AJ Allmendinger’s car was not pointed straight when he took the checkered flag on Friday night at Bristol.
Allmendinger won a wild Xfinity Series race on Friday night ahead of Austin Cindric as he and Cindric crashed coming to the finish line. Cindric accelerated back toward Allmendinger in the final two corners of the race and drove into Allmendinger off the final corner in a last-ditch attempt to win the race.
It didn’t work. Allmendinger won the race and the regular season championship.
Here’s the video of the crazy final two laps. It wasn’t the first time that Allmendinger and Cindric had banged into each other.
The sprint to the finish was set up by contact between Justin Allgaier — the No. 7 car in that video — and his JR Motorsports teammate Sam Mayer while they were racing for second behind lapped traffic.
Allmendinger entered the race five points ahead of Cindric in the points standings. He needed to stay ahead of Cindric to get five extra bonus points for the playoffs for winning the regular-season title.
He did just that. Barely. The crash then took out a bunch of other cars after they had crossed the finish line.
Allmendinger and Cindric will now start the playoffs with 2,044 points each. They have — by far — the most playoff points of any driver entering the final seven races of the season and should be among the four drivers racing for the title at Phoenix in November.