Posted on by Staff Report

Kurt Busch’s No. 41 Stewart-Haas Racing Ford and Paul Menard’s No. 21 Wood Brothers Racing Ford failed Sunday morning’s pre-race inspection at Watkins Glen International. Their speeds from Saturday’s Busch Pole Qualifying have been disallowed.

Busch and Menard will start at the rear of the 37-car field for Sunday’s Go Bowling at The Glen (3 p.m. ET, NBC, MRN, SiriusXM). NASCAR officials said that Busch’s car failed at the handheld template station while Menard’s car failed the mechanical measurements.

RELATED: Official starting lineup

Busch was originally slated to start 21st while Menard was 14th on the provisional lineup. Busch will now start 36th ahead of Menard in 37th on the basis of their rank in the points standings.

Denny Hamlin won the provisional pole in Saturday qualifying and will share the front row with Joe Gibbs Racing teammate Kyle Busch, last week’s winner at Pocono Raceway. Both of their cars passed inspection and retained their positions.

MORE: Hamlin leads JGR qualifying sweep

The post-qualifying inspection process is being used for the third time in Monster Energy Series competition. Four cars had their qualifying speeds thrown out at Chicagoland Speedway in June, and 13 were demoted to the rear of the field last weekend at Pocono.

The procedures were adjusted this weekend at Watkins Glen, with officials impounding the field Saturday evening and shifting inspection to race-day morning.

Posted on by Reid Spencer

WATKINS GLEN, N.Y. – Denny Hamlin blitzed the Watkins Glen road course with the fastest lap of the day on Saturday to win the pole position for Sunday’s Go Bowling at the Glen (3 p.m. ET on NBC, MRN and SiriusXM NASCAR Radio).

Hamlin covered the 2.45-mile distance in 70.260 seconds (125.534 mph), edging Joe Gibbs Racing teammate Kyle Busch (125.427 mph) by .060 seconds. First-round leader Chase Elliott was third fastest in the final session at 125.421 mph, just .003 seconds slower than Busch.

RELATED: Official starting lineup

“I had a great day today, and hopefully we can cap it off tomorrow,” said Hamlin, who earned his first Busch Pole Award of the season, his first at Watkins Glen and the 27th of his career.

The results from the top qualifiers were confirmed Sunday morning after the leading cars passed pre-race inspection. Only two cars had their qualifying speeds thrown out — the No. 41 Stewart-Haas Racing Ford of Kurt Busch, who will start 36th instead of 21st; and the No. 21 Wood Brothers Racing Ford of Paul Menard, who will start last in the 37-car field instead of 14th.

MORE: Inspection issues demote Kurt Busch, Menard

Hamlin found NASCAR’s enhanced schedule helpful—with two practice sessions and qualifying on the same day.

“I typically haven’t qualified well here,” Hamlin said. “A lot of it is because we (traditionally) qualify on a different day than we practice. I think today, being able to use those repetitions and still be hot from practice and have things fresh in your mind—I just got a little faster each round, so that helped.”

Busch’s No. 18 Toyota was the consensus favorite in the garage, and Hamlin was surprised to be able to beat his teammate.

“He’s usually pretty good at this stuff,” Hamlin acknowledged. “But once the 9 (Elliott) and the 18 had gone, and I went behind them, and he (crew chief Mike Wheeler) said we were P1, I felt that we had a good shot at. 

“But it’s amazing to me how well Kyle hits his marks and doesn’t make mistakes, especially on a one-lap qualifying, get-it-done moment.”

PHOTOS: See every car in Sunday’s field

Elliott was trending for the pole until the final turn.

“I felt like I had a good lap going, and then I got a little loose out of (Turn) 11 and thought I could stay in it,” Elliott said. “And then I thought I didn’t have any more room — I don’t know how close it was (to the wall), but it must have been pretty close.

“That sucks. I just hate to be that close.”

A number of big names fell by the wayside in the first of the two rounds, notably six-time 2018 winner Kevin Harvick, who posted the 16th fastest speed. Martin Truex Jr., who finished fourth in the first round, bumped out seven-time champion Jimmie Johnson in the final minute.

Johnson was just .008 second slower than Kasey Kahne, who wound up with the 12th and last transfer position in Round 1.

“You hate to be that close and not advance to the second round,” said Johnson, who expects to race well on Sunday. “But the 9 car (Elliott) has great speed.”

Brad Keselowski, a perennial contender at the WGI road course, qualified 18th, and Clint Bowyer posted the 19th fastest speed.

Posted on by Staff Report

NASCAR Hall of Famer Bill Elliott is set to return for a one-off NASCAR national series start with GMS Racing’s No. 23 Chevrolet Xfinity Series entry Aug. 25 at Road America (3 p.m. ET on NBCSN, MRN, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio).

The 1988 premier series champion last made a national series start in 2012. The 62-year-old has 45 wins in NASCAR on his resume, including one in the Xfinity Series. Despite his experience, because this will be his first start at the Wisconsin road course, the Dawsonville, Georgia, native will be required to attend the rookie meeting at Road America, according to a NASCAR spokesperson.

“When this opportunity came up from Mike (Beam, president of GMS Racing), I had to jump on it,” Elliott said in a team release. “Chase (Elliott’s son) has ran a handful of races for the team so I figured I would give it a shot at Road America. Beam and I have worked together in the past so it will be exciting to get behind the wheel and bring back some old memories.”

RELATED: Bill Elliott through the years | Elliott’s career stats

Beam served as crew chief for Elliott in 1990 and again from 1993-1994, part of the 1995 season and the 1996-97 seasons. Together, they teamed up for two wins (Dover-1990 and Darlington-1994).

“We are thrilled to welcome Bill to the GMS Racing family,” Beam said in a team release. “Bill has many years in NASCAR and it’s going to be great to watch him come back, especially in GMS equipment. Bill and I worked together back in the day and had a lot of success so hopefully we can pick up where we left off and create some more great memories.”

Elliott’s son, Chase, currently stars in the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series driving full time for Hendrick Motorsports in the organization’s No. 9 Chevrolet.

“Yeah, I definitely want to go,” Chase said after his qualifying effort at Watkins Glen. “It’s going to be exciting.  I know he’s excited about it. He just needs to go have fun and I think he will. He hasn’t forgotten how to drive. So, I think that he will have fun with it and that is the main thing — go and enjoy it and have a chance to get racing again.”

Posted on by Reid Spencer

WATKINS GLEN, N.Y. – Joey Logano reaffirmed his mastery of the road course at Watkins Glen International, but it took a three-wide restart late in Saturday’s Zippo 200 for the driver of the No. 22 Team Penske Ford to get the job done.

After winning his fourth straight NASCAR Xfinity Series pole at the 2.45-mile track, Logano took teammate Brad Keselowski and Joe Gibbs Racing driver Ryan Preece three-wide into Turn 1 after a restart on lap 75 of 82.

RELATED: Results | Standings | Stage 1 results | Stage 2 results

Logano’s move forced Keselowski wide and Logano cleared his teammate before the entry to Turn 2. But Keselowski wasn’t finished. He hounded Logano relentlessly until spinning in Turn 1 with two laps left.

That gave Logano a comfortable margin, and he cruised to the finish line 3.362 seconds ahead of charging AJ Allmendinger, as Keselowski fell to 10th at the end. Allmendinger passed third-place finisher Justin Allgaier in the final corner to secure the runner-up spot.

“That was all I had,” said Logano, who came to the green for the final restart with six-lap fresher tires than Keselowski. “He was definitely faster. I thought the tires would have been enough to be faster than him.

RELATED: Logano celebrates 50th national series win 

“I had a good restart and got in front of him, and he dogged me. These Xfinity cars draft quite a bit down these straightaways, and it’s hard to pull away. It felt good to race each other really hard, so it’s cool to see Penske cars doing that.”

The victory was Logano’s third in four races at WGI, his second in four starts this season and the 30th of his career, breaking a tie with Matt Kenseth for seventh on the all-time list.

Preece came home fourth, his fifth top 10 and fourth top five in six 2018 starts. Aric Almirola completed the top five.

RELATED: Cars race in the rain

Logano won the race’s first stage before a rainstorm forced a change to rain tires. Allmendinger showed his road racing superiority by pulling away to win the second stage before the sun came out and dried the track.

Allmendinger drew a one-lap penalty for sliding too far and pitting outside his stall during a fuel-only green-flag stop on Lap 52, but he fought back to finish second after two late cautions bunched the field.

“Just a dumb mistake on my part,” Allmendinger said. “I was coming in for fuel there, and it was still a little bit damp on pit road… I rolled in and slid a little more than I expected and got the nose over the line, and they’d already started to refuel.

“I just knew that, once we got the yellow, I was going to have to start roughing people up an driving up through there as hard as I could.”

Christopher Bell fell short in his attempt to match Sam Ard’s series record of four straight victories. Bell recovered from a pass-through penalty (for crewmen over the wall too soon on a Lap 16 stop) and finished ninth.

But Bell holds the series lead by 22 points over Cole Custer, who finished sixth on Saturday. Daniel Hemric (16th) is third, 23 points back, and fourth-place Elliott Sadler trials by 26 points.

 

Posted on by Staff Report

NASCAR officials have deployed rain tires during Saturday’s Xfinity Series race at Watkins Glen International.

A track-drenching shower forced teams to pit road during the third caution of the 82-lap Zippo 200, allowing them to install treaded, wet-weather tires for the completion of the race. The cars are also equipped with windshield wipers and a flashing rear brake light for racing in the rain, which only occurs on NASCAR’s road courses.

Goodyear officials allotted three sets of rain tires — marked with white letters instead of the traditional yellow — for the race. After mandating a pit stop for wet-weather tires and activation of wipers and brake lights, NASCAR officials will leave tire choice up to the teams’ discretion for the remainder of the event.

Saturday’s race marked the fifth time that rain tires have been used in an Xfinity Series race. The others: Montreal (2008, ’09), Road America (2014) and Mid-Ohio (2016).

Posted on by Reid Spencer

WATKINS GLEN, N.Y. – Daniel Suarez is a quick study.

With a racing background that includes very little road course experience, Suarez nevertheless finished third last year at Watkins Glen, his only top-five result in his rookie season in the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series.

He matched that third-place run earlier this year at Dover and improved his career best by one position last Sunday at Pocono Raceway. In Sunday’s Go Bowling at the Glen (3 p.m. ET on NBC, MRN and SiriusXM NASCAR Radio), Suarez will make his second start at the 2.45-mile road course.

RELATED: Playoff outsiders with high hopes at The Glen

That he has his sights set on another top-five finish at the high-speed road course is emblematic of the 26-year-old Mexican driver’s seamless adaptation to a racing discipline that involves right turns as well as left.

“I didn’t have a lot of road course experience or roval experience when I was young, just go-karts, and that’s pretty much all I did on a road course,” Suarez said on Saturday morning at Watkins Glen.

“After that, I jumped pretty much straight to the stock car stuff, which became more ovals than road course racing.”

That doesn’t mean, however, that the karting experience wasn’t useful.

“I feel like go-karts is like the base of everything,” Suarez said. “It really helps a lot, but it’s very different as well because… just the weight and the way that it drives.

“In the go-kart, you can do everything extremely fast, and in this car, you have to wait longer, but the basics are the same. I feel that has been helpful to be running well in road-course racing.”

Posted on by Reid Spencer

WATKINS GLEN, N.Y. — Reigning Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series champion Martin Truex Jr. has demonstrated the ability to win on a wide variety of venues.

Clearly, his superiority on 1.5-mile intermediate tracks can rightly be considered the primary strength of the No. 78 Furniture Row Racing team. But Truex also is adept at the road courses, as his recent record indicates.

RELATED: Full schedule for Watkins Glen

Truex is the defending race winner at Watkins Glen International. He also won at Sonoma in June. And if Truex is first to the finish line in Sunday’s Go Bowling at the Glen (3 p.m. ET on NBC, MRN and SiriusXM NASCAR Radio), he’ll be the first driver since Tony Stewart in 2004-2005 to win three straight road course events in the Cup series.

Does that qualify Truex as an elite road course driver? He’ll let others make that judgment.

MORE: Road course kings in NASCAR 

“I’ve been fortunate enough to be with a great team the past few years and to be able to take advantage of that,” Truex said. “They’ve given me great cars, and I feel like I’ve always been good at road courses. You look back in Xfinity Series days in Mexico (where he won in his only start in 2005), and things like that.

“I feel like we’ve always been strong on road courses, but now I feel like I have the team that gives me the capability of winning. So we’ve been winning. I don’t know how my name fits into that conversation. I guess you’d have to ask other people that.”

RELATED: Truex Jr.’s stats at Watkins Glen | And Sonoma

Truex acknowledges that winning three straight would be an important accomplishment.

“It means a lot to me, personally,” he said. “I think everyone in the garage … you want to be known in the garage as a driver that can win anywhere.

“Certainly, road courses are a unique set of circumstances. I think it’s an extra special feeling to be able to win at tracks that are completely different — like this.”

Posted on by Staff Report

NASCAR announced before the season that it will standardize at-track team rosters across all three national series in 2018, providing a structure for the number of personnel working on each vehicle during the course of a race weekend.

Official team rosters for Sunday’s Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series race at Watkins Glen (3 p.m. ET on NBCSN/NBC Sports App, MRN, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio) have been released. Click the print icon above, or the link below.

ROSTERS: Watkins Glen

RELATED: Overview of 2018 rules updates

Posted on by Staff Report

Chase Elliott powered to the fastest lap in final Monster Energy Series practice Saturday afternoon at Watkins Glen International.

Elliott pushed the Hendrick Motorsports No. 9 Chevrolet to a best lap of 124.520 mph late in the 75-minute session. That lap bumped Denny Hamlin, a Watkins Glen winner in 2016, out of the top spot by .088 seconds. Hamlin settled for the second-fastest speed — 124.365 mph — in the Joe Gibbs Racing No. 11 Toyota.

RELATED: Final practice results | 10-lap averages | Weekend schedule

Aric Almirola posted the third-fastest speed at 123.979 mph in the Stewart-Haas Racing No. 10 Ford. Rookie William Byron and Michael McDowell completed the top five in the final tune-up session before qualifying for Sunday’s Go Bowling at The Glen (3 p.m. ET, NBC, MRN, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio).

Martin Truex Jr., winner of the last two Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series road-course events, registered the 10th-fastest lap in the Furniture Row Racing No. 78 Toyota. Erik Jones, the fastest driver in opening practice, wound up 22nd on the speed chart in the Joe Gibbs Racing No. 20 Toyota.

Busch Pole Qualifying to set the provisional starting lineup is scheduled for 6:35 p.m. ET (NBCSN).

Erik Jones, JGR show early speed in first practice

Erik Jones topped the leaderboard in opening Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series practice Saturday morning at Watkins Glen International, leading a 1-2 sweep by Joe Gibbs Racing.

Jones lapped the 2.45-mile road course with a best speed of 125.165 mph in JGR’s No. 20 Toyota. That lap edged teammate Kyle Busch, a two-time winner of Sunday’s Go Bowling at The Glen (3 p.m. ET, NBC, MRN, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio). Busch clocked a 124.255-mph lap in the No. 18 Toyota as Joe Gibbs Racing placed all four of its cars among the top seven in practice.

RELATED: Practice 1 results | Weekend schedule

Joey Logano, the 2015 Watkins Glen winner, checked in with the third-fastest lap (123.654 mph) in the Team Penske No. 22 Ford, just ahead of fourth-fastest Clint Bowyer. Martin Truex Jr., aiming for his third straight road course win, completed the top five on the speed chart in the Furniture Row Racing No. 78 Toyota.

The 75-minute session went without major incident. The most signicant issue was Ryan Newman’s scrape against the guardrail in the esses, leaving his Richard Childress Racing No. 31 Chevrolet smoking on its way back to the garage. Denny Hamlin also slightly brushed the left side of his Joe Gibbs Racing No. 11 Toyota against the barrier in the final turn.

Posted on by Reid Spencer

WATKINS GLEN, N.Y. — Joey Logano can see what Kevin Harvick is doing.

He just can’t duplicate it, and that’s a major source of frustration as Logano and Team Penske try to match the speed of the six-time Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series winner this year.

“We have all the data these days,” Logano said. “We have all the SMT stuff (comparative SportsMEDIA Technology data) to look over. ‘Oh, he’s doing this different as a driver. He’s doing that different.’ His car is allowing him to do that, where I try to do that, and I can’t. My car is not allowing me to do that.

“So it’s a little frustrating sometimes, because you can see it and you’re like, ‘Oh, I just have to do that,’ but you can’t do it. So you know what you’ve got to get to. I guess it gives you a good goal and a good baseline to try to get off of. He’s driving a Ford as well, so we know it’s possible. We just have to get to that point.”

Logano has a victory at Talladega this season and an accompanying berth in the Playoffs, but the No. 22 Ford team hasn’t been able to run with NASCAR’s triumvirate of Harvick, Kyle Busch and Martin Truex Jr., who collectively have won 16 of the 21 events so far this season.

“We all talk about the big three and how fast they are,” Logano said. “Well, we’re not going to catch them if we don’t try something different. A majority of the time, when you try something, it doesn’t work, but maybe one out of 10 things you try does work, and you’re able to make some gains.

“I think just the mentality and the thought process has changed a little bit on how can we get faster for when we get to the Playoffs, because the speed that we have right now is not enough to win the championship. We have to get better, no doubt.

“The only way I know how to get better is you have to try new things. You have to be willing to change as a driver, as a team with the setups, the way we build cars and the thought process. Things have to change to be able to keep up with the top three cars right now that we constantly talk about, and we constantly see winning.”