By: Zach Catanzareti, Staff Writer
Rain or shine, Saturday’s Zippo 200 at The Glen was going to race… and Justin Allgaier was going to learn.
Starting the 82-lap race on dry tires, the XFINITY Series was thrown a curve ball in the opening stage when rain soaked the New York road course, forcing the teams to switch to rain tires for a short stint.
Having run the previous rain race (Mid-Ohio, 2016) Allgaier was happy with the performance of the wet tires.
“I felt really good with how our car drove in the rain,” Allgaier said. “I was able to gauge how hard to push the straightaways and braking zones.”
In fact, he could have pushed it even further if not for incoming blue skies.
“I felt I had more to go but there was no point in wrecking at that point,” he said. “We knew the dry was coming back.”
And it did. The rain went away and the summer heat led to a dry track for the final half of the event. Allgaier’s No. 7 JR Motorsports Chevrolet came home third.
“That got me into second place behind Joey [Logano],” he said of the rain sting. “He was better than I was but I was learning more and more every lap.
“It’s hard to absorb that much in such a short amount of time. By the time you get it figured out, the rain stopped and it started drying up.
Allgaier, who started the day 10th, finished the first stage fourth before jumping to second in Stage 2. The veteran has a road course win to his career, however, left Watkins Glen satisfied with a podium result.
“We just put ourselves in a good position at the end of the race, and that’s all you can ask,” he said.
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