Posted on by Chase Wilhelm

Martinsville Speedway is always a welcome site for Virginia native Denny Hamlin.

The pride of Chesterfield has racked up five victories in 26 career starts at the .526-mile short track, landing him ninth on the all-time Martinsville wins list and second among active drivers behind Jimmie Johnson’s nine triumphs. His 9.8 average finish makes it his third-best track by that measure, right behind Darlington Raceway and another Virginia short track, Richmond Raceway.

“I look forward to going to Martinsville every time,” Hamlin said. “Obviously, it’s one of my best tracks. With the strong runs we had in the spring and fall last year, I’m pretty optimistic that we can go out there and be good.”

RELATED: Hamlin part of Martinsville masters | Vegas odds for Martinsville 

Between winning the Daytona 500 and earning finishes no worse than 11th in the first five events, Hamlin and new crew chief Chris Gabehart have started strong in their maiden season together with the No. 11 Joe Gibbs Racing team.

For Hamlin, Gabehart brings his excitement level up a notch because he comes from an extensive short-track racing background, which bodes well for the pairing’s first short-track experience together in Sunday’s STP 500 (2 p.m. ET, FS1, MRN, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio).

“I’m excited so far with where I’m at with Chris — the mindset he has on these race tracks and the strategy he likes to pull and things like that,” Hamlin said. “He’s really smart and he’s obviously a short-track guy.”

Hamlin is hopeful to continue the momentum into the track dubbed “The Paperclip,” but despite all the previous success, Hamlin hasn’t visited Victory Lane since spring of 2015. That could very well be a product of other teams — including those of JGR teammates Kyle Busch and Martin Truex Jr. — learning the tricks of the Martinsville trade, thanks to extensive data sharing.

“I think data sharing changed the game,” Hamlin said. “There are just no more secrets anymore. There’s no questions of ‘well, how does this guy drive?’ You can just look it up nowadays.

“Back in the old days, I remember we did a test with me, Joey (Logano) and Kyle (Busch), we all ran the same car 20-25 laps with the same set up and everything and it was like, ‘Well, why am I so much faster in the long run, why is Kyle so much faster in the short run?’ … But you didn’t have the true data that you can stare at now and pretty much mimic anyone’s style. Certainly, all the advantages I had on short tracks were taken away when the notebook was open.”

Since Hamlin’s last victory at Martinsville, Busch has scored a pair of wins, while Logano, Johnson, Brad Keselowski and Clint Bowyer have all earned one apiece. But that doesn’t mean Hamlin hasn’t been right there to pounce, including last fall when he finished second by taking advantage of the no-holds, barred race to the finish line between Logano and Truex Jr.

So, could that play out again this time around? According to Hamlin, anything is possible.

“You never know,” Hamlin said. “I think it depends on the players that are in it. If there’s somebody that doesn’t think they’re going to get another win in the course of the season and that’s going to be their ticket to punch to the Playoffs, then certainly you’ll see a move like that.”

Despite teammates and other competitors closing the gap on Hamlin at his home track, Hamlin feels he will still naturally find his way to the front when it’s crunch time.

“There’s really five guys that are always up front in those races,” Hamlin said. “It doesn’t really change too much from that. … But it’s always been a track where if something crazy doesn’t happen, we’re always in contention there for a race win. … I’ve driven it the same, no matter the style or any data sharing. I’ve always stuck to what I know there and it’s been successful.”

Posted on by Team Release

Lexington, N.C. (March 21, 2019) – Kaulig Racing is proud to announce the addition of AJ Allmendinger to their 2019 NASCAR Xfinity Series driver line-up. Allmendinger, who has spent the past 13 years driving in the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series, will slide behind the wheel of the No. 10 Chevrolet for multiple races.

Additionally, Allmendinger recently signed a multi-year contract with NBC Sports Group as a motorsports analyst for both IMSA on NBC and NASCAR America.

MORE: Allmendinger joins NBC Sports Group

“I am excited for the opportunity to hop back into a Xfinity Series car,” Allmendinger said. “I look forward to helping Kaulig Racing build their program, as well as fight for wins with them.”

Throughout his career, Allmendinger has recorded one win and 11 top-five finishes in the MENCS and two wins in the NXS. He also boasts a successful career in the International Motorsports Association (IMSA), winning the coveted Rolex 24 Hours of Daytona in 2012.

“I am looking forward to seeing what AJ can do in the No. 10 Kaulig Racing Chevy,” Kaulig Racing President Chris Rice said. “He is another talented driver that we have tapped to wheel our All-Star car and I can’t wait to see it compete for wins.”

Announcements regarding slated races and sponsors will be released at a later date.

Posted on by @nascarcasm

When you think of Jamie McMurray, you think of a kind, gentle soul. The kind of fellow who signs every autograph, poses for every picture, and is way into bands like Dashboard Confessional.

Time to vacate those thoughts. Jamie is actually capable of taking the verbal propane torch to anyone who dare cross his path. Don’t know this? Kyle Larson knows this. He knows this all too well, and the burns haven’t healed.

Lately, because of an apparent lack of anything better to do, folks on Twitter have been taking Jamie to task because of … his attire and footwear when he appears on NASCAR on FOX. That’s how social media works – Jamie could recite an editorial entitled “Why Kyle Busch is so much better than Richard Petty” and Twitter users will be posting screenshots of his feet with “WHAT ARE THOSE????”

Here’s what they forget – Jamie McMurray is retired now, and therefore has all the time in the world to scour his mentions for static. Not only that … he has time to check out the profiles of those who dare cross him. And the result:

So here we are – you’re sitting there with third-degree burns, while Jamie drops the mic and walks away in the shoes he wants to wear that have proper comfort and arch support. Let it go on record that March Madness games hadn’t even tipped off, and a 5’8” player from Missouri had the first massive dunk.

Posted on by Marissa Fuller

CHARLOTTE, N.C. – Martinsville Speedway, the smallest track on the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series circuit, is a special place for the Wood brothers, whose hometown is a close 30 miles away in Stuart, Virginia.

The Wood Brothers Racing team has been competing at the legendary short track for seven decades and the current driver of the No. 21 Ford Mustang, Paul Menard, will be behind the wheel this weekend for the STP 500 (2 p.m. ET, FS1, MRN, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio).

Late Wood Brothers Racing team founder Glen Wood made his first start in the Cup Series in 1953 at Martinsville. This weekend, a win at the short track would mean even more to Menard and the entire team.

RELATED: NASCAR Hall of Famer Glen Wood dies at 93

“It would be huge,” Menard told NASCAR.com on Thursday. “It would be a big deal, especially this weekend as we honor Mr. Glen Wood, so I can’t think of a better way to honor him than to win at Martinsville.”

Wood, who had been the oldest living member of the NASCAR Hall of Fame, passed away on Jan. 18 at 93.

A win this weekend would not only honor the his legacy, it would also mark the team’s 100th Cup Series win.

Menard has 23 starts under his belt at Martinsville with just two top-10 finishes, but the 38-year-old from Eau Claire, Wisconsin, is on the hunt for his second career victory.

With the debut of a new rules package this season, drivers have been faced with a lot of unknowns. As the series heads into the sixth race weekend of 2019, however, things are becoming clearer for Menard and Co.

“We’re just trying to understand this package and what it wants. It seems like, for us, we can get on either side of the balance so easily, so trying to figure out how to make small adjustments to the car without overdoing it so we’re not teeter-tottering back and forth between loose and tight throughout the race,” Menard said. “That’s just work in progress. We’re building our notebook, our database and that’s just going to improve.”

The veteran considers Martinsville a track that nods to the old days, putting a spotlight on the kind of aggressive, nowhere-to-hide racing that a lot of drivers — himself included — grew up on.

“Martinsville is definitely a throwback to how our series started with the short-track racing and how a lot of us drivers started with running around little short tracks throughout the Midwest or California or the Southwest, or wherever you’re from,” he said.

“… It’s a lot of fun to drive at Martinsville; you have all this horsepower and not much grip and the cars accelerate really hard, but they don’t stop very good. So, that always makes corner entry really exciting but once you get racing, it’s kind of like 100-mile-per-hour bumper cars. You’re literally around cars all day long, trying to pass cars, trying to stay off other cars’ fenders to keep your fenders from cutting down tires. It’s a battle for 500 laps.”

Wood Brothers Racing also has an alliance with Team Penske, which has seen plenty of 2019 success thus far with two wins (Atlanta and Las Vegas) through five races. The partnership has given Menard and the No. 21 team confidence that their breakthrough is on the way.

“For us, we know that with the alliance we have with Team Penske, we have the equipment to get it done. It’s just up to us to make the right adjustments throughout the race and keep track position. Maintain track position and make good adjustments and we’ll have success,” Menard said. “We have everything we need, just a matter of putting all the pieces together to make it happen.”

MORE: Wood Brothers through the years

For those interested in honoring Glen Wood, Menard and the team will be at the Wood Brothers Racing Museum in Stuart, Virginia, on Friday for a tribute to the late team founder. Fans, family members, friends and former drivers will be there from 4-7 p.m. ET.

His son Eddie Wood said the tribute will be open to anyone who wishes to participate.

Posted on by Staff Report

Defending Kingsport Speedway late model champion Zeke Shell has been racing for more than two decades, and he’s had his dad by his side for all of it.

But his dad, Pat, wasn’t into racing when Shell was a kid. He was more into music. He was the lead singer for an 80’s hair metal band called Mercy.

In his spare time, Pat had a Corvette he would tinker with in the garage, and the younger Shell would tag along, helping, taking things apart, and putting them back together.

That’s when Pat got the idea to see if his son could drive a car as well as he could put one together.

“He went out and bought a really old, outdated go-kart and we went to a track, Beechnut Raceway. First time ever,” Zeke Shell said. “And we did very, very good, apparently. We didn’t know what we were doing. We raced out of the back of a pickup truck.”

Not long after, the Shells’ focus turned from music to cars.

“I was raised in a mosh pit, and grew up at a dirt track,” Shell said.

Shell family

That first race came when Shell was 8 years old. Now, the 32-year-old is celebrating his first championship at Kingsport Speedway, a .375-mile semi-banked concrete oval in Kingsport, Tennessee, just minutes from Bristol Motor Speedway.

Zeke has been racing at “The Concrete Jungle” since it reopened in 2011. He not only won the track championship last year, but also the NASCAR Whelen All-American Series Tennessee championship.

Kingsport Speedway | Facebook | Twitter

Other than crew chief, Pat Shell has worked just about every job on his son’s team over the years, from spotting to building – “Pretty much whatever it takes to keep it running,” Zeke Shell said.

The two have worked together for so long, it’s second nature to Shell.

“Me and my father, we started at a pretty young age and just did our best for as long as we could with what we had to work with. It was more of a father/son activity. We just had fun. We took it serious, but some people go camping once a week, some people go on a picnic once a week or a movie night. We go racing.”

“He’s a part of it every day, every step of the way… I’ve always had him. I don’t know what it’s like to not have him.”

Shell is now starting to get to see the side of racing from a father’s point-of-view too. He has a 4-year-old daughter, Bristol, who is growing up around the sport just like he did.

“She is in love with racing,” Shell said. “She’s always under the car with me. She knows her wrenches. She loves race cars.”

Zeke Shell Racing Facebook

Even though Shell has been racing so long it’s become a way of life more than a hobby, he admits last season’s championship chase felt different than in years past.

“The team wanted it more than anything. I think that’s really what drove that car to success,” he said. “There was nothing that this track or the other drivers were able to throw at it that stopped it.

“If they had to carry that car across the finish line it was going to be there.”

Zeke Shell

This year, there’s a different excitement around the team as they prepare for another full season. As long as there’s funding, Shell expects to race another full season at Kingsport as they prepare to defend their title.

There’s very little that could keep him away. And thankfully, he has a family who loves it as much as he does.

“Everything in my life is scheduled around racing. Birthdays, events, vacations, my finances, it’s all around racing,” Shell said. “Honestly, it’s just, it’s another day. I am excited for this year but I know I’ve got a target on my back and at the end of all the races there can only be one best. And hopefully it’s us again. But if not, as long as we had fun, nobody got hurt, everything was enjoyable. Because let’s face it, I’m in my 30s. This is it. This is as far as I’m going. And I’m fine with that… So I kind of have to put my values in order, and as long as I’m still a good father and husband and I can still afford to do it, then we had a successful year.”

“Honestly, the only thing that could probably keep me from it is my little girl and my wife, and they are definitely a racer family. So I don’t foresee us having any issues with coming here and taking more podiums.”

Kingsport Speedway will begin the season this Saturday night.

Kingsport Speedway Schedule

Posted on by David Smith

In the fall 2017 race at Martinsville Speedway, leader Brad Keselowski made what appeared to be a bold choice during the event’s waning laps. He elected to restart from the outside groove with 35 laps remaining. Decades of dominance proved Martinsville’s bottom lane was its most prominent, a notion perceptible to the naked eye.

Why such a brash decision? Clearly, Keselowski had erred. To some, losing the lead and the race was a justified result.

How our eyes deceive us.

Critics of Keselowski’s decision to restart from the outside groove were loud in its aftermath. In hindsight, the driver of the No. 2 Ford was an early adopter of a rising trend that became popular knowledge during last year’s spring race. Martinsville’s outside groove is, by far, its most dominant on restarts, a truism for the last five races held at the facility.

RELATED: Deep dive into 2019 stats

And this isn’t just a change in preference — Martinsville’s outside lane is one of the most reliable restart grooves in NASCAR. On all five restarts last spring, cars on the outside of the front row retained position. Through the first seven rows, its occupants held steady 91 percent of the time, 12 percentage points better than the series-wide rate for all tracks in 2018.

The inside groove on the flat, corner-heavy half-mile track allowed its drivers to successfully defend restart positions 63 percent of the time — far better than last year’s 44 percent series-wide rate, but nowhere as competitive as what its counterpart offered to drivers and teams. In total, over the last four races, cars in the outside groove out-gained those restarting from the inside by a 120-position margin. The once superior inside groove saddled its drivers with a net loss of 74 collective positions.

This year, Martinsville restarts may provide a welcome sight to weary drivers who’ve found the initial races of 2019 more volatile than usual. In all, drivers are retaining their restart positions 65 percent of the time out of the preferred groove, down from 79 percent last year. Only four drivers — Clint Bowyer (plus-14), Ricky Stenhouse (13), Aric Almirola (11) and Keselowski (10) — have secured double-digit net gains out of the preferred groove through the first five races.

FIRST LOOK: Brand-new paint schemes

Drivers return to Martinsville with the same rules package that allowed for the high success rates last season. Either from the track’s penchant for positional security or a majority change in which lane drivers most often find themselves restarting, here’s a glance at a few candidates whose results this Sunday could be bolstered by improved restart performance.

Kyle Busch

Despite front-row starting spots in both Martinsville races last year, such enviable initial track position couldn’t propel Busch to Victory Lane. Lane assignment on restarts was a factor. Combined, 11 of his 14 restart attempts from inside the first seven rows began from the inside groove, stunting his positional defense and slowing his efforts in making up ground.

Ryan Blaney

Blaney led 145 laps in last year’s spring race, but four of five restart attempts emanated from the non-preferred inside groove. This was a quantifiable hindrance as he lost his position on each of those attempts, including a try as the leader on Lap 143.

Aric Almirola

One of this season’s most prolific preferred groove restarters is Almirola, who wasn’t fortunate enough to win out on lane assignment at Martinsville last fall. Six of his nine attempts from a top-14 position were from the inside groove, including both of his efforts inside the final 100 laps.

Clint Bowyer Martinsville clock
Getty Images

Clint Bowyer

Bowyer is the defending spring race winner and his achievement probably doesn’t receive its due. He lined up on the inside on four of his five restart attempts in that race, successfully retaining position on all of them. The final restart of the day on Lap 392 saw Bowyer choose the outside in his only attempt as race leader.

Kyle Larson

Larson is retaining his preferred groove restart positions nearly 20 percent less often than he did in 2018. Martinsville’s tight corners are ill suited for the former dirt-track driver’s freewheeling ways, visible in his 24.2-place career average finish at the track. Still, a return to normalcy — and a time when Larson was a surefire defender of preferred groove restart positions — may help shift his Martinsville narrative.

Brad Keselowski

The driver at the epicenter of all this confusion may feel Martinsville owes him one. Across the last three Martinsville races, the car restarting from the front row’s outside spot retained position in 21 out of 25 tries, spelling a failure rate of just 16 percent. Indeed, it was a bad beat for Keselowski, who ranked as a top-five restarter in 2018 and remains one through the early part of the new season, keeping position on 13 of 17 clean restart attempts across both grooves.

David Smith is the founder of MotorsportsAnalytics.com and co-host of Positive Regression: A Motorsports Analytics Podcast. Follow him on Twitter at @DavidSmithMA.

Posted on by Staff Report

Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series drivers will head to Virginia for short-track racing at Martinsville Speedway this weekend.

Prior to Sunday’s STP 500 (2 p.m. ET, FS1) at “The Paperclip,” here’s everything you need to know to get ready for racing at Martinsville.

RELATED: Full weekend schedule for Martinsville

TRACK DETAILS

Martinsville is a 0.526-mile paperclip oval that measures the shortest on the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series circuit. With a track width of 55 feet, the track also features 800-foot straightaways and tight, nearly flat turns — with just 11 degrees of banking — that fosters close-quarters racing.

RULES PACKAGE

The Monster Energy Series will run the 2019 rules package tailored for short tracks (less than 1.33 miles in length) and road courses. A 1.17-inch tapered spacer will be used, with engines expected to generate about 750 horsepower. Unlike last week’s race at Auto Club Speedway, no aero ducts will be used.

This weekend’s configuration of the 2019 rules package will be used at 14 events in total this season. The 1.17-inch tapered spacer was first used this season at 1-mile ISM Raceway on March 10.

GOING FOR 3

After winning at ISM Raceway on March 10 and notching his coveted 200th career win at Auto Club Speedway last weekend, Kyle Busch will look to make it three in a row this weekend at Martinsville Speedway in the No. 18 Toyota. Busch has won three straight Cup races twice in his career: First in 2015 (Kentucky, New Hampshire and Indianapolis) and most recently, in 2018 when he won at Texas, Bristol and Richmond.

The Joe Gibbs Racing driver’s start to the 2019 season has been impressive; in addition to his two victories, Busch owns an average finish of 2.6, with four of his five races resulting in top-five results. His recent Martinsville numbers are equally impressive; he’s finished in the top five in all of his seven races with crew chief Adam Stevens at the paperclip oval, including two victories in 2016 and 2017.

LIVE COVERAGE

Sunday, March 24 at 2 p.m. ET on FSI, MRN, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio.

2018 RACE WINNER

Clint Bowyer broke a 190-race winless streak in the spring trip to Martinsville Speedway last season. The No. 14 driver paced the field for a race-high 215 laps to take the checkered flag over runner-up and two-time Martinsville winner Kyle Busch. The victory marked Bowyer’s first at the “Paperclip.”

ACTIVE RACE WINNERS 

Nine active Monster Energy Series drivers have earned a victory at the track — Jimmie Johnson (9 wins), Denny Hamlin (5 wins), Kurt Busch (2 wins), Kyle Busch (2 wins), Joey Logano (1 win), Clint Bowyer (1 win), Brad Keselowski (1 win), Kevin Harvick (1 win) and Ryan Newman (1 win).

Posted on by Staff Report

Idaho Track Joins NASCAR Whelen All-American Series

Dylan Kane’s mind is filled with childhood memories of watching races at Stateline Speedway. He grew up going with his dad to the track that’s only 10 minutes from his Idaho home.

“Just something that started on the weekends, we’d go here and there,” Kane said. “I was young, young. I remember going out there on weekends and falling asleep at the track and fell in love with it.”

Kane’s father passed away in 2009, and Kane started racing at his home track right after.

Sls Logo FinalThis summer will be Kane’s 10th at Stateline, a quarter-mile banked oval track built in 1974 in Kootenai County, Idaho. Last summer was his first away from his home track when he ran in the Northwest Mini Stock Tour, traveling around Idaho, Oregon, and Washington.

But this summer he’ll be back home, and the announcement the track would be going NASCAR sanctioned this summer is the reason why.

Stateline made the announcement it will be part of the NASCAR Whelen All-American Series for the 2019 racing season last week at its membership meeting. Kane and other drivers didn’t know what to expect after just hearing there would be an announcement. He hadn’t heard ahead of time what we coming.

“Everyone was like ‘what’s this announcement? Are they changing something? Are they selling it? What’s going on?” he said. “And I see a guy sitting in the background and he’s got a NASCAR T-shirt and a visor on and I’m like ‘holy cow.’

“You see all these other tracks, you see them on TV with K&N East and West and all these big circuits they go to and you never think small town Idaho or Spokane, Washington is going to have anything like this. So it’s kind of unreal.”

Stateline is located in Post Falls, Idaho, a town with a population of about 33,000, just outside of Spokane, Washington.

Dylan Kane

Kane, now 26, will run a full-time schedule in Stateline’s Division IV mini stock division. While he said the original idea was to return to the Northwest tour, he wants to see the perks NASCAR will bring to Idaho. He thinks having the NASCAR name will help with advertising and getting sponsors.

“As far as a fan base locally, I think it’s going to draw a much larger crowd, I think it’s going to be a lot more efficient racing, I think the structure behind it is going to be better and I think it’s going to bring a lot to the table for Stateline,” he said. “As a track, as a family, it’s going to be a big deal for everybody involved across the board. Your local drivers, your traveling drivers.

“I think it’s going to be easier. If you tell them you run for a NASCAR-sanctioned track, under NASCAR as a division, I think it puts it in a different bracket than just a local racetrack with 4-cylinders or super lates or modifieds. I think it’s just going to bring a lot more out to it for your local drivers and crew and everybody involved.”

Stateline Speedway | Facebook | Twitter

Returning to his home track also brings added comfort to Kane. It’s where he learned to drive and has spent nearly a decade perfecting his skills and getting comfortable with his crew enough to be able to move on to bigger tracks and series. He’s learned a lot in his time at Stateline.

“You learn that there’s a lot more to it than a guy getting in a car and going left,” he said. “I’ve learned that you have to have a lot of trust in your spotters, your crew chiefs, your set up guys have got to be with you 100 percent, and you’ve got to be 100 percent getting into it.

Dylan Kane

“I think what I’ve learned most is probably patience really. Not going out and winning it the first time. You’re not going to go out and set the place on fire. You have to learn the ropes and learn who you’re running with and how your crew handles things, different situations, different tracks, and you’ve all got to come together and make it as a group. When you win it’s a team, or we, not just me or I. Everybody is in it 100 percent.”

Kane believes the track is going NASCAR to make the racing better for the drivers and make them feel appreciated.

For him and his team, they appreciate the chance to come back home and try to run for a championship on their own turf.

“We’ve ran different tracks and come together a lot more as a crew between the traveling and different setups and things like that, he said. “So I think this year our main focus is to go out for a championship and try and do as well as we can in that NASCAR division and see if we can take it somewhere else, to another track and just play around with it and have fun.”

Stateline Speedway will open the season on April 20.

Stateline Speedway Schedule

Stateline 1

Posted on by Staff Report

CONCORD, N.C. — Eight drivers from across the United States have been invited to try out for the NASCAR Drive for Diversity Youth Driver Development Program during a two-day combine event March 23-24.

The NASCAR Drive for Diversity Youth Driver Development Program, managed by Rev Racing, promotes and trains ethnically diverse and female drivers ages 12-16 to compete in INEX Legend Cars.

The combine, which will determine the 2019 youth driver lineup for Rev Racing, will include an on-track evaluation at GoPro Motorplex located in Mooresville, North Carolina. Selected drivers will become year-long members of the NASCAR Drive for Diversity team and compete in the Bojangles’ Summer Shootout at Charlotte Motor Speedway, among other events, with Rev Racing.

“We are very enthused with the level of talent that we are seeing in our youth applicants,” said Max Siegel, owner of Rev Racing. “The talent pool continues to grow and connecting with these rising stars as early as possible is key. If we have the ability to engage drivers and their families early in their careers, we can prepare, train, and nurture their talents through every step of our program and beyond.”

In addition to the youth program, Rev Racing manages the NASCAR Drive for Diversity Driver Development Program, which offers racing opportunities in the NASCAR K&N Pro Series East and NASCAR Whelen All-American Series. The program provides selected drivers with equipment, mentoring, and competition experience. The mission of the NASCAR Drive for Diversity Program is to provide top diverse talent with a path for development through the ladder system, with the goal of being identified as a prospect by NASCAR’s national series teams, sponsors and manufacturers.

“We are pleased to welcome a talented group of young, diverse drivers to our first NASCAR Drive for Diversity Youth Driver Combine under the new program vision,” said Jusan Hamilton, NASCAR director of racing operations and event management. “We look forward to seeing members of this group rise up the ranks within Rev Racing and one day showcase their talent at the NASCAR touring series level.”

This year’s participants include a wide variety of driver backgrounds and competitive experiences. Isabella Robusto will have an opportunity to secure a third year with the program. In 2018, the Fort Mill, South Carolina, native finished third in the Young Lions Division at the Bojangles’ Summer Shootout and won the Battle at the Big Top race at Texas Motor Speedway, which was a U.S. Legends National Qualifier.

The invitees also include 15-year-old Lavar Scott from Carneys Point, New Jersey, who finished third in points at Airport Speedway in the 600cc Micro Sprint located in New Castle, Delaware, and Rajah Caruth, a 16-year-old from Washington, D.C., who in just nine months earned more than 20 iRacing wins and 157 top 5s in 359 starts.

2019 NASCAR Drive for Diversity Youth Driver Combine participants:

Driver Hometown 2018 racing experience
Rajah Caruth Washington, D.C. iRacing
Lacy Kuehl Sarasota, Fla. Dirt Oval Flat Kart
Blake Lothian Wellesley, Mass. World Formula Kart
Laci Minton Beaver Dam, Ken. U.S. Legend Cars
Sarah Napora Pemberton, N.J. 125cc Micro Sprints
Isabella Robusto Fort Mill, S.C. U.S. Legend Cars
Lavar Scott Carneys Point, N.J. 600cc Micro Sprints
Violet Townsend Ravenna, Mich. Cup Karts of North America

 

Posted on by Staff Report

After some aggressive driving early in this 2019 season from Ricky Stenhouse Jr. — including his typical superspeedway daring in the Daytona 500 and a run-in with Erik Jones in Las Vegas — fellow drivers now take note of where the No. 17 Roush Fenway Racing Ford is on the track at all times.

Kurt Busch remarked as such in a tweet Monday evening.

Ouch.

But Stenhouse Jr. remembers some things differently. Specifically, a Daytona 500 wreck when it appeared Busch’s No. 1 Chip Ganassi Racing Chevrolet was hit in the left rear by Stenhouse’s No. 17, causing a six-car wreck on Lap 51 — but Stenhouse insisted that he didn’t touch Busch with his car.

That one was all Busch, Stenhouse tweeted.

DEBATE: Is Stenhouse too aggressive?

Perhaps the score can be settled this weekend at Martinsville Speedway, the first short-track race of the year.