Posted on by Reid Spencer

LONG POND, Pa. — Given the strong buzz about the higher-downforce, restrictor-plate competition package used for the Monster Energy NASCAR All-Star Race in May, it was almost a foregone conclusion that the configuration would get additional test time — sooner rather than later.

That happened Tuesday and Wednesday at Michigan International Speedway in a Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series manufacturers’ wheel-force test at the 2-mile track. David Ragan drove a Ford, Justin Allgaier a Chevrolet and Drew Herring a Toyota.

RELATED: NASCAR taking ‘deep dive’ with learnings from All-Star rules package

“They’ve got a new tire for Michigan, so the manufacturers elected to use one of our wheel-force tests to go up, and we ran some laps with the current aero package, and we ran some laps with the new All-Star package,” Ragan said. “I felt like, with just three cars there, it’s really hard to get a really good read on what kind of draft you would have, what kind of ability you would have to pass cars.

“But I felt like it was similar to Charlotte. They cars drove really good. You could stay in the throttle. You felt like you were definitely going slower, but it did create a little bit of a draft, and it bunched everybody up. We only had three cars there, but we did run some together, and it was pretty easy to stay caught up with the person in front of you, and you could feel a pretty good draft going down the straightaway, and you could make up three or four car-lengths pretty easy.”

Steve O’Donnell, NASCAR executive vice president and chief racing development officer, said in an interview on FS1 Saturday morning that the package could be used in as many as three Cup points races this year to evaluate its possible viability for certain tracks in 2019.

“For us, it’s making sure everybody has had enough time to look at it, has enough time to evaluate it,” O’Donnell said. “If you look back at it, we really only ran it last year at Indy (Xfinity) and the All-Star Race, and this weekend is the first-time in Xfinity at Pocono.

“Taking all that data and evaluating if this is right direction to go is the first step.”

Ragan believes certain minor changes to the All-Star package could facilitate the ability to pass.

“I feel like they’ve got to tweak the package to allow a car that does get a run the ability to get out of line and continue with that run,” Ragan said. “Sometimes, at the All-Star race, a car in front of us would lift, and we would get a run, and you would pull out to pass, and you would still get stalled out.

“I think there are probably some different variations of spoiler height, maybe the front ducts or maybe a gear to tweak. The thought process behind the package would be ideal at some race tracks, but I don’t think it would work at every race track—at some race tracks, we don’t need anything different from what we have now.”

Posted on by Reid Spencer

LONG POND, Pa. — In 13 years with Richard Childress racing, Kevin Harvick won six poles.

When he moved to Stewart-Haas Racing in 2014, Harvick won eight poles in his first season with the team.

With SHR, Harvick is a threat to win the top starting spot wherever he races. He has five front-row starts this year, including two poles, and has qualified in the top 10 in all but two of 14 races. In those two events, Harvick never made a qualifying run — at Bristol after a wreck in practice forced him to a backup car, and at Charlotte when his No. 4 Ford failed to clear pre-qualifying inspection.

RELATED: Pocono starting lineup

To Harvick, the dramatic shift in results from time trials is primarily about priorities, both on his part and on the part of his organization.

“It is really just preparation,” Harvick said Friday after qualifying second for Sunday’s Pocono 400 (2 p.m. ET Sunday on FS1, MRN and SiriusXM NASCAR Radio). “For me, in my previous life, it was about not worrying about qualifying and just get what you can get and go from there. The emphasis was different when I came to SHR, and the difference was that there was a lot of preparation and time spent in the differences of the setups and things you needed to do.

“The expectations were much different. When the expectations are different, it makes you think about things differently. There are two different processes. For me, I feel like I can do what I need to do on the race track for the race, but I prepare more for qualifying on a weekend more than I do a race, if that tells you the emphasis they put on it.”

Posted on by Staff Report

Kyle Busch led Saturday’s Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series final practice leading up to Sunday’s Pocono 400 (2 p.m. ET, FS1, MRN, SiriusXM NASCAR radio).

Busch, the series points leader, pushed his No. 18 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota to a top speed of 174.588 mph at the 2.5-mile Pocono Raceway. He also led the opening Pocono practice session Friday. Coming off a victory in the Coca-Cola 600 at Charlotte, Busch will start fifth on Sunday.

RELATED: Practice results | Starting lineup

Pole-sitter and defending race winner Ryan Blaney posted the seventh-fastest time in Saturday’s session, reaching 173.360 mph in the No. 12 Team Penske Ford at the “Tricky Triangle.”

Kevin Harvick, who shares the front row with Blaney in the Pocono 400, was second-fastest Saturday at 174.115 mph in the No. 4 Stewart-Haas Racing Ford.

Martin Truex Jr. was third on the practice leaderboard at 173.953 mph, followed by Alex Bowman (173.658 mph) and Aric Almirola (173.568 mph).

Ricky Stenhouse Jr. spun his No. 17 Ford about 17 minutes into the practice session but avoided the wall.

Posted on by Reid Spencer

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.

Posted on by Reid Spencer

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).

Posted on by Reid Spencer

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.”

Posted on by Staff Report

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.

Posted on by NASCAR.com

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.

Posted on by RJ Kraft

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.

Darrell Wallace Jr., Richard Petty and Ryan Blaney at Pocono.
Bubba Wallace and Ryan Blaney took photos with Richard Petty before the June 11, 2017 race at Pocono. (Jerry Markland | Getty Images)

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.”