After last Saturday’s race at Nashville, Justin Allgaier became the fifth different points leader this season. Allgaier and Ricky Stenhouse Jr. are tied for the lead with 264 points, but Allgaier’s second-place finish at Las Vegas betters the top finish thus far in 2011 by Stenhouse (fourth at Auto Club Speedway), thereby giving Allgaier the tiebreaker heading to Richmond.
“As a driver, it’s comforting knowing we’ve come out of the box strong with a new team, new crew chief, new crew,” Allgaier said. “I feel like the one really good thing is this new race car has really kind of evened the playing field. I feel like all of us are running really, really close together.” To listen to Allgaier audio from last week’s NASCAR national teleconference, click here.
Allgaier is the third driver from Turner Motorsports to lead the series driver standings this season, joining his teammates Jason Leffler (currently third in the standings) and Reed Sorenson (fourth). Collectively Turner Motorsports has led the standings for five of the first nine weeks of the season.
Allgaier has posted one top five and four top 10s in the first nine races of the season.
Allgaier is the last series-only regular to win a race, having done so at Bristol in 2010. His former Penske Racing teammate and 2010 series champion Brad Keselowski won this race last year. Allgaier finished 15th.
Allgaier has made four starts at Richmond International Raceway posting one top-10 and three top-15 finishes.
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