DOVER, Del. — Just four laps stood between Justin Allgaier and a fourth win in 14 races in what is turning into a historically good season even by the high standards of the JR Motorsports veteran.
Allgaier led a race best 71 laps around the unforgiving high concrete banks of Dover Motor Speedway, Saturday (May 16), recording an impressive 10th top-five effort of the 2026 season. But he was unable to hold off a hard charging Corey Day, who surged past him on the outside with four laps to go.
The decisive moment came off turn 1, when the lapped car of Blake Lothian took the middle, forcing Allgaier to dive low and giving Day the top line. He didn’t need to be asked twice.
It was a topic Allgaier recounted in detail to Frontstretch.com on pit road after the race.
“I just thought that when the 55 [of Blake Lothian] went up, I thought that that was going jam up the top lane on Corey,” Allgaier said. “But unfortunately he kind of hedged his bet and he kind of went to the middle, which put me in a really bad spot because you really can’t charge the middle like you want to, and Corey just had the momentum on the top. So you know, if we’re both on the top, you know he was gonna have to really hustle that thing to be able to get by us, but they were really good right there.
“Anything could have happened, and like I said, it’s disappointing, but it’s how it goes.”
Allgaier was also quick to praise the 20-year old Day, running just his 25th NASCAR O’Reilly Auto Parts Series race.
“Corey’s ultra talented,” Allgaier said. “He’s just trying to get his feet wet and and figure out the stock car thing, and he’s doing a pretty darn good job of it. I’m disappointed to lose to him, but at the same time you watch what he was doing out there. I mean obviously he was running a heck of a race, and it’s going to be hard to hold him off even if the lap car wasn’t there.
“So you know, we’ll go back and reboot and figure out what we could have done better, but ultimately it just wasn’t our day.”
Allgaier, who is typically a great qualifier with a 7.2 average start in 2026, took the green flag in 13th place and methodically made his way through the field despite the chaos unfolding around him.
“Chaos is probably an understatement. We saw some aggression just because of how hard it was to pass. I don’t feel like it’s ever been like that here. I don’t know, it’s just a really difficult race. And I felt like track position was so important and restarts, and I think that’s why you saw some of the crashes that we saw guys just getting ultra aggressive because they knew clean air was so important.”
Despite the disappointment of a second-place run, Allgaier increased his overall points lead, now a whopping 175 points over his next closest competitor, Sheldon Creed, and 195 up over the surging Day.
So was a great points day some solace for a race that slipped away late?
“The competitor in me says you’re wrong, you want to win them all,” Allgaier said. “I don’t care what the stats say or or how good you run or don’t run, you want to win them all, and today it’s no different. My wife and kids are here. I’d love nothing more than to get them to victory lane. But no, again, it wasn’t meant to be.
“I’m super blessed to drive great racecars. I got a great team around me. It’s hard to be sad about that, but disappointing when you can’t pull one off. … You gotta take the good with the bad, and I thought we completed a 99.9% great race.”
Danny Peters has written for Frontstretch since 2006. An English transplant living in San Francisco, by way of New York City, he’s had an award-winning marketing career with some of the biggest companies sponsoring sports. Working with racers all over the country, his freelance writing has even reached outside the world of racing to include movie screenplays.