CONCORD, N.C. — For every NASCAR Xfinity Series race that Justin Allgaier wins, there’s just as many where he and the No. 7 JR Motorsports team fail to seal the deal with a dominant car.
Saturday’s (May 24) BetMGM 300 at Charlotte Motor Speedway was no exception.
Allgaier was cruising out front holding a two-second lead with 25 laps to go, and with the entire field on equal tires and a car that led more than half the race, he looked poised to score his third win of the 2025 season if the race went green to the finish.
But as we’ve seen multiple times this season, a clean, green finish was absolutely not in the cards.
Allgaier’s JR Motorsports teammate Carson Kvapil spun from fifth place with 22 laps to go to bring out a caution, and that set up a split decision for the entire field to either pit for tires or stay out and maintain track position.
Allgaier ultimately decided to stay out and retain the top spot.
But that’s not what the No. 7 team had recommended; instead, it called Allgaier to pit road.
“I saw a couple of guys that were staying out with me,” Allgaier explained. “If I stayed out, I just made a spur of the moment decision to just shoot back up on the racetrack, right? Hindsight, it’s [not] the right one, but you look at all those cautions that happened and you look at the chaos that ensued from what was happening on the racetrack. Do we get wrecked if we pit? Are you ultimately in that bad of a position? I don’t know.”
A few cars decided to stay out, but not as many as Allgaier had hoped when he made his split-second decision to not pit. Sam Mayer, the first driver with two fresh tires, restarted sixth. Connor Zilisch, the first driver with four, restarted ninth. Allgaier now had to hold them off for 17 laps with tires that had 30 extra laps of wear and tear.
“I think as soon as the No. 41 (Mayer) restarted sixth on newer tires, I kind of knew that it was going to be a tough road to climb,” Allgaier said.
“… Ultimately, I felt like clear air was so important. And if more cars stayed out with us or more guys took two tires, it was going to be a net positive for us. Unfortunately, it just didn’t.”
The remainder of the race devolved into an onslaught of crashes. Twenty of the final 26 laps were run under yellow, and while those cautions helped Allgaier keep the lead, it also allowed the cars with four tires to slowly pick their way through the field. And with five laps to go, Zilisch and William Byron — Allgaier’s fiercest competition of the day — had roared back to second and third.
“All those back-to-back cautions let the guys that had four tires kind of get a spot or two on every yellow, and [it’s] ultimately just the price you pay,” Allgaier said.
Another caution with five to go forced overtime, and while Allgaier initially held serve on the final restart, the tire deficit was too much to overcome and Byron made the pass for the win coming to the white flag.
Allgaier faded to fourth at the finish, and the decision to stay out failed in the end.
“I’d love to walk out of here and be standing here in victory lane and be saying, ‘man, I made the right call, and it was awesome,'” Allgaier said. “But it’s just not the case today.”
Allgaier recorded his ninth top-five finish in 13 races this season. He holds a commanding 72-point lead in the regular season standings, and while he already has two wins under his belt this season, Charlotte was just another race where he and the No. 7 team will wonder what could’ve been.
“I’ll own this one,” Allgaier said. “At the end of the day, they told me to pit. They had the plan, and it’s a bad decision on my part.”
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.
Find Stephen on Twitter @stephen_stumpf