Justin Allgaier Falls 1 Spot Short with Alternate Pit Strategy at Pocono

LONG POND, Pa. — Justin Allgaier looked to be one of the best cars in Saturday’s (July 13) NASCAR Xfinity Series race at Pocono Raceway, as he dominated stage one (his 11th stage win of the season, by the way) by more than four seconds over second place.

But as has been the case for the No. 7 team and Allgaier all season, an unforced error sent them to the back, as they got hit with an equipment interference penalty during the first round of pit stops.

He made his way back to 10th for the end of the stage two, and after an opening-lap caution to start stage three, crew chief Jim Pohlman rolled the dice and brought Allgaier down pit road with 42 laps to go, gambling that they would have enough fuel to make it to the end and leapfrog the rest of the field.

“We kind of knew where we were at, and we started saving as soon as we came off pit road there on that last pit stop, and Jim was giving me the numbers,” Allgaier said. “And the hope was that it was going to go green, and we were going to be just fine on fuel.”

The strategy worked at first, as Allgaier made his way back to the lead with 23 to go. But a caution came out just three laps later, and Allgaier suddenly had to contend with Cole Custer and William Byron on fresh tires after all but the top three had made a pit stop.

“When the caution came out, it was really, really tricky,” Allgaier said. “It’s so hard to put yourself behind these guys if we were to come [pit] and they stayed out, and even then, we would have been in a huge deficit.”

With only a two-car buffer for a restart with 15 laps to go, Allgaier did the best he could to hold off Custer, Byron and the rest of the field on fresher tires. But Custer had a rocket ship in the second half of the race, and he passed Allgaier. for the lead with 9 to go.

“We made all the rights decisions, just unfortunately when you’re out there on that old of tires and you’re trying to keep those guys behind you, you’re just a sitting duck,” Allgaier said. “That is what was really the most frustrating.”

One final caution set up a four-lap shootout, and just when all hope seemed to be lost Byron gave Allgaier one last shot with a huge push to Allgaier on the frontstretch, which allowed him to clear Custer heading into turn 1.

“A big, huge thank you to William Byron, who pushed on the front straightaway in that last restart,” Allgaier said. “It was awesome. …

“That whole [Hendrick Motorsports] team does a great job, and we work really closely with them and have a lot of respect for them and what they do, and they help us a lot when they can. So, he definitely pushed at the end there a lot.”

But Allgaier misjudged that first corner, and that was all Custer needed to take the lead right back and cruise to his first Xfinity win of the season.

“It’s going to sting for a little bit, you know,” Allgaier said. “I wish I’d have checked up a little bit more in the middle of turn 1 and got a little bit lower off the corner. I heard [Custer] go into third gear and I kind of knew that was the end of it for me at that point.”