JR Motorsports watches chances to win Daytona Xfinity race slip away

DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. — Three laps from the scheduled end of Saturday’s Xfinity Series race at Daytona International Speedway, JR Motorsports had all four cars aligned behind leader Austin Hill.

“I felt like I was going to be a sitting duck,” Hill said. 

Instead, JRM finished with one car spinning through the backstretch grass, one car running out fuel before the start of overtime and another car going upside down in overtime. 

It was Hill winning this race for the second year in a row.

What looked like a potential victory for JRM, turned into the organization having one car finish in the top five and no other car finishing better than 14th.

Everything changed for JR Motorsports two laps from the scheduled distance. Allgaier, running third, went low, while teammate Josh Berry, running second, remained behind Hill in the top lane.

Brandon Jones, in his first race with JRM, moved down from his spot in fourth to the bottom lane to be behind Allgaier. All of a sudden the JR Motorsports cars were two abreast and racing each other instead of ganging up on Hill.

“My plan was to wait toward the end and, hopefully, use my teammates’ help to try to get by (Hill),” Berry said.

Allgaier said it was time to go when he made his move.

“We come off of (Turn) 4 and my spotter says, ‘It’s going to happen right here, so be ready, it’s happening,’” Allgaier said. “I saw (Mayer) start to peek out, and I really assumed (Berry) was going to go down, too. When I realized he wasn’t and I knew the guys behind me were itching to do it, at that point, it was just a matter of trying to get to the bottom (lane).”

Berry got shuffled to fifth, made his was back to fourth on the backstretch and had a run when Jones moved to block his teammate. They made