Chase underdog holds 10th place in the standings heading to the Monster
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Before the playoffs, AJ Allmendinger gave his team a chance even when the odds appeared slim. Now the 32-year-old journeyman has one more chance to beat not only the odds, but at least four of his closest competitors to survive the first round of the Chase for the NASCAR Sprint Cup postseason.
"We’re digging," Allmendinger said Sunday after a 13th-place run at New Hampshire Motor Speedway. "We’re trying to be the little team that could."
Allmendinger, in his first-ever Chase, remains a dark horse to advance to the Contender Round after this weekend’s AAA 400 (Sunday, 2 p.m. ET, ESPN) at Dover International Speedway, where the field of title hopefuls will be trimmed from 16 drivers to 12. With a ranking of 10th after the opening two races and a scant 12 points separating eighth place from 16th, Allmendinger said he knows he’ll need another solid, error-free finish to make the cut.
Allmendinger managed to escape the heavy toll of carnage and misfortune that visited several of his Chase rivals in last weekend’s visit to New Hampshire. While he isn’t necessarily wishing for more bad luck to his fellow drivers, he said he may need some help to remain firmly among the top 12.
"We’ve got to focus on us," Allmendinger said. "We know what’s around us. We know we have a lot of great teams. This is what we’ve got to do to keep going is make no mistakes. Chicago, we didn’t run very good; we maximized 22nd. This weekend, thought we were a little better, weren’t great in the race, maximized a 13th. We’re going to need mistakes around us. We’ve just got to go to Dover — one of my favorite places — and just focus on us and get everything we can.
"Wherever that puts us, it puts us."
Allmendinger’s JTG Daughtery Racing team will be bringing the same No. 47 Chevrolet that ran at Chicagoland Speedway two weeks ago, hoping that it can withstand the smaller confines and heavy demands of the Monster Mile. Though the driver’s penchant for Dover is well-known, the team — which shares a technical alliance with Richard Childress Racing — will need to make gains from the 21st-place performance it posted there in June to build off last weekend’s effort.
"Momentum is a big deal for any team. We feel like we needed that going into this weekend," said Brian Burns, Allmendinger’s crew chief. "Fortunately for us, Dover is one of AJ’s favorite tracks. We had a really good car there last time. A lot of things that we have learned since then will help us unload better. … Our strategy is quite simple: Qualify good, stay out of trouble, be solid all day long."
Allmendinger insists he won’t be scoreboard-watching this weekend, though it would be hard to fault him if Carl Edwards and Matt Kenseth — the drivers close ahead of him — and Ryan Newman, Kasey Kahne, Denny Hamlin, Greg Biffle, Kurt Busch and Aric Almirola — the Chase drivers behind him — weren’t part of the approach.
Either way, Allmendinger is just one race away from achieving his pre-Chase goal of making a postseason surprise a reality.
"I got home (Sunday) and all of a sudden it started hitting me that we have a shot to advance," Allmendinger said. "I don’t know, the outlook is different, we can make it now. If we did, it would be good publicity for our sponsors, who have supported our team for such a long time."
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