Posted on by Chase Wilhelm

BROOKLYN, Mich. – Kurt Busch addressed reports Friday that he may leave Stewart-Haas Racing for Chip Ganassi Racing following the 2018 Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series season.

The report by Motorsport.com claims that Busch, 40, is expected to leave SHR and replace Jamie McMurray beginning in 2019.

RELATED: Kurt Busch’s career in photos

A spokesperson for Chip Ganassi Racing said that the organization does not publicly discuss driver contract discussions. A spokesperson from SHR said that “Stewart-Haas Racing does not comment on the status of its contracts, be it driver or partner related. We appreciate your understanding.”

Busch did not confirm nor deny the reports after Friday’s Busch Pole qualifying session at Michigan International Speedway.

“I’m talking to a bunch of teams out there,” Busch said. “There’s nothing that’s been signed and whatever has been reported is all hearsay.”

In 163 starts since 2014 with SHR, Busch has earned five wins, 34 top fives and 81 top-10 finishes, including a Daytona 500 victory in 2017. The team signed him to a one-year extension for this season late in 2017.

MORE: Michigan schedule | Lineup

McMurray is reported to be in the final year of his contract with Chip Ganassi Racing. Currently in his 16th full-time season, the 42-year-old has earned four wins with CGR since 2010, including the Daytona 500 and Brickyard 400 in 2010. His most recent victory came at Talladega Superspeedway in 2013.

Posted on by Reid Spencer

BROOKLYN, Mich. – The racing world took notice when Chase Elliott won his first Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series race at Watkins Glen International.

In particular, so did Kyle Larson.

To the driver of the No. 42 Chip Ganassi Racing Chevrolet, Elliott’s victory was emblematic of the progress Hendrick Motorsports has made in recent weeks.

Though he started the season with a clear speed advantage, Larson has seen the Hendrick organization close the gap. With the playoffs just around the corner, that gives Larson pause.

“I’d like to be making as big gains as what, say, the Hendrick guys have,” Larson acknowledged on Friday at Michigan International Speedway, venue for Sunday’s Consumers Energy 400 (2:30 p.m. ET on NBCSN, MRN and Sirius XM NASCAR Radio). “But I feel like we started off way better than they did. So, they’ve had more room to get better.

“But I feel like they’ve kind of surpassed us maybe a little bit the last few weeks. And there are obviously other teams that are better than we are, too. I feel like we’re getting our stuff better every week.”

MORE: Practice recap, results | Full schedule for Michigan, Mid-Ohio

Larson swept both Michigan races last year. This week, he’s commuting between MIS and the Knoxville (Iowa) Nationals for winged sprint cars. Larson was pleased with the speed his No. 42 Chevy showed in opening practice at Michigan on Friday.

“We just keep getting better, and there are some good tracks for us in the playoffs,” said Larson, who was eighth fastest in the session. “If we could just get some luck one of these times in the playoffs, maybe we can make a run at the championship. So we’ve just got to keep working hard and thinking about what it takes to get better and better every week.

“I feel like we have the right group of people at the race track and the race shop that we can do that. It’s all about just progressing and getting better. I feel like we are definitely doing that, but there are other teams that maybe have made a bigger step than we have.”

Posted on by Reid Spencer

BROOKLYN, Mich. — The math is as simple as 5-3-2.

The are five drivers who have qualified for the NASCAR Camping World Truck Series Playoffs by winning races — defending series champion Johnny Sauter, Brett Moffitt, Noah Gragson, Justin Haley and Ben Rhodes.

MORE: Full Michigan schedule | How to watch Saturday’s race

There are currently three playoff spots available on points, with Grant Enfinger, Stewart Friesen and two-time series champion Matt Crafton poised to claim them.

There are two races left in the NCWTS regular season. That means there are two more chances for a new winner to make the playoffs with a victory — and potentially to knock out one of the drivers planning to earn a berth on points.

Enfinger is in the most enviable position. He’s third overall in the standings, nine points ahead of Friesen and 39 ahead of Crafton. Accordingly, the driver of the No. 98 ThorSport Racing Ford isn’t planning to drive defensively in the final two regular-season races at Michigan and Bristol.

Nor is Enfinger taking anything for granted.

“I’m definitely not comfortable with our situation,” Enfinger said after opening practice for Saturday’s Corrigan Oil 200 at Michigan (1 p.m. ET on FS1, MRN and SiriusXM NASCAR Radio). “I wish we were locked in… to breeze through these next two weeks and focus on the Playoffs.

“We can’t really do that, but we’re not in a bad spot either. At the end of the day, we just need to keep doing what we’ve been doing to get us to this point, and I think we’ll be all right. Really, it’s kind of business as usual for us.”

With two races left before the Playoffs begin, Enfinger will secure a playoff spot if he stays ahead of both Friesen and Crafton in the standings — no matter what else happens.

Posted on by Reid Spencer

BROOKLYN, Mich. — With a blistering lap at 202.794 mph (35.504 seconds) on Friday, Denny Hamlin won his second straight pole position in the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series.

 This time, he left no doubt as to who had the fastest car. Hamlin’s No. 11 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota was fastest in opening practice—and fastest in all three rounds of knockout qualifying at Michigan International Speedway.

RELATED: Starting lineup | Weekend schedule 

For the second straight week, Hamlin and JGR teammate Kyle Busch (202.731 mph) will start 1-2. Hamlin edged Busch by .011 seconds to earn his second Busch Pole Award of the season, his first at Michigan and the 28th of his career. 

A victory from the pole would continue Hamlin’s streak of at least one victory per year, starting with his 2006 rookie season.

“It is a very important streak,” Hamlin asserted. “I think about it… I thought it was all over in 2013, the year that I broke my back (in a wreck at Auto Club Speedway), and we won in the final race of the season to keep the streak alive.

“You look back at the really great drivers of NASCAR, and they had long streaks, 10 years and above, of winning in a row, and you want to keep that going for sure. It’s important.”

Busch was on pace for the pole before losing time through Turns 3 and 4 in the money round.

“I thought 3 and 4 went OK,” Busch said. “Certainly, I don’t think it was my best time through there. The first couple of runs, we’d been fighting ‘loose,’ so you kind of drive a little differently to be ready for the loose situation, and then on the final run, we were tight.

“You guard your entry or guard your center or whatever you do for the loose, and that doesn’t happen, and you’re tight, and then you’re too tight because you guarded for the loose. Just ever so slightly just missed it, I guess. Overall, I didn’t think we were going to qualify there, so we’re certainly pleased with that.

“Denny’s been fast so far from unload, so good for them to capitalize on that.”

MORE: Top fantasy sleepers for Michigan | What retro shirt is Dale rocking?

Kevin Harvick, like Busch a six-time winner this season, qualified third at 202.100 mph. Erik Jones was fourth at 201.805 mph, putting three Gibbs Toyotas in the top four on the grid.

The Richard Childress Racing duo of 2018 Daytona 500 winner Austin Dillon and Ryan Newman will start from the third row after qualifying fifth and sixth, respectively. Martin Truex Jr., Ryan Blaney, Joey Logano and Alex Bowman completed the top 10.

The No. 19 Toyota of Daniel Suarez, who had posted the third fastest lap in opening practice, twitched out of control in Turn 2 in the opening round and tapped the outside wall. Suarez posted no time for the session and will start from the back of the field.

“I just got loose,” said Suarez, who had asked for adjustment after his car felt slightly tight in practice. “We just crossed the line. Once we got in the gray (out of the preferred groove), it was like being on ice.”

Suarez was optimistic his team could fix the cosmetic damage and get it ready for Saturday’s two practice sessions and Sunday’s race.

“I think we’ll see the 19 passing a lot of cars on Sunday,” Suarez said.

 

Posted on by Holly Cain

A few days removed from an excursion to the famous Sturgis Motorcycle Festival in South Dakota, Clint Bowyer showed up at Michigan International Speedway invigorated and ready to repeat his work at the fast two-miler this summer – ready to win again.

He arrives for Sunday’s Consumers Energy 400 (2:30 ET, NBCSN, MRN, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio) joining six-time race winners Kyle Busch and Kevin Harvick and four-time winner Martin Truex Jr. as the only competitors with multiple Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series wins this season.

MORE: Full Michigan schedule | Which drivers are on the bubble?

Bowyer, 39, collected his second trophy at Michigan in the rain-shortened race this past June – the win a product of his fast No. 14 Stewart-Haas Racing Ford and also some quick strategic thinking by his crew chief Mike Bugarewicz. Bowyer also won at Martinsville Speedway in March – his first win since October 2012 at Charlotte Motor Speedway.

In the last six months especially, Bowyer has revitalized his career and established a strong presence in the 2018 Cup championship race with his wins. It is reminiscent of that 2012 title-contending season (he finished runner-up to Brad Keselowski) and marks the third time in his career he’s hoisted more than one trophy in a season.

With only four races remaining to set the 16-driver playoff field and make a run at the title, Bowyer is currently fourth in the rankings. But he is also mindful that that his team must raise its game to be a part of that elite conversation.

What will it take? More wins, he explained. It’s simple.

“You have to elevate your game and rise to their capabilities and expectations,” Bowyer told the media Friday morning. “Those guys, not only do they have the wins, they are dominant cars that have led a lot of laps when they get those wins and all the stage points and all that stuff. You have to be able to do that more consistently.

 “On our team, that is what we have to do. We have touched on that and made some mistakes and know we have to get those mistakes behind us to capitalize on every possible situation. Every stage. Every lap. That is what we have to do better. We have to smooth out the highs and lows. You have to stay on top of the mountain. You can’t fall off the damn mountain. That’s what it boils down to.”

With the playoff push really starting to be felt, Bowyer’s wins give his team the opportunity to begin sizing up the 10 tracks and races that will ultimately decide the championship.  A fast, big track, Michigan is a reasonable reference point for some of the other venues the series visits – both to close out the regular season and also in the playoffs.

 “We were obviously really fast here last time and finished 1-2-3 with our Stewart-Haas camp,’’ Bowyer allowed. “Kevin [Harvick] was the class of the field and I think we ran third for most of the race. We were right there. All of our cars were really, really fast. That is the last race. That is so last week. You think about racing and whoever won last week, it doesn’t mean anything. Everybody gets better each week.

“You don’t go back after a win and sit on your hands and not do anything and talk about how good you were. You go to work on trying to get better. Doesn’t matter if you dominated the race and destroyed the field, you go back and go to work on getting better.

 “That being said, everybody has had time to get better here and I know they will. I also know we have, too. It is always exciting to go to any race track for the second time, especially when you have had some success to see how you will stack up when you unload again.” 

Bowyer’s performance in June at Michigan was certainly a welcome deviation from his recent results here. Before that win, he hadn’t had a top-20 since 2015 – a 10th-place that was the cap to a nine-race top-10 streak.

His Stewart-Haas team, however, has been the class of the field more often than not. They swept the podium at Michigan in June – a first for the organization. It’s been a similar showing in recent weeks.

The team had all four cars among the top eight at Sonoma Raceway. It had two in the top five at Chicago, three in the top eight at Kentucky. It had three among the top-10 at New Hampshire Motor Speedway, and three in the top 11 at both Pocono and last week at Watkins Glen. 

That momentum and keeping his eye on the 2018 prize is what Bowyer insists is most vital at the moment.

This week, his Ford team helped roll out the new Mustang that will compete in 2019. And as impressed as he is with the prospects, Bowyer would sure like to hoist a trophy driving this season’s Ford Fusion.

“I am looking forward to next year with the Mustang but I am looking forward to capitalizing on the program we have with the Fusion this year and getting the most out of that,’’ he explained. “Slowly but surely here the window is opening. 

“The playoffs are fixin’ to start and it is time to unleash the beast.”

Posted on by Chase Wilhelm

BROOKLYN, Mich. — The driving story of the 2018 Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series season has been the dominance of the ‘Big 3’ of Kyle Busch, Kevin Harvick and Martin Truex Jr. But a first career win by Erik Jones at Daytona may have marked the beginning of a plot twist.

Taking the No. 9 to Victory Lane at Watkins Glen, Chase Elliott became the second driver behind Jones to earn his maiden premier-series victory this year. Add that to a strong second-place run by Daniel Suarez, who nearly beat out Busch at Pocono Raceway, and it appears the youth movement may gradually come to fruition with four races remaining in the regular season.

RELATED: Full Michigan schedule | Hamlin leads first practice

“I think we (young drivers) all knew what (we) had to do,” Jones told NASCAR.com and NBC Sports following a tour of the Toyota Motor North America Research and Development facility on Thursday in York Township, Michigan. “I think there was just work, not only for the young guys, but the whole field, to catch up to the three who have been winning the majority of the races. It wasn’t just the young guys that needed to get there, it was everyone except them.”

Before his Daytona triumph, Jones only had one top-five finish to his credit. In the four races since then, Jones has scored two fifth-places results in as many races and hasn’t finished worse than 16th in that span.

Jones said they’ve been working hard to contend and win races, an effort that has shown in the recent performance.

“It does feel good to be one of the young guys who have won along with Chase,” Jones said. “I think it’s been good to see some variety here in the last month of guys who’ve been contending for wins and who have won some races. You can see that everyone has closed in a little bit.”

For the most part, the upswing in performance spans across all of Joe Gibbs Racing. Two straight top-five finishes by Suarez bode well for him to potentially squeak out a must-have victory to qualify for the postseason. Although Denny Hamlin has recorded one top-10 result in the past five races, he’s in solid position to make the playoffs without a win, sitting 189 points above the cutline heading into Sunday’s Consumers Energy 400 at Michigan (2:30 p.m. ET, NBCSN, MRN, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio).

RELATED: Jones gets behind-the-scenes look at Toyota’s presence in Detroit

But according to Jones, it’s been an uphill climb since February to get the organization’s Toyota Camrys to where they are now.

“I feel like we at JGR had some catch-up to play at the beginning of the year compared to some other teams,” Jones said. “I think we’ve done a good job of getting there. Kyle was really taking advantage of good execution to win some races early this year. I think he’d agree if you’d ask him that he didn’t have the best car. But now, I think we’re at the point where we can win some races based on having some of the best cars.”

With that said, is the No. 20 team peaking as the playoffs loom heading into Jones’ home track ?

“For right now, yeah,” said Jones. “We’re in a stretch of good tracks, at least for me and I think for JGR in general. If you look back in years past, JGR and Toyota have done a good job of continuously getting their cars better as the years go on, especially around playoff time. You’re seeing it again this year.”

Posted on by Staff Report

It’s early on a Friday morning at Michigan International Speedway during a weekend that celebrates children in our sport through the Kids Drive NASCAR platform. And it’s a perfect time to kick off a race weekend than with The NASCAR Foundation’s fifth Speediatrics Fun Day Festival of the year — the first such event at Michigan.

The NASCAR Foundation’s Speediatrics Fun Day Festival is dedicated to inspiring children to lead a healthy lifestyle. Children in attendance at the event, held in Graves Farm Campground, had the opportunity to become acquainted with some of NASCAR’s up-and-coming drivers — NASCAR Camping World Truck Series drivers Dalton Sargeant and Myatt Snider — who also couldn’t help but demonstrate their competitive spirit alongside the kids.

Boy Scouts at Michigan's Fun Day Festival
Special to NASCAR.com

“Today is all about the kids,” The NASCAR Foundation Executive Director Nichole Krieger said. “We love having Dalton and Myatt out here with us to celebrate the kids in our sport and to show them that being healthy and active can be fun. We are grateful to partner with Michigan International Speedway to bring the Speediatrics Fun Day Festival to this racing community.”

NASCAR-themed Speediatrics characters took center stage throughout the event, with The NASCAR Foundation mascot Chase joining the drivers and kids to participate in NASCAR-themed field day activities: Safety Sam’s Pinewood Derby Race, Pit Stop Pete’s Goodyear Tire Race, Victory Lane’s Jump Rope Challenge and Chase’s Sponge Relay.

Boy Scouts at Michigan's Fun Day Festival
Special to NASCAR.com

The festival also became a backdrop to celebrate a $20,000 grant presented by The NASCAR Foundation to Ronald McDonald House Charities of Ann Arbor (RMHCAA), to assist efforts in providing a supportive home away from home for families of children experiencing a serious illness or injury requiring hospitalization at a local area health facility.

“The Ronald McDonald House Charities of Ann Arbor is grateful for the support provided by The NASCAR Foundation,” said Julaine LeDuc, RMHCAA’s development director.  “Nothing else should matter when a family is focused on the healing of their seriously ill or injured child. Donations enable us to provide a ‘home away from home’ which assists in alleviating the families’ emotional and financial stress.”

The partnership with Michigan International Speedway and Ronald McDonald House Charities of Ann Arbor is an initiative of The NASCAR Foundation’s Speediatrics Children’s Fund, which supports needs expressed by hospitals, specialty clinics, camps and other organizations providing medical and health care services in NASCAR racing communities.

Posted on by Staff Report

Denny Hamlin jumped to the top position on the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series leaderboard Friday in opening practice at Michigan International Speedway.

Hamlin’s Joe Gibbs Racing No. 11 Toyota registered a 202.230-mph lap around the 2-mile track. Of the 40 cars to post speeds in the 50-minute session, 15 cracked the 200-mph barrier.

RELATED: Practice 1 results | Who’s on the bubble entering Michigan?

Kurt Busch, a three-time Michigan winner, wrapped up the second-fastest lap (201.901 mph) in the Stewart-Haas Racing No. 41 Ford. Daniel Suarez, Ryan Blaney and Kyle Busch completed the top five in the first prep session for Sunday’s Consumers Energy 400 (2:30 p.m. ET, NBCSN, MRN, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio).

Clint Bowyer, who prevailed in Michigan’s most recent event in June, turned in the seventh-fastest lap in the Stewart-Haas Racing No. 14 Ford. Defending race winner Kyle Larson was eighth-fastest in the Chip Ganassi Racing No. 42 Chevrolet.

Chase Elliott, last weekend’s first-time winner at Watkins Glen, clocked the 14th-fastest lap (200.602 mph) in the Hendrick Motorsports No. 9 Chevrolet.

Busch Pole Qualifying for Sunday’s 400-miler is scheduled Friday at 5:05 p.m. ET (NBCSN).

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 Michigan (2:30 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: Michigan

RELATED: Overview of 2018 rules updates