RICHMOND, Va. — In a battle of late qualifiers at Richmond Raceway, Brad Keselowski knocked Kevin Harvick off the pole for Saturday night’s Federated Auto Parts 400 to claim the top starting spot for the second race in the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series Playoffs (7:30 p.m. ET on NBCSN, MRN and SiriusXM NASCAR Radio).
The 36th of 38 drivers to make a qualifying run, Keselowski covered the .75-mile distance in 21.229 seconds (127.185 mph) to beat Harvick (126.559 mph) by .105 seconds. The Busch Pole Award was Keselowski’s third this season, his second at Richmond and the 17th of his career.
When Keselowski qualified first at Richmond in the fall of 2014, he also won the race. On Friday, he was fastest in time trials without the benefit of a mock qualifying run during practice earlier in the day.
“It was really good,” Keselowski said. “We didn’t do a qualifying run in practice, but we’ve had phenomenal short-run speed here.
“The last two or three years here, we haven’t necessarily qualified all that well here, but when the race comes, and we get the short runs, we could really make some steam, and it showed that here in qualifying.
“I hope we have the long-run speed — I think there’s going to be a lot of long runs in the race, but certainly qualifying up front, getting the first pit stall, all those things that go with it are great for our chances tomorrow. Really excited to get our third pole of the year. Last year we didn’t have a pole, and this year we’ve got three, so I’m really proud of my team, and great effort for us.”
Harvick, the 33rd driver to make a qualifying attempt, felt he left some speed on the table.
“I knew when I came in, I’m like ‘Ooh, man, I didn’t get anywhere close to getting everything out of that lap,’ especially in (Turns) 1 and 2 — or 3 and 4,” said Harvick who, like Keselowski, did not make a qualifying run in practice. “I just kind of cruised along the bottom and just didn’t push the car hard enough.”
Chase Elliott (126.194 mph) qualified third, followed by Kyle Busch (126.103 mph) and Clint Bowyer (126.068 mph), as playoff drivers grabbed the top nine starting spots. Denny Hamlin, Aric Almirola, Martin Truex Jr. and Kurt Busch will start sixth through ninth, respectively, with non-playoff driver Jimmie Johnson securing the 10th position.
Other playoff drivers will start as follows: Kyle Larson 13th, Ryan Blaney 15th, Erik Jones 16th, Ryan Newman 19th, Alex Bowman 20th, William Byron 25th and Joey Logano 28th.
RICHMOND, Va. — Daniel Hemric says he’s confident he did everything in his power to keep his seat with Richard Childress Racing’s No. 8 Chevrolet in 2020, saying that the decision came as a mild surprise.
Hemric reflected on the announcement of his impending departure from the RCR camp after Friday’s practices at Richmond Raceway, host of Saturday night’s Federated Auto Parts 400 (7:30 p.m. ET, NBCSN, MRN, SiriusXM). The .75-mile track was also the site of Hemric’s Monster Energy Series debut with RCR in April 2018.
“I feel like every night I’ve laid my head down, I knew I did everything I could do. I’ve always said that,” Hemric said. “If you do that, that’s all you can do in life, no matter what it is — driving a race car, being a father, a husband, a parent, whatever it is. If you lay your head down, you know you gave it everything you had, then that’s what allows me to sleep at night.”
Hemric spent two full seasons in each the Xfinity and Gander Trucks series before moving to NASCAR’s top division for a Sunoco Rookie of the Year campaign this year. The 28-year-old driver ranks 25th in the Monster Energy Series standings with a best finish of fifth — his lone top five — at Talladega Superspeedway in April.
News of RCR’s decision to release Hemric at season’s end trickled out Wednesday, just 10 days shy of a year since an emotional press conference at Charlotte Motor Speedway when Hemric was introduced as Ryan Newman’s successor. Friday at Richmond, Hemric spoke about his future in terms of landing with another organization, including those in NASCAR’s other national series.
“Listen, I’ve been down and out many times,” Hemric said. “Everybody knows my situation, where I’ve come from, the things I’ve had to overcome to get to here, and it’s no different. Back’s been against the wall and hey, somehow you made it to the top level of the sport. So I don’t care where I end up at. I’m not done.”
Hemric joined RCR on the Xfinity Series side, driving its No. 21 Chevrolet for two seasons from 2017-18. He qualified for the Championship 4 round both years, winning five pole positions.
Hemric’s rookie season has been a rocky one, marked by inconsistent results that fueled speculation surrounding his job status for 2020. That instability coincided with the rise of Tyler Reddick, who has won five Xfinity Series races in his first year for RCR, one season removed from claiming the series title for JR Motorsports.
Though team owner Richard Childress has publicly been bullish about Reddick’s premier-series future, the defending series champ has kept mum when asked about a potential link to the No. 8 Chevy. “I got nothing on that for you,” he reiterated Thursday at an Xfinity Series Playoffs kick-off event, saying he was trying to block out distractions as he chases a second title.
For Hemric, he said was “blown away” by the outpouring of support as he tries to determine the next step in his stock-car racing career.
“It’s very humbling to have not only people inside the industry but your peers as far as guys you race with on the race track to have some of the stars of the sport reach out with their gratitude and their praise for what they feel like you’re doing on and off the race track,” Hemric said. “Those are the guys who really see you in the heat of the moment. To have everyone on that side support me like they have, that’s led to a lot of phone calls and a lot of conversations with a lot of race teams over the last week. Because of that I’m thankful.”
Series points leader Martin Truex Jr. topped the leaderboard in Friday’s final Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series practice at Richmond Raceway at 121.885 mph in the No. 19 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota. Truex won the spring race earlier this season at Richmond and is already locked into the Round of 12 thanks to his Las Vegas win last weekend.
Fellow playoff driver Chase Elliott was right behind him in the No. 9 Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet at 119.861 mph, good for second place.
Rounding out the top five were Sunoco Rookie of the Year contender Daniel Hemric in the No. 8 Richard Childress Racing Chevrolet (119.268 mph), Denny Hamlin in the No. 11 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota (119.211 mph) and Austin Dillon in the No. 3 Richard Childress Racing Chevrolet (118.995 mph).
Kevin Harvick in the No. 4 Stewart-Haas Racing Ford was the highest finishing Ford in sixth with a fast lap of 118.964 mph.
Playoff driver William Byron got into the wall during final practice in the No. 24 Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet but the team was able to make minor repairs and send Byron back on track. He finished practice in 27th.
The Monster Energy Series qualifying session is at 6:05 p.m. ET on NBCSN/NBC Sports App.
FIRST PRACTICE
Chris Buescher topped the leaderboard in Friday’s first Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series practice at Richmond Raceway at 121.147 mph in the No. 37 JTG Daugherty Racing Chevrolet.
Right behind him was playoff driver Joey Logano in the No. 22 Team Penske Ford at 120.962 mph.
Rounding out the top five were playoff drivers William Byron in the No. 24 Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet (120.827 mph), defending race winner Kyle Busch in the No. 18 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota (120.687 mph) and Kyle Larson in the No. 42 Chip Ganassi Racing Chevrolet (120.487 mph).
Series points leader Martin Truex Jr., who won the playoff opener last weekend at Las Vegas and punched his ticket to the Round of 12, was 13th fastest with a speed of 119.723 mph in the No. 19 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota.
The No. 00 of Landon Cassill was held for 15 minutes at the end of first practice as a penalty for being late out of the garage for inspection at Las Vegas.
See the order that the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series drivers will go out for single-car qualifying on Friday night at Richmond Raceway (6:05 p.m. ET on NBCSN/NBC Sports App). You can view the qualifying order here or by clicking the print icon underneath the photo.
Bowling and NASCAR. Those aren’t often two words you often hear in the same sentence, but Stewart-Haas Racing driver Aric Almirola and professional bowler Jason Belmonte brought both together for one incredible feat.
Almirola and Belmonte, an Australian professional bowler, completed a stunt like no other at the Charlotte Motor Speedway Road Course on Sept. 4
Together, the two executed the world’s fastest strike — 140 mph — at the start/finish line of the Roval course, while wearing matching Go Bowling fire suits in a decked out Go Bowling Ford Mustang.
Almirola was driving the No. 10 Ford around the Roval with Belmonte in the passenger seat throwing a bowling ball down the frontstretch. It only took a few attempts for the two to get the right line and the right location to drop the ball.
Check out the full video below.
Almirola currently is in the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series Playoffs and vying for his first title. Heading into this weekend’s race at Richmond, Almirola sits 12th place in the standings.
CONCORD, N.C. (Sept. 20, 2019) – Leading machine tool manufacturer Cincinnati Inc. has joined 12-time NASCAR Cup Series champions Hendrick Motorsports as an official partner with a team record 10-year agreement that will begin in 2019 and run through the 2028 racing season.
Cincinnati will be showcased as primary sponsor of driver Alex Bowman’s No. 88 Chevrolet Camaro ZL1 in the Oct. 6 Cup Series playoff race at Dover International Speedway and in two events in 2020. In addition to being named Hendrick Motorsports’ Official Metal Fabrication and Additive Equipment Provider, the Ohio-based company will become a full-season associate sponsor of the team’s entire four-car stable for the next decade.
“We are absolutely thrilled to begin this relationship with Hendrick Motorsports,” said Rakesh Kumar, vice president of sales, service and marketing for Cincinnati Inc., which was founded in the 1890s. “Rick Hendrick’s teams have a long and storied history of winning at every level. We are proud to be associated with that incredible record and partner with another enduring American brand. We look forward to starting off our partnership as a primary sponsor of Alex Bowman and having a presence across all four teams for many years to come.”
Hendrick Motorsports will utilize Cincinnati’s state-of-the art equipment in the development and construction of its full fleet of race cars, including laser cutting, press brake and additive manufacturing machinery. Cincinnati’s 10-year commitment is the longest single sponsorship pact in the history of the team, which was founded in 1984.
“Ten years is quite a statement,” said Rick Hendrick, owner of Hendrick Motorsports. “It demonstrates how the Cincinnati team feels about NASCAR and the opportunities the sport presents for their business. From the perspective of our team, it’s a major endorsement of how fantastic the Cincinnati products are and the confidence we have that the relationship will help provide a competitive advantage on the racetrack. We look forward to a lot of trips to Victory Lane together over the next decade.”
In 2019, Bowman secured his second consecutive playoff berth in his second full Cup season with the No. 88 team. The 26-year-old driver won his first Cup-level race June 30 at Chicagoland Speedway and this year has posted personal records in multiple statistical categories.
“The best way we can welcome Cincinnati to Hendrick Motorsports is with a playoff win,” said Bowman, who led 16 laps and recorded a runner-up result at Dover on May 6. “After our performance there earlier this season, I’m excited to get back to Dover and finish one spot better. We’re looking forward to having Cincinnati on board with the No. 88 team.”
On the dashboard of every car Garrett Smithley has ever driven is written one phrase that has defined his life as a race car driver: “Patience, never give up.”
By chance, it was scrawled on the very first used Bandolero his parents helped him buy — the only equipment they ever bought him — when he was 15 years old and initially began to dream of a career in NASCAR. He liked it, and it stayed.
It has been on the NASCAR Xfinity Series cars he has driven for JD Motorsports for the past four years he has been the full-time driver of the No. 0 Chevrolet.
And it has been in his car for all 11 of the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series races the 27-year-old has driven in over the past two years.
“If I kind of live my life by that, then I have a better shot to make everything happen,” Smithley says.
Patience helped him get to NASCAR in the first place, as Smithley grew up an avid fan of racing but never even stepped foot into so much as a go-kart until he was 15 years old. One perfect turn on a lap and he was hooked with a realization he had been waiting his whole life for that feeling.
Persistence has allowed him to not only take a chance on himself by learning every aspect of the sport — from driving to securing sponsorship — but moving from Georgia to Charlotte at age 18 on the hopes he could get noticed despite his limited experience.
Smithley knows he got a late start in the racing world. He knows he has only driven for small teams and has had to scrap to sell his own sponsorship deals and use his background in theater to showcase his charismatic personality.
But he believes there’s a place in NASCAR for him, too — even if Kyle Busch grumbled last week in Las Vegas that he wasn’t qualified to race at the highest level after making contact with Smithley’s lapped No. 52 late in the race.
“There’s no set path to get to the Cup Series,” Smithley says. “There’s no path that says, ‘Hey, you need to do this, this, this and this and this.’ I feel like my path is one of the more unique paths — kind of doing it grassroots and getting to the big stage relatively quickly after having a late start.”
• • •
Matt Sullivan | Getty Images
Smithley has been watching NASCAR races for as long as he can remember. With no family connections to the sport, he never imagined it as a career option. His father and grandfather both were in the military, with his dad’s pilot job taking him from Pennsylvania to Virginia to Georgia.
He played with Matchbox cars and auto racing video games. He remembers attending his first race at Dover when he was 6 years old — and he fell asleep in his mother’s lap. That was the extent of his early racing experience.
Instead, he played football and baseball. And his mom loved theater, so by age 5, Smithley was singing and acting, too. When he was a junior in high school, he landed the lead of Charlie in “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.” Yes, that’s a musical.
His life changed when his parents brought him to an amusement park where he drove a go-kart at age 15.
“There was one turn that I remember,” Smithley says. “I was out toward the wall and drove into the corner, apexed the corner and hit the lines perfect and swung out to the wall. It was that corner, and I know it sounds cliché, but I was like, ‘Wow, that was really cool. I feel like I can do that for a living.’ ”
Somehow, his parents never doubted him — but they didn’t know how to go about helping their son get into the sport, either. So Smithley began googling. At Senoia Raceway, near his Peachtree City, Georgia, home, he learned he could test drive a Bandolero for $40.
“I spun out three times, but didn’t hit the wall,” Smithley remembers.
Eventually, that led to Smithley’s parents buying him a Bandolero — the one with the quote — as he tried to figure out how to race it. When he showed up to a practice race, he realized he still had a lot to learn. He didn’t have safety equipment. He wasn’t sure how anything worked.
“I didn’t know how to buckle myself in,” Smithley says. “We had to ask the next family over how to buckle me in. We had no idea what we were doing.”
Around that time, Tina Johnson first spotted Smithley zooming around the track — and wrecking often. The driving instructor who raced Legend and Bandolero cars for 15 years noticed the talented young kid who had no fear and plenty of drive. When Smithley came to her to ask for guidance, she was thrilled.
“You can see in kids the drive or if they’re scared,” she says. “Garrett never had that (fear). Every time I tell him to do something, he listened so well and he always saved his cars and was just a go-getter.”
She helped him learn the details of the sport, how to drive without wrecking, how to shift gears when he moved to a Legend car. In his first real race, he finished fourth.
“Probably it took me 15 minutes and Garrett knew how to drive a clutch system,” Johnson says. “That is not easy, but he had it. He is such a quick learner.”
When someone recommended Smithley attend the Richard Petty Driving Search in Charlotte in 2010, he didn’t hesitate. It wasn’t racing — he served as a driving instructor for the Richard Petty Driving Experience — but he’d still be around cars while in the epicenter of the sport in Charlotte. That was one step closer to NASCAR.
Smithley has dubbed his No. 0 Xfinity Series team #NumberNuthin. Jared C. Tilton | Getty Images
During five years with the Richard Petty Driving Experience, Smithley focused on learning the business side of the sport — how to sell sponsorship, how to cold-call CEOs and ask for funding. All the while, he still dreamed of racing at the highest levels.
Brian Keselowski ran the Richard Petty Driving Experience and in late 2012, recommended that Smithley drive in an ARCA test session at Daytona.
“He was like two-tenths quicker than our other driver,” Keselowski said. “I still haven’t figured out how he did that. How did you do that at Daytona, of all places? It’s pretty much just a wide-open, hold-it-down track. I was pretty impressed with that.”
It was, it turns out, Smithley’s big break. He landed three ARCA races in 2013 from that test, and then four Gander Outdoors Truck Series races in 2015.
In 2016, he talked to Johnny Davis about driving three Xfinity Series races. That turned into 32 of 33 races that season, and he has been driving for JD Motorsports ever since. His best finish of fifth at Daytona last season buoyed his 22.1 average finish in 2018.
It is not the conventional route, Smithley realizes. He was patient and persistent and it worked.
“I did things completely backwards,” he admits.
• • •
Kyle Busch says Smithley “killed our day” last weekend in Las Vegas when his No. 18 Toyota found the rear bumper of Smithley’s No. 52 Rick Ware Racing Ford as he tried to maneuver around the lapped car late in the South Point 400.
“We’re the top echelon of motorsports and we’ve got guys that have never won Late Model races running out here on the race track,” Busch told reporters after finishing 19th. “It’s pathetic. They don’t know where to go.”
No, Smithley has never won a Late Model race. He never even raced in one. He took his unconventional route to NASCAR by finding sponsorship that helped him land his first Monster Energy Series race in 2018 at Michigan — where he drove 215 mph when he had never approached that speed before, and was in awe of who he was sitting next to at the driver meeting.
But Smithley still wants respect for where he is and how he got there.
“I completely understand Kyle’s frustration,” Smithley says. “I get why he was upset. He’s running for a championship; it’s high stakes. I totally get it. I wasn’t mad that he was upset. But I feel like I did everything in my power to hold my line. Two cars got around me and one didn’t.
“What I took offense to is when he calls my career into question, when he says, ‘Oh, guys who haven’t even won Late Model races are out here running the Cup Series.’ Yeah, I didn’t have the opportunity to run with the best of the best. He’s been in that position for a lot of years. Obviously he’s a great race car driver. There’s no question he’s one of the best out there and he’s a future Hall of Famer. I’m not taking anything away from that. I just haven’t had those opportunities.”
Smithley has only driven for smaller teams like StarCom Racing, Spire Motorsports and Rick Ware Racing in his Cup Series races.
“They do everything they can to be able to compete all race long and every week, but they’re probably short on engines and tires and all the things that make race cars go fast,” Keselowski says.
Smithley says there’s a special gratification that comes for driving for smaller teams and seeing the impact made by tiny gains. He sees the passion that drives smaller teams to still compete, and it inspires him.
Still, he wonders what might happen if he had a chance to drive for a bigger team.
“I kind of joked around, but I was serious when I said if Kyle put me in something he owned, Late Models or Trucks, there’s no question I could win,” Smithley says.
RICHMOND, Va. — A fairly clear division of power looms over this season’s NASCAR Xfinity Series Playoffs, with Christopher Bell, Cole Custer and Tyler Reddick presiding as a tenacious trio at the top. Their regular-season dominance — 17 wins in 26 races — has afforded them a substantial insurance policy for the postseason.
They insist the path to clinching one of four championship-round berths at Homestead-Miami Speedway is no straightforward waltz.
“This year, we come in with the ‘Big Three’ and this and that, and you don’t want to let the pressure build up and you don’t want to be the guy that buckles under that pressure of well, he’s expected to be one of the final three at Homestead,” says Reddick, who won the Xfinity title last year with far less burden heading into the playoff hunt. “You’ve just got to phase that out and do your thing.
“I understand you’ve got to run it stage by stage and race by race and just be smart. We’re in a place to where it would be a gain to win, but it would be really, really bad if we had an error and didn’t finish a race.”
The battle to break up the so-called Big Three or claim the fourth seat at the Homestead table remained a prominent topic at Thursday’s Xfinity Series Playoffs Media Day at Richmond Raceway, site of Friday’s postseason-opening Go Bowling 250 (7:30 p.m. ET, NBCSN/NBC Sports App, MRN, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio).
Bell carries the biggest bounty of playoff points — 55 — entering the seven-race postseason. Custer — like Bell, a six-time winner this year — and regular-season champ Reddick are tied with 44. Next on the list is Austin Cindric, a distant fourth with 17.
The scenario takes a page from last year’s Monster Energy Series Playoffs, which had its own Big Three in Kyle Busch, Kevin Harvick and Martin Truex Jr., who combined to also go 17-for-26 in the regular season. All three navigated past the eliminations to reach the Championship 4 round.
The playoff points edge doesn’t equal immunity, something Bell knows well.
“Well, we definitely have the advantage, but last year was a rude awakening,” said Bell, who cruised through the first round last season before crashes in the first two races of the Round of 8 placed him in a precarious spot for the next-to-last race at ISM Raceway near Phoenix. In a must-win spot, he did. “… It happens fast, man. You get on the other side of it very, very fast.”
On the other side of the three, nine other drivers hope to wedge their way into the Homestead conversation. “We’ve been joking all day between the 12 of us, who’s going to be the fourth guy,” said Kaulig Racing’s Justin Haley, who enters as the 10th seed. “No one’s really come up with a firm answer, but I hope it can be us.”
The rest of the field carries similar hopes, some with even greater aims.
“I don’t see why not. I’d like to think that we could be the first guy,” Cindric said. “That’s the best way to look at it in my opinion, because we don’t to just be part of the party, we want to be the best car. It’s understanding that these next seven races what it’s going to take to be that best car, whether that’s executing races and putting ourselves in position or going out and winning races.
“The goal, yes, is to make the Championship 4 and then go run the best you can, but at the same time, if you can be better than those three other guys that’ve pretty much swept the whole regular season, that’s how you win a championship, for sure.”
Not literally, of course. The 26-year-old isn’t a magician. He’s a driver.
But the way Gase is able to stretch every cent given to MBM Motorsports, one of the smaller organizations in NASCAR, he might as well be both.
“Our team owner always jokes that he knows at the last minute, at the last hour, he can always rely on Joey to come up with some kind of money for that race weekend to help the team,” said Ryan Bell, crew chief of Gase’s No. 35 Chevrolet in the Xfinity Series. “And it’s almost not a joke. Whether it be $2,000 or $10,000, it always seems like at the last minute we’re putting a (sponsor) sticker on, and every penny helps in our situation.
“That’s what sets him apart, and that’s why his career has lasted as long as it has.”
Nine years and counting.
Gase broke into the NASCAR national series scene in 2011 and has since notched 233 starts in the Xfinity Series, 38 in the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series and four in the Gander Outdoors Truck Series. He became a full-time Xfinity Series racer in 2014, with a highlighted fifth-place finish at Talladega Superspeedway in 2015.
At the time of his only career top five, Gase was with Jimmy Means Racing, another small team. He started that race 39th (out of 40 cars) and navigated his way toward the front as laps dwindled down, with Dale Earnhardt Jr.’s Monster Energy Series practice tires on his car — they were used, but better than what Gase could otherwise afford.
That late charge showed what Gase could do with nicer equipment.
So when top-tier drivers from bigger teams question Gase’s legitimacy and put him in the spotlight — like Kyle Busch did following the race at Las Vegas — the digs can get frustrating.
“Would I love to be in a Joe Gibbs (Racing) car tomorrow? Absolutely,” Gase told NASCAR.com. “That’s my ultimate goal. But at the same time, I’m here. I’m in NASCAR. And I’m having fun trying to live the dream and make the most out of what I have the best I can.”
• • •
Ten years ago, Gase won the late-model championship at Hawkeye Downs Speedway in Iowa. He drove a 2004 Port City Racecar a family friend bought for $20,000 and gave to him. There was no team backing.
“It was just me, my dad, my uncle and my grandpa on my crew,” Gase said.
And then anyone his father could convince to help out after work — literally. He went into local restaurants and bars asking for volunteers. People did show up.
The Gases really put everything into Joey’s racing career. Mother Mary Jo was a hair stylist, but made it to every event before she died in 2011. His father Bob left a job at the power plant after 25 years, not wanting to miss a single moment. Younger sister Ashley helped from a public-relations standpoint once old enough. Uncle Jim didn’t have any kids of his own, so Joey received full attention. Clearly even the grandparents were involved if grandpa was on the crew.
“It’s a family story,” said Kevin Korsmo, the race promoter at Hawkeye Downs. “Where you see one, you see them all.”
Korsmo knows the Gases well, too. He raced against Bob for more than 10 years before Bob got out from the driver’s seat and let Joey take the wheel at 8 years old.
Hawkeye Downs, which has been around for nearly 95 years now, was the family’s local track. There, from past to present, Joey won his first-ever Jr1 Go Karts event in 2001 and raced his dad for the first time in 2019. It’s where he made a name for himself.
“Every little kid’s dream was to make racing a full-time thing,” Korsmo said. “You never think too much about it because around these parts in Iowa, we’ve had some success stories, like Landon Cassill and Michael Annett, but it’s just something most of us know we’re going out racing to have a good time. He made more of it. I was really impressed with how hard he worked to get where he is.”
After the late-model championship, Joey’s name started making rounds. He was introduced to one person after another until he ultimately met Archie St. Hilaire, who now owns Go FAS Racing.
Joey made his NASCAR national debut on Aug. 6, 2011, finishing 20th at Iowa Speedway in the Xfinity Series, and was then asked to do four more races that season — the beginning of his career.
“I’m like, ‘Joey, we can’t afford this. How much is it going to cost?’ ” Bob said. “It went from that to just so overwhelmed with happiness. I’m sure right after he left, I probably turned around and started crying just because he worked so hard and we all worked so hard. That was a dream come true.”
• • •
Less than a week ago, Gase finished 38th in the Monster Energy Series race at Las Vegas Motor Speedway. He drove an old Hendrick Motorsports car that was originally bought from HScott Motorsports before it shut down at the end of the 2016 season.
“That just shows you how old some of our equipment is compared to the top teams that build a new car every single week,” said Joey, noting his team put on only two tires in the last 150 laps of the 267-lap race because that was all the budget allowed.
Meanwhile, South Point 400 winner Martin Truex Jr. pitted with 37 laps to go and switched out four tires.
“Joey, in that same situation, can perform at the same level,” Bell said. “It’s hard because fans don’t understand that. They look at a guy who finishes 33rd every week and say, ‘Man, that guy is such a terrible driver.’ No. He’s not a terrible driver.”
Look at Brad Keselowski in the 2007 Xfinity Series season. He did 13 races with Keith Coleman Racing, with an average finish of 35.5. Keselowski then joined JR Motorsports, a bigger team, for 14 races and increased his average finish to a 17.9.
Not many, if any, would call Keselowski a bad driver. But even he had to go through a rough patch before catching a break and eventually working his way up to being crowned the 2012 Monster Energy Series champion.
“You can’t just say, ‘Well, I don’t have $20 million. I could never race,’ ” Bob said. “That doesn’t look good for the younger kids in the world, those with dads that don’t have a business or millions of dollars. Are they supposed to just quit racing if they can’t win a race? That’s the bad part about everything. I don’t want NASCAR to have an image that if you’re not rich, you’re never going to do it. Because that’s not true.”
It just takes more effort.
Out of the three days a week he’s home, Joey stops by the shop at least once to help with the car setup, or “all the fluff-and-bull parts” as Bell described it. When he’s not there, Joey is talking with sponsors — the team has 30 this season. At the track itself, he gets involved with the tedious stuff, such as double checking that everything is up to code and pushing the car through inspection itself.
There aren’t enough hands right now, so Joey lends one where he can.
“Joey, over the years, has really adapted to racing under these circumstances,” Bell said. “I’m telling you, it takes a special driver to do it. I’ve worked with a lot of them, and some of them can’t adapt — can’t find that kind of magic.”
Hendrick Motorsports driver William Byron is in the 2019 Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series Playoffs for the first time in his career. It appears many more postseason appearances are in store for the rising young star — and through 2021, at least, Liberty University will be along for the ride.
Hendrick Motorsports announced Thursday that Liberty University is extending its sponsorship of Byron’s No. 24 Chevrolet Camaro ZL1 for two years. Liberty’s livery will be the primary sponsor for 12 races in both 2020 and 2021.
The 2018 Sunoco Rookie of the Year is 21 years old and a junior at the college, working toward an undergraduate business communications degree via Liberty’s online program.
“Liberty University has been a big part of my racing career and progression through NASCAR from basically the beginning,” Byron said in a team release. “Their support on and off the track, including with my studies, has been monumental. They’ve been with me through numerous accomplishments, including race wins and championships, and I’m glad we were able to add to that list this season by making it into my first Cup Series playoffs. I’m excited about Liberty being back on board with the No. 24 team, and I look forward to what the future holds for us.”
In his first season with seven-time champion Chad Knaus atop the pit box, Byron has logged three top-five finishes and 10 top 10s through 27 races. He currently sits ninth in the standings, with two races remaining in the Round of 16 — the playoff field will be trimmed from 16 drivers to 12 following the race at the Charlotte Road Course on Sept. 29.
Byron won seven races in the NASCAR Gander Outdoors Truck Series in 2016, then followed that with a four-win Xfinity Series campaign in 2017, culminating in winning the series championship in Miami. Liberty sponsored Byron for 17 races that year, including the championship-deciding season finale. The school has sponsored Byron since 2014, when he drove late model stock cars.
“We have been by William Byron’s side as he’s risen through the ranks at a young age, and it is an honor to continue to support one of our very own in his career,” said Jerry Falwell, president of Liberty University. “William and Hendrick Motorsports have always been a perfect fit for Liberty University. We share the same values and are committed to the same mission that makes champions on the racetrack and champions in life.”
