Justin Allgaier claims ‘hardest’ Top-5 finish

By Nick Lewis

While Kyle Busch picked up his 97th Xfinity series win over Daniel Hemric and Austin Cindric in a battle that came down to the last corner. Justin Allgaier clawed his way to finish among the Top-5 in the Alsco 300 at Charlotte Motor Speedway.

“That might be the hardest Top-5 we’ve ever fought for right there boys,” said postrace Allgaier over the radio. “Great job, what a great way to rally. Sorry we started off as haywire as we did but way to stick with it all night.”

Justin Allgaier climbed in his race car for the Alsco 300 looking to build off the third-place finish he collected at Darlington last week in the Toyota 300.

A few laps after the competition caution at lap 20, Allgaier reported that all his gauges were not working. Those gages include his tachometer to watch his RPM’s and control his pit road speed, his fuel, oil and water pressures.

Allgaier was running in the Top-10 at the time and he was called down pit road so his crew couldattempt to diagnose and fix the problem under a caution caused by No. 52 of Kody Vanerwal.

The crew was unable to fix the problem and Allgaier was forced to run the rest of the race without his normal gages and returned to the track in the 14th position. He was able to move up into the was in the 9th position when he came down pit road under green.

With no gauges Allgaier had the challenge of coming down pit road without speeding. Allgaier attempted to pit under green while following the 18 of Riley Herbst to use him as a pit road speed indicator.

“Take your time, take your time nice and easy here,” said Crew Chief Jason Burdett as Justin Allgaier was leaving pit road under green.

Getting some help from some of the top contenders, Brandon Jones, Kyle Busch and Chase Briscoe were caught speeding on pit road during green flag pitstops and were forced to make a pass-through penalty as a result.

“You’ve got to be kidding me the guy who has no gages isn’t speeding but the guys who have working gauges are caught speeding, it’s awesome,” said Allgaier over the radio.

From eighth-place and a restart with 30 laps to go, Allgaier was able to use the outside lane to get three wide and pass some cars but the 21 of Myatt Snider appeared to come up into Allgaier spinning Snider into the wall.

Allgaier restarted in 7th on the bottom lane in-line with other cars who were on the same tires as Allgaier.

After restarting after the caution, Allgaier and Herbst made some contact on the front stretch which left the No. 7 car with a flat right front tire. After pitting under green, putting on scuffed tires

Allgaier and catching a couple cautions he was able to work his way up to fifth, which is where he finished.

The Xfinity Series returns to Bristol Motor Speedway on Saturday May 30th for the Cheddar’s 300 presented by Alsco on FS1 starting at 3:30 EST.