While the season’s opening four weekends provided AJ Allmendinger and Kaulig Racing with a decent start to the 2025 NASCAR Cup Series campaign, it’s been the last two races that have catapulted the No. 16 Chevrolet way up the series’ pecking order.
After picking up an eighth-place result last weekend at Las Vegas Motor Speedway, Allmendinger backed it up with a second consecutive top-10 result, finishing seventh in Sunday’s Straight Talk Wireless 400 at Homestead-Miami Speedway.
The result marks the fourth straight top-10 finish for the NASCAR Cup Series veteran at Homestead-Miami Speedway.
It’s the first time since the Summer of 2023 (Sonoma, Nashville), in the midst of his most recent full-time campaign in the NASCAR Cup Series, that Allmendinger has recorded back-to-back top 10 finishes.
In the NASCAR Cup Series, especially during the NextGen era, both Las Vegas and Homestead have been incredible racetracks for Allmendinger – who performed this same sequence of back-to-back top 10s at the end of the 2022 season.
The positive finish from Sunday’s 400-miler at Homestead-Miami Speedway now leaves Allmendinger with a 5.75 average finish in his last four starts at the Miami, Florida racetrack, the best in the NASCAR Cup Series in the seventh-generation racecar.
“I was able to figure out enough lines to make speed and do different things, where certain guys just rip the fence to keep the momentum up,” said Allmendinger. “We just didn’t quite have enough there in the longer run.”
The 43-year-old driver had an all-around solid afternoon on Sunday, qualifying inside the top 10 and spending most of the afternoon in contention for stage points, in which he was able to earn four in the first stage.
However, the Action Industries-sponsored Chevrolet lost a little bit of ground throughout the second stage of the race, sliding outside the top 10. Though, being the veteran driver that he is, Allmendinger was able to claw back out of the hole and return to the top-10.
“In general, I was really happy there. We fought hard, lost a little bit in the second stage, but [crew chief] Trent Owens and the team worked hard to get it back and be very competitive,” Allmendinger added.
The back-to-back top-10 finishes have launched Allmendinger into the top-20 in NASCAR Cup Series point standings and within striking distance of the NASCAR Playoffs bubble, as the series travels to Martinsville Speedway – another racetrack in which the Kaulig Racing driver has found success.
In 25 NASCAR Cup Series starts at the half-mile paperclip, Allmendinger has secured a pair of top-five results, both of which were second-place finishes (Spring 2012 and Spring 2016), as well as seven top-10s.
Allmendinger and Kaulig Racing will continue to utilize this forward momentum from a couple of strong weekends to improve upon their program and potentially make a run at the NASCAR Cup Series Playoffs.
