Justin Allgaier

He also returned to NASCAR, finishing 21st in a Truck race at Kentucky Speedway.

He failed to make five races and did not finish higher than 26th.

That year, he appeared on the Discovery Channel program, Driver X: The Race For The Ride.

The show's premise was Jack Roush searching for new talent to drive Roush Racing-prepared vehicles in NASCAR's top 3 series.

Justin Myrl Allgaier (born June 6, 1986) is an American professional stock car racing driver.

He competes full-time in the NASCAR Xfinity Series, driving the No. 7 Chevrolet Camaro for JR Motorsports.

Allgaier ran additional ARCA races in 2003, making six starts in the No. 86 owned by his father Mike.

He had a sixth-place finish in his second start at Toledo Speedway, and later the best finish of third at Salem Speedway.

The next season, he made only five starts but had a second place at Toledo.

In addition, he was a representative of the United States in the South Pacific Saloon Car Championship, where he had two top-fives.

In 2005, Allgaier ran seven races in ARCA, splitting time between cars owned by Hixson Motorsports and Bobby Gerhart Racing.

He won his first career pole at Springfield, setting a new track record, and had four top-five finishes.

He also made his NASCAR debut in the Craftsman Truck Series, making four starts in the No. 63 MB Motorsports/Dave Porter Ford.

In 2006, Allgaier made his first full-time run in ARCA, ending 10th.

He got his first career win at the Illinois State Fairgrounds Racetrack, becoming the first Springfield area resident to win in the 72-year history of championship auto racing at the fairgrounds.

He made three more Truck races for MB and had a twenty-first-place finish at Kansas Speedway.

In 2007, he won his second career ARCA race at Salem and finished fourth in points.

He also won two features in a midget car at Angell Park Speedway and placed 3rd in the Chili Bowl behind Tony Stewart and J. J. Yeley.

He is the 2008 ARCA Re/Max Series champion and the 2009 NASCAR Nationwide Series Rookie of the Year.

Allgaier was born in Spaulding, Illinois and raised in Riverton, Illinois, and began his racing career at the age of five in quarter midgets, winning over one hundred races and five championships.

He began stock car racing at thirteen in the UMP Late Model Series, where he competed for three seasons.

At the age of sixteen, he made his debut in the ARCA Re/Max Series at the Illinois State Fairgrounds Racetrack, driving the No. 99 Hoosier Tire Midwest/Law Automotive Chevrolet for Ken Schrader; he qualified twenty-ninth and finished seventeenth.

He ran two additional races for Kerry Scherer and Bob Schacht, with a best finish of eleventh.

Allgaier returned for another full season in ARCA in 2008, driving for his family team once again.

He won six races, including the final three, and won the series championship by a slim margin.

He broke Frank Kimmel's eight-year streak of winning the championship in that series.

In May 2008, Allgaier signed a contract with Penske Racing to drive four races in their No. 12 Dodge in the NASCAR Nationwide Series in the final part of the year.

His best finish in the Penske Truck Rental Dodge was eleventh at Phoenix.

Allgaier was then signed to drive the car full-time in 2009.

Because of the acquisition of Penske Racing sponsor Alltel by Cellco Partners, a joint venture of Verizon and Vodafone, their Sprint Cup sponsorship was legislated out of the sport by NASCAR's agreement with Sprint in that series to prohibit sponsorship by other wireless telephone companies.

This allowed Verizon to move their sponsorship to the Nationwide Series, where it is not prohibited, and Allgaier raced a full season with Verizon sponsorship for what became known as Penske Championship Racing.

(The name change was made when Bill Davis became a minority owner of the team.) Allgaier won his first career pole in NASCAR at Memphis Motorsports Park.

During the 2009 NAPA 200 in Montreal, Allgaier had the fastest car early in the race and while running sixth, tried to make a pass on Canadian road ace Ron Fellows and Kyle Busch.

Instead, he caused a wreck that took both him and Fellows out of the race and damaged Busch's hopes of winning.

After this incident, Allgaier took some lessons at Fellows' road racing driving school to better his road course skills, which turned out to come in handy in the following years when he won several Nationwide/Xfinity Series road course races.

In 2010, Allgaier had a similar season, but would win his first Nationwide Series race at Bristol Motor Speedway on March 20 and improve to fourth in the standings at the end of the year.

He was the highest-finishing series regular in the series standings that year, as the top three finishers in points were all full-time Cup Series drivers.

Allgaier was rumored to be moving up to the Sprint Cup Series in 2011 with Penske to drive the No. 12 Cup car, replacing Brad Keselowski, who was moving to the team's No. 2 car.

However, Penske had to shut down the No. 12 due to lack of sponsorship, and Allgaier would remain in the Nationwide Series, moving to Turner Motorsports where he would drive the team's new No. 31 Chevrolet Impala.

In the inaugural STP 300 at Chicagoland Speedway after passing Carl Edwards who ran out of fuel on the last lap, Allgaier won the race.