AUSTIN, Texas – AJ Allmendinger had a rare road-course weekend double-dip at the Circuit of The Americas within his reach, an opportunity to cheer on consecutive days in Victory Lane at the base of the massive Turn 1 hill.
Instead of the jubilation, a rollicking final combination of corners and a pinball-action series of bumps with Ross Chastain and late-riser Alex Bowman in overtime put his No. 16 Chevrolet off the track and out of contention. Chastain – his former teammate – drove on for his first NASCAR Cup Series victory, Bowman held on for second, and Allmendinger went from the top three to 33rd place in the final rundown.
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Instead of the first-turn hillside as a repeat backdrop after his Saturday Xfinity Series win, Allmendinger’s post-race destination was the infield care center for a cursory check, a battery of compulsory interviews and a consolation hug after all of it from Kaulig Racing president Chris Rice.
“At the end of the day, like I said, you’ve got to look at yourself in the mirror. If you’re OK with it, you’re OK with it,” Allmendinger said of Chastain’s tactics. “Every person is different. So it doesn’t matter what I think. We had a shot to win a Cup race. It’s pretty special.”
Allmendinger, a Cup Series part-timer who drives full-time for Kaulig’s Xfinity Series operation, led just two laps in his second Cup start of the season. But much of his day in the EchoPark Grand Prix was spent behind Chastain, his former Kaulig teammate who has since moved on to Trackhouse Racing.
An earlier nudge from Chastain’s No. 1 Chevrolet had Allmendinger driving his No. 16 Chevy with determination and the gap — .931 seconds at the white flag – shrank to nothing as the final lap wound down with Bowman suddenly lurking in third. Allmendinger sent Chastain wide in Turn 15, and Bowman briefly shot in front when their bumping resumed.
Finally, just before Turn 19, a pivotal push from Chastain sent Allmendinger’s car ricocheting off Bowman’s, clearing the way for a breakthrough win for both Chastain and Trackhouse.
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Allmendinger’s remarks were short but not sweet on his walk back to the care center, and he returned to his “look yourself in the mirror” theme more than once. It was a refrain borrowed by Rice, who had Chastain in the Kaulig fold for the 2019-20 seasons.
“AJ Allmendinger taught Ross Chastain how to drive the road courses. It’s just that simple,” Rice told NASCAR.com. “Ross, before he came to Kaulig Racing, he’d run around, I don’t know, wherever he ran. AJ Allmendinger spent many, many hours with him and helped him road-race. And at some point, you think, OK, maybe think about that. It’s fine, the bump and run, but don’t put people in the sand.
“You know, AJ don’t run for points over here, and we come for trophies and that’s what we do. So it is what it is. Congratulations to Trackhouse on their first win. We won last year at Indy in like our seventh, eighth race, something like that, so it’s pretty cool to get your first win. You know, we’re doing it from ground up and that guy right there is making us good.”
Chastain’s initial mirror look seemed OK: “I didn’t draw it up that way in my head, but, yeah, I did what I did. I stand by it.” Still, Chastain conceded that any mending of fences from a previous run-in with Allmendinger had probably soured.
“No, I don’t race anybody any different. I’ve cost AJ a win at Daytona in the Xfinity Series, and he was obviously a quarter-mile away from winning here. He has taught me a lot, and I’m sure that our friendship will hurt for this,” Chastain said. “I feel like I had started to win some of his friendship back, and just being nice to each other when you see each other. It took a while.
“I hate that because I’ve lived through that in my career for 12th place in Xfinity. I’ve fought, and I’ve roughed people up and gotten into people. … It’s not lost on me that I make some of the same mistakes. It’s just staring down a Cup Series win. I just couldn’t let that go.”
Allmendinger is scheduled for a total of 16 Cup Series races this year in the No. 16 Chevrolet that he’ll share with fellow Xfinity regulars Noah Gragson and Daniel Hemric. The next of those comes next Sunday, a chance for redemption at Richmond Raceway.
“It is what it is. You can’t change the result,” Allmendinger said. “We had a shot to win a Cup race. It’s pretty badass. Kaulig Racing almost swept a weekend, and that’s, at the end of the day, how can you be mad about that? So, the sport knows that Matt Kaulig is all about it, and we’ll keep putting it on the line every time we got a chance to win a race.”