Allgaier Spends Off-Weekend Racing with BRANDT…in Brazil

MOORESVILLE, N.C. (Oct. 20, 2016) – Many NASCAR drivers take a break from the long march of the schedule to go someplace warm and recharge their batteries. Justin Allgaier, driver of the No. 7 BRANDT Professional Agriculture Chevrolet for JR Motorsports, is doing just that this week...with a kicker.

Allgaier will travel to Brazil and climb into a BRANDT-sponsored Porsche GT3 Cup car and co-drive a 500-kilometer endurance event alongside former NASCAR driver Miguel Paludo this weekend at The Autódromo Internacional Ayrton Senna in Goiânia, a 2.383-mile, 15-turn road course named for the late Brazilian Formula One star Ayrton Senna. He will go back next month for a race in Sao Paulo at Interlagos, the track which hosts the Formula One series.

BRANDT entered the Brazilian agriculture market recently, with an office in Londrina (Parana State) and manufacturing in Olimpia (Sao Paulo State), and sponsored Paludo’s entry into the world-wide road-racing series the last two seasons as a platform to help spread the word. Paludo, who made 75 combined starts in the NASCAR Camping World Truck Series and NASCAR Xfinity Series, is a former teammate of Allgaier’s and lives in Mooresville, N.C. part of the year. He’s also a two-time Porsche GT3 Cup champion, and the perfect driver to help Allgaier adjust to the high-tech Porsche race car, which, incidentally, carries the same No. 7 that Allgaier uses here in NASCAR.

“I have sat in a car that is similar to what we’ll be racing,” Allgaier quipped prior to heading to Brazil. “The cars that we will be racing are actually stored and maintained by Porsche Brazil in a warehouse right there in Sao Paolo. Miguel races the same car we’re going to drive, he’s the sole driver of that car in the series.

“Rick Brandt [president and CEO of BRANDT] has a Brazil Porsche GT3 Cup car from a few years ago that Miguel actually won the championship with in his collection, that he was fortunate enough to buy when it came to the U.S. It had a sequential gearbox in it, where the shifter was actually up next to you. The car we’ll be racing this year has paddle shifters and a lot of really neat technological advancements that the one I sat in didn’t have.”

Allgaier is an accomplished road racer in the NASCAR Xfinity Series, posting a victory at Montreal in 2012 among his three top-five and 11 top-10 finishes in 17 starts. This, however, is a whole different program.

“Other than one ARCA race on a road course, and then my NASCAR road-course career, I have no road-racing experience,” Allgaier said. “In one aspect, it’s making me a little bit nervous, but on the flip side, any time you can gain experience outside of what we do… I love NASCAR and don’t have any plans to switch my profession any time in the near future, but this is a great opportunity to expand my racing portfolio, to be a part of something that’s really, really cool in Brazil with BRANDT. I have a lot of respect for Miguel as a driver.”

Not only is the car unfamiliar, the track will be as well.

“Goiânia is one that is new to me,” he said. “That’s going to be a challenge for me, knowing what to do, where to brake. I’m going to watch as much video as I can. Miguel will do what he can to try and help me. This is a steep learning curve for me, going to tracks I’ve never seen before. There’s lots of high-speed corners, blind corners, so there are things that are going to be a challenge.

“I feel like as racers our jobs are to maximize the times we don’t know what’s going on and learn as quickly as we can. That’s the goal.”

This will be a learning experience on many levels for the 30-year-old Allgaier, and he’s looking forward to it.

“It started out as I would have plenty of time in the race car,” Allgaier said with a laugh. “Then it was, ‘you’ll have a full day of practice in the car.’ Now it’s down to like three hours, and he [Paludo] said that we’ll have a limited number of tires.”

Allgaier remains confident that he’ll be up to speed in no time.

“This is a good opportunity to try something new, and Miguel, having had a NASCAR background, understands what I’m going to struggle with and what I need to learn and what the challenges are going to be,” Allgaier said. “I feel like we’ll be OK. We’ve been fortunate to be good on road courses in the NASCAR Xfinity Series, and I don’t see that changing in Brazil.”

It’s also an opportunity to do some good work with BRANDT.

“BRANDT has been on the cutting edge of agriculture industry,” Allgaier said. “A lot of our race fans don’t realize how far the scope of agriculture goes. They grow some amazing things in other places. There are countries that have specialties, have very fertile soil just like the United States, and there’s others that really struggle to grow things. That’s an area where BRANDT has stepped in and tried to help out as much as they can.

“They go right alongside the farmer and help them with products that allow them to grow in climates or soil types that might not have grown before,” Allgaier continued. “BRANDT is an amazing company, and I’ve been fortunate to be able to get to know the inner workings of what they do and how they work. Adding Brazil was a great opportunity for them to grow. Their racing program has been a great platform for them. To be able to go to Brazil to race, to be a NASCAR driver racing alongside of another former NASCAR driver, is a really cool story and is going to make for a lot of fun.”

The green flag for Saturday’s (Oct. 22) race at The Autódromo Internacional Ayrton Senna drops at 10:30 a.m. ET. You can follow live timing/scoring and stream the event here.