NEWTON, Iowa – Justin Allgaier bested a hard-charging Ryan Preece to capture a stage win in the second stage of Saturday’s U.S. Cellular 250 at Iowa Speedway.
Allgaier took advantage of a sluggish restart by JR Motorsports teammate Elliott Sadler, passing Sadler on the insider of Turn 3 at lap 71, and led the remaining 50 laps in the stage to garner his third stage win of the NASCAR XFINITY Series season and first since Talladega in May.
Though Preece closed a near-two second gap down to less than a car length coming to the green-checkered flag, an outside-inside maneuver in Turns 3 and 4 was not enough to keep Allgaier from banking a playoff point towards his championship chase.
“It’s really hard (to navigate lapped traffic),” Allgaier admitted after pit stops. “I think that’s the key right now is being able to manage it. Obviously the (No.) 20 (of Preece) was doing a really good job right there behind me. We weren’t too sure through practice and qualifying how we were going to be today, but the guys did a great job of making some adjustments on it before the race.”
“Ultimately it’s going to come down to going where nobody else is, and right now we’ve got a pretty fast Camaro here and have the ability to do that. We’ll see what happens.”
Only one caution for incident slowed the second stage, coming on lap 74 when Ross Chastain spun in Turns 3 and 4.
Preece crossed the line second, .324 of a second in arrears, followed by Elliott Sadler, Ben Kennedy and Kyle Benjamin.
Brennan Poole, Sam Hornish Jr., Cole Custer, Ty Majeski and Matt Tifft completed the points-scoring drivers in the top 10.
After a rough qualifying effort, three-time season winner William Byron found speed in his No. 9 Liberty University Chevrolet in the race’s second stint, moving up to 11th by the time the second stage break came down.
About the Writer
Jacob Seelman is the Managing Editor of Race Chaser Online and creator of the Motorsports Madness radio show, airing at 7 p.m. Eastern every Monday on the Performance Motorsports Network.
Seelman grew up in the sport, watching his grandparents co-own the RaDiUs Motorsports NASCAR Cup Series team in the 1990s.
The 23-year-old is currently studying Broadcast Journalism at Winthrop University in Rock Hill, S.C., and is also serving as the full-time tour announcer for the Must See Racing Sprint Car Series.
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