Eyes on O’Reilly: Is JR Motorsports in Danger of Having History Repeat Itself?

NASCAR can change the format in which they crown a champion in the NASCAR O’Reilly Auto Parts Series, but it may not be able to stop history from repeating itself.

In 2025, JR Motorsports had the dominant driver and car of the season in Connor Zilisch and the No. 88 Chevy. Ten wins for Zilisch, more than double the next best driver. Twenty top fives, five more than the next best in the category. But it didn’t matter at Phoenix Raceway when Jesse Love, winner of just two races that season, won the title.

Fast forward 10 months and the series, now back under The Chase format, is in a similar spot.

Justin Allgaier, while not nearly as dominant as Zilisch was last year, has been head and shoulders above the rest of the field so far in 2026. His six wins, 18 top-10 finishes and 335 stage points this season lead all drivers by a mile.

However, since the reset brought his points lead from 229 to 25 over teammate Carson Kvapil, he hasn’t had his usual results. As that’s happened, a pair of fellow Chevy drivers — Sheldon Creed and the aforementioned Love — have emerged to challenge Allgaier and JR Motorsports’ stranglehold on the top spot in the series.

Allgaier won stage one at Darlington Raceway, but a run-in with ‘The Lady in Black’ saw him sink in the final stage to 17th place, marking only the second time this season he finished outside the top 10 on a non-drafting oval over a mile in length.

This past week at World Wide Technology Raceway near St. Louis, history repeated itself again. Allgaier lost early track position, got caught up in another driver’s mess — sustaining damage from Corey Day and William Sawalich’s shocking and totally unpredictable run-in — and was lucky to come out with a 13th-place finish.

“We decided not to pit when the damage happened and in hindsight I wish we would have,” Allgaier said. “We pitted on that last caution and I wish we had a little bit more of that to be able to run well.”

Before the beginning of The Chase, it looked like Kvapil would be the only one who could contend with Allgaier after winning two of the final three races in the regular season. He won the pole at Darlington, but faded to 12th in the final stage. He took the pole and dominated the race at Gateway, but once again faded late to settle for fifth.

Meanwhile, Creed won at Darlington and Love snapped a season-long losing drought at WWT, pushing them into the thick of the title race with the JR Motorsports duo. Creed leads the points while the defending champion Love sits fourth. Between them, along with the two title favorites going into The Chase, is just 16 points of separation.

The shakeup at the top of the standings gives a chance for people to realize just how dominant JRM is in the O’Reilly Series. Creed, Love and Ryan Sieg’s win at Daytona International Speedway marks the longest stretch of the season — only three races — without a JRM car in victory lane. The last time the series had a stretch that long? The final four races of 2025 where a title slipped out of its hands.

Plus, you realize it takes a special kind of driver and team to dethrone them with Creed being maybe the only driver who rivals Allgaier’s consistency, while Love, despite a rough summer, is one of the best prospects in NASCAR.

Allgaier had been the points leader in the series since the fourth race of the season, but he’s not sweating losing the top spot. In fact, it’s just the opposite.

“Honestly, not being at the top of the points is probably the best thing that could have ever happened,” Allgaier said. “It just gives us motivation to go next week to a racetrack we’re really good at and try and figure out what we need to do and make it work.”

It is far from time to panic for Allgaier and Kvapil about the threat from fellow Chevys, but that time might come soon depending on Friday’s (Sept. 18) race at Bristol Motor Speedway. Allgaier has two wins there, the No. 1 that Kvapil drives won back in the spring with Zilisch, and the high-banked short track has been one of JRM’s best tracks to date. Their title hopes can be renewed in one day with a good run.

But a bad run? That’s trouble. If they somehow got caught up in a wreck like Allgaier nearly did at Gateway, that creates a hole to climb out of to get back into it.

But even worse yet, what if the pace still isn’t back to what is expected of JRM cars? What if the No. 1 and No. 7 that roll off the truck at Bristol are merely top-10 cars rather than the winners they seem to be every week?

Then, it could be a long and painful race to the finish for the organization that’s dominated the series over the last two seasons. That is, dominated except when it mattered most.