Axalta and Hendrick Motorsports have extended their long-standing partnership with a four-year contract extension through 2022, the team announced Friday.
The leading global coatings company will serve as a 25-race primary sponsor from 2018-2022. Axalta will sponsor Alex Bowman for 15 Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series races in 2018 and 12 races in 2019, and William Byron for 10 races in 2018 and 13 races in 2019. The 2020-2022 schedules will be announced at a future date.
Axalta and Hendrick Motorsports began their partnership in 1992 with rookie driver Jeff Gordon, who won four championships with the sponsor driving the iconic rainbow-colored No. 24 Chevrolet. Axalta extended its partnership to Dale Earnhardt Jr. in 2016 and 2017 before teaming up with Hendrick newcomers Bowman and Byron this season in the Monster Energy Series.
This year marks Axalta and Hendrick Motorsports’ 26th season in a multi-faceted partnership.
“Motorsports is in Axalta’s DNA,” Axalta Chairman and CEO Charlie Shaver said in a team release. “For more than 25 years, our partnership with Hendrick Motorsports has enabled us to showcase our industry leading performance coatings that have helped make cars lighter, more efficient and look terrific. We’re excited to continue our successful partnership with Hendrick Motorsports through 2022.”
The company also opened a 36,000-square-foot Customer Experience Center on Hendrick Motorsports’ Concord, North Carolina, campus last May. This allows fans to become fully immersed in the racing experience.
“We are so proud of our partnership with Axalta,” Hendrick Motorsports Owner Rick Hendrick said. “Their long-term commitment to our organization and our sport as a whole has been unbelievable. They are constantly innovating and investing to keep the program fresh, enhance the experience for their customers and ultimately drive value for their business. Projects like the Customer Experience Center on our campus are unprecedented and reinforce the strength of our relationship.
“We’ve worked together for more than a quarter of a century, and I believe it’s just the beginning.”
DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. (March 23, 2018) – NASCAR and PNC Bank today announced a five-year agreement that introduces the bank as the “Official Bank of NASCAR®” and “Official Wealth Management Partner of NASCAR®.”
The agreement provides PNC exclusive status and promotional rights around retail, corporate and private banking across the country and U.S. military bases abroad. PNC will be present at key NASCAR races throughout each season and offer its services to the industry, providing valuable insights to drivers, teams, tracks and sponsors. The agreement takes effect immediately.
“PNC Bank has a trusted reputation and national reach and we couldn’t be more pleased to welcome them to our family of partners,” said Steve Phelps, EVP and Chief Global Marketing, Media and Sales Officer, NASCAR. “Like many blue-chip brands, we are thrilled PNC Bank sees the value of the NASCAR fan. I’m confident we’ll deliver unique opportunities for PNC to connect with our industry and diverse fan base.”
The announcement signals another step in an ongoing effort to establish a stronger national PNC brand, even in markets without a retail branch presence. Last year, PNC said it was forming a national digital retail strategy. Since 2016, the bank announced the opening of expansion markets focused primarily on middle market corporate lending in Dallas-Ft. Worth, Kansas City, the Twin Cities, Nashville, Denver, Houston and the Port Cities market of Jacksonville, Savannah and Charleston.
“As we continue to focus on establishing a more powerful national presence, PNC’s new alliance with NASCAR will open more avenues to build on our brand and business coast-to-coast,” said PNC Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer William S. Demchak. “NASCAR is a storied part of Americana that built a national fan base. Millions of Americans say they are NASCAR fans, and so are we.”
PNC becomes the latest Fortune 500 company to invest in the sport. In 2017, more than 1 in 4 Fortune 500 companies invested in NASCAR — a 7 percent increase year-over-year — showing sustained investments or growth year-over-year for the past five years.
“PNC Bank has earned the reputation as a reliable and trusted financial institution with strong client relationships,” said Susan Schandel, Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, NASCAR. “We look forward to leveraging their capabilities and technology solutions as they become NASCAR’s primary provider of banking services moving forward.”
Announced during the NASCAR Fuel for Business Council® meetings in Charlotte, North Carolina, the agreement is PNC’s first with a sports league. PNC joins the NASCAR Fuel for Business Council®, bringing together an exclusive group of more than 50 Official NASCAR Partners to buy and sell products and services from one another.
Editor’s note: Fantasy Fastlane will look at each race from a fantasy perspective, examining the top plays as well as several under-the-radar options and a play to avoid for NASCAR Fantasy Live. See the full analysis here.
Racing is about more than just simply speed, and it goes deeper than just on-track competition. Competitors and the fans that follow them collectively form a family of sorts, a tightly knit unit that bonds over the smell of burning tires and exhaust.
That is especially true in the dirt racing world, where drivers work on their own cars, flare their tempers on short tracks and become heroes to those who pay to see them every week.
It is in the spirit of that universe where “Shifting Gears” lives, and the spirit in which the film was developed.
“I grew up in the South, and going to visit my granddad in Asheville, we would walk to the dirt track and sit up on the hill,” said Keith Harris, who wrote the script for “Shifting Gears” and also stars as Tom Williamson. “That always has been in my fond memory bank. … We wanted this to have a real grassroots kind of feel to it. I’ve got nothing but mad respect for those drivers.”
In the family-friendly flick, Williamson is an overworked dad, in a dead-end job who decides to spend his life savings on a “family business” hoping to bring his family closer together – his family being his wife, Carol, teenage son, Jeremy and daughter, Stephy.
Instead, that decision wagers the family’s destiny on Jeremy’s unexpected dirt track racing skills.
When it comes to some of the more colorful anecdotes of the dirt track scene, well, Harris had first-hand intel. His friend Rick Kennedy worked at a local garage for a decade and collected funny stories from the racers that visited. Some of the tentpole moments in the movie are based off true stories from Kennedy’s journal.
The idea of collecting those stories was the spark for Harris to write the script.
“My goal as a filmmaker was obviously to honor the sport as well as the people and the core audience, too,” Harris said. “I wanted to be as authentic as possible and have as few red flags thrown by people who are in the sport as possible. That was my goal.”
Several NASCAR drivers got their start on the dirt scene and can relate to some of the themes throughout the movie – especially the strong sense of family and community.
Corey LaJoie, one of those drivers raised on dirt, offered this review to NASCAR.com:
“Shifting Gears” is a well-made movie that keeps you entertained with light hearted humor and the Williamson’s determination to keep their family’s small auto shop in business.
Growing up in a racing family, I can relate to Jeremy’s mission to prove himself both on and off the race track to his family and friends.
The movie portrays a feel-good story of learning the ropes of dirt racing in order to buy the family’s shop back. They pull together to make it happen, just like thousands of short track racers all over the country do every single week.
With a solid cast and interesting ending, I certainly recommend taking the time to watch “Shifting Gears.”
John Ratzenberger, who stars as Conrad Baines, a local businessman who wants to knock down the service station Williamson and family are trying to run, has his own take on the film.
Dirt racers are known for getting their hands dirty and touching all parts of the car. It’s a skillset that ultimately goes beyond racing.
“The whole messaging of this movie is right along with what I’ve been trying to do for 20 years,” Ratzenberger said, “and that is teaching young people how to use tools. That doesn’t happen anymore. I love when people want to work on cars and want to be nuts-and-bolts guys.
“I like to remind my audiences that civilization wasn’t built by actors and celebrities. It was built by people who know how to use tools.”
“Shifting Gears” opens March 23 in select theaters nationwide, and also on streaming services such as Amazon, iTunes, DirecTV, and more. Find where you can see the movie at ShiftingGearsMovie.com.
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With a new team and fresh start, Aric Almirola’s spark is back and blazing in 2018.
The Stewart-Haas Racing driver likened his season so far to a different spark stemming from a high school experience on Wednesday.
“It’s honestly like when you’re dating a girl in high school and things just don’t progress and then you make that change and you got a new girlfriend and that’s all you can think about,” he told NASCAR.com. “You go to bed thinking about it, you wake up in the morning thinking about it, it consumes you and that’s kind of the place I’m in right now.”
That place is a good one in which to be. Almirola is the only driver in 2018 to finish all five races in the top 13. This weekend’s race marks a milestone for Almirola; it will be his 250th Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series start. His No. 10 Ford currently ranks 10th in the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series standings heading into Monday’s STP 500 at Martinsville Speedway (2 p.m. ET, FS1, MRN, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio).
“I think it’s really just a confidence booster,” he said of his strong early runs. “It … motivates us even more and gets us more excited about the rest of the season because we’re off to such good start with a relatively new and inexperienced team working together. So, as we build a notebook and as we get more comfortable with each other and as (crew chief) Johnny (Klausmeier) and the engineers start to develop trends that I like in the race car, I feel like we’ll start unloading at the race track with more speed and the cars will be more comfortable and it will help our whole weekend just go more smoothly.”
The 34-year-old started this season with a blank notebook, one that he and his team slowly fill each week that they visit the race track. A new beginning in a series that he has competed in full time for six years has left him rejuvenated and he wakes up excited every morning with the opportunity of a clean slate and the promising speed of Stewart-Haas Racing Fords.
“The first few years (in the Monster Energy Series) we progressed and got better and we won a race and I was very excited,” Almirola said. “We made the Playoffs and things were continuing to get better.
“And then all of a sudden, things leveled off and they leveled off for a few years and whether that was my fault or the team’s fault or whatever, it doesn’t matter; the reality was that things continued to stay the same. And that when happened, I feel like either you’re growing or you’re dying … It sort of took the wind out of my sails after a while – and same for the team, also. So that’s why change was somewhat inevitable …
“Now for to have this opportunity with such an incredible organization like Stewart-Haas Racing, it’s re-energized me and made me feel like a rookie again. You get all that newness and that excitement.
“I’m putting in so much effort and so much focus because I feel like this is the opportunity for me to either go make it or go home, and I want to make it.”
Carl Edwards spoke Wednesday night more than a year after leaving full-time Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series driving, and to the disappointment of many fans, he isn’t planning a return.
“I don’t have any plans to come back,” Edwards told Claire B. Lang on SiriusXM NASCAR Radio. “I do miss a lot of people. I stay in touch with a lot of folks and have fun, but I really appreciate the time from Joe Gibbs and everyone else to go do the things I want to do.
“I do miss the fans and there are a couple races I’d like to be a part of, but for the most part I’m having a lot of fun.”
Edwards said he’s overheard one rumor (in person, no less) that he had died, which he obviously assured fans isn’t close to true. As for the popular rumor that he might run for office, well, that has a better chance.
“I really believe in America and that the Constitution is a fair rule that’s letting us have all of our success and our freedom,” Edwards said. “So if sometime there’s a chance for me to help that cause and lend some assistance to not letting us get off track, then heck yes. But there’s nothing planned any time soon.”
In the meantime, Edwards is farming with his family, though he says calling him a farmer is probably not fair to real farmers.
“We farming and we’ve been having fun with it,” Edwards said, laughing. “We’re getting ready to plant a bunch of corn and soybeans.”
Edwards profusely thanked Joe Gibbs and JGR for racing opportunities and for being able to walk away and live life on his own terms.
“That part of my life was spectacular,” Edwards said of his racing career with 28 Monster Energy Series wins. “I wouldn’t trade one second of it for anything. I just hope everyone is doing what they want to be doing and getting the most out of every day.”
We get it, NASCAR fans. You endured a long, cold winter without your beloved sport and your favorite driver. Your excitement for the new season was through the roof. Then came Daytona, followed by Atlanta and the West Coast swing. Now five races into 2018, your favorite driver has … struggled? Okay. Don’t panic. Let’s talk through this.
Your driver’s average finish might not be very good at the moment, but the results may belie the effort that went into procuring them. Let’s search for some silver lining and slivers of hope:
Elliott tied for the second-most top-15 finishes last year with 27, so it’s startling that he only has two in the first five races of the new season. He presently has two DNFs caused by accidents on his record, which shed poor light on outings at Daytona and Las Vegas, in which he was running second and ninth, respectively, at the time of the crashes. His speed ranking (10th) and average running position (14.6) provide a better indication of his capability.
We also haven’t seen the best iteration of Elliott in traffic given last year’s output. To date, Elliott is a minus passer on the season, securing nine positions less than expected from a driver with his average running position; in 2017, he ranked as the third-best passer in the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series, earning 172 positions beyond his running spot’s expectation. Restarts from the non-preferred groove acted as a hurdle for him during this five-race sample, in which he retained his position just 16.67 percent of the time while amassing a 30-position loss across 12 attempts. Considering he was a top-five restarter from that groove last year, the laws of statistical regression should benefit him moving forward.
Jimmie Johnson (20.0-place average finish)
We don’t yet know how Johnson’s age-42 season will take shape. He is three years removed from what is, on average, the peak year in a Cup driver’s career, and aging affects drivers differently, but it seems unfair to point to age as the underlying issue with the seven-time champ when the peripheral numbers seemingly restraining his effort are widespread within his own team.
Poor qualifying and inspection area maladies have doomed Johnson in the first five races, during which he started from the top 20 only once. While there’s plenty of time for track position gains in a single race—something at which Johnson still appears good given his 31 surplus positions, earned through on-track passing, beyond his average running position’s expectation—starting with a deficit is ill advised. Worse, Johnson’s No. 48 ranks 13th in speed, representing a drop from ninth last year.
His ability to sift through traffic is elite via a quantifiable percentage; his 83.33 percent position retention on restarts from the preferred groove would’ve made for a top-six rate last year.
You wouldn’t think a driver with two stage wins and whose car ranks as the third fastest in the series would have this bad of an average finish. Busch has speed in spades, is a plus passer and holds position retention rates—88.9 percent from the preferred groove and 71.43 percent from the non-preferred groove—that build upon his reputation as an ace restarter.
Two DNFs are hindering Busch’s results. Like Chase Elliott, he was wrecked while contending for a Daytona 500 win. He was in the same crash as Elliott at Las Vegas. As the year progresses, herculean feats like passing for 25 positions more than expected from his average running position at ISM Raceway (a plus-29 adjusted pass differential in total) should define his season and its corresponding race results.
Daniel Suárez (21.8-place average finish)
Suárez’s Joe Gibbs Racing entry averages a speed ranking of 14.2, a chasm of over seven positions to his average result. His restart numbers—16.67 percent retention from the non-preferred groove for a loss of 21 positions—are weighing him down. There is a sense his effort on restarts will improve considering his 2017 output.
Despite his 44.8 percent retention rate on non-preferred groove restarts, he ranked as a top-15 restarter last year and fared especially well on such attempts late in races, when his 75 percent retention in crunch time ranked third in the series. Suárez is also developing into a steady long-run mover, with a plus passing efficiency outside of the restart window, evident in positive adjusted pass differentials at ISM Raceway and last weekend at Auto Club Speedway.
Jamie McMurray (22.8-place average finish)
Sure it’d be nice if McMurray’s entry, ranked 19th in speed, was as fast as that of his Chip Ganassi Racing stable mate Kyle Larson’s (ranked 11th overall and fifth with Daytona omitted), but there are easier, more obvious issues to shore up here.
McMurray’s crash rate of 0.60 is currently the highest among full-time drivers, which smacks of a temporary aberration; his full-season crash frequencies topped out at 0.31 twice in the last six years. The No. 1 team also holds the biggest total positional loss during green-flag pit cycles. Crew chief Matt McCall has retained McMurray’s running position prior to green-flag stops just 45 percent of the time—a rough 23 percent below the series-wide rate—for a loss of 30 spots that McMurray has been forced to make up on his own volition.
Improving on both of those unwanted distinctions would right McMurray’s ship better and more swiftly than any on-the-fly gambit for more speed.
BAKERSFIELD, Calif. — Kevin Harvick didn’t need a crystal ball to see the future; it was right there in front of him in the expansive infield at Kern County Raceway.
Harvick had returned to his home town of Bakersfield last Thursday to put his money — and his time, effort and energy — where his mouth had been four days earlier.
At Kern County, the 2014 Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series champion was racing against teenagers in the NASCAR K&N Pro West Series season opener, not to flex his muscles with a step down in class but to draw attention to an issue he had raised after winning his third straight Cup race at ISM Raceway in Arizona.
“My goal is to draw enough attention to get kids’ dads and competitors excited about racing in the K&N Series,” said Harvick, who grew up competing at Bakersfield’s Mesa Marin Raceway, which closed in 2005. “We have some good racetracks on the schedule. It’s important to keep that type of racing healthy for our sport, because I believe the grassroots, hardcore fans live at those racetracks. Those are the hardcore fans that we talk about losing.
Jonathan Moore | Getty Images
“In order to do that, in order to keep them enthused, we have to build it from the bottom up, from the late models, K&N, to get them to come out. The guys and gals that go watch the races in Tucson, we need to get them to come here and watch the races in Phoenix. The folks in Bakersfield, we need to get them to go to (Auto Club Speedway in) California. We need to re-energize that short-track system to get it to the point it needs to be.”
It was impossible not to know that Harvick had come home. Billboards on the approaches to the speedway were plastered with his likeness. A large mural on the side of a concession building proclaimed his presence. Before competing in the K&N event, the Stewart-Haas Racing driver presided as grand marshal for the Happy Harvick 50, a Late Model race that included 15-year-old Jagger Jones, son of P.J. Jones and grandson of racing legend Parnelli Jones.
The K&N race was primed with young talent. Sixteen-year-olds Derek Kraus and Hailie Deegan, along with 20-year-old Cole Rouse, drove for Bill McAnally Racing. Will Rodgers, who thrust himself into the spotlight with a second-place finish to Harvick at Sonoma Raceway last June, was a Harvick teammate at Kern County.
Fifteen-year-old Austin Herzog, who has already evoked comparisons to a young Kyle Busch in some quarters, was driving for Jefferson Pitts Racing, as the series raced for the first time on radial tires (having used bias-ply tires in previous years).
Through it all, Harvick was the undisputed center of attention. When he won his third straight race at Phoenix, his soap box became a bully pulpit, and he used it to highlight the importance of the connection of the highest level of NASCAR racing to the short tracks that were instrumental to its enormous growth.
Those who race at the grassroots level were effusive in expressing their gratitude.
“We will stand up as an army behind Kevin Harvick,” proclaimed team owner Tim Huddleston, part of a group that recently saved half-mile Irwindale Speedway from extinction.
The respect shown to Harvick in the garage didn’t necessarily extend to the race track. Harvick led the 175-lap race until the final restart, when Kraus slid up into the NASCAR champion in Turn 3 and dropped him from first to ninth in the running order.
Harvick charged forward, first tattooing the rear bumper of Deegan’s Toyota, then gradually working his way to fourth before the race ended. Kraus went on to win the race.
For Deegan, a rookie, it was an eye-opener to race against a driver of Harvick’s stature.
“I knew he was coming,” Deegan said. “I was almost expecting him to hit me. He was probably a little bit mad that he had been hit out of the way out of first. I knew he was on the move, but I was able to hold him off for quite a few laps. So I was pretty proud of that.
“When there’s someone behind you with his experience, you know they’re not going to put you into the wall. But after seven laps of him hitting me, I figured I should probably let him by. It would probably be faster for me to follow him to the front, and I got by two people just by following him, so it ended up working out for me.”
After getting run over on the final restart, a younger Harvick might have climbed from the car with blood in his eyes. But the 42-year-old Harvick had his gaze firmly set on the bigger picture — strengthening racing’s equivalent of the umbilical cord that connects the grass roots to the bigtime.
For Harvick, the trip to Kern County — opulent by short-track standards — wasn’t as much a return to the roots of his past as it was an affirmation of his vision of a thriving future.
“You almost feel spoiled pulling into a facility like this because it’s so nice,” Harvick said after the second practice for the K&N race. “To me, that’s really what tonight is about is bringing an awareness to how good of a racing facility this place actually is and how lucky the people in this town actually are to have this. And remind people that racing is alive and well after Mesa Marin closed.
“It closed in 2005 and this place reopened in 2013, so you had an eight-year gap of everybody thinking it was just dead and gone. A lot of people that will show up tonight, haven’t been to a race since Mesa Marin closed. You’re going to reintroduce them to weekly racing and the K&N Series and the Late Model Series and that’s really, really important, because this is a huge racing town. The only way it survives is through the support of the fans, the competitors and the car count.”
You can count Harvick among those dedicated to the survival of grassroots racing by practicing exactly what he preaches from the bully pulpit of a Monster Energy Cup Series star.
The No. 18 team in the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series received a safety violation from NASCAR following Sunday’s Auto Club 400 at Auto Club Speedway.
Per section 10.9.10.4 of the NASCAR Rule Book, the No. 18 Toyota had one lug nut not secure in post-race inspection. Crew chief Adam Stevens was fined $10,000.
Kyle Busch drove the Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota to a third-place finish after leading 62 laps in Sunday’s event won by Martin Truex Jr. Busch currently ranks second in the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series standings as the series heads to Martinsville Speedway (Sunday, 2 p.m. ET, FS1, MRN, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio).
The No. 18 NASCAR Xfinity Series team also was penalized for a lug-nut violation. Crew chief Eric Phillips was fined $5,000.
Ryan Preece finished ninth in the No. 18 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota in the Roseanne 300.
Daniel Hemric announced Tuesday that he will drive the No. 8 Chevrolet in two Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series starts for Richard Childress Racing this year.
The No. 8 hasn’t been on the track in the Monster Energy Series in nearly a decade. It was made famous, so to speak, by Dale Earnhardt Jr. from 2000-07, when he won 17 races in the red Budweiser paint scheme.
Hemric, who grew up in Kannapolis, North Carolina, much like Dale Earnhardt and drove by the old Dale Earnhardt, Inc., building on his daily commute, told NASCAR.com he had not spoken to Junior about the news.
