ROCKINGHAM, N.C. – Sheldon Creed sat comfortably in the shade of his team hauler in the Rockingham Speedway garage, seemingly oblivious to the fact that Justin Allgaier is on a rampage in pursuit of the NASCAR O’Reilly Auto Parts Series championship.
Allgaier, winner of three races already this season, has a 92-point lead over second-place Jesse Love and a 116-point edge over Creed, who’s in third.
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It seems early in the season, but the O’Reilly regular-season schedule is already 30% complete, and Allgaier is threatening to hide from the rest of the garage. He’ll be after win No. 4 in Saturday’s North Carolina Education Lottery 250 Presented by Black’s Tire at Rockingham (2:30 p.m. ET, The CW, MRN Radio, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio).
Creed, though, is taking things in stride. He has a win and four top-five runs and is off to the best start of his career. His average finish – 7.7 through seven races – represents a big leap from last year’s 11.7.
“He (Allgaier) is certainly out there,” Creed said. “I feel like we’re in a good spot, as well. Obviously, if he continues on like he has, it’ll be hard to catch up, and it’ll set them up well when The Chase does start. But I also think how the points are now and how much they matter, if he has three bad days and we can continue running top five and just having good days on those bad days, there is the opportunity to catch them. But we’ll have to see how it plays out.
“I don’t think there’s anything to stress about. Maybe if I was sitting 12th in points or something like that, but being third in driver points I’m happy with where we’re at.”
Allgaier has won two consecutive races and three (Phoenix, Darlington, Martinsville) of the past four. A win Saturday by Allgaier or any of his JR Motorsports teammates would tie JRM with Joe Gibbs Racing for the series’ longest winning streak at six.
Allgaier seems on target to notch more wins and clearly is the favorite to win the regular-season title, which would put him on top of the hill for the start of the O’Reilly Series Chase five months from now.
“There’s certainly an advantage to winning the regular season,” Creed said. “It’s an early advantage going into The Chase, but no matter where you are, you’ve just got to put your best nine races together. We’re going to try to keep doing what we’ve done the last seven weeks and get stage points and build momentum.”
Carson Kvapil, fifth in O’Reilly points, said no one should be surprised at Allgaier’s strong start.
“Justin has been around this deal forever,” Kvapil said. “Back when I was playing with toy cars when I was five years old, he was winning Nationwide races, right?”