Justin Allgaier finished the NASCAR O'Reilly Auto Parts Series regular season 229 points clear of the field. He starts the Chase on Saturday night at Darlington Raceway 25 points clear of Carson Kvapil, who drives for the same team.
Six wins, 14 top fives, 559 laps led and eight stage wins over 24 races put Allgaier at 1,090 points, 229 ahead of Kvapil. (Stage wins go to the driver leading at each of a race's two scheduled breaks.) NASCAR then reset the standings for the postseason after Daytona: Allgaier starts at 2,100, Kvapil at 2,075, and the other ten qualifiers between 35 and 80 points back. NASCAR's own race notes put it plainly: Allgaier's lead over second place at the end of the regular season was nearly three times what his lead over 12th place is now.
This is the first postseason the O'Reilly Series has run under the Chase format: 12 drivers, nine races, with the Fleetio 200 as the opener. Every driver on the grid is starting a format none of them has raced.
Kvapil is the closest, and the form is his. Since JR Motorsports, the team both men drive for, moved him back into the No. 1 car for the rest of the season, he has finished second at Atlanta, first at Indianapolis, first at Iowa and third at Daytona: four straight top-threes, the longest such streak in the series this year. His first career win came at Indianapolis in his 64th start. He and Allgaier share a shop and, for the next nine weeks, a championship to settle.
The shop is the story of the season. Chevrolet won 21 of the 24 regular-season races. Of the 15 wins the 12 Chase drivers scored this year, 11 came on Hendrick engines, which seven of the twelve run. JR Motorsports alone has 15 wins through 24 races, more than any team has had at that point in a season, and needs five more in nine to break Joe Gibbs Racing's single-season record of 19. The reset is what makes the next nine weeks a contest instead of a coronation.
Darlington is Allgaier's track. He has won four of the last 10 O'Reilly Series races there, including this spring, more than anyone else in the field. His 17 top-10 finishes at Darlington are second all-time to Mark Martin's 18. All four wins came in the spring race. In nine starts in the fall race he has never won: one top five, seven top 10s, an average finish of 10.3 against 5.1 in the spring. The track is the same. The result, so far, has not been.
Behind the two JR Motorsports cars: Sheldon Creed, who won his first race at Atlanta in February, sits 35 back. Jesse Love, the defending champion, is 40 back. Austin Hill is 45 back. Brandon Jones, the only other driver in the field who has won at Darlington, is 50 back. Corey Day, the first driver to carry a Hendrick Motorsports O'Reilly Series entry into a postseason, is 55 back. Sammy Smith, Parker Retzlaff, Sam Mayer, Taylor Gray and Rajah Caruth fill out the twelve, 60 to 80 points behind.
"I can't think of a better place to get this Chase started than Darlington," Allgaier said, in a quote carried by the NASCAR Wire Service preview. "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 is at 1:30 p.m. ET Saturday, qualifying at 2:35, and the green flag at 7:30 p.m. on the CW. Stage breaks come at laps 45 and 90, 147 laps in all. Allgaier has won the spring race four times. He has never won the fall race.
Two hundred twenty-nine points was a season. Twenty-five is a start.