Justin Allgaier takes the blame for last lap Xfinity Series crash at Daytona

Coming to the white flag in overtime, the NASCAR Xfinity Series field began to wreck. Justin Allgaier says he’ll take the blame for it. A lot of cars were torn up in the process as Jesse Love claimed the win.

Justin Allgaier is looking to defend his Xfinity Series championship from 2024 this year. While he has a spot in the Daytona 500 tomorrow with JR Motorsports, he was hoping to get his full-time season started with a strong performance.

After leaving the infield care center, Allgaier talked about that wreck and what led to it.

“Causing that last wreck was not how I wanted our night to end,” Allgaier told Bob Pockrass of FOX Sports. “You know, that outside row we were in kind of stacked up and I don’t know, I run in the back of Jeb and to kind of keep from crashing him I head to the middle and unfortunately, I think the 32 was coming with a big run, and just too late. I should have pulled left a little earlier but at the end of the day just a really frustrating night. The car had speed, you know, the team did a great job.”

Justin Allgaier was involved in a few moments on the track. He also got into the back of his teammate Connor Zilisch which set up the overtime restart. That was another incident where cars checked up and Allgaier had little time to react.

Justin Allgaier owns up to last-lap wreck

The JRM driver continued on about the wreck. He wishes all those cars weren’t wadded up, but to give him the benefit of the doubt, there wasn’t much he could do. Everyone is racing and pushing for the win at that point, what are you going to do?

“I mean I just look back on it and I just wish I would have stayed higher,” Allgaier said. “I’ll own the mistake, I feel bad for everybody that got a car torn up in the end. I mean as somebody that’s been around this sport a long time and worked on a lot of race cars, the last thing you want to do is tear up a bunch of equipment, especially coming to the white. So, I’ll own it. Disappointing, but I don’t know, I don’t know what we could have done differently right there.”

Jesse Love put on a great performance in this race. He was excellent from start to finish. Justin Allgaier had a good race going until that last wreck. Tough break.