By: Zach Catanzareti, Staff Writer
Justin Allgaier wasn’t the quickest in Saturday’s Allied Steel Buildings 200, but he made it close.
Starting second, the No. 7 JR Motorports Chevrolet of Allgaier faded with a struggling car on the high banks of Dover Interntional Speedway. However, when a rash of cautions tightened the field in the final 45 laps, Allgaier was back in the game.
“We struggled all day long,” Allgaier said. “We made a lot of adjustments on pit stops. For me, we were making the most of what we had. I thought we did a good job at that.”
Restarting on the front row with 17 laps to go, Allgaier hit the wall off Turn 2, making for a couple cloce calls between himself and third-place runner Tyler Reddick.
“The good news is we never touched,” Allgaier said. “We had a really good restart off the bottom and I tried to get up in front of Tyler. When he cut across, it took my car completely off the track. I slid up and hit the wall, actually pretty hard. Surprisingly, we kept going.”
From there, Reddick slid loose under Allgaier in Turn 3, keeping the No. 7 in second place.
“We joked about it after the race, it’s just good, hard racing, he said. “That’s what this racetrack provides, really aggressive but really good, hard racing.”
With smoke visible following the damage under an ensuing caution, the No. 7 crew opted to stay out and take the chance with a victory on the line.
“At that point, I think you’re better off to wreck it than to come down and pit,” he said. “I don’t mean that in a bad way but it wasn’t bad enough to be an issue. For us, knowing we had track position, knowing we had the ability to have a good day, you put yourself in the mode of going for it.
“If you do end up crashing… that would be a big negative. We don’t ever want to cause more work or damage to these cars. But, if we pitted and ultimately had the situation where it did finish, we’d feel pretty dumb for coming to pit road.”
With one more restart, Allgaier simply had nothing for race winner Christopher Bell, who beat Allgaier to the checkered flag by 1.7 seconds.
“I felt on that last restart, we timed it as close as you could time it,” he said. “Had a great run, had some help from the No. 98 [Chase Briscoe] giving a push. When we got to Turn 1, Christopher was close enough to me and we were all lacking grip — the last thing I wanted to do was go in and wipe all of us out. I checked up and it was just enough for him to clear me.
“To hit the wall that hard, to have knocked the body off it almost completely and to bring our Camaro to second, it’s a good day.”