On Monday following the final race of the 2022 NASCAR Xfinity Series season, Justin Allgaier walked into JR Motorsports’ headquarters in Mooresville, N.C., expecting a typical “what we needed to do in the offseason” meeting.
Instead, he walked into a “blindside meeting.”
JR Motorsports was shaking things ups, more so for Allgaier then anyone else.
All four of JRM’s teams would have new driver-crew chief pairings for the new season.
That meant a seven-year run with Jason Burdett as Allgaier’s crew chief was over.
A pairing that earned 16 wins and reached the Championship 4 in five of seven seasons, including last year, wasn’t enough.
“There was still a lot of unknowns in that,” Allgaier told SPEED SPORT. “It wasn’t like, ‘Hey, this is exactly what we’re going to do. This is how we’re going to do it.’”
When Allgaier left that meeting, he “went through a bunch of emotions and a huge range of emotions – happy, sad, mad, all those things.”
Looking back three months later, Allgaier recalled what was said by L.W. Miller, the team’s director of motorsports.
“We all have to be on board with this, right?” Allgaier paraphrased. “But when it’s all said and done, we’ve done a great job, we’ve had a great program, we’ve done all the right things. We put three in the final four last year in Phoenix, but we didn’t win the championship. And if we’re at 90 percent of how good we can be with organization the way that it is, and we can make a change, and we can unlock that extra five or 10 percent that we need to unlock? Why would we not try to do that?’”
Added Allgaier, “He’s so right.”
The Illinois-native cited the pairings of Jeff Gordon-Ray Evernham and Jimmie Johnson-Chad Knaus, highly successful duos that didn’t finish their careers together.
“Jason and I’s relationship was super comfortable. We were absolutely on board with each other,” Allgaier said. “But you know, sometimes you just get comfortable and you don’t realize what you need to do different. And I wouldn’t blame myself. I didn’t do some things at the end of last year to be prepared that I would have done in the past because it was just comfortable.”
So who did Allgaier turn to as one chapter in his career ended? He reached out to a co-star from a previous chapter.
Jim Pohlman was Allgaier’s crew chief in 2008 when the then 22-year-old racer earned the ARCA championship.
When the 2022 season ended, Pohlman was under contract with Richard Childress Racing.
JRM conducted interviews with other candidates, but nothing fit for Allgaier like an old glove.
“As a driver, it’s kind of like my relationship with my wife in a lot of ways,” Allgaier explained. “I’ve been lucky that I’ve been with my wife for a long time. And we can do things seamlessly, and it just works, right?
“When you think about that, you’re like, ‘How do I take that same information, that same knowledge and carry it over into a crew chief and have that good relationship, that one-on-one personal relationship with that person, and really feel like we’re making each other stronger?’”
Allgaier said JRM had to “jump through hoops,” but RCR eventually opened the door for Pohlman to once again be Allgaier’s crew chief.