HAMPTON, Ga. — Justin Allgaier’s 2025 NASCAR campaign has already been a memorable one. Fresh off double duty at Daytona International Speedway in the Cup and Xfinity Series last weekend — with Allgaier’s No. 40 Cup entry also doubling as JR Motorsports’ first in NASCAR’s premier circuit — the 38-year-old Illinois native heads into the Atlanta Motor Speedway race weekend with plenty to reminisce.
The new season additionally serves as a reminder that, even as the reigning Xfinity Series champion, everything is a clean slate. For Allgaier, the reminder is a necessary one.
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“I had a great piece of advice from my wife (Ashley Allgaier) … It is the truth, and I love it,” Allgaier said. “She said, ‘Enjoy the championship while you can because when you get to Daytona, you’re a zero again.’ She said, I don’t mean you personally are a zero, but she said you have zero points when you get to Daytona. Like, they don’t give you an extra five bonus points at Daytona because you won a championship last year. You start over just like everybody else.
“And if you are expecting a handout in that regard, like, you’re not going to get it. They’re going to race you just as hard because it doesn’t matter that you won a championship. The finishes aren’t going to be easier. You’re not just going to have a magic wand that you can wave over everything to make it easy anymore. You’re going to have to go want it again.”
Allgaier wheeled the No. 40 JRM entry to a ninth-place finish at Daytona in what was the organization’s Cup debut. Although Allgaier finished 18th in the Xfinity Series race a day prior, the No. 7’s speed was apparent from jump, with Allgaier starting on the pole and leading 11 laps.
While Allgaier did not find Victory Lane during his Daytona double, all remains calm for the No. 7 team. After all, the season has just begun. More importantly, Allgaier maintains the same mindset that helped the No. 7 team hoist the 2024 Xfinity Series title trophy.
The mindset, according to Allgaier, came from one of the team’s engineers. After the No. 7 had a rough stretch of races during the opening portion of the 2024 Xfinity Series Playoffs, the engineer laid out a “road map” on a piece of paper, which detailed a series of finishes and points totals. If each box was checked on the piece of paper, the No. 7 team would make the Championship 4.
Although Allgaier initially couldn’t envision the thought of a Championship 4 berth after initially “being behind the 8-ball,” the No. 7 eventually wheeled its way to the Championship 4, one point more than what the piece of paper detailed. The rest was history.
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“I was like, man, that’s, that’s pretty special, that somebody could sit down, you know, seven … probably five races before the end of the season, and say, if you do all of these things and you score this many points, you’ll make the final four,” Allgaier said. “And ultimately, we did, and that was really cool. And he was smiling the whole time that he did it when everybody else was doing gloom. And he’s still smiling today because he’s a champion out of it. So, it worked out pretty well.”
Allgaier will look to keep that mindset — and perhaps create another lasting memory — at Atlanta in the Bennett Transportation & Logistics 250 on Saturday (5 p.m. ET, The CW, PRN Radio, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio).
