JR Motorsports sets the Chase pace as favorites in O’Reilly Auto Parts Series title fight

CHARLOTTE, N.C. -- Justin Allgaier has already established himself as a favorite for the NASCAR O'Reilly Auto Parts Series championship, based not just on his edge in experience but on a brilliant regular-season run. His six wins -- and counting -- plus remarkable consistency left him 229 points clear of the field after last Friday's regular-season closer at Daytona International Speedway. His strongest challengers in The Chase presented by Mobil 1, however, may come from within. Allgaier's JR Motorsports teammates are lining up to be his closest competition in the nine races ahead. "I would be hard-pressed to say that they're not," Allgaier said during Wednesday's Chase Media Day. The rest of his answer included nuance about other organizations' abilities, plus the potential extra effort required of JRM to field a multipronged Chase offensive. But the thrust of his insight was based on his faith in the team's direction, one that's so far led to 15 wins in 24 races this year and a 1-2-3 finish in the team owners' points at regular season's end. RELATED: Darlington weekend schedule | O'Reilly Auto Parts Series standings JR Motorsports carries the front-runner banner into Saturday's Fleetio 200 (7:30 p.m. ET, The CW, ESPN Unlimited, MRN Radio, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio), the opening race in the circuit's Chase. Allgaier's odds for a strong start are greater thanks to the venue -- historic Darlington Raceway, where the 2024 series champ is a four-time winner, including a victory there back in March. That performance marked a milestone: his 30th win in the series and a figure that only grew through the summer months. But Allgaier says he isn't necessarily counting his No. 7 Chevrolet team's output as a guarantee of Chase success. The Illinois native pointed to his fandom of Major League Baseball's St. Louis Cardinals, noting how their regular-season results historically haven't necessarily meant postseason advancement. "I don't want to do that," said Allgaier, whose lead in the standings now sits at 25 points after re-seeding. "But on the other side of it, I think people race differently in the regular season than they do in The Chase. I think you're going to have people that you expect to run at a high level that don't, and you're going to have people that you didn't expect to have a good Chase, and they're going to, right? You never really know what that looks like until you're kind of in it, and I just feel like for us, if we don't change paths and we do the same thing we've been doing, yeah, we've got a great shot at it still. But you know, I think it's really easy to feel like you get behind sometimes, right? We need to not do that. We've seen it time and time again. We're gonna just run the way we've been running, do the things we've been doing." That not-broken-don't-fix approach also applies to fellow JRM driver Carson Kvapil, who finished second in the regular-season points but enters The Chase with one of the circuit's hottest hands. After a succession of near-misses and flirtations with tasting his first O'Reilly Auto Parts Series victory, the 23-year-old driver broke through in a big way at Indianapolis Motor Speedway, added another in quick order at Iowa Speedway and nearly made it a fast three in a row before getting the short end of an overtime restart last week at Daytona. Kvapil likened snapping his winless drought to removing a dark cloud from overhead. Now the next-generation driver has some clarity, both in his No. 1 Chevy team's abilities and who he'll likely have to outrun for a shot at the title -- Allgaier, plus fellow JRM teammates Sammy Smith and Rajah Caruth. "It's going to be really cool to see how it all plays out," Kvapil said. "Obviously, with us being in the same building, it's gonna get weird at times probably, but that's just part of it, just part of racing. But no, I feel like our team is really strong, and we've hit our stride these last couple weeks, and this is the normal now, I guess you could say. It's not like we've had these last good couple of weeks, and we're pumped up and excited and praying that it's gonna stay that way. We know this is what we're capable of, and all the finishes are starting to come together for us." The rest of the 12-driver field comes from a variety of teams -- Haas Factory Team's Sheldon Creed and Sam Mayer, Richard Childress Racing's Jesse Love and Austin Hill, Joe Gibbs Racing's Brandon Jones and Taylor Gray, plus Hendrick Motorsports' Corey Day and Viking Motorsports' Parker Retzlaff. Their assignment comes with a sense of awareness, both of what JR Motorsports has been able to accomplish and the mistake-free racing that will be required to oust them. "Nine races isn't a lot, especially with this points format," said the 21-year-old Gray, who enters The Chase as the 11th seed. "Justin Allgaier, we've seen he's excelled at it this year, right? He's done this longer than I've been alive, and he's excelled at being consistent, right, and he absolutely stomped us all in the dirt in the regular season, so I think that shows how consistent you do have to be. And you know, obviously on top of that, they've had a lot of speed. So for us, it's all about consistency, right? No DNFs, running up front and winning races." MORE: Chase format 101 | Photos: Chase Media Day Producing that sort of measured reliability should be key, both for JR Motorsports drivers and their rivals. Caruth enters as the last of the 12 seeds, but will have a consistent ride for The Chase, driving the No. 88 JRM Chevrolet the rest of the way after splitting the regular season between that team and Jordan Anderson Racing's No. 32. It's Caruth's first Chase appearance in his first full-time O'Reilly Series campaign, but he has postseason experience with the elimination-era playoff structure from his last two seasons in the Craftsman Truck Series. He says he expects the rigors of The Chase to be a different sort of pressure. "Compared to the format in previous years, sure, winning's great, but the valleys are way more hurtful than they were in previous years," Caruth said. "So it's going to be important where if you're having a seventh-place day to not make it a 12th- or 15th- or 20th-place day, and then also not throw away a second or third trying to get a win and then ending up outside of the top 10. It's going to be even more important for that in The Chase. Yeah, I really feel good about our chances. Not only will our cars be fast, but I'm confident in myself and the lessons I learned earlier this year, and ready to put it all to the test."