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.

Posted on by Reid Spencer

FONTANA, Calif. – With the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series qualifying field thinned significantly by inspection issues, Martin Truex Jr. won his second straight pole of the season in Friday’s knockout qualifying session at Auto Club Speedway.

Avoiding the trouble from the seams between lanes that tripped up first- and second-round leader Kevin Harvick in the final round, Truex covered the two-mile distance in 38.592 seconds (186.567 mph) in the No. 78 Furniture Row Racing Toyota, edging fellow Camry driver Kyle Busch (186.437 mph) by .027 seconds for the top starting spot in Sunday’s Auto Club 400 (3:30 p.m. ET on FOX, MRN and SiriusXM NASCAR Radio).

RELATED: Qualifying results | See every car in the field

During time trials that saw only 24 of the 37 cars entered pass inspection and make qualifying attempts, Truex won the first Busch Pole Award of the season under sponsorship announced this week. The pole was Truex’s second of the season, following last week’s at Phoenix, and the 17th of his career.

“I felt really good about our chances after practice,” Truex said. “We opted to stay on one set of tires the whole practice and ran our fastest lap on scuffs… I felt like that was a big advantage for us. We ran the fastest lap of anyone on scuffed tires and felt like that would bode well for us in qualifying.

“We really just had to put it all together.”

Harvick, who will try for his fourth consecutive victory on Sunday, posted the fastest lap of the day in the first round, running 188.744 mph (38.147 seconds), eclipsing Denny Hamlin’s track-record 188.511 mph (38.194 seconds) set in March 2016. But the handling of Harvick’s No. 4 Stewart-Haas Racing Ford deteriorated, and he fell to 10th in the final round. 

“We were just tight as we went through every round,” Harvick said. “We had the same thing in practice, where the second round was just so much tighter than the first round. We tried to adjust on it and we made it better entering the corner and through the middle of the corner. 

“But as we got to the exit, right at that three-quarter mark, I just kept getting tighter and tighter, and then I got up the race track and got hung on the seam and got loose and kind of screwed it up.”

RELATED: Harvick ‘extremely confident’ No. 4 team has shot at history

Kyle Larson qualified third, followed by Erik Jones, giving Toyota’s three of the top four starting spots. Austin Dillon earned the fifth position on the grid, followed by Joey Logano, Kurt Busch and Ryan Blaney. 

None of the four Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolets made it through inspection in time to make a qualifying attempt. Two of Harvick’s teammates — Clint Bowyer and Aric Almirola — were sidelined for the session by inspection failures after posting top-five speeds in Friday’s opening practice. 

The silver lining for the cars that will start 25th on back on owner points, led by Denny Hamlin in 25th, is a tire advantage. Cars that took laps in qualifying will start on their scuffed qualifying tires. Those who didn’t take times will start on new tires, and Truex considers that a significant advantage. 

“It’s a huge advantage on that first run, especially if it goes long,” Truex said. “In my mind, if you’re not probably in the top four, you’re better off being 25th. It’s going to be a big deal. For us, hopefully we can get out front and get a big lead early in clean air and kind of get separated… 

“I know in Atlanta we started on stickers, and it was like a video game those first five laps, because you had so much more grip than everybody else.”

Posted on by Zack Albert

FONTANA, Calif. — Hours before he turned his first official laps around Auto Club Speedway, John Hunter Nemechek was getting an early Friday tutorial from one heck of a mentor: fellow Chip Ganassi Racing driver Kyle Larson.

Larson, who swept the weekend doubleheader at the 2-mile track last season, was behind the wheel of the pace car with Nemechek in the passenger’s seat before the track opened for practice. The two discussed proper turn-in points and other nuances of the well-worn pavement ahead of Saturday’s Roseanne 300 (5 p.m. ET, FS1, MRN, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio).

RELATED: Full schedule for Auto Club

Though the 300-miler will mark only Nemechek’s second career start in the NASCAR Xfinity Series, he’s already finding comfort in his first season with the Ganassi team, where he’s pulling part-time duty in the operation’s stout No. 42 Chevrolet.

“They’ve given me every tool that I’ve been able to ask for, especially from being able to go and be ‘open notes’ with Jamie (McMurray) and Kyle and looking at all their stuff from years past and going over race data from years past,” Nemechek told NASCAR.com after Friday’s opening Xfinity practice. “… Those guys have definitely been a huge help, but I think in general, the whole Chip Ganassi Racing team, their motto is, ‘One team, one goal,’ so it’s all open book. Anything I need to see from going and looking at Cup data to talking to the crew chiefs and engineers to try and fill my brain with their knowledge and experience at different race tracks, it’s definitely a huge help.”

So far Larson says he likes what he sees out of the 20-year-old rookie, who is getting his first taste of Xfinity competition after scoring five wins in the Camping World Truck Series.

“I think any time when you’re young and you’re getting your first opportunity in Trucks or Xfinity, you’re really excited and you want to take full advantage of that,” Larson said. “John Hunter, he’s been great to get to work with. I mean, he’s in the gym every day, constantly watching video and learning and asking questions. So he’s very self-motivated, which is nice to see and he’s a very aggressive and fast race car driver. It’s cool to get to work with him a little bit and try to help out in any way I can.”

RELATED: Nemechek battles back for top-five finish in Xfinity debut

So far, Nemechek has been a fast study. He placed fourth in his Xfinity Series debut last month at Atlanta Motor Speedway, rallying from a one-lap deficit after suffering a cut tire in the race’s first stage. He said the experience taught him the power of patience when facing adversity, and his resilience was rewarded with a top-five result.

Nemechek has spent the last four seasons multi-tasking with his family’s truck operation, extracting maximum performance from a plucky underdog team with an employee count in the single digits. He’s still keeping his hand in the family-owned effort this year, racing in two of the Truck Series’ three events thus far.

The Xfinity Series duty, however, has helped Nemechek sharpen his focus, with the depth and assets of the Chip Ganassi-owned organization allowing him to direct his full attention to driving.

“I don’t necessarily want to say ‘luxury’ because you still have to work at it each and every day, but just being able to utilize all the resources they have,” Nemechek said. “Our truck team definitely was good. It helped me learn a lot throughout the year on how to manage your equipment, how to make the most out of your vehicle.

“So now, being able to switch over here, talk with all the guys and utilize them, just being able to go through the day-to-day routine over at the shop, going through different meetings and talking about what we’re focusing on each weekend, I definitely think that helps as a driver, just being able to focus on the driver instead of having to work on everything and focus on driving. I definitely think that’s all going to help.”

RELATED: Nemechek details decision to join Chip Ganassi Racing