NASCAR: Allgaier wins Richmond Xfinity race

The four drivers who vied for the Dash 4 Cash bonus in Saturday’s NASCAR Xfinity Series race all started among the top five at the front of the pack. None of them finished there, but best-of-the-rest veteran Justin Allgaier was still smiling at the end, $100,000 richer.

After a final-stage call on pit strategy that nearly went awry, Allgaier held on to finish 13th and outlast the others in the Dash 4 Cash-eligible quartet on a hard-fought afternoon at Richmond Raceway. The rest struggled to stay on the lead lap, with Allgaier’s JR Motorsports teammate Sam Mayer taking 17th, Joe Gibbs Racing’s Sammy Smith driving home 19th and Kaulig Racing’s Daniel Hemric placing 24th as the first driver one lap down.

Allgaier started from the pole and led only the first two laps but grappled to keep the same pace as the day’s eventual front-runners in the ToyotaCare 250. With 40 laps to go, his No. 7 JRM crew chief, James Pohlman, opted to pit on a long green-flag run through the final stage, but a yellow flag 10 laps later for Jeremy Clements’ stalled No. 51 thwarted the gamble. He held on with tires that were 10 laps older than most of his peers who pitted during that caution period, helped by a trickle of more yellows that kept the others from gaining on him.

“Obviously, you want to win the 100 grand by winning the race, right, and we felt like that was the call to try to win the race,” Allgaier said. “We were off a little bit more than we wanted to be, and we knew everybody was gonna have to pit in that last segment. It’d been going green, so we were kind of hopeful that maybe it would stay green. … Ultimately, it worked out for us, but proud of the team, proud of the effort. You know, Jim Pohlman’s done a great job this year. We made the play to go try to win the race. It could have bitten us and taken the 100 grand away, but ultimately didn’t.”

Race Results