Driver Allgaier is not too young, not too old — but still looks for ‘just right’
SPARTANBURG, S.C. — The life-sized Elvis still gazes out the front window, stopped in mid-gyration while keeping watch on the traffic that zooms along the Interstate here on the northeastern edge of the city.
Evidence of a former owner, one with an attitude a bit more on the free side when it came to NASCAR.
Some areas of the building are a bit more cramped today, with two teams operating out of a shop originally built for one, but the folks at HScott Motorsports aren’t exactly hanging all over one another.
Cars recently on the track are being stripped and rebuilt, others are closer to completion and soon will be loaded up for journeys to Dover, Pocono, Michigan or some other locale.
There’s talk of moving the team’s headquarters closer to Charlotte, but for now it’s no more than that.
Familiar faces abound throughout the building, crew chief and car chief and fabricator among them. Folks who have spent years elsewhere now call HScott home. Some have called this home a bit longer — parts manager Art Owens is the unofficial shop historian and says he came on board when the building was completed. Originally home to Buckshot Racing and driver Buckshot Jones, Sprint Cup team owner James Finch moved in when the Jones gang moved out.
Today, it’s the home of HSM with its two Sprint Cup teams for drivers Justin Allgaier and Michael Annett.
• • •
Roughly one-third of the way through the 2015 NASCAR Sprint Cup Series season, Allgaier sits 28th in points, Annett 33rd. Plenty of work remains to be done, both on and off the track.
At this point a year ago, Allgaier was 29th in points; his team, headed up by veteran crew chief Steve Addington, has "definitely been better this year," Allgaier, 28, said last week.
"It’s frustrating because I feel we’ve run better and still don’t have the finishes to show for it."
An eighth-place finish at Bristol (Tennessee) Motor Speedway earlier this year was his first career top 10 in Sprint Cup. But a 12th-place finish at Auto Club Speedway even before that trumps the BMS finish.
"We had an awful race and finished 12th (at ACS)," he said. "We executed well and pulled off a good finish. For me … that’s been the most important part. Figuring out how to execute the last 10 percent of the race. Whatever that distance may be, that last 10 percent I feel like is where we’ve struggled and where we have to be to get the finishes we feel we deserve."
Allgaier is in an unusual position. Similar to many of today’s veterans, he came to Sprint Cup through the lower-tier NASCAR series. He’s only in his second full season at this level, having spent four years prepping in what’s now the XFINITY Series.
Most of today’s veterans are in their mid-30s or early 40s; on the other end of the Sprint Cup spectrum, the youngsters are barely old enough to shave.
"I don’t feel like an old guy, but that’s true," Allgaier said. "When I was trying to make it … to this point, I raced with a lot of guys that got that opportunity at a young age. A lot of young guys were getting development deals … and a lot of stuff got crashed. There was a lot of teaching. That seemed to be the goal of a development program, spend a lot of money to teach these guys how to race the right way.
"Flip to now, look at Chase Elliott, Erik Jones. These guys have gotten that training from the time they were 10-12 years old, learning what I was learning at 25. You make the transition now and you’re way more ready.
"I don’t feel like I’m on the older side, but I know that I’m not 23 or 25 and getting that opportunity. I have to do a better job with a shorter window of opportunity than a lot of these guys that are coming up."
• • •
A year ago, there were a lot of questions and not enough answers for the single-car entity.
"You’re always trying to make things better, but did you make the right choice?" Allgaier said. "Are we running the best we can be running?"
The addition of Annett, 28 and in just his second full season at the Sprint Cup level, has helped to shed new light on some of those concerns.
"I feel like we’ve gained a lot. Not that the finishes show it, but I think we’ve grown tremendously," Allgaier said. "Learning how to balance all that and making sure that we put two really good cars on the race track has been the key and we’ve done that very well, I think."
• • •
Allgaier spent two years (2009-10) at Team Penske competing in the XFINITY Series, winning once and finishing in the top 10 in points both years. He added a pair of wins in the series while driving for team owner Steve Turner.
Multiple teams, stock car and open-wheel, reside inside the sprawling Penske shop. The building is so large, pit-stop practices are often held inside.
"They both have their advantages and they both have their disadvantages," Allgaier said of the two facilities. At Penske, "it seemed like you had every single resource you could ever want. In some aspects, that’s great. However, sometimes it took a lot longer to implement something because there were so many more channels, so many more hoops to jump through and so many more people that had to touch each part.
"I feel like we have a great team here; we’ve got a lot of room for growth. And ultimately that’s all you can ask for."
Contending for wins would be nice, but Allgaier admits that’s quite a leap given their present position.
"I’m not going to be greedy, not going to say that I think we have a shot at wining a race right now," he said. "I’m not going to say that we don’t.
"But at the same time I think we’re a lot closer than we were."
