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NASCAR XFINITY SERIES: NASCAR RACING EXPERIENCE 300

February 16, 2019

Justin Allgaier

Daytona Beach, Florida

THE MODERATOR: We're going to continue on with our post‑race media availability for the 38th annual NASCAR Racing Experience 300 at Daytona. We're joined by today's runner‑up, driver of the No.7 Brandt Professional Agriculture Chevrolet, and that's none other than Justin Allgaier. We'll open the floor for questions.

Q. Justin, last year's Xfinity race we had five overtimes and it was a mess. Today it was clean and anything but a mess. Can you figure out or have any explanation for what happened to basically go complete 180 from last year to this year?
JUSTIN ALLGAIER: I wish I had a good answer for you. You know, last year we were running second on the original 10th at the green‑white‑checkered, and I was released from the care center before the race ended because I remember watching my teammates cross the line side‑by‑side, and I had already been evaluated and released.
This year was interesting. I felt like coming down to the end of the race, we had seen a clean‑and‑green race pretty much all the way through, and I just expected something crazy to happen, you know, somebody was trying to side draft and mistime it or something along those lines, and it just never did.
You know, Michael drove a fantastic race, and even right there at the end I tried to back up to Brandon and get a run on Michael, and it just seemed like the top row for whatever reason‑‑ we were all having slight handling issues but nothing that is out of the norm. And I just couldn't make a run. I just couldn't generate that run that I have in the past.
For whatever it is, I don't know. But really happy to come home second, but also, too, extremely excited for Michael, the whole 1 team, just to see the joy in their celebration afterwards. I've been there, and I know what that experience is like, and to get that first win is definitely monumental. As much as I wanted to win, since we didn't, I was so glad to see their emotion. It was really cool.

Q. What move were you wanting to make, and when did you realize you just weren't going to be able to do it?
JUSTIN ALLGAIER: Well, we knew kind of based on the speeds that we were running, I needed to do it sometime near the last lap, just because once you get clear, it kind of jams everybody up, so we were afraid that if we did it too early it was going to allow some of those guys that were fourth, fifth, sixth to get that momentum and kind of go by the field, so we were trying to wait until ideally getting into 1 on the last lap was where we wanted to do it, and I backed up to the 19 and didn't really get the run that I thought I was going to get. So then you kind of go into panic mode, right, because now everything you think you're going to do didn't really work out the way you wanted it to.
So down the back, I lifted off of 2, got as much of a gap as I could get, and we just generated enough of a run to push the 1 back out in front. It was just really weird. It was very unique today in how you had to generate runs, where you generated those runs. I generated a lot of runs in the middle of the straightaway, which hasn't been the case in years past.
So I think from that, we go back, we watch the video again and learn from it and try to decipher what we could have done differently, where we were the best and where we were the weakest and kind of go from there.
But like I said, I thought for sure we had it all figured out, and then when we tried it, it just didn't really work out the way we thought it was going to.

Q. Could it be that I think RCR just had one car instead of two or three, no Ganassi car, no Roush cars? Were there just not enough strong cars?
JUSTIN ALLGAIER: No, I think there's probably more strong cars this year than there's been in the past. Having the composite body, I think it leveled out some of the guys that maybe didn't have the cars years past to be able to be competitive, we saw that in qualifying, and I think we saw it all the way through the race.
I think the cars that the composite body were so much more similar, there was less stuff going on. I think that the steel body, even though it was regulated really closely, this composite body just takes that extra little bit away from the teams that have time in a wind tunnel or have done this for years and years.
And I think from that standpoint, I think that's the biggest point of what I've taken away is we saw guys that qualified really, really well today with some smaller definite underfunded teams, and it was cool to see. I loved seeing that, and I think that that bodes well for the season. I think we have got a lot of really talented teams and really talented drivers that are going to be up front battling it out every week.

Q. Kind of a similar question to Bob's because we're all kind of looking for an answer or scapegoat. The only significant change that we can tell from last year to this year is the rear bumper extension they've added to the car. That combined with the composite bodies, could that explain some of the issues with sucking up?
JUSTIN ALLGAIER: I think we ran that same bumper extension last year. Ours stayed the same, and then the Cup guys got more similar to what we have, if I'm not mistaken.
I wish I had a good answer. You know, I think that when we practiced yesterday, I was actually pretty confident that the bottom line was going to be the place to be. We talked about it a lot. We talked about it before the race. Tab Boyd, my spotter, and I talked about it a lot before the race. We really expected the bottom lane to be the lane to go in, and I thought that was going to be the preferred lane, and that's where we were generating good runs in practice.
And then the race started and Jeffrey moved up and we just kind of all filed up there and got in line behind him. And I don't know what caused that.
I don't know if we've been sitting here watching some of the Cup stuff, and obviously the Cup cars are handling a little bit differently than what our cars are, and they kind of need to get up there. But I think everybody on the Xfinity side was really surprised that it moved up so quickly and that we ran there so long.
Chase and I worked really hard on it early in the race, and I was trying it and he'd let me in and he'd try it and I'd let him in, just trying to get something figured out where we could make those runs, and for whatever reason today, we just couldn't make it.
I don't know, it's really‑‑ it's disappointing from a fact that we want to put on the best race we can, but on the flipside of it, we didn't do anything that we would ever be able to explain why it did what it did. There wasn't enough of a change for us to say, this is what happened and this is why we're all doing this. So yeah, I don't have a good answer for that.

Q. Justin, with the strong start to the season, how much momentum does this give you and your team going into the rest of the 2019 season?
JUSTIN ALLGAIER: Oh, it's huge. First and foremost, to have one‑two today, to have four cars finish this race, I don't know that we got any damage today to any of the four cars. You know, that's incredible. When you leave Daytona just to not have to go home and cut that thing apart and fix it, that in itself is a really strong boost of confidence.
We go into a stretch here where we go to Atlanta, then we do the West Coast Swing, so all the parts and all the pieces that we can have at our disposal, the better. So that's big part of it. But also, too, last year here I was running second on the original green‑white‑checkered of the race, or not even overtime but the actual green‑white‑checkered of the race, and sat in the care center and had a destroyed race car.
You don't realize how much that puts a strain on you until you get to like race 2, 3, 4, and then you start looking, like man, I'm 20th in points leaving Daytona, even though I did everything right and I got stage points and I was running up front at the end of the race. So you put yourself into a hole.
I think this really allows us to go into Atlanta, focus on our mile‑and‑a‑half program, what we've got to do come 2019 to be better, and really just gives us that confidence that we did what we needed to do today. We excelled, and as a company we did everything right and we finished one‑two. I think that's the biggest part of my takeaway from Daytona is just the enjoyment of knowing that we can go to Atlanta next week knowing that we did our job today.
THE MODERATOR: Justin, congratulations on the finish. Good luck next week.

FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports

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