Eyes on Xfinity: A New Mindset Makes Justin Allgaier Seem Unstoppable

When the NASCAR season started in February at Daytona International Speedway, the pressure on Justin Allgaier couldn’t have been much higher.

Not only was he the defending NASCAR Xfinity Series champion, but the 38-year-old was carrying the banner for JR Motorsports in its first attempt to make the Daytona 500 that’s synonymous with the name Earnhardt.

Once he qualified for the Daytona 500 in the Feb. 13 duels, a sense of relief came over him.

“I’m probably the loosest and freest I’ve ever been going into a race and there’s a lot of fun in that,” Allgaier told The CW before the start of the Xfinity Series season opener at Daytona on Feb. 15.

There’s an old theory in racing that winning races gets easier after you’ve finally gotten your first, and there’s plenty of career resumes to back it up. Allgaier, in his 15th season in Xfinity, is testing if the theory applies to championships.

Allgaier has a pair of wins and four top-five finishes, both career-high marks for him as far as the opening six races of a season. And he’s making it look really easy.

Allgiaier was fifth in the standings after a 29th-place run at Circuit of the Americas. He went to Phoenix Raceway the next week and dominated before a late caution bunched up the field for a late restart. After leading 130 laps and winning a stage, he was relegated to a fifth-place finish.

He dominated again the next week at Las Vegas Motor Speedway and finished the job for his first win of the year. Then came this past weekend at Homestead-Miami Speedway, where it felt like the bad timing that bit him at Phoenix came back around.

The leader Kyle Larson had built a 25-second cushion to fourth-place Justin Allgaier when the caution flag waved with eight laps to go. Allgaier said post-race he was actually frustrated with the caution, wanting to secure himself a top five and get out of dodge. 

Then, crew chief Jim Pohlman came over the radio.

“Jim said something to me that we’ve worked on this week and really this whole year,” Allgaier said. “We went from discipline to motivation. At the end of the race, there is no discipline. You just got to go for it.”  

The lack of discipline was evident. Larson, the dominant car of the day, was given a hard shove by Sam Mayer at the restart that allowed Austin Hill and Allgaier to pull away. Mayer could have had a shot at his first win with Haas Factory Team if not for his mistake. While Larson was frustrated with Mayer’s lack of patience afterwards, he did also choose to restart on the slower inside lane, a decision that also proved costly.

From there, Allgaier cleanly got around Hill for the lead coming to the white flag. After not blocking Hill when he had a chance back at Atlanta Motor Speedway weeks prior, Allgaier picked his spot and crossed Hill over heading off turn 2 down the backstretch.

Heading into a race at Martinsville Speedway — where Allgaier also has six top-five finishes in nine Xfinity starts — the driver of the No. 7 leads Mayer in the standings by a whopping 29 points. He also leads Xfinity regulars with the most wins, stage wins, stage points and laps led in 2025.

Obviously, JR Motorsports has had pace this year. While they’ve had their rookie trials and tribulations, Carson Kvapil and Connor Zilisch have had race winning pace more weeks then they haven’t. Sammy Smith may only have one top-10 run, but he’s still firmly in the playoff race.

That alone doesn’t propel Allgaier to this hot of a start. It goes back to that feeling he had back at Daytona and how he got to that point.

“Jim Pohlman has done a great job of getting me in a position where I’ve changed my approach,” Allgaier said during an interview with the CW during rain delay coverage of Daytona qualifying. “You do this long enough and it gets stale and you don’t test yourself. He was able to push me in ways I haven’t been pushed before.”

Allgaier is far from alone in the race for the title. At the beginning of the year, I put him, Hill and Zilisch as the three favorites to win the title. The number of contenders is growing as the season progresses. The Haas Factory Team duo of Mayer and Sheldon Creed is on the cusp of winning and Richard Childress Racing has been consistent since their wins to open the year.

Yet Allgaier is still firmly the title favorite. And it’s in large part due to a new frame of mind implemented by Pohlman and company.

“To be able to sit up here and to not only win today but do it two weeks in a row with the field of competition we have right now,” Allgaier said after winning at Homestead. “It’s a big deal.”