Last year’s Championship 4 Media Day included a now-famous quip from Joey Logano that the title field was “The Big 3 and me.”
The Big 3, of course, was the triumvirate of Kyle Busch, Martin Truex Jr. and Kevin Harvick, who had dominated the season to that point. Those three returned to the Championship 4 this year, leading to an updated quote from Busch on Thursday.
“This is the Big 3, with the New 1,” Busch said with a laugh, referencing Joe Gibbs Racing teammate Denny Hamlin, who qualified for his second Championship 4 and first since 2014 with his win last week at Phoenix.
There were a few laughs — and plenty of respect — doled out during this year’s Media Day among the title contenders.
As for Hamlin, he doesn’t mind being the (new) one to crash the party this year.
“These three … have been the standouts year in and year out,” Hamlin said of his competition. “You see one or two guys get into that Championship 4 here and there. I think it would be most gratifying if we did win because this is by far the best (field) you could put together. It would mean more for that reason.”
Harvick and Busch each have had the most Championship 4 appearances since the elimination-style format was introduced in 2014 — five times in six years. Truex Jr., meanwhile, has qualified four times.
“It’s difficult to navigate the playoffs and there’s a group of guys that have been there and done that and know that you’re going to have some things that you’re going to have to deal with throughout the playoffs,” Harvick said. ” … Our teams are experienced and have navigated those things year after year and I think you see the best crew chiefs and the best organizations and the best drivers and they consistently stick out.”
Don’t think Hamlin is just happy to be here, though.
“I’ve got a chance, an opportunity, another one. This will be our third essentially going to Homestead with a legit shot,” Hamlin said. “Certainly you don’t want to squeeze away any opportunities, but it doesn’t make me nervous by any stance. We already won Homestead. We won Homestead last week. That was our win-or‑go‑home race. We performed at an incredibly high level.
We have now a free weekend to go out there and have fun and keep doing what we’ve been doing. We’ll have a chance by the end of the night because we have all year long as long as we do the same thing.”
Monster Energy Series cars hit the track for opening practice Friday at 3:35 p.m. ET, with another practice later in the evening at 6:30 p.m. ET.
Tune in to see who will hoist the championship trophy on Sunday at 3 p.m. ET (NBC/NBC Sports App, MRN, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio).
When Denny Hamlin straps into his car at Homestead-Miami Speedway on Sunday for the championship-deciding season finale, one of the last people he will talk to before the race starts will be crew chief Chris Gabehart. And truth be told, Hamlin will probably listen more than he talks.
Just before the cars roll onto the starting grid, Gabehart will give his driver — the only one of the Championship 4 without a title — a rousing speech, as he does before every race. If anybody else talked to Hamlin the way Gabehart does, Hamlin would see it as a ploy or as part of a shtick, and he wouldn’t buy it. Not so with Gabehart.
“His confidence in me is unwavering,” says Hamlin, driver of the No. 11 Toyota for Joe Gibbs Racing. “He finds a way to make it relate and make you believe it.”
And Hamlin believes for good reason: He has set career bests in top fives, top 10s and average finish. He has six wins, including one in the Daytona 500 and one in last Sunday’s win-or-be-eliminated race in Phoenix.
No word yet on what pearls of wisdom Gabehart might drop on Hamlin before he battles Kyle Busch, Martin Truex Jr. and Kevin Harvick for the championship. But with the numbers Hamlin and Gabehart have put up in just one year together, it’s a safe bet that he will continue the pre-race tradition.
It’s also a safe bet Hamlin will peel out of pit lane inspired.
And that will be the last predictable thing that happens all day.
Jonathan Ferrey | Getty Images
When NASCAR started the playoff format in 2004, in which the top 10 drivers had their points reset for a 10-race shootout for the championship, anticipation for an intense championship battle was sky high. When five drivers entered the final race at Homestead-Miami Speedway with a chance to win what is now known as the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series, nobody knew what to expect.
Fifteen years later, that’s still true. The format has changed — now 16 drivers make the 10-race playoffs, 12 are eliminated, and the final race is a best-finisher-wins-the-championship battle among four drivers. But the what-craziness-will-happen-in-Miami? anticipation remains.
From Kurt Busch’s wheel coming off in 2004 to Jimmie Johnson getting a hole punched in the nose of his car in 2006 to Tony Stewart dropping to the back of the field twice in 2011, the eventual champions have faced no small amount of obstacles.
Since the best-finisher-wins-the-championship format began in 2014, the champion has won the final race every season. Joey Logano led a race-high 80 laps last year to take the championship; he’s the only driver in the playoff era to lead the most laps, win the final race and win the title. But final performances by champions haven’t always been stellar. Brad Keselowski (2012), Johnson (2008) and Stewart (2005) finished 15th and won the Cup anyway.
Throw in bad pit stops (too many to name), lightning-fast pit stops (same), desperate late-race searches for faster lines (Martin Truex Jr. in 2017) and thrilling late restarts (Kevin Harvick in 2014 and Johnson in 2016, among others) and everything that could happen, has.
All of which adds up to this: Nobody knows what will happen this weekend.
• • •
Teams sometimes tell themselves the season-ender at Miami is a race just like any other. But that’s a big fat lie, and anybody who has ever been in the Championship 4 knows it. Anxiety swirls over everything, like clouds on a mountain top. Fans and media desperate for late-breaking insight smother the garage in a dense layer of fog. The competitor who best finds his way through will hoist the big trophy on Sunday.
“Trying to think while you’ve got 50 cameras pointed at you, and those distractions, that was the biggest thing to me,” says Rodney Childers, crew chief for Harvick now and when he won the championship in 2014, the first year of the current format.
Amid that chaos, Childers found peace in having the fastest car. That made his decision-making easier. He didn’t have to take any risks or big swings to try to catch up to the competition. They were doing that to catch up to him. “Everything went right. I never felt confused or felt that I didn’t know what I should do on certain pit stops,” he said.
Which is not to say he knew his decisions would work out.
Patrick Smith | Getty Images
The most crucial one came during a pit stop on Lap 249 of 267. Leader Denny Hamlin, one of the Championship 4 drivers, stayed out. Ryan Newman took two tires. Childers thought to himself, They’re going to get run over staying out on old tires. Taking four tires at Homestead is always the right decision, even more so with the championship on the line AND when the guys in front of him didn’t.
“We had had a really fast car all year,” Childers said. “I knew if we could put it in Kevin’s hands and put him on offense instead of defense, we were going to be a lot better off.”
Harvick restarted 12th with 15 laps to go — that’s pretty far back with not a lot of time to get to the front. “I was like, ah, this might not work out,” Childers said. “But we weren’t leading the race to begin with. We were going to have to do something different. I knew if we ended up getting a couple cautions, we would be in the catbird seat.”
Harvick moved up five positions, to seventh, before a caution on Lap 254. He was in the lead for the final restart on Lap 261. He pulled away from Newman, who restarted alongside him, to win the race and the championship.
“I remember just waiting until he came off of Turn 4 to take the checkered flag,” Childers said. “It’s a crazy emotional time, that last lap. Once you take that white flag, and you know that even if the caution comes out, you’ve won the championship. So many things running through your head. It’s pretty nuts.”
After the race, Harvick told ESPN: “I was just going to hold the pedal down and hope for the best.” That sounded like an exaggeration. But Childers found video of Harvick’s in-car camera feed of that race. He has watched it multiple times and what strikes him is not what he sees but what he hears. The audio reveals Harvick did not fully lift his foot off the accelerator, even as he entered the corners. “You’re like, how in the world did he do that? He pretty much ran wide open,” Childers said. “That’s just something you don’t do at Homestead.”
Unless the championship is at stake.
Because it’s not a normal weekend.
• • •
“Everyone is so spooled up. You see it in the garage, you see it in the competitors, the sponsors, the PR people — everybody is on pins and needles the whole time, from first practice to qualifying to when they drop the checkered flag.”
So says Al Garcia, who knows that pressure intimately. He is president of the track now and has worked there since 1995. It’s his job to put on a good show in the most intense race of the season, when the entire American motorsports community is laser-focused on his track. “We want to make darn sure that everything that is under our control has been checked and double-checked and triple-checked,” Garcia said. “I always preach the mantra: Mistakes are OK, mistakes happen, we’re all human. But let’s make brand-new mistakes. You can’t make the same mistakes over and over.”
He focuses on the three Ts — an approach he learned from Bill France Jr., the son of NASCAR’s founder who served as NASCAR’s CEO from 1972 until 2000. “He used to always tell me, ‘Al, they’ve got all these people, and they’ve got all these consultants and marketing and studies and all this brand stuff. But it’s simple. It’s tickets, it’s traffic, and it’s toilets, in that order. The rest of it, don’t worry about it,’ ” Garcia says.
In the middle of the 2011 race — a battle between Stewart and Carl Edwards — Garcia had to stop watching and start working.
Jared C. Tilton | Getty Images
At that time, he was the vice president of operations, which meant traffic and toilets were his responsibility. A rain delay sent fans out of their seats and into the midway and bathrooms, which needed to be serviced at a time they would normally have been empty.
Meanwhile, Stewart and Edwards forged a real-time legend, a where-were-you-when? race that was historically amazing even as it was happening. Stewart drove from the back of the field to the front, twice. During the second march through the field, Stewart radioed his crew: “This is going to make it that much more satisfying when we come back and kick (Edwards’) ass.”
Stewart, who passed a stunning 118 cars that day, didn’t kick Edwards’ ass, not exactly, at least. Stewart won the race, Edwards finished second and led the most laps, and the two of them ended the season tied in points, the only time in NASCAR history that has happened. Stewart won the tiebreaker on the strength of his five wins versus Edwards’ one.
No less an authority than A.J. Foyt — Stewart’s hero and one of the greatest drivers in racing history — said, “I think Tony drove the best race of his life.”
Nobody would argue with that. Said Stewart after the race: “If this doesn’t go down as one of the greatest championship battles in history, I don’t know what will.”
• • •
The battle between Martin Truex Jr. and Kyle Busch in 2017 is on that list, too.
Before the race started, Truex had already reeled off the most dominant performance of the new playoff format and arguably of the playoff era.
You’d have to go all the way back to 1992 and owner-driver Alan Kulwicki’s unlikely championship to find an underdog rising to the top like Truex. In recent memory, no driver’s title was met with such widespread enthusiasm as Truex’s.
And not just because he dominated all season but because of what he overcame in the process. He lost his ride with Michael Waltrip Racing in 2013 and struggled through a terrible 2014 with Furniture Row Racing. But late that season, his relationship with crew chief Cole Pearn clicked. Truex won one race in 2015 and four in 2016. That set the stage for 2017, in which he led the series in every major category. His eight wins were more than the rest of his career combined at the time.
Jared C. Tilton | Getty Images
His longtime girlfriend, Sherry Pollex, was diagnosed with ovarian cancer in the midst of that horrible 2014 season and had a recurrence in 2017. On top of that, team owner Barney Visser had a heart attack in 2017; he survived but doctors barred him from attending the final race.
Truex started out the race uncharacteristically slow. But he found speed as the race progressed, setting up an insta-legend battle with Busch. He said the biggest challenge he faced was holding off a clearly faster Busch. Truex did that by experimenting with his line until he found a fast one.
“Running up the against the wall there, you just got to be perfect, so we had to run 36 (laps) in the last run and just had to not make any mistakes at all,” he said. “Thirty-six laps as hard as you can possibly go and never make a mistake, that was hell of a challenge. But it felt good to be able to make it happen.”
The struggles earlier in his career prepared him to endure the stress of that final run. “Before 2014, I know I couldn’t have (done it),” he says. “I would have been probably spun out a bit, nervous as all hell. But I was like, OK, just got to find something. Just got to find a little bit. And I found it, and it was like, OK, here we go, I’ve got this. Start clicking them off, and we got to about five to go, and I was like, This is working pretty good. Just don’t screw up, dummy.”
He didn’t, and his post-race celebration was among the most emotional the sport has ever seen. “I was overcome. I took the checkered flag and I was just junk. I couldn’t talk, I couldn’t think,” he said after the race. “I had no idea what to do. I was bawling like a little kid. It was insane, and I don’t even know why. All the things I’ve been through flashed through my head. All the people that have got me here flashed through my head. It was just more than I could handle. But it felt pretty damned good.”
• • •
In 2006, Jimmie Johnson and Chad Knaus were in their fifth season together. They had finished in the top five in the previous four and been in championship contention deep into each of them. Their failure to win a title weighed on both of them and threatened to fracture their relationship before it could blossom into the historically great tandem it eventually became.
After the 2005 season, team owner Rick Hendrick called the two of them into his office and fed them milk and cookies. He told them if they acted like children, he was going to treat them like children.
In 2006, they raced like grown-ups. The No. 48 team won the season-opening Daytona 500 (even with Knaus suspended) and the Brickyard 400 and spent the entire regular season in the top three in points. A bad start to the playoffs left them deep in the field. Then they roared back with a win and four second-place finishes to enter Homestead with the points lead. They had to finish 12th to take home their first title.
Rusty Jarrett | Getty Images
“That’s not an easy feat,” Knaus said. “At that point, our main focus was to just stay ahead of, or stay in close proximity to, the 17 car (Matt Kenseth, who was second in points). There’s a lot of stress with that — stress on the driver, stress on the crew chief, stress on the pit crew, stress on the team. There’s no such thing as coasting through a championship race.”
And the 48 team did not coast through this one. Early in the race, Johnson ran over debris, which punched a hole in his car’s nose. Atop the pit box, Knaus thought, oh no, not again … or perhaps a more colorful version of that.
“One thing our teams have done over the years is reacted to adversity and maintained our composure well,” Knaus said. “We repaired the damage to the best of our ability. We put some tires on it. And we got out there and got racing again.”
Which is not to say that was the end of the struggle. Johnson still had to drive from the back of the field to the front. And stay there.
“If you’re in a situation like that, and you have adversity show up, it just ratchets up the intensity to one more level,” Knaus said. “You’re just stacking pennies, waiting for the tower to fall. But fortunately enough, we were strong and everybody did a great job, and we were able to pull it off.”
From the cockpit, Johnson felt less stress about the nose’s hole than Knaus did. He barely knew it was there. The car’s handling didn’t change, so he didn’t worry much about it. The stress for Johnson came later as his car slowed down relative to the field.
“I remember my stomach being in a knot. I literally thought I was going to have an ulcer,” he said.
He’s a seven-time champion now. He was a zero-time champion then and worried he was frittering away his last chance at a title. He thought he’d go down as the guy who came close but never won. “I physically felt it in my stomach. I had heartburn the whole weekend. I don’t ever have heartburn,” he said. “My gut system was stressed and messed up as a result. I can remember as the race wore on, that intensity kicking in, that hurting even more, my heart rate being really elevated, being short of breath. There were physical ailments of fear of losing this championship.”
Through that, Knaus kept close watch on the hole in the nose. He had told the crew to use bright orange tape to cover it, so he would be able to see the tape after the sun went down. If the tape was intact, he knew their championship hopes were, too. In 2006, that bright orange tape heralded a championship for Johnson and Knaus.
In 2004, bright orange tape signaled their defeat.
They entered the final race that year battling with Kurt Busch, Jeff Gordon, Mark Martin and Dale Earnhardt Jr. to be the first champion of the playoff era.
When Busch’s tire came off early in the race and bounded onto the track, Johnson thought the championship was his to lose. “I just assumed the damage was going to be so bad that his car’s performance would be way off,” Johnson said. “As the race went on, I didn’t see him. I started to believe, after an hour or so of racing, that it was ours.”
During a late restart, Johnson looked in his mirror and saw orange tape, which he recognized as being on Busch’s car. At the same time, Knaus told him over the radio that Busch had crept from a low of 28th back into the championship hunt.
On the final restart, a green-white-checkered, Johnson passed two cars by going three wide. Busch was stuck in traffic. As late as the final lap, Johnson thought he was going to win his first championship.
“My eyes were forward, I’m like, Yes! Yes! Yes! I’m doing the right things! I’m doing it all!,” Johnson said.
It may have been the greatest NASCAR championship story in history. In October of that year, a Hendrick Motorsports plane crashed on the way to Martinsville, killing 10 people, including team owner Rick Hendrick’s brother, son and two nieces. Also killed were Hendrick’s chief engine builder, Randy Dorton, and general manager, Jeff Turner.
Johnson won two of the next three races to storm from afterthought to contender. And for much of that Sunday afternoon, he thought this storybook ending was meant to be, that he was fated to win. NASCAR history is full of like this, and until the last turn, Johnson thought he was helping to write one of the best ever.
“I looked in the mirror coming off of (Turn 4), and I saw the tape. I’m like, no. It’s not happening,” he said. He needed more cars between him and Busch than there were. “To look up in the mirror and see that orange tape I was like, you’ve got to be kidding me. It’s not meant to be. It’s not. It’s over.”
• • •
Jared C. Tilton
In 2015, Kyle Busch’s season looked over before it even started.
He broke his right leg and his left foot in a crash in the season-opening race in the NASCAR Xfinity Series. He missed 11 Cup races, but fought back to make the playoffs and qualify among the final four at Miami. He and his wife, Samantha, had their first child, a son named Brexton, who was born that May after an emotionally painful and stressful in-vitro fertilization process.
They had already had a year full of ups and downs. And now Busch was on the verge of the greatest up of his career, and yet he and Samantha tried to act like it was a normal weekend. They didn’t even talk about the fact he could win the championship. They ate a quiet dinner in their motorhome the night before, and Kyle went through his normal pre-race study session, cool as could be. The only sign anything was different was that Brexton, then 6 months old, had gone with his grandparents to sleep in a hotel.
All of their outward calm was an act, a charade, a way to distract themselves. “I wanted to throw up every second of the day,” Samantha Busch said.
However nervous drivers are, their loved ones might be even more so. At least the driver has control, or some semblance of it, by holding the steering wheel and pushing the pedals. All family members can do is watch.
When Samantha Busch gets nervous during races, she shakes, and that causes the pit box to shake, which distracts the engineers and crew chief and worries the fans and sponsors sitting up there. As the race neared its end, Samantha tried to “unfocus,” as she put it — to distract herself by praying and texting with friends.
But she could never take her eyes off the action for long. “I remember the last 30 laps being in panic mode and just trying to breathe through it, watching him every lap. It was the longest end of the race ever.”
After Kyle won the race and the championship, she ran to congratulate him. The sea of crew members parted. She leapt into his arms and kissed him. His eyes were wet. She was still crying. “He said, ‘We did it,’ ” she said. “We were a team. We had to struggle. We got pregnant together. We finally had our son. Then we went through all of his physical therapy together.”
A few hours later — it was maybe 2 a.m. — she woke up Brexton to take him out on the track. “Awesome mom,” she jokes. But this was a family moment to be savored. “We were sitting on the track doing photos,” she said. “We worked so hard for him and had to go through so many things to get him. To have Brexton, who, in a sense, was one trophy, and then the trophy, it was just like, Wow. Crazy cool. It started out so bad and got to here.”
This is a value that was instilled in me at a young age by my parents, whom I continued to disappoint on a daily basis and still do, but that’s another topic entirely.
I keep promises. I proved this a couple of years ago, as you’ll recall, in a wager involving Joey Logano. He won at Richmond but failed post-race inspection, which meant that he had not qualified for the playoffs. As Twitter raged and frothed at the mouth, I made the very salient point that it wasn’t like Logano was going to go winless the rest of the year. In fact, if he did not, I would get Darrell Waltrip’s face tattooed on my inner thigh.
Well, you know what happened. He did not win the rest of the year. Tattoo gotten. Then he went on to win the championship the following year, which means he deliberately tanked in 2017 so that I’d have to get this tattoo. It was a conspiracy that runs deep. Tattoo truther here. I know what you did, Joey, you unscrupulous minx.
That leads me to this year. Earlier this summer, I was perhaps overly confident in Jimmie Johnson’s chances of making the playoffs – so much so that I promised to wear a dude romper with Jimmie’s face on it to Homestead if he didn’t. Once again, I gambled, and I lost.
The romper has arrived, it is ready to be worn, and somehow, some way, it is ready to be claimed on my 2019 tax return as a business expense. I purchased a size XL because I like my dude rompers baggy. But H&M must make these things because it is tight. Way tight. If I try and stretch, this thing is gonna rip like Hulk Hogan’s tank top and y’all are getting a show you didn’t want and didn’t ask for.
Thankfully, Homestead-Miami Speedway and Ally Financial have teamed up to provide fans with an incredible beach setup on the infield lake. Sand, umbrellas, beach chairs – the works. It seems like the ideal place to rock a dude romper without judgement. So that is where you’ll find me. I will be the first human being on earth to develop a romper tan. That’s what I do. I set records and blaze trails.
I could have easily disregarded this wager, and simply asked my editors at NASCAR.com to delete the article in which I promised to wear one. (EDITOR’S NOTE: THIS IS LIKE ONE OF 400 OF HIS ARTICLES WE WISH WE COULD DELETE) But again, that would be dishonest and unethical. How would you be able to trust me anymore? How could you believe a word I say even though 99 percent of what I post are lies anyway but, just like disappointing my parents, that’s another topic altogether?
That’s why this coming Sunday at Miami if you see a gentleman walking around in a dude romper, chances are pretty good that it’s me, because if someone else was wearing one of these willingly then they should check their homes for high lead levels. Come say hello. Take in the romper in all of its glory. Admire it as if it were a wearable Mona Lisa.
I’m off to the hotel fitness center now to do some squats and quad extensions. I’m not quite in dude romper shape yet and the clock is ticking. See you at the track.
Back in February, before the green flag flew in the Daytona 500, we challenged people on Twitter to guess this year’s Championship 4 — the four drivers who would compete for the title of NASCAR champ nine months later.
Now, with 35 of 36 races in the books, we’ve got our Championship 4: Martin Truex Jr., Kevin Harvick, Kyle Busch and Denny Hamlin.
So, how’d Twitter do? Surely, the all-knowing users of Twitter were perfect, right?
Out of over 500 guesses, it appears two people — yeah, just two, but it’s two more than last year — correctly guessed this year’s exact Championship 4 back in February. Way to go, @tuckgraphics and @the11thdoctor25.
Kyle Busch
Kevin Harvick
Denny Hamlin
Martin Truex Jr
Sorry we have to shame you in such a public matter (not really sorry — you were warned), but it’s necessary. Do better next year!
Twitterer @tybaltus79 went to the effort of tabulating all the predictions — what a help! It looks like, in general, people underestimated Denny Hamlin, who rebounded from a winless 2018 to contend for a championship in 2019.
What does this all prove? Well, not much. But maybe it gave a few people the opportunity to show how good (or bad) they are at predicting the future. Maybe we’ll have more than two winners in 2020.
Thanks to everybody who played the game, and congratulations once again to our winners, @tuckgraphics and @the11thdoctor25. Go brag!
Editor’s note: This is the fourth in a series of four stories examining why each driver could win the 2019 Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series championship.
Kyle Busch will win the 2019 championship because …
He’s due.
Look, we get it. This hasn’t been the easiest stretch of time for Kyle Busch or his No. 18 team. The group rattled off four wins in the first 14 races of the season, but they haven’t won since. A winless stretch dating back to June feels like an eternity for perhaps the most consistently successful driver in the garage the past three years.
And we know it wasn’t an easy road in the postseason. Busch’s average finish over the past nine races ranks last among the Championship 4 field.
But here’s the thing. Being in this position is new for Busch. He’s made five of six Championship 4 fields since the inception of the elimination-style postseason. In every one before this, he was considered the favorite or at least one of the favorites. He is unquestionably the underdog among this group, and that’s OK. It’s a position that should allow Busch and his team to breathe a little easier and perhaps even sleep a little better.
We’re confident in this pick after Phoenix, too. Yeah, Denny Hamlin had the car to beat and drove away from the field. But Busch and his team brought it to Phoenix, finishing second with a sound car and a driver who is capable of delivering when it matters most.
So write off the all-time leader in NASCAR national series wins if you want. But do so at your own peril. Flying under the radar will serve this group well. Come Sunday, we’ll be looking at a two-time Monster Energy Series champion.
Daniel Hemric will return to the NASCAR Xfinity Series in 2020, driving in a part-time role for Dale Earnhardt Jr. — who also will race once next year in his team’s No. 8 Chevrolet.
JR Motorsports announced its 2020 driver lineup for the No. 8 car on Wednesday, with Hemric as the headliner for 21 (of 33) races. Jeb Burton will add 11 races in the entry, and Junior will have one race, yet to be announced.
“I want to thank Dale, Kelley (Earnhardt Miller) and everyone at JR Motorsports for believing in me,” Hemric said in a team release. “For a Kannapolis (N.C.) boy like me, driving for the Earnhardt family is pretty awesome. My goal here is simple — to go win races for JR Motorsports and to help their program any way that I can. I’ve raced against their cars before and I know how they’re capable of running. My focus is on finishing the Cup season out strong, but once the checkered flag flies at Homestead, we’ll set our sights on getting the No. 8 car to Victory Lane early and often next season.”
Fascinating where this journey called life takes you…..this move to @JRMotorsports is what felt right to me. Humbled, and so thankful for this opportunity! I’m ready to chase wins and a owners championship for @DaleJr@EarnhardtKelley & everyone at @JRMotorsports next year! 👊 https://t.co/ZyT8Vhezz2
Hemric will conclude his rookie season with Richard Childress Racing in the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series this weekend at Homestead-Miami Speedway. After two years of making the Championship 4 for RCR in the NASCAR Xfinity Series, RCR promoted him to the premier series for this season.
Earlier this year, RCR announced that Tyler Reddick would drive its second car next year, leaving Hemric looking for a new ride.
He found it at JRM.
“Daniel is a solid competitor with a great personality,” Earnhardt Jr. said. “He’ll be a quality addition to our lineup in 2020. We’re lucky to have him. I feel like he has grown as a driver from his time in the Cup Series. That will be valuable to him with this new opportunity to compete in the Xfinity Series. He’s a local Kannapolis (N.C.) native with a lot of determination to succeed, and I’m excited to work with him.”
Burton, meanwhile, made six starts for JR Motorsports this year. Excepting when he had brake issues at Bristol, his average finish was 6.8, earning him more seat time.
Earnhardt’s one start will come at Homestead-Miami Speedway, which he confirmed on Twitter on Thursday night.
Just got into @HomesteadMiami and it’s driving me CRAZY that I have to wait till next March to turn some laps here. I sure miss it. Such a fun track. Gonna be a great weekend for our sport. @NASCARonNBC@NASCAR
The Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series heads to South Florida for the Ford EcoBoost 400 in the highly anticipated championship finale Sunday at Homestead-Miami Speedway (3 p.m. ET, NBC/NBC Sports App, MRN, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio).
At 55-feet wide, the 1.5-mile asphalt oval features an even 1,760-foot backstretch and frontstretch with 18-20 degrees of variable banking in each turn. The progressive banking and grip-filled asphalt surface will make navigating various grooves and controlling tire wear a constant challenge for drivers.
NASCAR Hall of Famer Tony Stewart won the inaugural Monster Energy Series race at the track on Nov. 14, 1999. Homestead-Miami Speedway has hosted the season finale since every year since 2002.
RULES PACKAGE
Cars at Homestead-Miami will run a 550 horsepower tapered-spacer engine and be equipped with aero ducts. After the race at Atlanta, the original 2019 rules package was updated to include aero ducts at Pocono, Darlington and for the championship in Miami.
Teams will have three sets of Goodyear Eagle Speedway radials for practice, one set for qualifying and 12 sets for the 400-mile race (11 race sets plus one transferred from practice or qualifying). With 12 sets of race tires, tire management will be extremely important to teams throughout the entire race. Maintaining track position while managing increased tire fall-off will most likely make pit stops a vital factor in deciding this year’s champion. Race fans should expect to see four tire stops all day.
“Homestead is one of the highest tire wear tracks that we have on the NASCAR circuit,” said Greg Stucker, Goodyear’s director of racing. “We have a new tire set-up for Homestead, and it is the same one we ran at both Chicagoland and Darlington earlier this season. The compounds we will be running provide plenty of grip, but also offer the endurance needed on Homestead’s track surface. These high wear tracks put on some of our best races, and the past several years at Homestead have proven that.”
CHAMPIONSHIP STATS
– Denny Hamlin is the only driver to make the playoffs more than 10 times and not win a Cup Championship.
– Martin Truex Jr. won at Martinsville and made it to the Championship 4 for the fourth time in the last five years. In two of the last three years, the Martinsville winner has gone on to secure the series title.
– Each driver in the Championship 4 has won a race at Homestead-Miami. Hamlin is the only driver with multiple wins at the track.
– Kevin Harvick has won at least one playoff race each of the last eight seasons — the longest active streak. Jimmie Johnson holds the all-time record, winning in 13 consecutive. Harvick’s last win at Homestead came in his 2014 championship-winning season.
– Joe Gibbs Racing is the only organization in series history to have three drivers in the Championship 4. JGR drivers have won five of the nine playoff races this season (Truex Jr.-3, Hamlin-2).
– The last five champions have also won the race at Homestead-Miami Speedway (Harvick-2014, Kyle Busch-2015, Johnson-2016, Truex Jr.-2017 and Joey Logano-2018).
Source: Racing Insights
LIVE COVERAGE
Catch the 2019 Monster Energy Series finale at Homestead-Miami Speedway live Sunday at 3 p.m. on NBC and the NBC Sports App. Listen in to live radio coverage provided by MRN and SiriusXM NASCAR Radio. Also, follow along on NASCAR.com for live Lap-by-Lap coverage, the live leaderboard, Drive (featuring in-car cameras) and RaceView (subscription: in-car audio, stats, more). Be sure to set your lineup in Fantasy Live and make your picks in the Props Challenge.
2018 RACE WINNER
Joey Logano outpaced the field at Homestead last season, leading the most laps (80) and securing the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series title for the first time in his career.
ACTIVE HOMESTEAD-MIAMI WINNERS
Denny Hamlin (two); Joey Logano, Martin Truex Jr., Kurt Busch, Kyle Busch, Jimmie Johnson and Kevin Harvick (one each).
MOORESVILLE, N.C. (November 13, 2019) –Front Row Motorsports and Matt Tifft have mutually agreed to end their agreement as Tifft continues to focus on his health.
A statement from Matt Tifft:
“I’ve made the decision to focus on my health and there is no rush or timetable to get back behind the wheel. Because of that, I can’t commit to racing full-time in 2020. I can’t say when I’ll be ready to race again, but I believe I will come back. I love this sport, the people, and I would like to be a part of it next year in some capacity.
“I want to thank Bob Jenkins, Jerry Freeze and the entire Front Row Motorsports organization for allowing me to live my dream of racing in the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series. They are great people and it’s been awesome to race there. I look forward to what’s next in racing when the time is right.”
A statement from Bob Jenkins, owner, Front Row Motorsports:
“Matt has always shown us a lot of determination and courage. He’s a fighter and I believe, like him, that he’ll return to driving. For now, we support Matt and his need to focus on his health and his family. Racing will be there when it’s time. We want to thank Matt and his family for being a part of Front Row Motorsports and helping us continue to grow.”
DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. (Nov. 13, 2019) – NASCAR and Dixie Vodka announced today a multi-year official partnership, designating the American-made craft spirit brand as the “Official Vodka of NASCAR.” Central to the agreement, Dixie Vodka will sponsor the NASCAR Cup Series race at Homestead-Miami Speedway next season, commemorating the track’s 25th anniversary.
Launched in 2014 by Grain & Barrel Spirits, Dixie Vodka is the largest premium craft vodka produced in the Southeast and includes a lineup of six unique expressions all representing the best of Southern flavor and craftmanship. The South Carolina-based brand is one of the fastest-growing spirit brands in the United States and recently expanded its distribution footprint west of the Mississippi.
“Dixie Vodka is entering the sport with an integrated industry approach, introducing its product to a national fan base that actively supports partners of the sport,” said Daryl Wolfe, executive vice president and chief operations and sales officer, NASCAR. “NASCAR is rooted in heritage and tradition, beginning as a regional sport that eventually grew into a global property. Our new partners have emulated that approach and are utilizing this partnership to expand Dixie’s presence and brand awareness.”
For its first taste of NASCAR, Dixie Vodka will join NASCAR Champion’s Week celebrations at the Fan Fest in Nashville, serving cocktails in Music City’s Riverfront Park alongside all 16 Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series Playoffs race cars and other fan displays Dec. 3 – 5.
“Our goal from day one has been to align with partners who share our mission of promoting the best of our region’s wonderful hospitality, flavors and craftsmanship,” said Matti Christian Anttila, founder of Dixie Vodka and CEO of Grain & Barrel Spirits. “NASCAR is an iconic brand that has grown from southern roots into a national sport watched by millions of people every race day. This partnership allows us to speak directly to that amazing fanbase, introducing them to the best of the flavors of the south and the heart and soul we put into every single bottle of Dixie Vodka. We’ll toast to that.”
The Dixie Vodka 400 at Homestead-Miami Speedway on March 22, 2020 will help celebrate the track’s 25th anniversary season. As part of the event, Dixie Vodka will be featured at bars throughout the racetrack, serving cocktails that showcase the brand’s expressions – Southern, Black Pepper, Peach, Wildflower Honey, Citrus and Mint.
“Dixie Vodka aligns perfectly with what Miami and Homestead-Miami Speedway are all about,” said Homestead-Miami Speedway President Al Garcia. “Not only can our fans witness some of the most exciting racing in NASCAR, but we also have tremendous amenities throughout our facility that they are able to experience as well. It’s all about fun, and that’s what Homestead-Miami Speedway and Dixie Vodka will offer all of our guests. We are thrilled about this new partnership as we commemorate the 25th anniversary of our venue.”
At the start of the 2020 season, fans will have the opportunity to taste Dixie Vodka and a lineup of its all-American cocktails at the Dixie Vodka-branded bar at Daytona International Speedway. Additionally, fans will be able to celebrate every win at Richmond Raceway from the Dixie Vodka Victory Lane Club, which provides unprecedented access to the action in the infield.
As part of the partnership, Dixie Vodka also becomes the Official Vodka of the DAYTONA 500, Daytona International Speedway, Homestead-Miami Speedway and Richmond Raceway.
The Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series Playoffs concludes at Homestead-Miami Speedway with the Ford EcoBoost 400 Sunday, Nov. 17 at 3 p.m. ET on NBC, MRN and SiriusXM NASCAR Radio.
Ever wanted to try your hand at a NASCAR pit stop? Now you can with the NASCAR Pit Stop Challenge game, available now on Facebook. To play with the Camera Effects:
Visit NASCAR.com/FBPitStop
Follow the prompts to play the game
Share a screenshot of your best time and @tag NASCAR in stories
And don’t forget to switch your camera to selfie for a fun surprise!
