Justin Allgaier had the NASCAR Xfinity Series race at Phoenix Raceway won with four laps to go when Nick Leitz cut a tire, crashed, and triggered a green-white-checkered.
There, the defending champion suffered his only bad restart of the race and nearly wadded both himself and Aric Almirola into the wall, giving Brandon Jones and Alex Bowman a chance to send it into Turn 3 four-wide.
Allgaier had literally launched tremendously on every restart from the row until the one that mattered the most.
Bowman surged to the lead but Almirola reeled him back in. Entering the final pair of corners, Almirola chose not to use the bumper and execute a bump-and-run but he did, in his own words, have every intent of making some degree of contact.
It was a hip-check that forced Bowman and his part-time Hendrick Motorsports No. 17 into the wall and Almirola, now a part-time driver for Joe Gibbs Racing, won his first race of the year and third since moving to this role last season.
First, Allgaier did get into Almirola in the first lap of overtime.
“You know, when we went off into Turn 1, it was just a contest of like, who was gonna lift first, right,” Almirola said. “And so we both drove in way too deep on 60 lap old tires. I knew, him being underneath me, he was going to have his hands full and he did. He was really loose and kind of chase it all the way up.
“I was trying to give him room but the more room I kept trying to give him, the more he was sliding up into me. And we pretty much ran all the way up to the fence. I had a ton of marbles and debris on my tires and when I saw (Bowman) drive around both of us, I was like, ‘oh, there it goes.’”
Bowman missed the next corner and it was on again.
Almirola then had the choice about to what extent he was going to trade paint with Bowman.
“I was not going to crash him,” Almirola said. “I mean, you guys have watched me race enough to know that’s not how I race. I wasn’t going to go in there and just wipe him out. I certainly tried to pack air on him and get him loose, which I was able to do. “And then at that point, it’s just about throttling up and racing him to the start-finish line. It’s a drag race from there. I felt like if we rubbed fenders and smashed the fence a little bit, no big deal, right? Like, we’re racing for the win.”
Bowman took it the way one would expect.
“Obviously, I’m not going to like it,” Bowman said. “He drove me straight into the fence on exit but he won the race. I get you have to do what you have to do.”
Really, Bowman didn’t think he would have a chance anyway until Allgaier slid Almirola towards the wall in the first place.
“He just got me loose enough into 1 with air and just kind of pulled me back to him and I wish 3 and 4 went differently,” he said.
Allgaier led a race high 130 laps. Leitz came over to him on pit road to apologize for causing the caution that denied him a win.
“It’s such a tough spot to be in,” Allgaier said. “No one wants to cause the caution, especially when the leader has a second and a half lead with three to go. That’s just what this place is though. We cut a tire with four laps to go last year. The probability of a late caution is high and you just have to hope it doesn’t happen when you’re leading.
“It’s how it goes.”
Allgaier knows the ‘statistics’ said choosing the outside on the restart would have been the high percentage play but his restarts from the bottom had been so good all race.
“I just felt like it was maybe the right thing to do,” Allgaier said. “I’ll have to go back and look at it. Aric had such a good launch from the top and was able to roll up and get more even with me than I thought he would.”
Allagier said he picked up some marbles from where the track blowers cleaned the track before the restart.
“We got into 1 and I just slipped into the 19 car. It’s disappointing but at the same time, I’ll take this on my shoulders and figure out what I can do better. We might be in the same scenario in a couple of months (in the championship race) and I’ll need to go over my notes and see where I can be better.”
