Brandon Jones may have given Toyota its 700thNASCAR national series victory with his win in the NASCAR O'Reilly Auto Parts Series season finale at Homestead-Miami Speedway Saturday, but motorsports history will label 2026 the Year of JR Motorsports.
The team not only claimed its fifth championship, but it also won 17 of the 33 races with seven different drivers. All five cars in its stable visited victory lane during the season while all four of its full-time drivers – Justin Allgaier, Carson Kvapil, Sammy Smith and Rajah Caruth – made the post-season Chase. Allgaier claimed his second championship, Kvapil finished third in the standings, Smith seventh and Caruth 12th.
"I'm just thankful that we had this format," said Dale Earnhardt Jr., who co-owns the team with his sister Kelley Earnhardt Miller and her husband L.W. Miller.
"It gave us a real better understanding of kind of what our goal was, what our job was every race and every weekend."
At age 40, Allgaier is the oldest driver to win the series title since Tommy Ellis accomplished the feat in 1988 at age 41. The Illinois native is now the 10thdriver to win multiple championships in the series and the first JR Motorsports competitor to claim multiple titles for that organization.
"I'm proud of tonight in a lot of different ways, but kind of the resiliency of this team is the biggest reason," said Allgaier, who has now won two of the last three championships and moved into sixth on the all-time win list with 34 victories.
Allgaier entered the 200-lap season finale with a 22-point lead over defending series champion Jesse Love. However, the championship race was a nailbiter for Allgaier who had tire issues twice during the event. He first reported a right-rear tire going down on lap 43 of the 45-lap first Stage. Allgaier managed to finish seventh and collect Stage points, giving him an 18-point advantage over Love. He then finished fourth in the second Stage to collect more points. Now, he led Sheldon Creed by 19 points.
However, Allgaier had another right-rear tire go down on lap 139 while running fifth. That triggered the beginning of final green-flag stops that were interrupted by a pit road accident. Andrew Patterson lost control of his Chevrolet at the pit road entrance, slammed into the safety barrels, and destroyed them before spinning on pit road. The race was halted for 10:24 while repairs were made and pit road cleaned.
"I'm just thankful that we had this format" - Dale Earnhardt JrDavid Jensen - Getty Images
Once the red flag was lifted, crew chief Andrew Overstreet called Allgaier back to pit road for fresh tires. That left Allgaier eighth on the restart. Kvapil was leading and he was just five points behind Allgaier. For several laps, it appeared JR Motorsports drivers might collect the race victory and the championship, but then with 14 laps remaining, Jones passed Kvapil and continued to stretch his advantage, eventually finishing 3.937 seconds ahead of Kvapil.
Allgaier never led in the race, and Earnhardt admitted he was nervous in the closing laps as this driver was rim-riding the wall.
"I was pretty worried about it," Earnhardt said. "I was on channel two. Justin (Allgaier) couldn't really hear me, but I was … just kind of hammering the spotter to dial him back."
Allgaier eventually finished seventh, 12.339 seconds behind Jones. However, even the last lap left a lump in his team's and family's throats. He was a few hundred feet from the checkered flag when a tire carcass flew off Creed's right-rear and hit the front of Allgaier's car. However, even that couldn't stop the two-time champion as he said he was determined to get to the finish line "if I had to back it across."
