Allgaier leads the 2026 OAPS standings with his victory in Phoenix

Justin Allgaier led 11 of 200 laps in Saturday night's GOVX 200 at Phoenix Raceway, but they were the only ones that mattered. Jesse Love had controlled the race with 114 laps out front and the best pace of the entire field, yet Allgaier passed him on the outside with 11 laps to go and won by 0.449 seconds. With the result, Allgaier and the JR Motorsports Chevrolet #7 took the lead in the 2026 NASCAR O'Reilly Auto Parts Series championship.

Love led 114 laps and it wasn't enough

The first two stages ran without interruption. Sammy Smith won the first, Love the second, and the Richard Childress Racing Chevrolet #2 seemed to have the night under control with 46 fast laps, nearly double that of Carson Kvapil, who was second in that statistic with 28.

The problem for Love appeared at the start of the third segment, when his car started to tighten up in the corners and lost the balance that had kept him out front for 150 laps. Two late yellow flags regrouped the field just as Allgaier's team was recovering from a slow pit stop that had dropped him out of the top 5.

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Allgaier passed on the outside on the final restart

On the final restart, with 15 laps remaining, Allgaier took the outside line. On a one-mile oval, that means losing traction and covering more distance in every corner, but Love no longer had the grip to defend on the inside. They ran side-by-side for four laps until Allgaier got ahead and managed the gap to the checkered flag.

It is the 107th victory for JR Motorsports in series history and the continuation of a record personal streak, as Allgaier has at least one win per season for 10 consecutive years, something no other active driver in the category has achieved.

"It wasn't without adversity and it seems like those are the ones that are big for us," said Allgaier. Love, with four consecutive top 10s and a stage win in every 2026 race, left frustrated. "That's not why I'm here. I'm frustrated with myself. I don't know what else to say."

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Hill fell to third in the championship

Austin Hill had led the standings since Daytona with consistency that opened a 28-point gap over second place, thanks to his win in the opener, a fourth in Atlanta, and a second at COTA. A 12th place at Phoenix snapped that streak of three consecutive podiums and left him third with 179 points, five behind Allgaier (184) and two less than Love (181). The difference between first and third fits within one bad night.

Chevrolet occupied the first 14 positions in the classification. Taylor Gray was the best Toyota in 15th and Ford didn't place a car among the first 19. Kvapil finished third, Sheldon Creed and Sam Mayer from Haas Factory Team rounded out the top 5, and Smith, Jeb Burton, Rajah Caruth, Corey Day and Anthony Alfredo completed a top 10 where there was only one real talking point.

The series heads to Las Vegas Motor Speedway for The LiUNA, a race on a 1.5-mile oval where Allgaier is the defending winner. Three different winners in four rounds, all in Chevrolets, and a championship with a five-point gap between the top three.