An agitated Justin Allgaier got out of his car and went straight into Jesse Love’s cockpit for a chat after finishing fourth at Bristol. Early in the race, Allgaier suffered major damage to his front end after a hard shunt into the back of Nick Sanchez on the last lap of stage one, and yet the Junior Motorsport No. 7 Chevrolet driver managed to stay in the hunt for the win up until thirteen laps to go.
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On the restart, Love chose the inside line, trying to maintain his lead in the No. 2 RCR Chevy, but slid up into Allgaier at Turn 1. And once he was loose, he just rammed the No. 7 Chevy into the wall. Allgaier was quick to find Love after the race and shared some strong words with him. And Love understood that he might have one coming his way after accepting his mistake.
“If I was him, I don’t know if I would if I would answer my phone call,” said Jesse Love to Frontstretch. “To be honest, I’m still going to talk to them, but I don’t know. He’s never really done me like that. And I’m not gonna explain my thought process right now because it’s not gonna fix anything. But I made a wrong move. I made a dumb decision, and I’m gonna probably I’m going to pay the price for it. And yeah, that’s not good.”
Love took responsibility for ruining both his own and Allgaier’s race which with Allgaier losing points in the championship for a second week in a row while Love himself finished 17th in Bristol after winning at Gateway.
But Love immediately understood what he had done and even took responsibility for it, saying, “I screwed up and made a bad judgment call and in a lot of ways screwed myself.”
“I drove in there, and I got into him,” said Love, giving his side of the incident. “And once I got really close to him and put myself in that spot, I got loose, and I started knocking him up the racetrack. And once we make that initial contact, maybe the second piece of contact, we’re both a little bit along for the ride. So it wasn’t even processing if he had enough room or not when he hit the wall and exit because the damage was already done by my action in the one.”
The crash cost Love a right-rear flat, forcing a pit stop that ended his shot at the win. But more than that, Allgaier came up to him for a word before Love could even attempt to get out of the car. The RCR driver didn’t share the details of that conversation.
But Allgaier has shut all of those claims down himself, revealing that the chat was just an immediate reaction to the result. And he’s not looking for retaliation against the RCR driver, especially against a fellow Chevy-partnered team.
“I feel like my entire career has been not being that guy or trying not to be that guy,” said after the race. “So, no, I mean, we won’t have a problem moving forward. I just. Wish you would have thought differently and made a different decision, but he didn’t, and that’s just where we’re at.”
What caught Allgaier by surprise was that he had raced Love pretty clean throughout the race. No egregious moves or using the bumper at a track like Bristol. But despite finding himself on the receiving end of a crash, the JRM driver shared that he had no hard feelings for Love.
“Yeah, I’ll take his call,” said Allgaier. “I mean, that whole group over there, we have a good relationship with them. We talked to him a lot, obviously, Chevrolet. That’s why it’s disappointing. Not because we didn’t win the race. I mean, obviously had a great run. And who knows how it comes out? But, um, I just feel like it’s just, it was unnecessary. He knows he messed up. We’ll move on. And get over it.”
What’s unfortunate for both the JRM and the RCR drivers is how it affects their Chase. Allgaier entered the Chase as the leader and held his lead despite a 17th-place finish in Darlington, but now he’s second, 11 points behind Sheldon Creed with six races to come.
For Love, who is currently 4th in points, there is a 41-point deficit to make up. And 41 points with six races to go is going to be a tough climb.
Both Chevrolet drivers will be hunting down a much-needed victory in Las Vegas because Creed has already picked up wins at Darlington and Bristol.