AJ Allmendinger Finishes a Season Best Eighth at Martinsville

By David Morgan, NASCAR Editor

When it comes to certain tracks in AJ Allmendinger’s wheelhouse, everyone knows he is a force to be reckoned with at the road courses, but there are also some other tracks that the JTG-Daugherty Racing driver has shown speed at.

One of those is Martinsville Speedway and Allmendinger displayed exactly why, driving from deep in the pack to score an eighth-place finish in Monday’s STP 500, marking top-10 finishes in four of his last five starts at the track.

With qualifying snowed out, Allmendinger would have to start the race back in 25th, but even starting that far back would be no problem for the California native. By the end of Stage 1, he had climbed 18 spots up the leaderboard to finish the first 130 lap segment in seventh place.

The final two stages were more of the same as Allmendinger kept a solid presence in the top-10 throughout the remainder of the race finishing both stage two and the final stage in eighth place.

“It was just a solid day,” said Allmendinger. “We were just missing just a little bit to go up there and run with the best of them.  The last set of tires didn’t agree with the car, the car was bouncing around a lot.  It’s unfortunate that our last set of tires were our worst, but that happens.  We still got a top 10 out it, ran in the top 10 all day and was able to start 25th and pass a lot of cars.

“What we needed at one of our better racetracks.  These are the places we know that we have a better chance at and we have to take advantage of it.  So, I would say I’m okay with eighth, I wish we could have got a little bit more at the end of the race there, but a solid day all around.”

After next week’s Easter break, the No. 47 team will set their sights on Texas Motor Speedway in two weeks, heading to the 1.5-mile track 19^th in points.