Posted on by Staff Report

Alex Bowman was announced Saturday as the All-Star Race Fan Vote winner for the final spot in the Monster Energy NASCAR All-Star Race.

Bowman was the top vote-getter among drivers not already qualified for the main event. The fans’ choice put his Hendrick Motorsports No. 88 Chevrolet into the field as the 19th and final entry.

RELATED: See the full lineup | All-time Fan Vote winners

There was sure to be a new Fan Vote winner this year with Chase Elliott, who won the honor the past three years, having already locked into the All-Star Race by virtue of victory – he had three last year and has one this season.

In fact, every single driver who had ever previously won the Fan Vote is either already in the All-Star Race (like Martin Truex Jr., Joey Logano and Elliott) or is no longer an active driver.

Bowman joins William Byron (Stage 1 winner), Bubba Wallace (Stage 2 winner) and Kyle Larson (Stage 3 winner) in the $1 million shootout. His Fan Vote win ensures Hendrick Motorsports has all four of its cars in the main event.

The five finalists in the Fan Vote, revealed earlier this week on NASCAR.com, were Alex Bowman, Kyle Larson, Matt DiBenedetto, Bubba Wallace and William Byron.

Posted on by Staff Report

Kyle Larson passed Ty Dillon for the lead with five laps remaining in the final stage of the Monster Energy Open and held on to win the event — and claim the final spot in the All-Star Race.

RELATED: Monster Energy Open results | All-Star Race lineup in photos

The 10-lap final stage was the last chance for drivers to qualify for Saturday’s main race in the Open. The fourth spot added to the lineup is earned by fan vote, and was awarded to Alex Bowman.

Dillon had led the first four laps of the stage after getting a jump on the restart in his No. 13 Chevrolet, before Larson closed the gap and passed.

Larson’s race to the finish was the only one of the three stages to be uncontested, as both Stage 1 and Stage 2 ended with battles to cross the start/finish line — won by William Byron and Bubba Wallace.

STAGE 2

Bubba Wallace won the battle to the start/finish line in Stage 2, edging out Daniel Suarez for the overtime stage victory and a spot in the All-Star Race on Saturday.

Wallace joins William Byron as the first two qualifiers to advance to the main event at Charlotte Motor Speedway.

Suarez’s No. 41 Ford went spinning through the grass as Wallace crossed the start/finish line first, and sustained damage.

The two-lap shootout was set up when the caution came out two laps before the end of the stage when Daniel Hemric and Ryan Preece fought for third place. Hemric wiggled into Preece’s No. 47, and then slammed into the wall with his No. 8 Chevrolet before spinning through the grass — with a little help in the form of a nudge from Preece.

Hemric exited the race after the caution, the damage too substantial for his No. 8 to continue.

Alex Bowman had led the first 23 laps of the stage until the yellow flag came out.

Stage 3 is scheduled to last 10 laps.

STAGE 1

William Byron won a two-lap shootout to take the Stage 1 overtime victory in the Monster Energy Open on Saturday — and a spot in the All-Star Race.

Byron edged Bubba Wallace to the start/finish line as the No. 24 and No. 43 Chevrolets banged and fought through the final lap of the stage.

Stage 1 ended on Lap 27, overtime from the scheduled 20 laps, after the yellow flag came out on Lap 15 for the No. 52 Chevrolet of BJ McLeod smoking profusely as he entered Turn 4. During that caution, Chris Buescher came to pit road with a broken track bar on his No. 37 JTG Daugherty Chevrolet.

Pole-starter Daniel Hemric had led the first 25 laps at Charlotte Motor Speedway. He lost the lead on the restart, however, as Kyle Larson and Wallace sped past him.

Posted on by Marissa Fuller

Following the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series race at Talladega Superspeedway in April, the NASCAR Research & Development Center based out of Concord, North Carolina, did an analysis on the late-race rollover incident involving Kyle Larson and his No. 42 Chip Ganassi Racing Chevrolet.

NASCAR officials looked through various camera angles using freeze frame photos and determined that the No. 24 of driver William Byron made contact with the No. 42 behind the right front tire.

As a result of the contact, damage from the collision caused the lift when Larson’s car slid sideways toward the inside retaining wall. NASCAR’s wind tunnel data shows that an undamaged car would lift off only at speeds greater than 250 mph. The damage sustained on Larson’s car, the analysis showed, would have decreased the liftoff speed by 70 mph.

“Cars getting airborne for us is a big deal. We’ve done a lot of work in wind tunnels and (simulators) to mitigate the ability of the car to get airborne,” Senior Vice President of Racing Innovation John Probst said Saturday at Charlotte Motor Speedway. “At this point, our conclusion is the reason that car got off the ground is from that contact with the 24 that led to the spin to the right.”

After many hours and simulator tests, NASCAR officials are not requiring any changes to the cars.

“From our side, we plan no changes to the car based on this,” Probst said. “To get it to where there is a 0% chance of a car getting off the ground, the cars would be going very slow. We’re not recommending any changes to the car or the track. I will say, we have personnel that regularly visit the tracks to look at those sorts of things.”

Posted on by Reid Spencer

CONCORD, N.C. – Team Penske drivers have won four of the first 12 Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series points races this season, but Ryan Blaney has yet to share in the spoils of victory.

Brad Keselowski won for the third time last Saturday at Kansas Speedway, and Joey Logano got his lone victory of the season so far at Las Vegas in early March.

Blaney’s season, on the other hand, has been one of feast or famine. He scored three of his four top fives in consecutive races—a third at Phoenix, a fifth at Fontana and a fourth at Martinsville—but his best finish in the last four events has been 15th.

RELATED: Every Team Penske win

In his last start, at Kansas, Blaney came home a disappointing 32nd at one of his favorite tracks. Nevertheless, Blaney holds the 10th position in the series standings, well inside the cut line for the Playoffs, and his level of confidence remains high despite the inconsistencies of the first third of the season.

“Kansas was just a bad weekend for us,” Blaney told reporters on Friday at Charlotte Motor Speedway. “We were just off, so that part stinks, but I feel like, obviously, our whole organization is good enough to win races. Brad put on a great show last weekend and was able to win that race, so the speed is still there. It’s just about kind of cleaning things up.

“Our group is great. Our group is fine, and they do such a great job. Whether it’s the road crew or the over-the-wall guys, they have it all together, and it’s just a matter of everything coming together for you, whether it’s throughout 400 miles, 500 miles or 600 miles. That part I’m not worried about. It’s just a matter of me doing my job and just piecing things together.”

Posted on by Nick Giffen

The Action Network specializes in providing sports betting insights/analytics and
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The Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series makes its way to headquarters in Charlotte, North Carolina, for the annual All-Star Race. As has been the case in recent years, there are two races.

First, the Monster Energy Open (6 p.m. ET, FS1) hosts all the drivers not yet eligible for the main event. The winner of each of the three stages of the Open will transfer to the main race. The Monster Energy NASCAR All-Star Race main event goes off at 8 p.m. ET, also on FS1.

There are many ways a driver can become eligible for the All-Star Race, and the format is different from most NASCAR races. I suggest you read this excellent primer that gives all the details before placing any bets.

Charlotte is a 1.5-mile quad-oval that has a fairly old surface. That means its tire wear should be relatively high. However, the cars are running the aero ducts, so this is the first 1.5-mile oval with high tire wear and aero ducts. The other high tire wear tracks were Atlanta (no aero ducts) and Auto Club (2-mile oval), and both were run in the heat of the day, instead of at night.

Kansas was a night race last weekend, and Las Vegas also ran the aero ducts. I’m planning on using data from all 1.5-mile tracks this year in my evaluation of the All-Star Race.

Because this race has a lot of unknowns, we should only pick the very best value bets. Hence, my card will be quite small this weekend. Let’s get to the picks.

RELATED: Race-day betting odds

A quick primer on the odds below: A $100 bet at +700 odds would profit $700, while a $200 wager at -200 odds would pay out $100.

Kevin Harvick +700 to Win

Harvick easily led in green-flag speed at Kansas last weekend — the only night race of the year to date. He was also second in green flag speed at Atlanta, first at Las Vegas, and 13th at Texas, which is the newest surface during a day race — about as far away from Charlotte conditions as you can get.

Also, let’s not forget that he dominated last year’s race, leading 36 laps en route to his second career All-Star win.

Harvick was plenty fast in practice, posting the fastest 10-lap average in first practice, and the third-best average in final practice. He starts third in the main event.

Clint Bowyer +1500 to Win

Bowyer opened at +1400 at the Westgate and went on to win the pole position for the main event. However, a bit of shopping will pay off as Bowyer is currently 15-1 to win at MGM properties.

Bowyer was one of a quintet of Fords to post a 10-lap average over 176 mph in final practice, with everyone else clocking in at least 0.5 mph slower. He’ll have his teammate Harvick starting directly behind him, and it’s a solid bet that one of the two will control the early portion of the race, putting them in prime position to contend for a win late.

Ryan Blaney +2000 to Win, +500 for Top 3 Finish

Blaney has a less-than-stellar record at Charlotte, posting only one top-10 finish in seven career Cup Series starts on the 1.5-mile oval (he did win last year’s race on the Charlotte Roval, but that provides no quantitative value in analyzing 1.5-mile performance).

However, Blaney does have an Xfinity Series win in 2017, and has three top-four finishes in four Xfinity starts. That’s important, because the current rules more closely approximate the Xfinity Series than in the past.

Blaney also lead all drivers in 10-lap speed in final practice. In a short field with only 19 drivers, the 20-1 value to win offered at the DraftKings Sportsbook is too good to pass up.

Blaney starts mid-pack in ninth, which means he’s in an interesting spot to play the strategy game. He and his crew chief could gamble at some point in the race and use an alternate tire or fuel strategy giving us a nice third driver to pair with Harvick and Bowyer who should be on the main, front-runner strategy. It’ll be nice to have drivers on different strategies, so our eggs are in multiple baskets.

Even if Blaney doesn’t use the alternate strategy, he’s still the fastest car in practice and an Xfinity winner at this track.

Posted on by Marissa Fuller

CONCORD, N.C. — Friday night’s NASCAR Gander Outdoors Truck Series North Carolina Education Lottery 200 resulted in a career-best runner-up finish for Brennan Poole, driver of the No. 30 On Point Motorsports Toyota.

Poole, who chose to forego the race last weekend at Kansas to come to Charlotte this weekend, was right behind race-winner Kyle Busch — with a broken sway bar that he fought through for a majority of the race’s 134 laps.

He wasn’t going to go down without a fight, though. Poole was working to get to the back of Busch and spin him for the win.

“I tried. I tried. I’m not gonna lie,” he said. “I tried to get to his corner and if I spun him, I spun him. It was going to be what it was there at the end.”

RELATED: Race results

To battle back from a 17th-place starting position and broken sway bar, this small team needed all the grit they could muster.

“We broke a sway bar arm in the very beginning of the race so the truck was just a handful, but the guys made some good adjustments,” Poole told NASCAR.com post-race. “The truck just stayed with me, it was good — even with the broken sway bar.”

On the final restart, Poole’s chance of grabbing his first NASCAR national series victory was in clear sight.

“I knew I was going to have a shot at it and I got a good run, I was pushing Kyle (Busch) down the backstretch and I probably pulled off of him a little bit too soon and dove in the corner,” he said. “I tried to tag him a little bit and slow him down and get some side draft and I just couldn’t quite get here and he got me.”

This was Poole’s seventh race of the season and his first top five. His previous best finish was ninth at Texas.

“It’s all we had and it’s a pretty good effort for a broken sway bar arm and coming from 17th ,” Poole said. “We just fought hard all night. Just imagine what we can do if we got just a little bit more than what we have.”

Posted on by Reid Spencer

CONCORD, N.C. – For the fifth time in his allotted five NASCAR Gander Outdoors Truck Series starts in 2019, Kyle Busch took the checkered flag, this time under the lights in the North Carolina Education Lottery 200 at Charlotte Motor Speedway.

“I wish I could do more,” Busch said following his 56th Gander Trucks career win.

The rest of the field undoubtedly is quite happy the owner/driver of Kyle Busch Motorsports won’t be back until 2020. After all, Busch posted a perfect driver rating (150.0) and led five times for 102 laps in Friday night’s 134-lap event. He notched his eighth victory in 13 starts at Charlotte, where he has finished either first or second in nine straight events in the series.

RELATED: Race results

The win was Busch’s 56th overall, extending his own series record and bringing his combined NASCAR national series wins total to 205.

“This Tundra was awesome tonight,” Busch said of the No. 51 Kyle Busch Motorsports Toyota. “It was flying and it was fast. We worked on it a lot in practice. We were a little off when we unloaded, and we tried to make it better and better and better.

“We made improvements. That’s what’s good about me driving and Rudy (Fugle) crew-chiefing,” he added. “These guys do a great job working on it, and we just keep getting better.”

On a three-lap run to the finish after the seventh and final caution, Busch pulled away to beat Brennan Poole to the stripe by 1.115 seconds. Despite dealing with a broken sway bar for most of the race, Poole grabbed second after staying out under caution before the final restart on Lap 132.

RELATED: Poole would have spun Busch

“My truck was all over the place, man,” Poole said. “I just gave it everything I had. I found something running the top lane there on the restarts, and it worked out really good.

“We just ran second to Kyle Busch tonight with a broken sway bar. I’m pretty proud of the effort. I know we’ve got a lot more chances like this coming up in our future to get this Toyota Tundra to Victory Lane. But I’m excited tonight, and I think I may even go get myself a beer when I get home.”

Stewart Friesen ran third, followed by Ben Rhodes and pole winner Matt Crafton. Austin Hill, Todd Gilliland, rookie Anthony Alfredo, Grant Enfinger and Ross Chastain completed the top 10. For Chastain, last week’s winner at Kansas, it was the eighth straight top 10 in eight races this season.

But Friday’s story was all about Busch.

It took just a few seconds to observe just how dominant his Toyota Tundra was going to be. Starting the race from the eighth spot, Busch had powered his way into third by the time the field came off Turn 2 on the opening lap.

On Lap 5, he took the lead for the first time, cruising to the inside of KBM teammate Todd Gilliland. By the time NASCAR called the first caution for Natalie Decker’s hard contact with the Turn 2 wall on Lap 23, Busch held a 5.652-second lead over Gilliland.

Busch pitted for tires and fuel under the yellow, handing the Stage 1 victory to Crafton, who passed Gilliland on Lap 30 and took the green/checkered flag moments later. But four laps after the green waved in Stage 2 on Lap 37, Busch was back in the lead, heading for a stage victory with a margin of more than four seconds.

Divergent strategies scrambled the field during pit stops under rapid-fire cautions on Laps 78 and 85, but Busch regained the top spot on Lap 96, passing Rhodes to the outside off Turn 2.

Busch stretched his advantage to 6.125 seconds before Brett Moffitt cut a tire on Lap 126 and caused the seventh caution when the tire carcass rolled free onto the track in Turn 3. The yellow simply delayed but couldn’t thwart Busch’s seemingly inexorable march to Victory Lane.

Posted on by Reid Spencer

CONCORD, N.C. – Though he didn’t get into his pit stall as quickly as he would have liked in the unique Monster Energy NASCAR All-Star Race qualifying format, Clint Bowyer had enough speed in his No. 14 Stewart-Haas Racing Ford to earn the pole position for Saturday night’s marquee event at Charlotte Motor Speedway (at 8 p.m. ET on FS1, MRN and SiriusXM NASCAR Radio).

Though he hasn’t won a pole for a Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series race since he won the top spot at New Hampshire in 2007, Bowyer had enough muscle under the hood of his Ford Mustang on Friday to beat Kyle Busch by a decisive .177 seconds.

“Hell has frozen over,” Bowyer quipped. “It’s so easy to make mistakes in that (format), because it’s so out of the ordinary of what we usually do. I actually didn’t get on pit road near as good as I wanted to.

RELATED: Qualifying results

“I had my dead-set line that I was going to get to and would lift (off the gas) at, and when I didn’t get on pit road like I needed to, I drove past that and I was like, ‘Oh no, I’m going to get stuck.’ and my eyes were getting bigger.”

Nevertheless, Bowyer negotiated the three laps plus a mandatory four-tire pit stop (with no pit road speed limit) in 118.794 seconds for a speed of 136.371 mph. The only other driver to break 119 seconds, Busch logged a speed of 136.168 mph.

“Our Fords have been extremely fast, but we haven’t gotten them in Victory Lane like we’d like to yet, but we’re knocking on the door,” Bowyer said. “Who knows? I just saw (Charlotte Motor Speedway president) Marcus Smith. I said, ‘You know how bad I want to win your million dollars?’ I’m going to take his million dollars tomorrow night!”

Busch was pleased with his own performance and that of his team.

“I thought everything about the lap actually was pretty good,” said the driver of the No. 18 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota. “I’m not sure how fast the lap itself was — how fast our car was on the lap.

“I felt like my progressiveness onto pit road and pit road speed was relatively good, and then the braking point and being able to just chatter the tires all the way into the box was really close. Really on the money there. I thought we got all we could get out of it.”

Kevin Harvick, Bowyer’s teammate at SHR, qualified third at 136.068 mph. Austin Dillon, who paced the field in Friday’s final practice, claimed the fourth starting spot for the race that pays $1 million to the winner.

RELATED: Austin Dillon leads final practice

“It feels really good to back it up,” Dillon said. “We had a really fast lap by ourselves right there. I’m proud of my pit crew for having a solid pit stop, and, man, the adrenaline is just flowing right now after hitting pit road with all that speed.

“It’s an intense situation, and you just want to give those guys that pit, and not slide it so it doesn’t focus on you. But, yeah, that was a good overall run for us.”

All told, 15 cars — those already locked into the All-Star Race — made qualifying runs. Martin Truex Jr., Ryan Newman, Erik Jones, Jimmie Johnson, Ryan Blaney and Joey Logano will start from positions five through 10, respectively.

Three segment winners from the Monster Energy Open, which precedes the All-Star Race on Saturday, will earn spots in the main event, as will one driver selected by fan vote.

In an earlier qualifying session on Friday, Daniel Hemric, Dillon’s teammate at Richard Childress Racing, won the pole for the Open. Ford driver Michael McDowell claimed the second starting spot.

“I said on the radio this is the first box checked for the weekend,” Hemric said. “You’ve got to bring the fastest race car you can, and we’ve done that. Hopefully, we can do our jobs tomorrow and do what we need to do to get in the All-Star race and really have some fun.”

MORE: Hemric on winning Open pole

Posted on by Reid Spencer

CONCORD, N.C. — The competition package mandated for this year’s Monster Energy NASCAR All-Star race features two significant components: a single-piece carbon-fiber splitter/pan and a radiator duct in the hood of the car.

From a “feel” standpoint, however, most drivers participating in practice sessions Friday at Charlotte Motor Speedway couldn’t tell much difference between the configuration they have been running at intermediate speedways so far this year and the package for Saturday’s million-dollar event (8 p.m. ET on FS1, MRN and SiriusXM NASCAR Radio).

RELATED: All-Star weekend schedule

But that doesn’t mean the feel was exactly the same.

“This place is just so weird, Charlotte is, as a track,” said Austin Dillon, who was strong in both Friday practice sessions at the 1.5-mile track, topping the speed chart in Final Practice. “It’s a lot different handling-wise.

“I feel like there are different things, obviously, with the splitter and how high the cars are. I think they handled a little differently in practice. Some people looked like they really struggled in traffic, but I felt like my car was decent in traffic. I feel like some of that is just getting the balance right, because we haven’t run this package.”

Though some cars benefited from the draft, particularly in the first session when the Open cars and All-Star cars ran together, Dillon believes there will still be a premium to being out front.

“I felt like clean air was still the fastest way for my car, but you could get a pull, for sure,” Dillon said. “A bigger pull, and I noticed it right off the bat running behind the 19 (Martin Truex Jr.) coming to the green, that I could get a bigger pull than what we have been this year.”

Posted on by H.A. Branham

DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. — NASCAR Day and Daytona International Speedway. Talk about a perfect pairing.

Hundreds of NASCAR fans felt that way Friday as The NASCAR Foundation partnered with the speedway, the event’s host, for the 15th annual celebration on the plaza area outside the DIS Ticket and Tours Building.

In the city where NASCAR began in 1947, fans gathered for a sun-splashed lunch and a chance to win prizes through a raffle; proceeds benefited the foundation, NASCAR’s charitable arm that focuses on improving the quality of life of children in need throughout the United States.

“It’s a beautiful day and this is for a good cause,” said one of those fans, Daytona Beach’s Sean Ruddy.

Ruddy said he’s never missed a NASCAR Day at DIS. He plans on keeping that streak intact, being a lifelong follower of the sport.

“I grew up in this area and [my fandom] probably started with my Dad who brought me over here to the races. We would work on the concession stands or the souvenir stands back in the day, just to be able to get into the track and say we were there.”

Gale Stump came down Friday from Jacksonville. She took the day off from work and arrived in head-to-toe National Guard racing garb, a holdover from her days of following Dale Earnhardt Jr. in the NASCAR Cup Series, when he was sponsored by the military branch.

“I’ve been a fan forever – old school,” Stump said. “For me, it started in the early 1990s with Dale Earnhardt Sr. and then later with Dale Jr. But I also followed Dale Jarrett, Rusty Wallace, and Tony Stewart. And now, it’s the young guys coming up.”

Stump, too, was eyeing the prizes lined up for the raffle. There was a lot to eye.

Nascar Day Main 1
Special to NASCAR.com

Tickets cost only $1 and potential payoffs were enticing. Among those prizes: Two-night stays in several of the city’s premier hotel-resort properties … 2019 Daytona 500 champion’s hat and helmet signed by Denny Hamlin … tickets to the July 5 Circle K Firecracker 400 at the speedway … and a NASCAR Racing Experience Ride Along Package.

“We really need to thank Daytona International Speedway for helping us celebrate our sport, our community and our fans – and also for supporting our efforts to help children because at the end of each and every day for us, it’s all about the kids,” said Nichole Krieger, executive director of The NASCAR Foundation, which was founded in 2006 by the late Betty Jane France.

And so it was most appropriate that a youngster well-known in NASCAR circles was in attendance Friday – the “NASCAR Whiz Kid,” 13-year-old Michael Nichols of Ormond Beach, who possesses an astounding acumen for NASCAR history. Ask him a question, any question, and he invariably can supply the answer.

The Whiz – wearing his trademark checkered-flag bow tie – wasn’t being quizzed Friday. He and his father Michael Sr. were, like others, just enjoying the atmosphere at the “World Center of Racing.”

“This is like the NASCAR holiday,” the Whiz Kid said. “One big [special] day each year.”