Day of Disappointment for Allgaier in Hometown Race

By Luis Torres, Staff Writer

For the fourth time this season, Justin Allgaier failed to see the checkered flag after having a tough day in Saturday’s Camping World 300 at Chicagoland Speedway in Joliet, Illinois.

In front of his and sponsorship’s (Brandt Professional Agriculture) home crowd, Allgaier started off the 200-lap race on a good note after qualifying fourth and worked his way up to second, trying to hold off Joey Logano.

Then on Lap 11, his No. 7 Chevrolet Camaro lost control on the bottom after battling with Joey Logano. Allgaier avoided any form of damage and pitted for fresh tires.

The Riverton native recovered tremendously well to finish sixth in Stage 1 and collected five stage points. Then he would have a clean second stage with a better performing car on entry and exit, claiming ninth.

From there, day went awry after a caution came out for Ryan Sieg, who spun in the same corner Allgaier did earlier. Allgaier pitted for fresh tires, fuel and made adjustments, but a couple of drivers such as Jeffrey Earnhardt, stayed out.

Once the green flag dropped on Lap 116, those who stayed out had nothing on those with fresh tires, including Earnhardt who got loose exiting Turn 1. It caused a ripple effect which put Allgaier in a bad spot and slammed the wall.

“I was following the 81 there, trying to get a run,” Allgaier on the incident. “I knew Joey had a good run to his outside and he got loose. I thought maybe there would be enough of a hole to his outside that we can sneak by, but once I got into his dirty air, there was just nowhere to go and hit the fence.”

This resulted Allgaier to pit with the JR Motorsports crew observing the damage on the right side and see if the right front was flat. They were able to make some repair and exited out of the pits two laps down.

The damage was far worse than they thought as Allgaier reported a bigger problem, notably with steering making a half turn to the left.

His day was officially done after hitting the wall once again and brought his machine to the garage, finishing 32nd. Allgaier was checked and released from the medical care center, saying that he was bummed being out of the race that went wrong after his first incident on Lap 11.

“It’s our home race and it has been such a fun race track for me. We’ve had a rough day,” said Allgaier. “Our Camaro wasn’t great in the beginning. We felt like at practice we were good. Just got too loose in and I spun out earlier, and that really started all of the problems that we’ve had today. Hate it for our guys. Hate it for all the guest and customers that we had here. It was a pretty disappointing day.”