Car: No. 7 | Team: JR Motorsports | Manufacturer: Chevrolet
Status: Full-time | Hometown: Riverton, Illinois | Age: 40
Career Highlights
Justin Allgaier is one of the most accomplished drivers in NASCAR O'Reilly Auto Parts Series history. His 33rd career victory, at Pocono on June 13, 2026, came a week after his 32nd at Nashville broke a tie with Jack Ingram on the all-time O'Reilly Series wins list. The 2024 O'Reilly Series champion, Allgaier has anchored the JR Motorsports lineup since joining the organization in 2016, and is now in his 10th season with the team.
In 2026 he leads the O'Reilly Series standings by 250 points over second-place Jesse Love through 17 races, a commanding margin built on a series-leading five wins. Back-to-back victories at Nashville and Pocono matched the five he won in 2018, his career best, with most of the regular season still to run. At Bristol on April 11 he finished fourth and collected a $100,000 Dash 4 Cash bonus, one of several career checks from the program.
Allgaier finally won at Pocono on June 13, the one big track that had kept beating him — surviving a three-wide final restart to take the MillerTech Battery 250 by .607 seconds for his series-leading fifth win of 2026 and second straight after Nashville. He had led more laps and won more stages at Pocono than any driver in O'Reilly Series history without ever winning the race, and broke the trend that no driver over 30 had won there in the series' previous seven visits. Read the recap.
Rodney Childers made the call to stay out on old tires with 28 laps left. Connor Zilisch made him look like a genius, holding off Kyle Larson to win the Suburban Propane 300 at Bristol Motor Speedway.
Brandon Jones put the JRM No. 9 in second place at Rockingham — and in doing so, gave us the cleanest possible picture of what this car is capable of. Now comes the harder part.
William Sawalich wins his first O'Reilly Auto Parts Series race at Rockingham, ending a three-year drought for the JGR No. 18. Corey Day led 118 laps but finished tenth.
Four national championships. More than fifty wins at South Boston. Six years of silence. Then Lee Pulliam came back and led forty laps in his first O'Reilly Auto Parts Series start at Martinsville.
JR Motorsports runs programs at every level of stock car racing — Late Models, O'Reilly Series, and selected Cup starts — all under one roof in Mooresville. The development pipeline has already produced three Cup-level champions. The system is the story.
Taylor Gray won the Kansas Lottery 300 on a Jason Ratcliff short-pit call at Lap 143. Sheldon Creed pocketed the $100K Dash 4 Cash. Corey Day's top-10 streak ended at eight. Joe Gibbs Racing takes down the Chevy juggernaut for the second time all year.
The 2026 Dash 4 Cash program closed Saturday at Texas Motor Speedway, and the season's final $100,000 bonus went to Brent Crews — eighteen years old, in his rookie season, driving the Joe Gibbs Racing No. 19 Toyota. Crews finished fourth in the race; none of the other three D4C-eligible drivers finished ahead of him. It was his first such bonus and the year's last one.
Dover Motor Speedway hosts the NASCAR All-Star Race for the first time Sunday, May 17 — the first time in the event's 41-year history the race comes to the Northeast. John Speedway breaks down the full three-day weekend at the Monster Mile.
What to watch and who's hot at Dover's first NASCAR All-Star Race Sunday — three segments, no Open, 17 drivers already locked into the final field, Shane van Gisbergen bringing the most recent Cup win into a venue that could not be less like a road course, and a Memorial Day pre-race ceremony with Bronze Star recipients as grand marshals.
Corey Day, 20, made his first Dover start a winning one. The Hendrick Motorsports No. 17 split lapped traffic against the outside wall with four laps left to pass Justin Allgaier and take the BetRivers 200 by .461 seconds — his second career NASCAR O'Reilly Auto Parts Series victory. Allgaier still leads the championship by 155 over Sheldon Creed.
Connor Zilisch ran Jesse Love down on fresher tires Saturday at Watkins Glen, then passed him in the final corner of the final lap to win the Mission 200 by 0.262 seconds — Zilisch's third consecutive NASCAR O'Reilly Auto Parts Series win at The Glen and his thirteenth career win.
Kyle Larson held the bottom for 17 green-flag laps and beat his JR Motorsports teammate Justin Allgaier to the line by 0.293 seconds at Texas Motor Speedway on Saturday. Allgaier — the points leader, three-time winner this year, sitting on the pole — got to Larson's bumper. He just couldn't get around him without contact, and he wasn't going to make contact. JR Motorsports went one-two. Allgaier extended his championship lead to 121 points anyway.
Justin Allgaier brings the championship lead to Saturday's Dover BetRivers 200 (640 points, +155 over Sheldon Creed). Connor Zilisch brings the last win, having passed Jesse Love in the final corner of the Mission 200 at Watkins Glen by 0.262 seconds for his third straight O'Reilly Series win at The Glen. The brand-new Goodyear right-side tire designed for the Monster Mile's concrete decides the rest.
Patrick Staropoli's Big Machine Racing crew chief, car chief, and engineer return at Kansas after a four-race suspension. The retina surgeon is 20th in O'Reilly Series points — 101 behind the Chase cut line — and the math to get back starts Saturday night.
All three NASCAR national series race at Nashville Superspeedway this weekend — Trucks on Friday, the O'Reilly Series on Saturday, and the Cracker Barrel 400 on Sunday night. A guide to the schedule, the stakes, and why the concrete decides it all.
Justin Allgaier has led more laps at Pocono than anyone in O'Reilly Series history and brings a 179-point cushion to Saturday's MillerTech Battery 250. He just doesn't have the trophy. No driver over 30 has won here in seven races, and the last three winners are all back in the field.
Justin Allgaier leads by 179 points heading into a five-race summer stretch unlike anything the NASCAR O'Reilly Auto Parts Series has seen. Starting Saturday at Pocono, five consecutive weeks across five different surfaces will test every team in the field.
Justin Allgaier finally won at Pocono, the one big track that kept beating him, surviving a wild three-wide final restart to take the MillerTech Battery 250 by .607 seconds. A two-laps-to-go shove from JR Motorsports teammate William Byron sealed his fifth win of 2026 and stretched his championship lead to 250 points over Jesse Love.
Connor Zilisch and Shane van Gisbergen have won twelve of the last fifteen O'Reilly Series road-course races, and they drive for the same team. As the series closes its road-course season Saturday at Sonoma, the field isn't chasing two great drivers. It's chasing one company.