AJ Allmendinger to start from rear at Phoenix after issues in practice

AJ Allmendinger will start from the rear in Sunday’s NASCAR Cup Series championship race at Phoenix Raceway. He is the only driver dropping to the rear at Phoenix.

Allmendinger crashed in practice on Friday after blowing a tire. The 43-year-old was already going to start at the back of the field since he did not run a qualifying lap Saturday. Allmendinger did not make a qualifying lap because his team was still working on his backup car.

Allmendinger’s backup car is ready for Sunday’s race. There are only 312 laps left in the 2025 season, and Allmendinger is excited about that.

AJ Allmendinger: ‘I’m ready for this year to be over’

“I’m ready for this year to be over,” Allmendinger said, via Frontstretch. “… I’ll have a bruise on my elbow. I think I bounced it off the seat when I hit but other than that, I’ll be fine. Blew a left front, but I don’t know. The first run, we blew a left rear like three laps into it. Everything felt fine there. I was already tight. But the balance was OK, and I just wanted to run the laps out and put a 25-30 lap run to see what we had.

“Yeah, it just all of a sudden blew out of nowhere. So, I don’t know if it’s we’re too low on tire pressure. We usually on our group in practice, we’re not overly low in tire pressure but to have two left side tires blow out, we got to figure out why.”

While the last couple of months haven’t been kind to Allmendinger, 2025 has all-in-all been a solid season for him. He has seven top 10s and a pair of top 5s, having an average finish of 20.886.