DOVER, Del. — Saturday’s (April 27) NASCAR Xfinity Series race at Dover Motor Speedway will be a race to forget for Justin Allgaier.
It was a day where he had potential winning speed and was undone in the final 50 laps by a caution for rain and a series of late-race restarts.
“I don’t even know where to start with today, it was just a comedy of errors on all sides,” Allgaier said.
Cole Custer and Allgaier were running first and second when a caution came out for rain on lap 159, and they rolled the dice and banked on a rain shower that would end the race.
Instead, the heavy rain never arrived despite a brief red-flag hold on lap 167. The cars were soon re-fired and because the cars had the opportunity to come down pit road before the red flag was displayed, the pits remained closed until the next restart. Custer had to pit for gas and serve the penalty, while Allgaier reluctantly stayed on track for the upcoming restart.
Not reopening the pits after the red, NASCAR’s decision to throw the caution for rain when it did and confusion on the choose for the restart were all sources of frustration for Allgaier on pit road after the race.
“We called the caution for no rain and decided to go back [racing] when the rain actually started to come down,” Allgaier said. “Then [race control] told us one-to-go choose, we picked the outside, and the No. 21 (Austin Hill) stayed doubled up with us when I was above the choose cone. And then they come in and tell us we have to go to the bottom when we chose the outside.
“They didn’t open pit road, we couldn’t come down and put fuel in it, you go through the comedy of errors that they made, and it’s frustrating.
“You know, they ruined a fantastic race today, and it is what it is. Whether I win the race or not it doesn’t really matter, but when you make errors like that it’s uncalled for. I’ve already asked to go talk to [NASCAR], and hopefully they’ll give me some resolution on it, because I don’t understand this one.”
Allgaier still had a chance to salvage his day after pitting out of sequence, as a series of late restarts allowed him to climb up to sixth for the final restart. But even that went awry, as a last lap crash saddled him with a 17th-place finish.
“Last lap, the right rear [tire] was going down from the damage in that last restart,” Allgaier said. “With the way that the day went, it’s hard to pit right there not knowing, we thought we got clearance enough [for the tire] under that last caution, and it went down.”
Meanwhile, Allgaier’s JR Motorsports teammate Carson Kvapil had a chance to score his first Xfinity win in just his second career start, but he lost the lead on the final restart to Ryan Truex and instead had to settle for second.
“I hated that the No. 88 (Kvapil) didn’t win the race, I mean, that’s probably the most frustrating part,” Allgaier said. “The kid did a great job all day and doesn’t get to victory lane today.”
Allgaier is now up to 268 laps led in the 2024 season — the second-most of all drivers — but he only has two top fives and an average finish of 16.2 to show for it. The next race on the Xfinity calendar is at Darlington Raceway and Allgaier will look to move on from a disappointing finish in a season that has been full of them.
Stephen Stumpf is the NASCAR Content Director for Frontstretch and is a three-year veteran of the site. His weekly column is “Stat Sheet,” and he formerly wrote "4 Burning Questions" for three years. He also writes commentaries, contributes to podcasts, edits articles and is frequently at the track for on-site coverage.
Can find on Twitter @stephen_stumpf.
He thinks his day was bad… ?. he fails to mention he took out the 98, (Herbsts) who had the chance at the $100,000 with just a few laps to go!!! Hello!!! ???