NASCAR on TV this week

Justin Allgaier’s Crash Opened the Door, Cole Custer Slammed It Shut

BRISTOL, Tenn. — Staring down a 43-point deficit to Justin Allgaier with one race remaining in the NASCAR Xfinity Series regular season championship, it appeared that Cole Custer would need divine intervention to pull off the upset.

The No. 00 team had three DNFs and four finishes of 21st or worse in the last five races, and the team had little momentum after what Custer described as a “tough month-and-a-half” where “we crashed a lot of stuff.”

Forty-three points is a tall deficit for anyone to overcome in a single race, and Custer would have to do it at Bristol Motor Speedway, one of Allgaier’s best tracks on the Xfinity schedule. Allgaier won Bristol a year ago and had led a whopping 901 laps in his last seven Bristol starts.

And when Allgaier started Saturday night’s (Sept. 20) race by leading the first 60, it looked like the regular season title battle would be won without contest.

That is, until an Austin Green mechanical failure tore the back bumper off the No. 7 car.

“Having the best car at the beginning, I mean, I thought our Brandt Camaro was phenomenal,” Allgaier said after the race. “And then we got the damage from the [No.] 32. That kind of put us behind the eight ball.”

Allgaier was forced to pit and missed out on stage points, but he still had a fast car and used pit strategy to get back up to second place.

“We had to flip the stage, and once we were on a little bit older tires those guys were coming, but we were making really good time on the bottom and putting ourselves in a good position,” Allgaier said.

But then disaster struck on lap 154, as Sheldon Creed and Allgaier made contact on the frontstretch, which sent the No. 7 hard into the outside wall.

“Then the [No.] 18, I just don’t know if he got loose off the corner or what, but he came down off the wall and caught the right front, and that was kind of the end of it,” Allgaier said.

For the second incident, Allgaier wasn’t as lucky; the heavy damage to nose turned his No. 7 car into a parachute, turning in laps that were two seconds slower than the leaders.

“You’re just kind of hanging on, and all those laps we lost just spot after spot after spot,” Allgaier said.

The crew managed to put some speed back in the No. 7 car for the final sprint to the finish, but it was too little, too late, as Allgaier ended the race in 30th, 10 laps down.

“The team did a great job fixing [the car],” Allgaier said. “I mean, the run before the last run, if we had to run with what that speed was, we’d have probably been about 100 laps down, right? It was awful.”

Meanwhile, Custer had scored 13 stage points and was in complete control of the race. With Allgaier running 30th for the remainder of the race, a win would’ve given Custer just enough to claim the regular season championship. But if he faltered and finished second, Allgaier would’ve won the regular season by the skin of his teeth.

See also
Cole Custer Wins Bristol, Steals Xfinity Regular Season Title

In the end, the final 94 laps of the race went green, and Custer led the last 92 to win the race and the regular season championship by a mere three points.

“Cole did a great job, he went on and won the race,” Allgaier said. “He did all the right things he needed to do tonight, and unfortunately we did not.”

In the post-race presser, Custer knew that winning the regular season championship was a longshot heading into the weekend.

“I knew we needed some help,” Custer said. “That’s a good team, that No. 7 team, and it would’ve been a really good race if they didn’t have whatever problems they had, but I’ve always liked racing Justin. Just bad luck for them, I guess.”

It wasn’t a smooth race for Custer either, as he blew a tire and made contact with the wall on lap 3, and he had to race all the way back from the rear of the field.

“I knew that we just had a really fast car,” Custer said. “I kind of knew from lap 1 that we had something. I knew going through the field was gonna be tough, but we had our car set up pretty good to be able to pass and work the bottom.”

The early wreck left Custer with zero fresh sets of tires for the final 100 laps, and the one thing he didn’t need was another caution.

“I wanted it to go green [to the end] as much as I could,” Custer said. “But it’s tough with lapped traffic, you just never know here. You catch one lapper that’s just really hard to pass, it could derail your whole race. So I was trying to be as aggressive as I could to get through lapped traffic and kind of move on, but it was tough.”

But Custer navigated the lapped traffic with ease, and the end of the race went green to his advantage. And while Allgaier’s misfortune was what opened the door for Custer to win the regular season title, he still had to maximize his night, and he capitalized with a win in a race that he absolutely had to win.

“It’s a testament to our team, what we bring to the racetrack every single week,” Custer said. “… It’s been a tough month-and-a-half, but I know when we got our stuff right, we’re going to be up there for wins and fighting for a championship.”

Stephen Stumpf is the NASCAR Content Director for Frontstretch and is a three-year veteran of the site. His weekly columns include “Stat Sheet” and “4 Burning Questions.” He also writes commentary, contributes to podcasts, edits articles and is frequently at the track for on-site coverage.

Can find on Twitter @stephen_stumpf.

Sign up for the Frontstretch Newsletter

A daily email update (Monday through Friday) providing racing news, commentary, features, and information from Frontstretch.com
We hate spam. Your email address will not be sold or shared with anyone else.