DARLINGTON, S.C. — As he’s been all season, Corey Heim was the car to beat on a muggy Saturday afternoon at Darlington Raceway. While Layne Riggs put the pressure on the 2025 Regular Season Champion, a downed tire with 20 to go put Heim on point to win a ludicrous eighth race of the season and opened the door for other playoff contenders to land big points day.
Daniel Hemric and Grant Enfinger strung together clean days behind Heim to round out the podium in the Sober or Slammer 200, while defending champion Ty Majeski recovered from a flat tire in Stage 1 to come home fourth to begin his run for a second-straight title.
“It was just cool to see this 19 team find another level today — our most highly executed weekend of the year,” Hemric said after finishing second Saturday. “Proud of the timing of that for sure. Just important for this team to come together and we did that today. We found another level and it’s good to maximize that.”
The opening stage became one of attrition for the playoff field during a 47-lap stretch from green to stage checkered.
Kaden Honeycutt and Chandler Smith were the first to take a hit as they had tires go down. Smith slammed the wall in Turn 1, ending his day, while Honeycutt continued on but couldn’t inch his way back to the front.
Majeski was the third postseason driver with an early-race obstacle, but was able to put himself in position to take the wave around for Stage 2 and get back on the lead lap. The No. 98 ThorSport Racing driver could’ve opted to limp it around the closing laps of Stage 1 and risk going down multiple laps, but the championship mentality and experience of the Wisconsin native opted to put himself and his team in a better position.
“When things like that happen, the biggest thing is to not let the hurdle get too tall, right? So you have to minimize the damage,” Majeski said after the race. “It’s a hard thing to pull in when you have a flat tire, especially when you’re that close to the end of the stage. If I could just limp it around and stay on the lead lap, that would be better than doing a green-flag pit stop. But, yeah, I’m glad I pulled down. It would have been catastrophic one more corner so yeah, just minimizing the damage.”
Enfinger, the long-time Truck veteran, gave a fair assessment of his day. Despite not being able to battle with Heim and Riggs for the lead, the No. 9 CR7 Motorsports wheelman gave his team a high grade for delivering all race long and putting Enfinger in a spot to score 50 points Saturday.
“Just in general, I’d give us an A-minus for execution,” Enfinger said. “Still, maybe losing a little bit with just sheer potential to run with the 11. But we kept them and both the Front Row (Motorsports) trucks in our grasp the whole time. They were never light-years in front of us. Feel like guys were excellent on pit road and not crazy happy with my restarts, but just given we were restarting on the inside most of those times, I don’t know how much I’d have done different.”
Majeski ultimately was the biggest benefactor of the day as he gained nine points on the Round of 8 cutline after recovering from the flat tire. It will be a shot in the arm for a team that’s yet to reach Victory Lane in 2025 and has won at the next track on the docket — Bristol Motor Speedway (Sept. 11, 8 p.m. ET, FS1, NASCAR Radio Network, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio).
“It could have been a lot worse for sure,” Majeski said. “I think we’re (16) above going into Bristol, which is a good track for us. New Hampshire should be good as well. So, like where we’re at. Good recovery today. Nobody panicked and we’ll move on.”
DARLINGTON, S.C. — Although the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series changed the clock from the regular season to the playoffs, it was still “Heim Time” on Saturday at Darlington Raceway.
Pulling away after a restart on Lap 134 of 147, Corey Heim won the playoff-opening Sober or Slammer 200 at the challenging 1.366-mile South Carolina track. The win was Heim’s eighth of the year, one short of Greg Biffle’s record nine-victory season in 1999.
Heim crossed the finish line 0.766 seconds ahead of fellow playoff driver Daniel Hemric to collect his first victory at the “Lady in Black” and the 19th of his career. With the win, Heim earned automatic advancement to the Round of 8.
The break at the end of Stage 2 proved fortunate for the race winner. Heim felt a tire losing air shortly before the end of the stage, but he survived the stage in second place and brought the No. 11 Tricon Garage Toyota to pit road before the tire went flat.
“Lucky it wasn’t a complete blowout — otherwise we would have been in trouble,” Heim said. “I could make a little bit of speed on the wall, but it was such a high-risk play if you scrubbed it. You saw so many people have those right-front issues.”
One of those was Stage 2 winner Layne Riggs, Heim’s primary competition for the win. Moments before a collision between the trucks of playoff driver Kaden Honeycutt and Andrés Pérez de Lara brought out the third and final caution of the race on Lap 128, Riggs slammed the outside wall with a right-front tire down.
Riggs, who finished 17th, led 71 laps to Heim’s 65.
“I put a little pressure on the 34 (Riggs), and he got into it, and we were able to take advantage of it,” said Heim. “… It feels like I’m in a dream. Eight wins this year is phenomenal, man. It’s great to look back on, but we’ve also got so much to look forward to.”
Playoff drivers Grant Enfinger and Ty Majeski, the defending series champion, finished third and fourth, respectively — Enfinger with a consistent problem-free performance, Majeski after overcoming a flat right-front tire with a wave-around.
Trevor Bayne, running his first NASCAR race since 2023, came home fifth, followed by rookie Tanner Gray, playoff driver Tyler Ankrum, Timmy Hill, Corey Day and playoff driver Jake Garcia.
The complexion of the Truck Series Playoffs took a dramatic turn early in the race. Starting next to pole-winning Front Row Motorsports teammate Riggs, Chandler Smith led the first 10 laps, but on the 11th circuit, he slapped the outside wall and cut his right-front tire.
Attempts to repair serious damage to the No. 38 Ford proved futile, and Smith retired from the race in 30th place after completing 14 laps.
“Made a mistake on my end today,” Smith acknowledged. “Just got a little too greedy trying to run the fence a little too hard… When you get into that hard, it suckers you in, you cut a tire, and you’re done for the day.”
The early exit left Smith two points behind Garcia for the last spot in the Round of 8.
“We’ve got two races left,” Smith said. “(We’re) going back to Bristol, where we won earlier in the year. Then we’re going to New Hampshire for the last race in this round, where I’ve been really strong in the past as well.”
Honeycutt fell to 10th in the standings, seven points below the current cutline.
Hemric, on the other hand, leaves Darlington 33 points to the good.
“We’ve been wanting so badly to have execution like that,” Hemric said. “That was our cleanest race of the season.”
The Truck Series returns to action on Thursday, Sept. 11, at Bristol Motor Speedway (8 p.m. ET, FS1, NASCAR Racing Network Radio, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio).
NOTE: Post-race inspection in the Craftsman Truck Series garage concluded without issue, confirming Heim as the Darlington winner.
DARLINGTON, S.C. — One week ago, when the NASCAR Cup Series’ regular season came to an end at Daytona International Speedway, the first two drivers on the wrong side of the playoff cutline were RFK Racing teammates Chris Buescher and Ryan Preece.
Team co-owner and driver Brad Keselowski found himself close to victory multiple times as well, with all three having legitimate paths to postseason competition in 2025. But ultimately, the teammate trio arrived at Darlington Raceway without the yellow trim on its windshield banners and spoilers that would otherwise indicate them as members of the 2025 championship hunt.
Buescher was the nearest of those three racers to getting into the postseason, one spot and 31 points short of being one of the 16 playoff drivers. His motivation is no different ahead of Sunday’s Cook Out Southern 500 at Darlington (6 p.m. ET, USA Network, MRN Radio, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio) than it has been all season: Go win races.
“That’s the only thing there is to do,” Buescher said Saturday morning. “And ultimately, I mean, it’s what you wish you could do every week anyway. Obviously, there’s always a bigger picture (that’s) more important at times. But for us, it’s just go to the race track with everything we got, take chances, be aggressive on them and see if we can’t pull a few upsets through the next handful of races.”
To call Buescher’s season a disappointment would misrepresent the body of work he and the No. 17 team have put together. Buescher ended the regular season 10th in points with four top fives and 13 top 10s — a top-10 figure that ties him with four others for fifth-most all season. His average finish of 14.1 ranks seventh overall after 26 races. But the underlying goose egg lies in the wins column. In a season that featured 14 different race winners, that lone zero stood between Buescher and a playoff position.
“You take away the fact that we missed the playoffs, it’s been a solid year. We’ve been fast,” Buescher said. “We’ve had a few runner-ups and been in contention to win a handful, and overall, our average finish is well on up there. So I mean, it’s been a great year. We’ve had speed at a lot of different styles of race tracks. Obviously, everyone’s aware and we’re proud of that, but ultimately it’s that final metric that you’ve gotta win to make the playoffs and be fighting for a championship at the end. The old way just doesn’t work anymore. So with that, take that speed we’ve got and win this year, but also be ready to show up and win races early next year so that we get past all the talk that we’ve had to go through the last couple months.”
Preece is in the midst of his first season driving the No. 60 RFK Racing Ford. The results didn’t produce that critical first Cup win that would’ve propelled him into the postseason, but he and his team, led by crew chief Derrick Finley, surpassed the expectations of many as the expansion team at RFK, which grew from two teams to three for the 2025 campaign.
“I feel like for a first-year team, we executed really well,” Preece said. “So outside of winning right now, I feel like we’re hitting a lot of the things that we need to hit on. And I would say the last 10 races is all about continuing to build momentum for next year. I mean, we’ve put ourselves in position to capitalize. Just didn’t work out.”
Keselowski mounted a midseason charge to boast about. Through the first 17 races of the season, the 2012 Cup champ ranked 30th or worse in points after 15 of those events. The final nine weeks of the regular season, though, propelled Keselowski to 19th in the post-Daytona rundown, a testament to the strength in speed he and his No. 6 crew found with seven finishes of 11th or better in those last nine races of the regular season.
“We certainly started out this season in a really difficult place,” Keselowski said. “And over the last dozen races or so, I think we’re showing the potential that we have. And if we can keep that level of performance, we’re a lot better team than what our standings show.”
There remains an obvious level of fight throughout the trio of drivers, all cut from the same old-school racing cloth. The difference, of course, is finding a way to break into Victory Lane and spoil the playoff party.
“We just need to convert the opportunities we’ve had to win into wins, and we haven’t done that,” Keselowski said. “I don’t think there’s any big secret to that. I had a car good enough to win in Iowa. Circumstances didn’t play out in our favor, and we didn’t win with it. You could extend that to my teammates who’ve had similar situations where they’ve been close to winning and we weren’t able to convert. You have to convert.”
After a lackluster stretch of races during the summer, top-seeded Kyle Larson enters the NASCAR Cup Series Playoffs fresh from back-to-back sixth-place finishes at Richmond Raceway and Daytona International Speedway.
Larson expects to be fast in Sunday’s Cook Out 400 at Darlington Raceway, one of his best tracks, but there are challenges on the horizon in each of the first two rounds — specifically World Wide Technology Raceway at Gateway (second race in the Round of 16) and New Hampshire Motor Speedway (first race in the Round of 12).
“Yeah, I think still the shorter, flatter tracks (are potential weaknesses), so seeing Gateway and New Hampshire in the playoffs is not something that I was thrilled about,” Larson acknowledged. “But I do think we’ve made our package better on that style of track. You know, I look at Iowa — we were fast and (Hendrick Motorsports teammate) William (Byron) won.
“Chase (Elliott) was fast. Alex (Bowman) was fast. When we went to Richmond, we were all really good again. Alex finished second, and I think I was in sixth. Chase was probably one of the best cars that night. William was good, as well. I do think we’ve gotten our cars better on those places, but we still need to probably be better. We’ll see when we get to Gateway and New Hampshire.”
In three starts at WWT Raceway, Larson has one top five, a finish of fourth in 2023. At New Hampshire, the driver of the No. 5 Chevrolet has posted six top fives in 14 outings, including third- and fourth-place results in his last two races there.
DARLINGTON, S.C. — There’s one huge difference between Chase Briscoe’s approach to the Cook Out Southern 500 last year and his mindset this year.
The level of expectations is exponentially higher for Sunday’s opening playoff race at the “Lady in Black” (6 p.m. ET, USA Network, HBO Max, MRN Radio, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio, NBC Sports App).
For the first time in his NASCAR Cup Series career, Briscoe believes he has a championship-caliber team.
That wasn’t the case last year when the Southern 500 was the final race of the regular season. Briscoe needed a victory just to make the playoffs, and after a near-perfect run, he took the checkered flag and qualified for the postseason.
Last year, Briscoe drove for now-defunct Stewart-Haas Racing. This year, he’s driving the potent No. 19 Toyota for Joe Gibbs Racing, an organization that expects to win and compete for championships.
“Last year, nobody expected us (to win), and truthfully, as a race team, we weren’t coming into Darlington and being like ‘This is our weekend,’” Briscoe said. “At SHR (Stewart-Haas), you really couldn’t go to the race track each weekend and say we are going to win this weekend, or we are going to have a shot at it.
“We knew that we would be good, because we had been solid at Darlington, but I don’t think we thought we would have race-winning speed, I would say. So, this (the playoff race) feels more pressure-packed than a win-or-go-home situation, because we all kind of made up our minds that we were probably going home anyways, and it just so happened that we won that race, and we were in.”
DARLINGTON, S.C. — If any active driver has come close to mastering the track “Too Tough to Tame,” it’s Denny Hamlin, who asserted his superiority once again in qualifying for Sunday’s Cook Out Southern 500 (6 p.m. ET, USA Network, HBO Max, MRN Radio, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio, NBC Sports App).
Gaining enormous time through Turns 3 and 4 on his single qualifying lap at Darlington Raceway, Hamlin knocked Joe Gibbs Racing teammate Chase Briscoe off the provisional pole for the first NASCAR Cup Series Playoffs race.
A five-time winner at Darlington — most among active drivers — Hamlin covered the 1.366-mile distance in 28.694 seconds (171.381 mph), beating Briscoe (171.255 mph) by 0.021 seconds. Briscoe had won the pole position for the previous three crown-jewel races — Daytona 500, Coca-Cola 600 and Brickyard 400.
The Busch Light Pole Award was Hamlin’s second at Darlington, his second of the 2025 season and the 45th of his career. He is the first driver to reach 40 poles in a Toyota, with his first five coming when JGR ran Chevrolets.
“It turned,” Hamlin said of the performance of his No. 11 Camry. “We struggled with balance all through race practice, but we made some good adjustments to run one lap.”
Hamlin acknowledged his car still needs work to enhance its performance in race trim.
After a stellar first two corners on his qualifying lap, Briscoe wasn’t as aggressive as he needed to be at the narrow end of the egg-shaped track.
“That one stings,” Briscoe said. “My 1 and 2 was really good, and I didn’t want to go into (Turn) 3 and hit the wall or something, so I under-drove it.”
Playoff drivers occupy the first 12 spots on the grid for Sunday’s race. Josh Berry qualified third at 170.578 mph in the No. 21 Wood Brothers Racing Ford. Tyler Reddick was fourth at 170.466 mph in the No. 45 23XI Toyota, followed by Kyle Larson of Hendrick Motorsports as the top Chevrolet driver.
Ross Chastain, Christopher Bell, Bubba Wallace, Austin Dillon, Austin Cindric, William Byron and Ryan Blaney will start from positions sixth through 12th, respectively.
The remaining four playoff drivers qualified as follows: Joey Logano (14th), Shane van Gisbergen (20th), Chase Elliott (21st) and Alex Bowman (29th).
Berry’s qualifying performance was his best since starting second at Atlanta nine races ago.
“I’m super proud of that effort,” he said. “Our big focus was trying to qualify better here, and the guys did a great job. I feel like our car is really strong, and I’m excited for (Sunday). The biggest thing I feel like I’ve fought here is starting position, so starting up front, I think we can just manage the race easier and obviously score some stage points.
“That’s going to be important, so just having a mistake-free day by taking care of the car and having good pit stops will help keep us in the hunt.”
McDowell fastest in practice
Spire Motorsports’ Michael McDowell topped the leaderboard in practice early Friday morning at 169.531 mph over teammate Justin Haley (168.856 mph) and Joe Gibbs Racing’s Ty Gibbs (168.850 mph).
Carson Hocevar (168.394 mph) and Noah Gragson (168.135 mph) rounded out the top five.
Todd Gilliland (168.002 mph), AJ Allmendinger (167.653 mph), playoff driver Bubba Wallace (167.243 mph), Kyle Busch (167.203 mph) and John Hunter Nemechek (166.902 mph) completed the top 1o.
Four playoff drivers were outside of the top 30 on the speed charts, with Alex Bowman (31st), Shane van Gisbergen (32nd), Josh Berry (33rd) and Chase Elliott (34th).
Ryan Preece got up into the Turn 3 wall and earned an early Darlington stripe, while Zane Smith spun entering pit road. Neither incident in Group 1 brought out the caution. Group 2 was incident-free.
See where your favorite drivers will pit this weekend with the NASCAR Cup Series and NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series at Darlington Raceway, and the NASCAR Xfinity Series at Portland International Raceway.
NASCAR Cup Series
Southern 500 at Darlington Raceway on Sunday (6 p.m. ET, USA, MRN Radio, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio, NBC Sports App).
Drivers, start your engines … and start saving fuel.
The latter command has been so hard to escape in the NASCAR Cup Series this season, it’s left Chase Briscoe obsessed with maximizing his mileage — even without a fuel gauge to confirm his performance.
Whenever the yellow flag flies during a Cup race, Briscoe begins absent-mindedly toggling the engine of his No. 19 Toyota.
“It’s become a habit,” the Joe Gibbs Racing star said. “Even weeks where we don’t need to be, I’m saving fuel just for the sake of it because you never know what can happen and it eventually adds up. That’s just been something I’ve really kind of burned into my mind over the course of the last couple of years in Cup racing, and it’s obviously worked out for us.”
It worked out well enough to put Briscoe in the playoffs by holding off teammate Denny Hamlin at Pocono Raceway — one of several races this summer in which fuel conservation played a major role in the outcome.
The trend figures to continue into the playoffs starting Sunday with the Southern 500 at Darlington Raceway — and possibly be a key determinant in who is crowned champion. Joey Logano won the 2024 title after advancing to the championship race by running the final 72 laps in his No. 22 Ford without stopping to win at Las Vegas Motor Speedway — the increasingly rare instance of a fuel mileage outcome predicated on filling up.
The only time a Gen 7 car’s 20-gallon fuel cell is typically at capacity anymore is when it’s mandatory for the initial green flag.
From that point on, it’s a neverending chess match between teams crunching numbers and strategizing to spend as little time in the pits for refueling as possible. A crack staff of engineers armed with algorithms and mounds of data might need to track the consumption of as much as 70 gallons of fuel without once having the benefit of measuring off a full tank.
Jonathan Bachman | Getty Images
Though there might be some confusion about the precision of those calculations when William Byron is still able to smoke the tires of his No. 24 Chevrolet for a few hundred feet in celebration after winning at Iowa Speedway on fumes, consider that a victory burnout takes roughly 8 ounces of fuel (or about 6 percent of a gallon).
“Even with all the technology and effort, to get it right within 8 ounces throughout the course of three hours is a really small error value that teams are tasked with hitting,” Joe Gibbs Racing director of competition Chris Gabehart said. “It’s really hard to do. When you see a burnout afterward, it might just be because the math was really, really good but not perfect.”
As a veteran of racing series that allow for real-time monitoring of fuel consumption, Austin Cindric is continually amazed that NASCAR teams can model their mileage accurately through a blend of math that includes throttle application, braking usage and lap times.
“There’s a lot more guessing that goes on in a fuel-save situation in the NASCAR Cup Series than really anything else I’ve ever driven, or been a part of,” said the Team Penske driver, who made the 2024 playoffs on a fuel-mileage win. “In any other series, I’d know what my fuel capacity is, and I’d have it on my dash. I’d know how much fuel I just used on the last lap, so I can make real-time adjustments without even getting feedback from my team.
“(In NASCAR), it is a lot of estimating based off of data. The guys that are tasked with that challenge on top of the pit box and back in the shop have a lot to overcome. When you hear guys just making it on fuel or running out at the line, it honestly is so impressive.”
Meg Oliphant | Getty Images
After running out of fuel while leading at Michigan and contending at Indy earlier this season, Byron credited the Iowa victory to an improvement in mileage precision, and the regular-season champion believes it might be remembered as the tipping point for a team that has become more aggressively confident with strategy.
“I’m proud of my crew chief and my engineering team to make those tighter decisions and have them more refined because I think that could be the difference,” Byron said. “Fuel mileage is always a thing. You can go to a place with high tire wear where it’s not as big, but fuel mileage and track position are becoming just more and more of a critical element with the cars all being the same.
“That race gave us a ton of confidence that we can be up front competing for the lead and not have to run all out.”
With the emphasis on conserving fuel, here are answers to some questions about the practice heading into the playoffs:
Why has fuel conservation become such a hot topic in recent years?
There have been three primary inflection points, beginning with carburetors being phased out in 2012.
Before the introduction of electronic fuel injection, mileage calculations were rather primitive and often based on weighing fuel cans to determine how much gasoline was in the car.
The advent of EFI, and the electronic control unit (ECU) that records more than 60 settings ranging from RPMs to brake pressure, opened up a wealth of data that NASCAR teams were able to harness.
“ECU data made everything visible lap by lap,” Gabehart said. “There was a lot more nuance that you could see, and that was huge. Once the data got opened up to all the teams, everyone was off to the races on refining their processes.”
That next leap forward happened when teams began receiving live access to data during races as the 2017 introduction of stage cautions created two predetermined yellow-flag pit stops (which opened the strategy playbook and lessened the importance of filling up). For the 2018 season, NASCAR built a real-time data pipeline with steering, braking and throttle information distributed directly to teams.
The most recent sea change was the debut of the single-lug nut pit stop with the Next Gen car’s debut in 2022. That allowed pit crews to change four tires faster than they were able to fill the car with fuel (vs. the five-lug nut era when stops were a tad slower and roughly equal to a complete fuel fill).
Logano said the single lug nut made mileage “more of a discussion point. Are you going to slow down your pit stop for more gas?”
The answer is usually no, particularly on tracks where an extra second can mean losing multiple positions on the track. Teams increasingly have chosen to send drivers from their stalls when the jack drops rather than wait.
“It does all come down to if one team is willing to leave the pit stall after 8 and a half seconds and three gallons short, but another team is willing to fill it up, that’s a second and a half or so that that team’s sitting in the pit box,” Gabehart said. “Are you willing to give up those spots for extra fuel? That’s a constant decision that these teams are facing.”
Chris Graythen | Getty Images
How do teams calculate fuel mileage without relying on a gauge?
The process starts with a multimillion-dollar dynamometer that allows engineers to map out fuel consumption while purposely running engines at 60 to 80 percent throttle at varying loads to mimic the myriad tracks of the Cup Series. It’s a reverse-engineering exercise to locate a sweet spot between the base amount of fuel consumption needed to avoid damaging the engine and the optimized amount of fuel for maximum power.
During the race, teams can then pinpoint how much fuel is being consumed based off how much throttle a driver uses on every lap.
Engineers generally have charts or graphs that list mileage corresponding to lap times and throttle traces. Engines use fuel proportionally to the RPMs, so consumption can be decreased by asking a driver to coast longer (which is easier to do on bigger tracks with long straightaways).
In Byron’s win at Iowa, crew chief Rudy Fugle told SiriusXM NASCAR Radio that the team relied on four engineers (three working remotely, the fourth on the pit box) to calculate and monitor fuel mileage. Working with manufacturers, teams are also evaluating the opposition’s fuel consumption rates.
How do drivers hone their fuel-saving craft?
It’s tricky because the only time they are able to improve is under race conditions.
“I don’t go to the sim and practice fuel saving,” Ryan Blaney said. “You can’t really. It’s kind of a trait that you’re learning under fire a lot. I feel like I’m OK. I can turn into a hybrid every now and then and fuel save a little bit.
“Each track is different. It’s way harder to save gas at certain places than others. (Daytona and Talladega), you can save a lot of gas pretty easy just because of the draft, but a Martinsville fuel save is way harder to do and make lap time because (of) heavy brakes.”
Bubba Wallace, who won the Brickyard 400 by being able to stretch his last tank through overtime, jokes that he has “a hybrid Toyota Tundra that shuts off at the stop lights” but otherwise just goes off feel and knowledge.
“You have to have the right people behind the scenes giving you the right information to help you do that,” Wallace said. “They just tell me to lift, and I lift, and they tell me to go, and I go. I‘m just following what they’re doing, so it’s more of a testament to my engineers.”
Jared C. Tilton | Getty Images
At Iowa, Fugle said Byron was three laps short on fuel with 30 laps remaining. Over the next 22 laps, Byron ran at 60 percent throttle or less — putting him within the window to reach the finish with eight laps left.
“You kind of learn how much throttle percentage it really takes to make a lap time,” Byron said.
Briscoe said he became astute at toggling the engine — a popular fuel-saving trick — by competing against former teammate Noah Gragson on who could achieve the longest shutoff time during races.
“I guess I’m really good at shutting the thing off and rolling for a long time,” said Briscoe, who’s been told by crew chief James Small that he is among the best at saving under yellow.
Drivers often are coached during the week by team engineers on their rates of deceleration, minimum corner speeds and proper steering, braking and throttle techniques for efficient laps that maintain fuel conservation without sacrificing speed.
In some cases, teams have been known to put signs inside the cockpit to depict throttle usage for conserving fuel. But an overabundance of information also can be overwhelming.
“It really becomes how much can I absorb as a driver,” Gabehart said. “So a lot of it is not just the data, but data management. And where the drivers are concerned, that’s more true now than ever because they just have so much of it.
“We’re probably evolving to a world where I don’t need the driver to know why I’m telling them to do what I’m telling them to do. I just need them to do it. Their job is to execute it. In a lot of ways, that’s where driving a car is evolving to and certainly where fuel mileage is concerned. There’s a lot of data and studying and preparation that needs to go into it, but with the live data that we have, you can just coach them through it.”
How are drivers able to maintain or increase their lead while saving fuel?
This was the mystery behind the wins by Briscoe at Pocono and Byron at Iowa.
One explanation is that the focus on saving fuel prevents over-driving the corner. By coasting on the straightaways (even going several mph slower at Pocono), a driver can give up maximum speed but recover it in the average time over the course of the lap by carrying more speed through the corner.
“My dad’s always told me, ‘If you just slow down a little bit, you probably go faster,’ and it was the truth at Pocono,” said Briscoe, who has developed a more feathery touch to his throttle since joining JGR this year. “Where my car was better compared to Denny, I could maximize the straightaway so long he would never get back to me on corner entry to be able to do something with how early I was lifting.”
Pocono and Iowa are also tracks with narrower racing lines, putting the car in the lead at an aerodynamic advantage.
“The closer you get to the car in front, the aero wake just becomes so terribly difficult to deal with for the car in the rear,” Gabehart said. “The car in the rear wears its tires out and stalls out. So it puts that premium on putting the car out front at all costs because the reality is that some tracks, once you’ve got that clean air, you can start saving fuel more and that car behind you just can’t pass you.”
What is ‘the switch?’
It’s a term commonly used by teams in referring to an emergency fuel reserve that can be activated with the driver flipping a switch if the engine begins to stumble.
NASCAR allows two lift pumps to deliver fuel from the bladder into a location where it’s sucked into the engine. When delivery stops from the primary pump, the second pump can be deployed to transfer enough fuel for about a lap at most tracks. Before last year, teams were permitted to run the secondary pump below the primary to scoop more fuel, but staggering the heights was outlawed last year to reduce the emergency supply (which once was two laps on a big track).
ThorSport Racing is no stranger to success when it comes to competing for championships in the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series. The longest tenured team in the Truck Series garage holds six championships, the most of any organization in series history.
The Ohio-based team is also the only organization to win multiple consecutive series titles, with Matt Crafton earning back-to-back championships from 2013-14 and again taking top honor in 2019, Ben Rhodes adding two more titles (2021 and 2023) and Ty Majeski claiming the 2024 crown.
Enter Jake Garcia, a 20-year-old from Monroe, Georgia, in his second year of competing under the blue oval banner for ThorSport Racing. Garcia is making his first appearance in the Truck Series Playoffs in his young career.
Surrounded by championship banners from his three teammates, there is no question that the No. 13 driver knows all too well that there’s certainly a championship pedigree at ThorSport.
“You know, we’ve got a really strong team,” Garcia said during Truck Series Playoffs media day. “I’m the only full-time driver that hasn’t won a championship, so I think there’s some pressure that comes along with that, too. Entering the playoffs to get a championship, that way you’re not maybe the odd man out anymore.
“I think that I can rely on my teammates, you know, Matt Crafton and Ben Rhodes and Ty as well. You know, for some advice on entering this deal, because they’ve been in this situation before, and I haven’t, so I’ll use a little bit of their help. And, you know, some of my guys have been on a championship team as well. So I think that all plays into our advantage entering these playoffs.”
Taking advice from those who have been in this format before is essential when every race matters in the quest for the title, even better when the advice comes from a championship-winning teammate.
Majeski has made the postseason for three consecutive seasons and is the only other ThorSport driver accompanying Garcia in the seven-race stretch, looking to defend his victory from a season ago.
“I think the biggest thing is just not letting the moment get too big, right?” Majeski said when asked about advice he’d give his teammate. “There’s a reason that the No. 13 group and Jake made the playoffs, and don’t lose sight of how you got to this point. As soon as you kind of let the stage get too big and overthink it, that’s when you make mistakes, and that’s really the only thing that can really disrupt your playoff run, is making a mistake, especially in that first round.”
The other driver Garcia plans to lean on throughout his first experience in the playoffs is longtime series veteran Crafton, who announced that he would step away from full-time competition in the series at the conclusion of the 2025 season.
Such advice brings plenty of value as the young Garcia tries to carve his own playoff path, beginning with Saturday’s postseason opener at Darlington Raceway (Noon ET, FS1, NASCAR Racing Network Radio, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio).
“It’s been great to have Matt as a teammate for these past two seasons at ThorSport,” Garcia said. “His dad, Danny, worked on my quarter midget stuff when I ran quarter midgets when I was a little kid. So I’ve known Danny and Matt forever. Matt used to come to some of the races and hang out with us, so I’ve known him forever, and it’s been really cool to be able to grow up and become his teammate in the Truck Series and be able to work with him.
“He brings a ton of experience every week. If I ever need anything, I can ask him a question, and he usually has an answer for me, because he’s been to that track so many times. So you know, I’m really thankful to have him as a teammate, and I’m looking forward to finishing out the rest of the year with him.”
