Eyes On O’Reilly: Tide Has Turned In Title Fight Between Creed and Allgaier

For the first time this season, the NASCAR O’Reilly Auto Parts Series title is no longer Justin Allgaier’s to lose.

With wins at Darlington Raceway and Bristol Motor Speedway, plus second at World Wide Technology Raceway, Sheldon Creed has not only assumed the championship lead, he’s arguably the new favorite to win it.

“I feel like our execution has been outstanding the last three weeks,” Creed said in his Bristol post-race press conference. “I don’t know if we’ve had the fastest car the entire race. Darlington, we struggled at the start and got really good. [Gateway] we ran fifth most of the night and got good [results]. Tonight was just okay, but the way strategy fell we were just on the positive end of it.” 

The deficit of 30 points has been quickly made up, and Creed leads by 11 over Allgaier. And yet, Creed still feels like there’s more his team can get out of the No. 00 car.

“Execution [is at] an all-time high,” Creed said. “I still feel like we can have more raw speed or fire off a little closer. The No. 1 and the No. 7 makes that really hard, and everyone is bringing their best stuff right now. It doesn’t take much to run eighth or ninth like I did most of the night.”

The previous playoff format prioritized winning. The rehashed Chase format prioritizes consistency. Somehow, Creed and crew chief Jonathan Toney have managed to consistently win to start The Chase. While in the previous format the three-race stretch would do them no good for the next round, the wins will carry them through a potential bad day in the final six races. 

If they have a bad day in those final six races.

At nearly all of the final six tracks on the 2026 schedule, Creed and Haas Factory Team are among the best in the field over recent years. Creed has three runs of 11th or better in Las Vegas Motor Speedway. He has seven top-10s over his last nine races at Phoenix Raceway. 

Among active O’Reilly Series drivers, he has the fifth best average finish (9.7) at Talladega Superspeedway since 2023. He’s yet to finish worse than fourth at Martinsville Speedway with Haas Factory Team and has a pair of fifth-place finishes at the track hosting the series finale, Homestead-Miami Speedway.

The one track that’s been an issue for Creed is Charlotte Motor Speedway, where he has an average finish of 22.8 in his O’Reilly Series career, but there’s a catch. The series hasn’t run in the fall on the 1.5-mile oval during his time in the series, an important distinction since the late spring race is typically filled with Cup Series entries. Since 2020, only three of the seven oval races have been won by full-time O’Reilly drivers. 

In the postseason, Cup drivers are barred from entering lower division races, enhancing the chances for Creed to have a good points day. That is, if he can stay out of trouble. 

It’s important to note that Creed’s been in this spot before. He’s been a champion in the ARCA Menards Series and, in 2020, made his way through the prior playoff format to win the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series title. He never finished worse than 12th in that title run. The next year, when he missed out of the Championship 4, he still won two races and had four top 10s in the postseason.

Those two runs alone, plus nearly five seasons under his belt, and the 29-year-old is about as built for this moment as anyone in the field.

Anyone except Allgaier.

Allgaier’s fall from the top spot wasn’t due to a loss of pace that’s seemed to plague JR Motorsports the last few weeks. Mainly, it’s just been bad breaks. After a pair of rough results, Allgaier snagged a fourth-place finish and 52 points at Bristol. It wasn’t flawless, having to have a conversation post-race with Jesse Love after the two made contact in the late stages of the race. Still, the team is moving in a positive direction.

Of course, Allgaier’s resume speaks for itself when it comes to postseason prowess. He won the 2024 title in dramatic fashion, coming back from two laps down at Phoenix to finish second ahead of his fellow Championship 4 contenders. In the final four seasons of the prior format, Allgaier managed to reach the final round each time despite only winning in one of those seasons (2023). His average finish in the playoffs during that stretch was 10.2.

Not to mention, of the six tracks remaining, Allgaier has wins at all but one: Talladega. This year alone, he has won at Phoenix and Martinsville already. Sweeping those tracks would put him right back in the driver’s seat.

Maybe a fall out of the points lead, which Allgaier held since March, is what he and his team needs to be refocused on. As made evident with his 2024 title run and his early season dominance the last two years, the No. 7 seems to go a little faster when they feel they’ve got nothing to lose.

All the while, Carson Kvapil and Love might still have a say come the season finale. One thing’s for certain; the last six weeks of the season are going to feel wildly different than the previous six months.