By: Zach Catanzareti, Staff Writer
For a couple of teammates, Saturday’s ending to the XFINITY Series OneMain Financial 200 from Dover International Speedway was as hard as it could get.
Elliott Sadler did everything he could, but it was Justin Allgaier’s race after the JR Motorsports duo raced, bumped and slid to the checkered flag after a hardened battle for the win.
The show was between two men who have hundreds of Monster Energy Cup starts to their name. And that experience showed, as did the respect between the two.
Sadler missed out on not just a return to Victory Lane but the Dash 4 Cash $100,000 prize along with a win for OneMain Financial, his sponsor who also held the race’s name.
“I’m heartbroken, I’ll be honest,” Sadler said. “My team deserves it. We’ve been too good all year long not to have a checkered flag. This would have been a good race to win with it being the One Main Financial 200. That’s hard to swallow.”
It wasn’t without effort from Sadler, the four-time championship runner-up who began diamonding the banked corners to pass teammate Allgaier “the right way.” And though he had multiple runs through lapped traffic, it wasn’t enough to clear the No. 7 of Allgaier.
“I was trying to create some momentum, especially on the topside,” he said. “I wanted to do it the clean way as much as possible. The last lap, going into Turn 3, I figured I’d do the opposite of what I was going to do. Didn’t really know with the lapped cars.
“He rolled the middle and I stabbed the gas and tried to get up under him. I got loose, if I stayed in the gas I would have probably wrecked both of us pretty hard.”
Sadler believes himself and Allgaier are the leaders of JR Motorsports, each holding more wins, poles and starts than their teammates Michael Annett and Tyler Reddick. That, in part, influenced the way he raced Allgaier.
“Justin and I have a ton of respect for each other,” he said, “but we race each other hard. We race each other hard but fair. We have that understanding. Us two are the leaders of JRM, so we have to lead by example.”
In the fourth and final race for the Dash 4 Cash, that meant another race without Cup talent throughout the pack. Sadler believes it opened the opportunity for himself and Allgaier to race for the win Saturday as well as boost the competitiveness of the series.
“The last four races have been the best of the year from a competition standpoint on the track,” he said. “Big names bring people in the seats but as far as action on the track, it has been some great racing on the track. We should all be proud of us as a series that we can create this kind of racing when there aren’t Cup guys in the field.”