See where your favorite driver will pit in Sunday’s Pocono 400 at Pocono Raceway (2 p.m. ET on FS1, MRN, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio).
LONG POND, Pa. – Just as he had done in winning his first Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series race last June, Ryan Blaney kept Kevin Harvick behind him at Pocono Raceway when it mattered most.
Blaney sped around the 2.5-mile triangular track in 50.877 seconds (176.897 mph) in Friday’s knockout qualifying session to earn the top starting spot for Sunday’s Pocono 400 (2 p.m. ET Sunday on FS1, MRN and SiriusXM NASCAR Radio).
RELATED: Qualifying results | Full Pocono schedule
In winning his first Busch Pole Award at the Tricky Triangle, his second of the season and the fourth of his career, Blaney beat Harvick (176.807 mph) by .026 seconds. Harvick, a five-time winner in the series this year, had the top speed in each of the previous two rounds.
But Pocono is becoming a special track for Blaney, who got his first taste of competition in a quarter midget on the dirt track outside Turn 3.
“I’ve always enjoyed this place,” Blaney said. “I enjoyed coming here to watch my dad (Dave Blaney) race. I made my first-ever start in a race car at the dirt track out there. So it’s been special to me.
“Me and Jeb Burton and Brandon McReynolds grew up racing scooters. There used to be a small Pocono with MRO (Motor Racing Outreach) in the infield over there. We used to race scooters around that. I have a lot of memories about this place.”
Blaney and his No. 12 team also have developed a knack for negotiating the track with three distinctly different turns.
“I feel like we have a pretty good line of communication with where we need to be from practice to qualifying to the race. I feel very comfortable, and the team feels very confident, and that’s always a good combination.”
Harvick had a pole-winning lap going until he slipped in Turn 3.
“I thought we did a really good job of trying to pick a pace and trying not to be a hero on every lap, and we were able to pick up a 10th (of a second) in each round,” Harvick said. “We got a little loose there in (Turn) 3, and I didn’t want to tug on the wheel any more just because of the fact I didn’t want it to get any looser.
“So I just let it slide to the center and had to wait and gave up a good solid 10th there. It was still a great lap for our Busch Beer Ford, and starting up front is a big deal here.”
Jamie McMurray qualified third in the No. 1 Chevrolet, followed by Toyota driver Martin Truex Jr. Kyle Busch, who picked up his fourth victory of the season in last Sunday’s Coca-Cola 600 at Charlotte, will roll off fifth beside brother Kurt Busch, who qualified sixth.
Joey Logano, Ryan Newman, Clint Bowyer, Denny Hamlin, Chase Elliott and Daytona 500 winner Austin Dillon completed the top 12.
You might think Alex Bowman would chafe under the weight of the pressure that accompanies stepping into the No. 88 Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet vacated by Dale Earnhardt Jr. after last season.
You’d be wrong.
What motivates Bowman to a greater degree is the history of Hendrick Motorsports, where winning races and titles has become the expectation over the past three decades.
RELATED: Bowman: Hendrick teammates could help each other out more
“I think, honestly, there’s not a lot of pressure in the fact that it’s Dale’s old car, it’s the No. 88 car,” Bowman said. “The pressure for me comes from the fact that it’s a Hendrick Motorsports car. Hendrick Motorsports is known for winning races and winning championships, and that’s what I’m expected to do.
“I think most of my pressure comes from myself and the fact that I just want to win races and prove that I can do it. For me, there are a lot of No. 88 fans, obviously, and my job is to give them something to cheer for. I don’t feel like we’ve done a very good job of that this year. We’ve had hints of brilliance and hints of being able to run up front, but we haven’t consistently given them something to really cheer for every weekend.
“We know we need to get better, and I think that will come with wins, but there’s not a lot of pressure from the Dale side of things. It’s just pressure because I want to win.”
Thirteen races into the season, Hendrick is still looking for its first win, but the speed of the Hendrick cars has improved recently. Bowman comes to Sunday’s Pocono 400 (at 2 p.m. ET on FS1, MRN and SiriusXM NASCAR Radio) fresh from his fourth top 10 of the season (ninth in the Coca-Cola 600 at Charlotte).
LONG POND, Pa. — Martin Truex Jr. is just glad he’s not in the same boat — literally.
That’s not to say a trip to his New Jersey home — and a visit to Atlantic City and the clam boat he worked on during his youth — didn’t produce some pangs of nostalgia for the reigning Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series champion.
But Truex has come light years since his early days harvesting clams for his family business.
“It was very nostalgic, and that particular boat is very special to my dad, because it was his actual first boat he ever built,” Truex said after Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series practice at Pocono Raceway on Friday. “It’s just a cool story, his first boat, I got to work on it. It’s still in service, still working each and every day.
“But just to go in there and to look at it and just feel the memories of what it was like, how much time I spent on there, how much I didn’t like it, and then just so many things haven’t changed in that business. That boat is the same. It looks identical. There’s so many things in it that are still the same, and it just reminded me of how fast time really goes by, because it felt like just yesterday I was out there working on that thing. It’s crazy.”
Truex left New Jersey with some new memories, too. In Trenton, the state capital, Gov. Phil Murphy declared May 31 Martin Truex Jr. day. And on Friday, Truex was recognized as national driver of the year by the Eastern Motorsports Press Association.
MORE: Martin Truex Jr. Day proclaimed in New Jersey
“(Thursday) was a big day,” Truex said. “It was fun to go home, to go to the state capital and meet the governor and get the proclamation that yesterday was MTJ Day in New Jersey. That’s just crazy to think about. It’s crazy to think about things like that, where we’ve come to in such a short amount of time.
“It feels like just yesterday I was living up there working, building race cars and racing for fun and thinking, yeah, ‘Maybe someday somebody will hire me to drive for them.’ And here we are not that much further down the road with a championship and all the things that have come along with it.”
NASCAR and Rev Racing have announced two additional drivers set to join Rev Racing’s youth driver lineup as part of the NASCAR Drive for Diversity Driver Development Program.
Kaylee Bryson, 17, and Hayden Swank, 16, will compete with previously announced drivers Isabella Robusto and Nick Sanchez at the Bojangles’ Summer Shootout at Charlotte Motor Speedway, beginning June 11.
The youth program targets drivers ages 12 to 17 for INEX Legend Car competition and serves as an entry point to the NASCAR Drive for Diversity Driver Development Program. Selected youth drivers are year-long members of the Drive for Diversity team roster.
After several months of evaluation, youth drivers are selected based on overall driving performance, past success on the track and recommendations from members of the racing community.
“As it remains a goal of ours to focus on the growth and development of both our academy-style program and youth participants, we want to connect with these drivers as early as possible,” said Max Siegel, owner of Rev Racing. “The sooner we can start providing the proper guidance to these individuals, the more prepared they are to grow into different series.”
Swank, a North Carolina native who currently resides in Woodstock, Georgia, began his quarter-midget racing career at age 7. Swank promptly won his first 10 races and spent four years racing quarter midgets before graduating to Bandoleros, winning six of his first seven races.
In 2014, Swank won the Bandit class at the Bandolero National Championship. He finished second in Thursday Thunder Outlaw points standings in 2015, earning him the David Ragan Award for the 2015 season.
Bryson is an accomplished race car driver from Muskogee, Oklahoma. She started racing winged karts in 2010 when she was 8 years old. In her first two-and-a-half years in winged karts, she accumulated 50 total wins.
In June 2012, Bryson made the transition to Restrictor Micro-Sprint Cars and won 16 races between 2013 and 2015. The following year, she moved up to A-Class and Outlaw Micro-Sprint Cars and claimed multiple top-three, top-five, and top-10 finishes. She claimed the 2016 Port City Raceway A-Class Rookie of the Year and Points Championship honors.
Robusto, 13, will join Rev Racing for her second season. Robusto earned one podium finish, two top-fives and eight top-10s in the 2017 Bojangles’ Summer Shootout. She took first place in Young Lions U.S. Legend Cars/INEX division at the sixth-annual Battle at the Big Top (BATBT) at Texas Motor Speedway in April.
Sanchez, 16, is currently running full time in the NASCAR Whelen All-American Series with Rev Racing. He participated in the Youth Driver Development Program in 2017, earning five podium finishes, six top-fives and one win, garnering a fifth-place finish in the 2017 championship point standings.
“This program cultivates growth and seizes the opportunity for development in drivers at the earliest age possible,” said Jusan M. Hamilton, NASCAR senior manager of racing operations and event management. “Drivers who are successful and show promise are considered to compete for a chance at the next level of the program in the Late Model Series.”
The first practice session for the 2018 Bojangles’ Summer Shootout is June 5.
Name: Leigh Ann
Current City: Sparks, Nevada
Member since: 2012
Getting To Know Leigh Ann:
Why did you join the Official NASCAR Fan Council?
“I received an invitation and gladly accepted. I had heard of the council listening to SiriusXM NASCAR Radio and one day in my email I got an invitation.”
How did you first become interested in NASCAR?
“My son’s teacher was a Jeff Gordon fan and his enthusiasm spilled over into our family, so began watching and fell in love with the sport in 1997.”
What makes NASCAR special for you?
“Family – It’s a great family sport. I also found that they honor the military each and every week along with supporting causes that mean so much. NASCAR always has something that keeps you tuned whether you’re at the track or at home watching.”
Do you have any favorite NASCAR memories or traditions?
“In 1999 my family and I went to our first race event in Sonoma. Wow, I can still smell the rubber for the first time. We had pit road passes and the second I set foot on it, I welled up in tears. It was a special feeling to be there. We attended every year from then on including a race in Texas. We all had different favorite drivers: Dale Sr, Jeff Gordon, Dale Jr, then Tony Stewart, Jimmie Johnson and Kyle Busch. My annual tradition is at the end of the race in Homestead, no matter who wins, I cry like a baby because it hits me like a ton of bricks that the season is over and I have to wait until February for Daytona. My husband pokes fun at me about it because it happens every year.”
If you could go to any NASCAR race/track, where would you go?
“Daytona or Talladega.”
Do you have a favorite in any of the following categories?
Driver: “Jimmie Johnson”
Track: “Homestead Miami”
Memorabilia:“Scaled cars & driver shirts”
Where is your dream car?
“50th Anniversary Chevy Camaro”
From all of us at NASCAR, we thank Leigh Ann for her continued support and forward to hearing from her in 2018.
LONG POND, Pa. – As best friends, Ryan Blaney and Bubba Wallace have an undeniably strong bond. They have similar interests and they like to have fun away from the track. On track, they have raced each other for years across several NASCAR national and touring series as the pair worked their ways up the ladder.
Their bond is so strong that a singular date stands out as a seminal moment for each.
The date was June 11, 2017. The place was Pocono Raceway, a 2.5-mile track located in the Pocono Mountains of Pennsylvania. Bubba Wallace made his first Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series start for the No. 43 Richard Petty Motorsports team – the first of four races filling in for an injured Aric Almirola and the break that would set him up for his full-time 2018 ride with the team.
Ryan Blaney was in the midst of his second full-time season driving for Wood Brothers Racing and had 67 starts to his name in NASCAR’s top series. A month earlier at Kansas, he served notice that he was knocking on the door of his first Monster Energy Series wins, starting on the pole and finishing fourth.
In Pocono, that elusive win finally came. Blaney finished strong in the race, overtaking Kyle Busch (on older tires) for the lead with 10 laps to go. He then held off a hot-pursuing Kevin Harvick for the victory. The win was the 99th for Wood Brothers, which has a technical alliance with Team Penske.
A year later, Blaney is back, but in the Penske fold this time, driving the No. 12 Ford.
RELATED: Reliving Blaney’s 2017 Pocono win | Blaney breaks down closing laps
“It is always nice to come back to a place you have had success at and won at,” Blaney said. “It gives you confidence as a driver, and as a whole team everyone’s confidence is up. Obviously, you want to repeat that. You want to win every week but when you come back to a place where you have had success that definitely is nice. Especially after the last couple of weeks. We have struggled the last couple of races after having fast cars.”
The 24-year-old Blaney has had two-straight early exits in this season’s most recent points races, Kansas and Charlotte. Despite those setbacks, Blaney still ranks third among laps led this season, behind only Kyle Busch and Kevin Harvick. He is 11th in the standings.
RELATED: Why Blaney smelled like smoke for two days
There is a certain comfort at the Pennsylvania track for Blaney, the son of the “Buckeye Bullet,” Dave Blaney. In addition to his Monster Energy Series win here in 2017, he also earned a Camping World Truck Series win in 2013 — and essentially made his racing debut at the “Tricky Triangle.”
“I came up here and watched my dad run a lot throughout the years growing up. I made my first start in a race car at the dirt track out there outside of Turn 3. That is where I made my first quarter midget start. This place has always been special. We always have a lot of family at this race. I have enjoyed it for a long time and it suits the way we like to set up the race car and the way I drive.”
While Blaney basked in a win at Pocono last year, Bubba finished 26th in his debut – his worst finish in his four-race fill-in stint as he suffered through three pit road speeding penalties.
“It was my first time working with digital dashes and I got caught speeding,” Wallace said. “I believe two or three consecutive, back-to-back, that took us out of contention early and that was a bummer. I thought we had pretty good speed in our car. So that was the biggest thing.
“I was out doing a Mack truck appearance this morning at 8:30 and we were on pit road so I was already taking down notes and practicing pit road speed in a big Mack truck. I don’t know how that’s going to translate over,” he added with a laugh. “Any practice you get is good.”
MORE: Wallace finishes second in Daytona 500 | New sponsor on board for Bubba
Wallace’s debut came after his run with Roush Fenway Racing’s Xfinity Series program was coming to a close and an uncertain future lay ahead. The 24-year-old Alabama native started 2018 strong with a runner-up finish in the Daytona 500, but has had the expected rookie growing pains ever since and now sits 23rd in the standings.
“I remember just telling myself not to do anything stupid and mess us up,” Wallace said of his 2017 series debut. “Knowing that it was kind of a tryout session because I didn’t have anything else after that.
“Now, knowing that for sure I’m racing all year long, my name is on the car this time and it’s my guys and my team. So, I’m excited about that. I think that just helps out the confidence level so much. From the start of the season, I feel like I’ve gotten better and better in the car, trying to give better feedback and trying to be a better racer and a better driver and give guys respect and earn that respect, too.”
NASCAR announced this offseason 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 Pocono (2 p.m. ET on FS1, MRN, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio) have been released. Click the print icon above, or the link below.
ROSTERS: Pocono race
RELATED: Overview of 2018 rules updates
Kyle Busch soared to the top of the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series leaderboard Friday, setting the early pace at Pocono Raceway.
Busch clocked a lap of 176.939 mph with the Joe Gibbs Racing No. 18 Toyota on the 2.5-mile Pennsylvania track. Busch, a four-time Pocono pole winner, added to the momentum from winning last weekend’s Coca-Cola 600 at Charlotte.
RELATED: Practice 1 results | Full Pocono schedule
Alex Bowman hustled the Hendrick Motorsports No. 88 Chevrolet to the second-fastest lap at 175.490 mph, a lap that was .420 seconds off Busch’s fast time. Clint Bowyer, Kyle Larson and Kevin Harvick completed the top five.
Defending race winner Ryan Blaney managed the eighth-fastest lap in the Team Penske No. 12 Ford.
The start of opening practice was delayed by approximately 10 minutes because of moisture on the track. Race officials extended the practice five minutes past its scheduled end to provide teams with more track time.
RELATED: Best photos from Pocono
Officials also moved the start of Friday’s Busch Pole Qualifying back by five minutes to 4:20 p.m. ET (FS2).
Three teams were docked 15 minutes of practice for failing pre-race inspection twice. Those penalized were:
- No. 15 Premium Motorsports Chevrolet of Ross Chastain
- No. 48 Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet of Jimmie Johnson
- No. 78 Furniture Row Racing Toyota of Martin Truex Jr.
With three wins atop the pit box at Pocono Raceway, Steve Letarte knows quite a bit about finding success at the “Tricky Triangle.”
Letarte won at the 2.5-mile track in June 2007 as the crew chief for recently named Class of 2019 NASCAR Hall of Famer Jeff Gordon. In 2014, his final year atop the pit box before becoming part of the NASCAR on NBC broadcast booth, he guided Dale Earnhardt Jr. to a sweep of both races at the Pennsylvania track.
RELATED: Full schedule for Pocono | Letarte’s stats as a crew chief
The track is the lone venue on the circuit with just three turns instead of the traditional four found at most oval tracks that make up the majority of the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series schedule. That uniqueness is a challenge for drivers and crew chiefs alike for Sunday’s Pocono 400 (2 p.m. ET on FS1, MRN, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio).
“It takes a mindset,” Letarte told NASCAR.com. “If you don’t have track position, there’s not much you can do as far driving through the field. I think you just have to like going there — driver and crew chief.
“It just comes into a very honest compromise. What you have for a car. Which corner you are good in. Which corner are you are not good in. You have to have a very methodical approach because if you think you are going to be very good in all three (corners), you’re wrong.
“Then, it’s just a ton of hours studying all the options that can come your way. The track layout, specifically the length of the lap, just opens up so many opportunities for strategy — when to pit, how to pit. It’s just a challenging race track atop the pit box and in the driver’s seat.”
Pocono has seen 12 different winners in the past 13 races there with Earnhardt’s 2014 sweep standing as the only instance of a driver winning more than once in that stretch. Letarte is one of two crew chiefs to win multiple races at Pocono in that span – Jason Ratcliff is the other, although he did it with two drivers, Joey Logano (in 2012) and Matt Kenseth (in 2015).
Kyle Busch and Kevin Harvick have combined for nine wins in the first 13 Monster Energy Series races of 2018 but have just one win combined at Pocono (Harvick has not won there). And while their early dominance has been a prominent storyline so far, the playoff picture is also coming more into focus with half the regular season complete. Letarte expects that to play into the strategic mindset, especially for teams currently on the wrong side of the 16-driver cutline.
RELATED: Standings entering Pocono | Who could be next to win at Pocono?
“You look at the second half of the playoff standings,” Letarte said. “You look at teams like Paul Menard (Wood Brothers Racing, No. 21 Ford). Someone who won at Indy on fuel mileage. Ryan Newman (Richard Childress Racing, No. 31 Chevrolet). He’s been so consistent for so many years. How much are they willing to throw away points to get that win?”
With the stages of the Pocono 400 set to be 50 laps, 50 laps and 60 laps, teams will have to pit at least once in each stage since a fuel run at Pocono is around 33-35 laps. Last year’s July race saw stage-winning machine Martin Truex Jr. bypass a stage win to pit from the lead with four laps to go in Stage 2 in order to better position himself to go after the race win by only needing one more pit stop the rest of the way. Kyle Busch went on to win the race, while Truex finished third.
RELATED: Stats to know about Pocono | See every spring race winner
“Aggressive is the new norm,” Letarte said. “Splitting a fuel run up in the middle used to be, ‘Man, you are way outside the box.’ Now, if you don’t split it, you are way outside the box.
“I expect most guys to pit as soon as they get in their window. The aggressive strategy is to perhaps run really long and try to have the freshest tires at the end and put your driver on offense. If the cautions fall right — Dale Jr. and I did it (in their August 2014 win). We pitted and took fuel and tires just so we could come back a few laps later to take fuel again. …
“A win fixes everything, so I do think there will be some creative strategies.”