Justin Allgaier has had the best season of anyone in the NASCAR O'Reilly Auto Parts Series. Five wins, the points lead, the best average finish in the field, six stage wins. By almost every number that matters, he is the driver of the year so far. He has also not won a road course, and on Saturday at Sonoma, the season runs out of them.
The Pit Boss / FoodMaxx 250 is the last of four road courses on the O'Reilly Series schedule. After this one the series turns back to ovals for the rest of the year, which is exactly where Allgaier built his case. All five of his wins came on ovals. He is, by reputation and by results, an oval racer, and an excellent one. Road courses are the asterisk on an otherwise dominant season.
The problem is who owns the asterisk. Connor Zilisch and Shane van Gisbergen have spent two years turning the O'Reilly Series road courses into a closed shop, winning twelve of the last fifteen the series has run going back to the start of 2024. Both are entered Saturday. Zilisch won here last year. Van Gisbergen has never finished worse than second in a Sonoma start. If Allgaier is going to check the one box he hasn't, he has to do it through the two drivers who have made this kind of track their property.
Here is the case for him anyway. Two weeks ago at San Diego, the road-course wall finally cracked. Austin Hill won his first career road-course race in his 33rd try, beating the specialists at their own game and proving the result is not preordained. Somebody from outside the road-course aristocracy can win one of these. Allgaier, on the best run of his career, is exactly the kind of somebody who could.
And there is a version where the road-course gap is not a weakness at all, just a quirk of the schedule. Allgaier leads the series because he is good everywhere the series mostly races. You do not put up five wins and the best average finish by being fragile. You do it by being there at the end, week after week, which is its own kind of skill: survive the chaos, take what the day gives you, leave with more points than the driver who was faster.
Still, the calendar is the calendar, and Saturday is the last road course of the season. Win it, and Allgaier closes the only argument anyone has left against him. Lose it, and the best driver in the series carries one small, stubborn hole into a summer of ovals, with no chance to fix it until next year. Green flag is 5:30 p.m. ET on The CW.