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.
Kvapil came into Indianapolis tied for the most runner-up finishes without a win in series history. He led the last 22 laps to end that, and JR Motorsports finished 1-2-3-4 behind him to reach a mark that had stood since 2010.
Kvapil is tied for the most second-place finishes without a victory in series history, and he has done it in 63 starts. Brent Crews has been passed for the lead late at four tracks this season.
Through 13 cautions, three red flags and 76 laps of yellow, Justin Allgaier won the Focused Health 250 at EchoPark Speedway, his 34th career O'Reilly Series win. He now leads the championship by 240 points with the playoff cutoff approaching.
Austin Hill is the all-time king of drafting tracks, and Saturday night the Focused Health 250 brings him home to Georgia with a chance to break Kevin Harvick's Atlanta record. Justin Allgaier's runaway points lead is cooling, Jesse Love is chasing a first win before his Cup move, and the Chase bubble is four races from closing.
Brandon Jones won the Cuervo 300 from 29th in overtime while the Cup moonlighters led 126 laps for zero points. The sharper story is the NASCAR O'Reilly Auto Parts Series Chase picture: 11th, 12th, and 13th in points are all Joe Gibbs Racing drivers, and one of them just spun another.
The O'Reilly Series returns to Chicagoland on Saturday for the first time in 2,562 days. Nine of its full-time teams didn't exist when it left, the 2019 winner is back in a different ride, and Connor Zilisch, winner of 30 percent of his career starts, has never raced there in anything.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.