Posted on by Brad Norman

We might enjoy retired Dale Earnhardt Jr. and Jeff Gordon more than when they wore fire suits every weekend.

The two former Hendrick Motorsports drivers have had a number of back-and-forth banters on social media, but Saturday’s Twitter conversation may be the best one yet.

It began when Dale Jr. poked fun at ‘most famous people to wear coonskin hats’ in a photo collage. Of course, a black-and-white picture of a young Gordon made the cut. A bold move by Earnhardt, but Gordon was ready with a zinger of his own.

In true Junior fashion, he made a witty comeback while the Earnhardts eagerly await the birth of their daughter.

However, not to be outdone, the former pilot of the No. 24 punched right back. This time he included a throwback photo of Dale Jr. that immediately became internet gold.

We may have this battle end in a tie because each driver stepped up his jokes with each click of the keyboard — and we aren’t complaining.

Posted on by RJ Kraft

Martin Truex Jr. will start on the pole for the second straight race in Sunday’s Auto Club 400 (3:30 p.m. ET on FOX, MRN, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio). Kyle Busch will start on the front row and defending race winner Kyle Larson is lurking in the third position. With all three practice sessions for this race in the books, we’ve dissected the numbers and 10-lap averages to offer a suggested lineup worthy of your Fantasy Live consideration as you go to make roster decisions for the fifth Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series race of 2018.

PLAY NOW: Set your Fantasy Live lineup | How the new Fantasy Live works
MORE: Fantasy analysis for Auto Club | Full lineup | 10-lap averages

RJ Kraft’s revised Fantasy Live lineup following practices and qualifying:
1: Kyle Busch
2: Kyle Larson
3: Kevin Harvick
4: Brad Keselowski
5: Erik Jones
Garage: Clint Bowyer

Analysis: The big move for me is my decision to play Kevin Harvick. All week long I have been fretting about the usage limit but I’m deciding to ride the hot hand one more week. The No. 4 car has shown no signs of slowing down — topping the 10-lap averages board in Saturday’s two practices — and has to be considered the favorite as he goes for his fourth win in a row. This play will potentially bite me down the line but I’m willing to live with the consequences of that decision. If you have used Harvick less than twice, he is a must-start here. If you are concerned about the usage, stacking the deck on bonus picks with Harvick is advisable.

Kyle Busch, Kyle Larson, Brad Keselowski and Clint Bowyer were part of my initial lineup and nothing I’ve seen this weekend has convinced me to change that. Busch is a three-time winner at Auto Club Speedway and topped the board in final practice. Larson is the defending race winner, has won the last four races contested on 2-mile tracks and has been fast all weekend long. Keselowski has a win and a 4.0 average finish in his last three starts at Auto Club. He was second in the 10-lap average in second practice and I like his ability to nab some stage points as he starts 11th. Bowyer was my original garage pick, has shown speed all weekend and finished third in this race last year. Despite starting 26th, I like stashing him in reserve if something goes wrong with one of my starters.

My other roster change is swapping in Erik Jones for Chase Elliott. I love Elliott’s record on the 2-mile tracks but the 31st-place starting position has me concerned that I will miss out on valuable stage points. I like having one of the drivers starting at the back in my lineup (for me, that’s Bowyer) but I’d prefer not to have two in that regard especially since the teams will be on equal footing when it comes to tires. Enter Jones into the fray, who was in the top six of 10-lap averages for both Saturday practices. Considered Ryan Blaney for this spot as well, but Jones has a more favorable history here and will start in the top five.

RELATED: Teams that made qualifying lap have tire option

Remember to set your roster and bonus picks ahead of Sunday’s 3:30 p.m. ET start time and to keep tabs on your team during the race with the ability to go to the garage locking at the completion of Stage 2.


Posted on by Zack Albert

FONTANA, Calif. — The Southern California full celebrity treatment welcomed Kyle Larson upon his Friday arrival to Auto Club Speedway.

The track brought some Hollywood glitz and glamour to its Walk of Fame, and Larson rolled up in style, chauffeured by the speedway’s 1948 Chevrolet woodie wagon. A gathering of adoring fans cheered the home-state favorite’s return to the 2-mile track, but his appearance took an odd turn when hosts opened the ceremony up for a brief Q&A.

PHOTOS: See Larson honored and more scenes from the track

“Hey, why don’t you do us all a favor and take (Kevin) Harvick out this week?” blurted out one fan, prompting a nervous smile from the guest of honor. However blunt the wording, the question of how to halt Harvick’s three-race win streak remains a front-burner issue for Larson and the rest of the field entering Sunday’s Auto Club 400 (3:30 p.m. ET, FOX, MRN, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio).

“I don’t think you can slow him down. We’ve all got to get our stuff to be able to compete with him right now,” Larson said. “I don’t think we’re far off. We were definitely off at Phoenix, but in Atlanta, he’s always fast. And then Vegas he was fast, too. But I think we’re only something small away from getting to be as good as he is.”

RELATED: Historic streak in Harvick’s sights

The closing race of NASCAR Goes West marks a time of transition for the defending Auto Club winner, both personally and professionally. On the career side, Larson joins Chip Ganassi Racing and the rest of the Chevrolet campaigners in the sorting-out period for the new Camaro ZL1, now entering just its fifth race in Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series competition.

Larson noted that Toyota experienced similar growing pains last year with the racing debut of the automaker’s new Camry. He said that Team Chevy was on a similar, if not quicker pace with its progress, and Auto Club presents a unique sweet spot for Larson: Four of his five big-league victories have come on 2-mile circuits (three at Michigan, one in California).

“There’s still a lot of opportunity to learn about these cars and what their different characteristics are, really for the bodies,” Larson said. “The chassis, suspension and all that stuff is basically the same. I feel like we’re off to a good start with it.”

On the personal side, Larson and his fiancée, Katelyn Sweet, are expecting their second child in May. The couple already have hands full with their energetic 3-year-old son, Owen, who added his own handprints in the wet cement for Larson’s Walk of Fame marker.

RELATED: Larson, Sweet get engaged

The family wrapped up an extended stay in the Phoenix area after last weekend’s race, taking some time off for golf and visiting with friends. But after the California weekend, it’s back to North Carolina for a two-day test next week at Charlotte Motor Speedway’s road course and the continuing preparation for baby No. 2’s arrival.

“Everything’s been good. I think with the first one, you think about it every day and it goes super-slow, the nine months,” Larson says. “With this one, we haven’t found out gender, haven’t done any parties or anything like that. This one’s gone by a lot faster, so far the pregnancy has, so it’s creeping up on us. It’s only a couple months away, really.

“So we’ve got to get to work on rooms and clothes — but we don’t know the gender yet, so we can’t really do any of that. But it’s going to creep up on us.”

Posted on by Staff Report

Take a look at which drivers have led the way with the best 10-lap averages at Auto Club Speedway in this weekend’s practices ahead of Sunday’s Auto Club 400 (3:30 p.m. ET on FOX, MRN, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio).

PRACTICE 3: RESULTS

Pos Car Driver From Lap To Lap Avg Speed
1 4 Kevin Harvick 8 17 180.161
2 42 Kyle Larson 9 18 179.417
3 78 Martin Truex Jr. 18 27 179.285
4 18 Kyle Busch 1 10 179.108
5 3 Austin Dillon 12 21 179.086
6 20 Erik Jones 1 10 178.611
7 11 Denny Hamlin 1 10 178.558
8 1 Jamie McMurray 17 26 178.545
9 2 Brad Keselowski 20 29 178.433
10 12 Ryan Blaney 1 10 178.429
11 48 Jimmie Johnson 1 10 178.262
12 21 Paul Menard 21 30 178.169
13 41 Kurt Busch 20 29 177.968
14 22 Joey Logano 16 25 177.944
15 88 Alex Bowman 1 10 177.785
16 14 Clint Bowyer 16 25 177.596
17 19 Daniel Suarez 14 23 177.459
18 10 Aric Almirola 1 10 177.398
19 24 William Byron # 12 21 177.265
20 9 Chase Elliott 1 10 177.258
21 17 Ricky Stenhouse Jr. 1 10 177.240
22 31 Ryan Newman 16 25 177.127
23 95 Kasey Kahne 16 25 176.297
24 37 Chris Buescher 16 25 176.123
25 13 Ty Dillon 12 21 175.848
26 34 Michael McDowell 21 30 175.802
27 38 David Ragan 1 10 175.484
28 43 Darrell Wallace Jr. # 5 14 174.170

PRACTICE 2: RESULTS

Pos Car Driver From Lap To Lap Avg Speed
1 4 Kevin Harvick 16 25 181.009
2 2 Brad Keselowski 10 19 180.460
3 20 Erik Jones 1 10 180.303
4 42 Kyle Larson 18 27 180.060
5 12 Ryan Blaney 5 14 179.801
6 18 Kyle Busch 1 10 179.714
7 14 Clint Bowyer 10 19 179.501
8 9 Chase Elliott 5 14 179.468
9 3 Austin Dillon 8 17 179.343
10 1 Jamie McMurray 1 10 179.265
11 78 Martin Truex Jr. 1 10 179.071
12 11 Denny Hamlin 1 10 179.051
13 41 Kurt Busch 10 19 178.901
14 48 Jimmie Johnson 1 10 178.463
15 21 Paul Menard 16 25 178.437
16 43 Darrell Wallace Jr. # 12 21 177.534
17 95 Kasey Kahne 5 14 177.167
18 34 Michael McDowell 12 21 176.876

PRACTICE 1: RESULTS

Pos Car Driver From Lap To Lap Avg Speed
1 11 Denny Hamlin 1 10 181.278
2 38 David Ragan 1 10 177.070

* Car must run 10 consecutive laps on the track to be included in the above chart.
# Indicates driver is eligible for Sunoco Rookie of the Year honors.

Posted on by Staff Report

It’s been all Kevin Harvick in practice throughout the weekend at Auto Club Speedway, but it was Kyle Busch who spoiled the party in Saturday’s final session for the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series.

Busch, who will flank pole-starter Martin Truex Jr. on the front row in Sunday’s Auto Club 400 (3:30 p.m. ET, FOX, MRN, SiriusXM), topped the charts with a lap at 185.668 mph in the No. 18 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota. Truex came in just behind Busch with a lap at 185.319 mph in the No. 78 Furniture Row Racing Toyota.

El Cajon, California native Jimmie Johnson finished third in the session, flying around the 2-mile track in his No. 48 Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet at 184.525 mph.

RELATED: Practice results | Best 10-lap averages

Harvick, who laid down fastest laps in first and second practice, ended with the fourth-best time at 184.308 mph in the No. 4 Busch Beer Stewart-Haas Racing Ford. Brad Keselowski, driving the No. 2 Team Penske Ford, rounded out the top five with a lap at 184.280 mph.

With around 37 minutes remaining, Kyle Larson had a scare after a right-rear tire went down on his No. 42 Chip Ganassi Racing Chevrolet. Larson was able to catch the problem quickly and slowly make his way back to the garage area without any damage.

Ten teams were required to serve practice holds during Saturday’s final session. The No. 34 of Michael McDowell served a 15-minute hold for a qualifying inspection violation. The Nos. 9 (Chase Elliott), 10 (Aric Almirola), 11 (Denny Hamlin), 14 (Clint Bowyer), 24 (William Byron), 47 (AJ Allmendinger), 48 (Jimmie Johnson), 72 (Cole Whitt) and 88 (Alex Bowman) had 15-minute holds for failing pre-qualifying inspection twice.

PRACTICE 2 RECAP

After posting the fastest time in Friday’s opening practice, Kevin Harvick led the charge once again in second practice for Sunday’s Monster Energy Series Auto Club 400 at Auto Club Speedway.

Harvick ticked off a lap around the 2-mile oval at 186.075 mph in the No. 4 Busch Beer-sponsored Stewart-Haas Racing Ford. Teammate Kurt Busch finished second in the session, laying down a lap at 184.431 mph in the No. 41 Ford.

RELATED: Practice results  | Best 10-lap averages | See every car in the field

Chase Elliott had the third fastest time with a lap at 184.021 mph in the No. 9 Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet, followed by Kyle Larson in the No. 42 Chip Ganassi Racing Chevrolet (183.908 mph) and Ryan Blaney in the No. 12 Team Penske Ford (183.861 mph).

Practice was delayed for roughly 10 minutes as crews worked to dry the track after early morning showers passed through the Fontana, California, area.

The No. 51 Rick Ware Racing team of Timmy Hill served a 15-minute practice hold in the second session after arriving late to Friday’s qualifying inspection.

Posted on by Staff Report

For NASCAR Xfinity Series qualifying today, any team that does not make a qualifying attempt for the Roseanne 300 (5 p.m. ET, FS1, MRN, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio) will start from the rear of the field and be required to serve a pass-through penalty once the green flag waves, according to a NASCAR spokesperson.

NASCAR Xfinity Series Managing Director Wayne Auton delivered the message to crew chiefs Saturday morning in Fontana, California. Xfinity qualifying is at 1:35 p.m. ET with TV coverage on FS1.

Posted on by Staff Report

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 Auto Club Speedway (3:30 p.m. ET, FOX, MRN, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio) were unveiled.

Simply click the “print” icon above, next to the headline and social media icons, to get the full list.

RELATED: Overview of 2018 rules updates

Posted on by Staff Report

The 24 Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series teams that passed pre-qualifying inspection and made a qualifying lap Friday at Auto Club Speedway will have the option to purchase a new set of sticker tires for the start of the race, series Managing Director Richard Buck announced late Friday night.

Teams normally start the race with the same tires on which they qualified. The change for Auto Club comes after 13 teams failed to pass pre-qualifying inspection at the 2-mile track. Those teams are not eligible to purchase a new set.

RELATED: Full starting lineup

Teams who purchase a new set of tires must return their respective qualifying sets of tires to Goodyear.

The total race-tire allotment remains unchanged — the starting set of four plus 10 race sets, per Buck.

PHOTOS: Every car, every paint scheme

Posted on by Pat DeCola

FONTANA, Calif. — In the immortal words of Major League II‘s Lou Brown, “We won a game yesterday. If we win one today, that’s two in a row. If we win one tomorrow that’s called a winning streak. It … has … happened … before.”

Kevin Harvick is on some kind of winning streak.

The Stewart-Haas Racing driver has won the past three Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series races, in a 2018 season that is but four races deep. That’s … insane? Ridiculous? Unprecedented?

All of the above.

In NASCAR history, eight drivers have strung together four consecutive victories against the best competition stock car auto racing has to offer — five of them went on to win that year’s title — but never this early in the season. Harvick’s No. 4 Stewart-Haas Racing Ford team can join the club this weekend in Sunday’s Auto Club 400 (3:30 p.m. ET, FOX, MRN, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio), joining the likes of Cale Yarborough and Darrell Waltrip all the way to Jeff Gordon and Jimmie Johnson.

RELATED: Drivers with four consecutive wins in NASCAR history

“I’m just happy to win one, let alone two in a row, three in a row,” Harvick said Friday at Auto Club Speedway. “And this most likely probably will be the only opportunity that you’ll ever have to do it because it’s hard to string together just putting a whole day together, and the odds of putting three weeks together …

“Anytime you can put your name next to a group of guys on a list (like that) is something that’s pretty special and just shows the magnitude of where our race team is at right now and how good it’s actually functioning.”

“Magnitude” is a good word for it — Harvick hasn’t exactly been sneaking his way into Victory Lane.

The 42-year-old has led a whopping 433 laps in his Atlanta-Las Vegas-Phoenix run, which is 39 percent of all the laps run this season and more than double the amount the next-highest driver has through four races (Kyle Busch, 147).

Keys to what Harvick and Co. have been doing?

Mental fortitude. Focus. Confidence. And it runs team-wide.

In other words, it’s all the things that matter in the NASCAR Playoffs and what most teams and drivers typically aren’t even sniffing in mid-March, with 22 races to go before the postseason even begins.

“I think everybody is extremely confident. I think that confidence just builds and every moment you just become more and more confident in the things that you can and can’t do,” Harvick said.

ANALYSIS: Taking a deep drive on Harvick’s historic production

” … We’ve talked about this in the past, but how do you race every week like you do in playoff mentality and that’s really what it’s felt like the first four weeks that we’ve been on the race track. That part, to me, is fun because I feel like that’s really what Jimmie and Chad (Knaus, No. 48 crew chief) did for so many years was they raced with a playoff mentality every week and were able to accomplish that in the shop, and if you can accomplish that in the shop that’s unique just because it’s so mentally draining and takes so much work to stay up with everything as you look at all the details and things that come with that.”

Credit, also, the work everyone at SHR had to put in pre-2017 as the organization shifted from a Hendrick Motorsports-aligned Chevrolet backing to a Ford program. The 2014 champion said it took a lot of work to get to this point of winning races after the swap, and everyone at the shop “carried that same workload over (to this past offseason), but all the work it took to switch manufacturers was already done so it’s like you already put everything in position.”

Harvick’s win last week at Phoenix was particularly impressive. While he didn’t quite dominate like he had the previous two weeks — and just about every Phoenix race prior to that, it seems — he won the race with a statement, landing in Victory Lane without the aid of his car chief.

The No. 4 team had been penalized earlier in the week, one of the stipulations being that Robert “Cheddar” Smith was suspended for a pair of races.

MORE: Harvick says penalty ‘just motivates us’

The team took that penalty, used it to fire up the group and prevailed.

“We all have so much confidence in each other and then you add everything that happened with the penalty in the middle of all that and it just really added fuel to the fire.”  

Playoff mode. Playoff mentality.

“… If you can get your team to that point of being able to be in that playoff race mindset every week, that’s something that most teams can’t do,” Harvick said.

And there’s little doubt what mode Harvick and the No. 4 team will be come Vegas in September, when the playoffs officially begin.