Driver: Justin Allgaier
Car: No. 7 BRANDT Professional Agriculture Chevrolet Camaro
Track: Daytona International Speedway (Feb. 25, 2017)
Bio: Justin Allgaier’s 2017 season with JR Motorsports ended with a chance to win the series title at Homestead-Miami Speedway. The season began with Allgaier’s heavily damaged No. 7 BRANDT Professional Agriculture Chevrolet sitting in a smoking heap at Daytona International Speedway with the right front nearly back at the firewall.
Running near the front of the pack coming to one to go in Stage One of the season-opening PowersharesQQQ 300, Allgaier was in tight formation with a pair of RCR cars, the No. 33 of Brandon Jones and the No. 21 of Daniel Hemric, with Jones to the inside and Hemric just behind him on the low line. The pack entered Turn 3 at full song and that’s where it all went wrong.
Hemric’s car chattered up the banking and struck Allgaier in the left rear quarter panel, which turned the No. 7 directly at the wall between Turns 3 and 4. The right front of the car arrived there a fraction of a second later with predictable results, caving in the right front suspension and bending the front clip.
Allgaier kept his car against the wall as it slowed down, and a good thing he did, too. A total of 12 cars were involved, and they were in the process of wrecking at that time. Jones and Hemric were done on the spot, and Daniel Suarez and Bubba Wallace collided heavily with each other and the wall during the scrum.
Allgaier popped the window net quickly and got out, relegated to a 30th-place finish. The car, however, was on the disabled list for quite some time. It was eventually taken to convalesce alongside so many of its sisters in the bucolic setting of the Racecar Graveyard.