As with his NASCAR Cup Series’ No. 1 seed in the Chase counterpart, Denny Hamlin, the NASCAR O’Reilly Auto Parts Series’ No. 1 seed, JR Motorsports’ Justin Allgaier arrives at Darlington Raceway with plenty of reason to feel confident.
The series opens its 12-driver, nine-race Chase under the Darlington lights in Saturday’s Fleetio 200 (7:30 p.m. ET on the CW, MRN and SiriusXM NASCAR Radio) marking the first time this historic track has been a Chase race for this series.
What was a massive 200-point plus advantage for Allgaier atop the standings is now a 25-point gap on his JRM teammate Carson Kvapil as the points reset to decide the 2026 title. It’s remarkably now the smallest advantage for Allgaier since the fifth race (Las Vegas) of the season.
Chasing the teammates will be Haas Factory Team’s Sheldon Creed, who earned his first victory this year, reigning series champion, Richard Childress Racing’s Jesse Love and his teammate Austin Hill along with Joe Gibbs Racing’s Brandon Jones, Hendrick Motorsports rookie Corey Day, JRM’s Sammy Smith and another first-time title-contender, Viking Motorsports’ Parker Retzlaff.
Haas Factory Team driver Sam Mayer, JGR’s Taylor Gray and JR Motorsports’ Rajah Caruth round out the 12 drivers competing for the championship trophy. Among them only Allgaier (2024) and Love (2025) have won a title.
Allgaier is a series-leading four-time winner at Darlington, including this Spring and his 17 top-10 finishes is second all-time to Mark Martin’s 18. Brandon Jones is the only other former winner at the track, claiming a pair of trophies himself (2020, 2025).
Only two other Chase drivers have an average finish of 10th or better here – Love (9.0) and Corey Day, who finished sixth in his track debut this Spring.
While JRM – led by Allgaier’s six wins – has been a dominant force this season, Joe Gibbs Racing team has kept them honest at Darlington recently. The Gibbs team has four wins compared to six for JR Motorsports in the last 11 races.
The driver who leads the most laps at Darlington has won half of the last eight races. Only three times in the last 12 races has a last lap pass produced the winner.
Among the nine Chase tracks, it’s worth noting that this season, the 2024 series champion Allgaier has scored the most points, followed by Day, Love, Creed and Smith.
“I can’t think of a better place to get this Chase started than Darlington,” Allgaier said. “This place is such a fun track to race on. [Crew chief] Andrew [Overstreet] and everyone on this team have been working their tails off to get us to this point and I know that we are going to unload just as strong this weekend.
“We just need to go out and execute like we know we can and if we do, we will get the Chase started on a good note.”
Practice gets underway Saturday at 1:30 p.m. ET followed immediately by Kennametal Pole Qualifying at 2:35 p.m. ET.
— NASCAR Wire Service —