With three laps to go, the field goes four-wide on the final restart in the NASCAR Nationwide Series Copart 300 at Auto Club Speedway on Saturday in Fontana, Calif. (Photo Credit: Chris Graythen/Getty Images)

The ultimate goal in pretty much any form of motorsports is to win. Week to week and race to race, that may mean visiting victory lane after a given event. But when it comes to the ultimate goal over the course of a season — well, that would be a championship.

When a championship isn’t in the cards, drivers and teams strive to finish in the top-10. NASCAR has tightened that up somewhat for competitors in its Camping World Truck and Nationwide Series with the merger of the two series’ end-of-season awards banquet.

With the top-drivers of two series being recognized at a single banquet, only the top-five drivers in each will receive on-stage recognition.

In the Nationwide Series, that fifth and final spot is a highly and closely contested one between Steve Wallace and Nationwide rookie Justin Allgaier. The battle for fifth between these two drivers is so close that they’ve swapped it like a hot potato three of the past four weeks.

“With the points as tight as they are, you just have to try and capitalize as much as you can when the opportunity arises,” Wallace said.

Allgaier is the current occupant of the fifth position, but he’s only 34 points ahead of Wallace, so there’s a significant possibility that they could trade the fifth and sixth positions again.