Justin Allgaier finds Lady Luck at Darlington and breaks one-year winless streak

Justin Allgaier returned to victory lane at Darlington Raceway Saturday afternoon in his JR Motorsports No. 7 Chevrolet and ended a 34-race winless drought.

Coincidentally, the last Xfinity Series trophy he raised was also at the track known as Too Tough to Tame, where Allgaier, apparently, is the exception to the rule.

It doesn’t hurt to be part of a winning team either. JRM has won the last three races in the series with Noah Gragson victorious at Talladega Superspeedway and Josh Berry at Dover Motor Speedway.

Allgaier led 76 laps of the Mahindra ROXOR 200 and grabbed his fourth top-five finish this year but gave much of the credit to his No. 7 crew who kept him in contention all day with fast pit stops.

“This team right here — the pit stops today were killing it,” he said. “They were awesome. This Hellman‘s Camaro was so fast. Just a testament to the 7 guys, but everybody at JR Motorsports — they‘ve been working so hard. It‘s showing with our finishes, not just our 7 team, but all of us.

“We‘ve been doing this way too long, and you know how great it feels to get back to Victory Lane.

“And by the way, it was awesome racing my teammates. That was probably the coolest part, racing my teammates all day, so hats off to those guys.”

His teammate, Gragson won the first two stages and led 45 laps during the race for his eighth top-five result of the season.

“A 1-2 finish for our company, that was great,” Gragson said. “We had great points today. Two stage wins and a second place. I wanted that win. I was ripping the top. I went on a bike ride this morning with Justin Allgaier, right at sunrise. He said, ‘Man, I’m going to run the bottom,’ and I knew he was going to run the bottom.

Photo by Ted Seminara

“We ran at the fence all day. He got the win. Hopefully, we’re selling T-shirts out on the concourse for ripping the top. I don’t know if anyone was higher than us, and there’s barely a scrape on the right side.”

Riley Herbst finished third, John Hunter Nemechek was fourth and JRM driver, Sam Mayer, rounded out the top five. Landon Cassill, Brandon Jones, AJ Allmendinger, Austin Hill and Daniel Hemric finished sixth – 10th respectively.

Up Next: May 21 at Texas Motor Speedway for the Texas 250 at 1:30 p.m. ET on FS1.

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The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of SpeedwayMedia.com

Angie Campbell
Angie Campbell
A native of Charlotte, NC, Angela (Angie) was first introduced to racing by her father. An avid fan of NASCAR, she found a way to combine her love of racing with her passion for writing. Angie is also an award-winning member of the National Motorsports Press Association. Follow her on Twitter @angiecampbell_ for the latest NASCAR news and feature stories.

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