Justin Allgaier heads tight Nationwide battle for fifth in points
Penske Racing driver Justin Allgaier is fifth in the NASCAR Nationwide Series point standings. // Mike Laczynski, NASCAR Scene
Penske Racing driver Justin Allgaier is more than 400 points behind fourth-place Jason Leffler in the NASCAR Nationwide Series standings, but his battle to hang on to fifth has taken on a new sense of importance this season.
Because NASCAR will host a combined Nationwide/Camping World Truck series banquet in Miami on Nov. 23, only the top five Nationwide finishers will be on the stage. The top 10 in Nationwide points will still be honored at the banquet, but the second five will have to be recognized from the banquet floor instead of the stage.
So there’s new interest this season on landing that fifth spot, and it has become a tight battle in recent weeks. Allgaier is only 59 points ahead of sixth-place Mike Bliss and 117 ahead of seventh-place Steve Wallace with three races remaining in 2009.
And for the rookie Allgaier, finishing fifth has become a top priority.
“Setting out at the beginning of the season, that wasn’t necessarily a goal that we had,” Allgaier said. “I think top-10 was a goal of ours. But [crew chief] Chad [Walter’s] big thing to me was, ‘Typically the top five will spread out from the rest of the field. If we can get ourselves in that spot and get away from all the other guys, it’s going to be a lot easier to try to overcome at the end of the year if we have some bad races or if we want to try something.’
“Unfortunately, it seems like the top four spread away from everybody else. Even though we’re in fifth, we’re still locked in a pretty close point battle.”
Until recently, Allgaier was chasing Rusty Wallace Racing’s Wallace. But Wallace has stumbled in the last four races, finishing 15th or worse each time.
“Fifth is real big from a points aspect,” Wallace said. “Top-five is good, for sure. But we’ve had some bad luck the past three weeks that kind of hurt us – [some] with the 12 car. Stuff’s kind of going tough right now, but we’ve got to keep digging and keep running better.
“We’ll be running really good, and like at California, we were running fourth and fifth all day and got my left-front fender ripped off on a green-white-checkered [finish]. At Charlotte, we had a god car, and everybody knows what happened there.
“We’ve had good cars the past month and a half or so; we’ve just got to get good finishes. We’ve just got to simply finish.”
At Memphis last weekend, Wallace was running in the top 10 when he spun after contact from Matt Kenseth. He finished 20th.
That allowed Bliss to take over sixth and become the closest challenger to Allgaier. But Bliss’ season has been disjointed since being let go by Phoenix Racing.
Bliss has three top-fives in his last five races, all with CJM Racing. His best finish otherwise was a 13th with MacDonald Motorsports, and Bliss has also driven some start-and-park cars, too.
Still, Allgaier knows he has the target on his car.
“It’s been a great first season for me,” Allgaier said. “I can’t complain. To be fifth in points and leading rookie of the year and to run as well as we have has been great. Obviously, we want to win a race, but unfortunately, we’re talking about Stephen and I, and that’s what’s been on TV, but if you look right there behind us, you’ve got Jason [Keller], you’ve got Mike Bliss. They’re coming for us.”
