June 30, 2022 | By Lee Spencer

Allmendinger looks to make Road America his own personal playground

For just the second time in 15 NASCAR Xfinity Series races this season, AJ Allmendinger finished outside the top 10 in a 16th-place result at Nashville Superspeedway last Saturday.

The mediocre result didn’t affect his position atop the series standings. As consistent as the No. 16 Kaulig Racing team has performed to start the 2022 season, Allmendinger still holds a 25-point advantage over second-place Ty Gibbs.

This weekend, Allmendinger will look to expand his lead—and his win total—as NASCAR rolls into Road America, where he hopes to score a third-consecutive road course win. 

“Road America has always been one of my favorite race tracks in anything that I’ve driven over my career,” said Allmendinger, who will perform double duty for Kaulig Racing in both Cup and Xfinity this weekend. “I’ve been fortunate enough to race a lot of races there in different forms of open-wheel racing; won a Champ Car race there. It’s a race track that is challenging and unique. 

“There are not a lot of race tracks, especially in North America, that are like Road America with the speed down the straightaways. You still have really big brake zones. There are a lot of passing opportunities and a lot of areas to make mistakes. That’s something that, in a way, makes it still a true road course because there’s no run-off area, really. You go off the race track, you’re in gravel or grass. So you have to be pretty spot-on on the race track throughout the four miles.”

Dinger won in his NXS debut at the 4.048-mile circuit nestled in Elkhart Lake, Wis., driving for Roger Penske in 2013, he led 29 of 55 laps en route to his first Xfinity Series win. Allmendinger has one win, two poles and three top-fives in four Road America Xfinity appearances. 

“It's a fun weekend,” Allmendinger said. “Knock on wood, the weather looks really good. I love the crowd there. The Wisconsin race fans, they pack that place in. It’s cool to have Cup going there as well now. We’ve had speed over the first two road courses; winning them in Xfinity. I think we can improve. 

“That’s something we’ve been working hard on at Kaulig Racing. By no means do we think, ‘OK, our road course program is set and we’re good to go’. We’ve been working hard to make our race cars faster. It’s going to be a tough field in both series. I’m pumped up to get there and hopefully have a strong weekend.”

Both of Allmendinger’s Cup wins came on road courses—including last year’s Indianapolis G.P. victory under the Kaulig banner. While his 2022 Cup results on road courses have been lackluster, Allmendinger has been solid on every type of venue on the Xfinity schedule. Despite leading the points and posting an average finish of 6.5, he still believes the team has work to do.
 
“Obviously, we’re leading the points, which is great,” Allmendinger said. “If we’re going to be brutally honest, if we had to go race Phoenix tomorrow in the championship, I don’t think we have a shot to win it. But with that said, we still have a good amount of time before the Playoffs start. 

“Last year at this point, we were second in points; probably felt a little bit better about our speed. But because of that, with no practice, we were always afraid to really try anything to try and improve the race car. We kind of thought, ‘OK, we’re still pretty good, we don’t want to hurt that.' The great thing about where we’re at right now, is we know we need speed and all the men and women at Kaulig Racing are working hard trying different things at every race. We definitely have a lot of room to improve. But we’re working hard on it.”

Allmendinger advanced to the Championship 4 in 2021. Does he consider himself the frontrunner with 11 races remaining in the regular season?

“As of this moment, are we the championship favorite? I don’t think so,” Allmendinger said. “I think you have to look at all of the JRM cars that have everyone beat. What Justin Allgaier did at Nashville, he put a whipping on us. So we definitely have some work to be done. 

“But that’s what I love about this team—we’re working hard and we are improving. Maybe it’s not as quick as we want to be, but we’ll get there. We have time before the Playoffs start, so that’s what I love about it.”