Justin Allgaier dominated the majority of the GovX 200 NASCAR Xfinity Series race at Phoenix Raceway before an overtime finish ultimately derailed him from winning in his return to the track he secured his championship on last fall.
The green-white-checkers set Allgaier up against the Cup Series regular of Alex Bowman and two Joe Gibbs Racing teammates, Brandon Jones and the ultimate race winner, Aric Almirola.
Allgaier and Almirola started on the front row, and the two bumped before Allgaier got loose while fighting his aging tires, checking the two up the track and allowing Bowman and Jones through. Bowman took a shot through the middle to take the race lead after restarting fourth. Bowman took the white flag with Almirola rebounding from being dragged back with Allgaier settled into the hunt behind the Hendrick driver.
On the final lap, Bowman took the high side on corner entries, with Almirola trying to slip in below. In the final turn, Almirola exited the corner wide, squeezing Bowman up the track and, ultimately, into the wall.
“I would’ve hoped that he would’ve given me a lane on exit, but he just exited like I wasn’t there,” Bowman told The CW Sports. “Which, he was better than us for sure, but [I was] just trying to capitalize on that last restart and trying to win the race, and got shoved in the fence and the race car is destroyed.”
Bowman would have to settle for second after starting on the pole in his one-off Xfinity Series start.
Almirola believes that his last-lap move was acceptable; it was just hard racing.
“I knew I was going to use him up a little bit, but we’re trying to win the race,” Almirola told The CW Sports. “I feel like it was warranted. I didn’t think I did anything overly egregious; I just throttled up, and I knew it was going to be a drag race to the start finish line.”
Jones finished behind the duo in third, with Ryan Sieg sneaking into a fourth-place finish after damaging his car in the pits prior to the start of the race on Saturday.
Allgaier fell to fifth but collected the fastest lap extra point and moved up one spot to second in the Championship points behind Jesse Love, who finished ninth. Austin Hill, who misjudged a corner and put himself into the inside wall during stage two, falls from the top spot of the championship down to fourth with his second DNF of the season.
Victoria Beaver is a nomadic sports writer who spends her time hopping between race tracks and hippie farms. She’s covered every corner of motorsports that will let her in from 410 Sprints to NASCAR to Supercross. Her daily driver is a 2010 Subaru that she refused to do the smallest amount of preventative maintenance on. Instead, she spends her free time and money building a 42-foot Skoolie to one day travel the country full time.