Legends meet: Mutual respect for Jimmie Johnson, F1’s Fernando Alonso

Posted on January 23, 2018January 24, 2018 by Zack Albert

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CHARLOTTE, N.C. — Grand Prix star Fernando Alonso’s first encounter with seven-time NASCAR champion Jimmie Johnson was a virtual one, some 15 years ago.

“The first time I heard his name, it was probably 2003, 2004 in the NASCAR video game,” Alonso says. “I used to choose him, not knowing him or not knowing the name — just because the car.”

Tuesday, the two legends from different motorsports disciplines met in person, in conjunction with the two-time Formula One champion’s visit to the NASCAR Media Tour. In the years since Alonso’s first exposure to the stock-car world, the 36-year-old Spaniard has come to appreciate Johnson’s accomplishments, beyond just a snazzy look to his No. 48 Chevrolet.

“That was the first time,” Alonso says, “and obviously the success that he had in the years in motor racing, he became a legend of our sport, and massive respect.”

The admiration was mutual from Johnson’s side.

“I’ve been a huge Alonso fan for a lot of years,” Johnson said. “Just mentioned to him out there that the way he came and ran Indy — and certainly did an amazing job in the car, but outside of the car — the friends I have on the IndyCar circuit, he just handled himself so well, did a great job, and really brought a lot to the table when he raced here. His worldwide exposure in motorsports is really good for us here state-side.”

Alonso met the press ahead of his first start in the Rolex 24 at Daytona, the endurance kickoff this weekend for the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship. He’ll be sharing the driving duties in the No. 23 United Autosports Ligier LMP2 for his first competition at Daytona International Speedway.

The Rolex appearance is Alonso’s latest diversion from his Formula One career. He made his first Indianapolis 500 start last May, wowing the crowd by leading 27 laps before engine failure derailed his first IndyCar effort. The natural question, as Alonso dipped his toe Tuesday into the NASCAR media rounds: Is stock-car racing next on his exploration list?

“Now I’m going to endurance racing in a closed cockpit, so maybe one day try a different series and maybe even NASCAR, no? Why not?” Alonso said. “Right now, it looks quite far because I think the driving technique and the experience that all those guys have, it’s quite difficult for me to achieve that level, but I will never know until I try. So I would like maybe one day to test the car and after that, driving the car, I would know how enjoyable it could be in racing.”

For now, Alonso’s only taste has been through video games and simulator racing, an experience that hasn’t quite given him a favorite track on the NASCAR circuit.

“To be honest, I cannot pick up one,” Alonso said. “I think the Daytona 500 is one race that I watch on television as well, not only on the video games because it’s an iconic race that all the world is following that weekend in NASCAR.

“What I like about the racing in NASCAR is how unpredictable it is and until the last lap, everyone is pushing each other and they’re trying to manage the strategy and think ahead of what is going to happen in the last lap, even 20 laps ahead. That’s something that is unique in motorsport, what NASCAR does. From the outside, it is very attractive. But from the inside, I don’t know in the cockpit how it would feel.”

Posted on January 23, 2018January 25, 2018 by Reid Spencer

CHARLOTTE, N.C. – On February 18, in the 2018 Daytona 500, Danica Patrick will drive a Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series car for the 191st time.

It will also be the last.

Last November at Homestead-Miami Speedway, a tearful Patrick announced she would end her driving career with the “Danica Double” — final appearances in both the Daytona 500 and Indianapolis 500.

Patrick confirmed on Monday she will drive the No. 7 GoDaddy Chevrolet fielded by Premium Motorsports in her stock car swan song. Both the car number and sponsor harken to her NASCAR debut.

Patrick will leave stock car racing disappointed with a record that includes no victories or top fives and seven top 10s in her first 190 starts in NASCAR’s top series.

On the other hand, she will take with her the memory of a pole position for the 2013 running of the Great American Race and a career-best fourth-place finish in the NASCAR XFINITY Series event at Las Vegas in 2011.

With her seven top 10s in the Monster Energy Series, Patrick is tied with Janet Guthrie for most ever by a female driver.

But former Stewart-Haas Racing teammate Kevin Harvick reiterated on Tuesday during NASCAR Media Tour Presented by Charlotte Motor Speedway something he had expressed a few years earlier — that Patrick had begun her career in stock cars at a disadvantage to more experienced drivers and had little prospect of closing the gap.

“You know, this is a conversation that I had with her,” Harvick said. “I had 20 years on her when she started in a stock car. That is experience, and the things that come with that, you are never going to make up that ground. As long as I’m still racing, I’m going to be 20 years ahead regardless. I think it never is going to be easy to go from (IndyCars to NASCAR) if you are going to be at the top level of that sport for a long time because the cars are …

“I have never driven an IndyCar, but based on everything I’ve heard, the characteristics and how you drive them are 180-degrees different. It has been very hard for a lot of the open-wheel guys to come over here and drive these (3,300-pound) cars. It’s the total opposite of everything they have been taught their whole lives.

In Harvick’s opinion, the career path a driver chooses at an early age is a good predictor of performance in the respective disciplines.

“A lot of the kids we have coming up through our ranks now have been in stock cars since they were 12 or 13 years old,” said the 2014 series champion. “It’s much different. I think you have to pick a path. If you want to race open-wheel cars and do those things, it’s probably going to be carts and into an open wheel series.

“There are very few people that have been able to do them both. Tony Stewart and (Juan Pablo) Montoya have done it the best in my opinion. Might be somebody else I am missing. But there have been a lot that have tried.”

Posted on January 23, 2018January 23, 2018 by Zack Albert

CHARLOTTE, N.C. — The 2018 schedule for the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series has made a slight shuffle to the general sense of order, especially in and around the 10-race playoffs. For former series champ Kevin Harvick, an even more thorough shuffling would suit him just fine.

Harvick’s wide-ranging discussion of the schedule was part of a wide-ranging media availability Tuesday during the NASCAR Media Tour hosted by Charlotte Motor Speedway.

The 42-year-old driver for Stewart-Haas Racing’s No. 4 Ford team talked pit stops, the impact of Danica Patrick in NASCAR and his second calling as a radio host on SiriusXM NASCAR Radio. But he spent the most time Tuesday offering a comprehensive examination of the stock-car racing calendar.

“Do you really want to get me started on schedules?” Harvick said with a devilish grin. After some nodding from reporters, away he went.

NASCAR competition officials made key changes to the Monster Energy Series schedule this season, among them were moving Indianapolis Motor Speedway to the regular-season finale in September, followed by Las Vegas Motor Speedway as the playoffs opener. The postseason also gets an additional short track in Richmond Raceway and its first road course with a modified oval-infield layout at Charlotte Motor Speedway in the Round of 16 — all moves that Harvick noted as positives.

“The one thing that I do like about this season is the fact that the schedule is changing,” Harvick said. “You see Richmond in the playoffs, you see Indy in a date that the fans can actually sit in the grandstands without burning their rear ends off, you see the Charlotte road course. It’s just like the road course: If we don’t ever run the road course again, think about all the conversation that it has created. If you did it every year, it would just be another race.

“Those are the types of things that we need to create. We need to create events; we need to create moments.”

If he was granted a magic pen to craft more schedule adjustments, Harvick said he’d go further. That included a possible rotation of the series’ championship race from Homestead-Miami Speedway, which has hosted the season finale since 2002.

“I think it gets stale. It’s a great race track, but it’s not at all about the race track. It’s really about the event,” Harvick says. “How many times have you had a crappy Super Bowl, but everybody goes to the Super Bowl because it’s an event. And those are the types of things that we need to create. I love how we’re starting to mix it up; I think we need to mix it up more. Going to Vegas for the first race of the playoffs is a good move from a market standpoint. It’s a great race track, but the market in itself is something that you have to pay attention to. If you’re going to some of these places and the market is stale, I think all these race tracks should have the opportunity to have one race in the playoffs.”

Some of Harvick’s other proposals included giving tracks in the midst of major renovation projects the option to lease their race dates to other facilities, which would give other markets an audience and speed up the construction process at their own venue. The move would potentially create another wild-card event on the calendar.

Harvick acknowledged that there were some constraints presented by the five-year sanctioning agreement for the 23 Monster Energy Series tracks that continues through the 2020 season. But he added that opportunities exist for ingenuity within those boundaries.

“I think there are things there that you could get creative and really mix it up,” Harvick says. “People don’t like the same thing. You have to keep their attention. It can’t just be about the cars racing on the race track and if you have to have a good race. They are not all going to be good. If you make the schedule exciting and make the events exciting, that is what guarantees you the people to come back if they had a good time.”

Posted on January 23, 2018June 16, 2021 by @KESELOWSKI

CHARLOTTE, N.C. — The Denny Hamlin-Chase Elliott incidents that transpired at Martinsville Speedway and ISM Raceway in Phoenix toward the end of last season prompted Elliott’s crew chief Alan Gustafson to tell SiriusXM NASCAR Radio on Jan. 12 that he thought it “shortened (Elliott’s) fuse and got him to a point where he felt like he was being … taken advantage of.”

Elliott, 22, addressed his crew chief’s comments on Tuesday at NASCAR Media Tour Presented by Charlotte Motor Speedway, as the series readies to kick off its 2018 season with the Daytona 500 on Feb. 18.

“I think there were times, not just in that situation, that I was a little taken advantage of in how I race people and maybe with too much respect at times, and I think that’s what he was getting at with that comment,” Elliott said. “And I do think there was probably some truth to that.

“So, at some point, you either stand up for yourself or you continue to get taken advantage of. I’d rather choose Option A over B.”

Now in his junior season in the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series, Elliott later spoke on racing drivers differently looking at it from the perspective of a rookie, young driver coming into the sport.

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“Every circumstance is going to be different,” the Hendrick Motorsports driver said. “It could be something small, it could be a restart at a certain point in the race and you know the guy’s going to try to take you three-wide just because of who you are.

“So, at some point in time, if you stop that from happening enough, he’s probably going to think twice about doing it to you. I think that’s just what goes around, comes around, and if you stop someone from taking advantage of you enough, they probably won’t do it anymore.”

Posted on January 23, 2018 by Staff Report

CHARLOTTE, N.C. — Ricky Stenhouse Jr. and Danica Patrick will be on track together again in less than a month at Daytona Speedweeks, but for the first time since the two announced in December that they had ended their five-year relationship.

Questions persisted when the two began dating on how they’d race each other on the track. On Tuesday at the NASCAR Media Tour Presented by Charlotte Motor Speedway, Stenhouse addressed if it will be different this time around.

“I don’t think I’ll race any differently,” Stenhouse Jr. said. “I try to respect everybody around me, especially at speedway races. You don’t want to put somebody in a bad spot because you’ll put everybody in a bad spot. I’ll go out and race just like I’m racing everybody else and see how it plays out.

“Heck, when we first started racing we got in crashes anyway,” he added with a laugh. “So it is what it is. I’ll just go compete as hard as I can. I plan on putting myself in position to win the race.”

Patrick announced in November that she was retiring from full-time competition after the 2017 season, following five years at Stewart-Haas Racing in the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series.

At the time, she said she hoped to compete in both the 2018 Daytona 500 and 2018 Indianapolis 500, which she coined the “Danica Double.” Since then, Patrick has confirmed that she is now dating Green Bay Packers Pro Bowl quarterback Aaron Rodgers and that she’s locked in her Daytona 500 plans — she’ll drive the Premium Motorsports GoDaddy No. 7 Chevrolet, with Tony Eury Jr. serving as crew chief.

“It was just a matter of time,” Stenhouse said of Patrick’s Daytona 500 plans. “Like I’ve always said, I think it’s a cool way to retire. For somebody who’s done the Daytona 500, run in NASCAR, run in IndyCar, I think it’ll be cool for (her) to hit the two biggest races of the year.”

Posted on January 23, 2018 by Team Release

SANDUSKY, Ohio – Grant Enfinger, the 2015 ARCA Racing Series presented by Menards Champion, will return to ThorSport Racing for the 2018 NASCAR Camping World Truck Series (NCWTS) season, piloting the No. 98 Ford F-150. The Fairhope, Alabama, native, who celebrated his 33rd birthday Monday, led 41 laps en route to nine top-five and 15 top-10 finishes in his rookie season for the Sandusky, Ohio-based team in 2017, and plans to build on that success as he competes for the championship title in 2018.

“I couldn’t be more excited to be back with ThorSport Racing for the 2018 season, and also to be back with Ford,” Enfinger said. “A good bit of my earlier years in the ARCA Series were with Ford, and with their support we were able to go to Victory Lane quite a few times. I’ve always maintained a good relationship with those guys, and I feel that we can translate that into success in the Truck Series. I’m very thankful for the opportunity that Duke and Rhonda Thorson have allowed for us this year, and last. I know we can build on what we had last year, and make them proud by seeing their trucks in Victory Lane a lot this year.”

Enfinger’s 2018 campaign will once again be led by veteran crew chief Jeff Hensley, and the 2016 Talladega Superspeedway winner will continue his partnership with Curb Records, and Champion Power Equipment, a market leader in power generation equipment, in 2018.

“This is a great opportunity for Grant (Enfinger), Jeff (Hensley), and the entire No. 98 team, to build on the success we started in 2017,” said David Pepper, General Manager of ThorSport Racing. “We look forward to having everyone back to compete for race wins and a championship title in 2018. As our driver lineup starts to take shape for the upcoming season, everyone at ThorSport Racing is working hard to get our Ford F-150’s built to compete at the top level of the series.”

Enfinger, who earned his first NCWTS Keystone Light Pole Award in the season-opener at Daytona International Speedway (2016), also has two wins in the ARCA Racing Series presented by Menards at the 2.5-mile track, and will make his fourth career NCWTS start in the season-opening NextEra Energy Resources 250 on Friday, Feb. 16. All the action will be televised live on FS1, MRN and SiriusXM NASCAR Channel 90 at 7:30 p.m. ET.

Posted on January 23, 2018January 23, 2018 by Team Release

SANDUSKY, Ohio — Entering his third full-time season in NASCAR’s Camping World Truck Series, Louisville, Kentucky-native Ben Rhodes will return to ThorSport Racing for 2018. Continuing to build on his success, Rhodes has tallied one win, nine top-five and 20 top-10 finishes, two pole awards and led 258 laps over the past two seasons for ThorSport.

Piloting the No. 41 NCWTS entry for the team in 2018, with backing from Ford, Rhodes notes his anticipation for the upcoming season, saying “It’s great to be back this year at ThorSport Racing with Ford behind us. Duke and Rhonda Thorson have given me an excellent opportunity to build on our 2017 performance. We are working hard to start this year off with the momentum we had at Homestead, and after our performance improved with every start last season, I feel this year is going to be no exception. Having a second year with my crew chief Eddie [Troconis], and the same team, is a big plus. All of our foundations are there, which makes winning right out of the gate much easier.”

“Obviously, we’re very excited in having Ben and Eddie back together for a second season,” noted team general manager David Pepper. “They proved they could run up front and win races last year, and we’re looking forward to the possibility of winning more races and having a chance to compete for the championship in 2018.”

Rhodes and the No. 41 ThorSport team kick off the 2018 season at Daytona International Speedway, taking the green flag Feb. 16 for the NextEra Energy Resources 250.

Posted on January 23, 2018January 24, 2018 by George Winkler

CHARLOTTE, N.C. — Clint Bowyer is still looking for a breakthrough win with Stewart-Haas Racing after Year 1 with the program, but he enters Year 2 with the same sense of humor that always seems to liven up the Media Tour hosted by Charlotte Motor Speedway at the Charlotte Convention Center.

The 13-year veteran of the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series had the quip machine rolling Tuesday. Here were some of the best lines the driver from Emporia, Kansas, blessed us with:

On why Dale Earnhardt Jr. fans should get behind him now that their favorite driver has retired:

“I’m just going to have to see what (Alex) Bowman does I guess. If he fails ’em, I’m coming for him. I’m going to give (Bowman) a month and then I’m going to start my campaign.”

On what he did during his offseason:

“These kids change your life in the offseason. No more vacations, no more gallivanting around, it’s dad duty.

“I was home probably, I think, five weeks. I think the most I’ve ever been home since I moved to North Carolina has been three weeks. So I was like champing at the bit. I had a friend call and say, ‘Hey you want to go to Nashville,’ and I was like, ‘I can start walking now.’ ”

On the one thing he’d change from his car last year:

“Confetti, more confetti. That’s what I would want to change. Yeah, that’s right.”

On being a good radio guest and listening to himself on radio:

“Hell no (I don’t listen), but people remind you all week long. … I ought to get a damn trophy for it, though. That’s what makes me mad. If you’re going to use me, at least pay me.”

On whether new teammate Aric Almirola is a good dude and he’d hang out with him:

“Of course he’s a good dude. I think he’s a great asset to an already great organization. He’s a good guy, he really is. … You can tell a lot about a guy by how his kids act, and he has great kids.”

On what we can tell by how his kids act:

“I apologize, I failed miserably. But no, my kid is way more mild-mannered and calm and chilled than I’ve ever been. I’m like, are you sure honey (he’s mine)?

“There’s other kids you see running around and you’re like, ‘Yup, that’s exactly what I thought he’d act like.’ ”

On last year’s performance:

“We were spraying it all over the place. It was good runs, good qualifying efforts sometimes and back up with two terrible ones and then run good again. And it was like, ‘What the hell is going on?’ … You couldn’t figure out a pattern.”

On the marketing push for young drivers:

“I haven’t noticed that (said with a smile). … No, I don’t care, they’re good kids and I understand. They are filling some pretty big voids. You got someone getting into Jeff Gordon’s car, you got someone getting in Dale Jr.’s car. We have to figure out how to fill that void somehow, and it can’t always be on the same old guys that have been there.”

Posted on January 23, 2018January 23, 2018 by Zack Albert

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CHARLOTTE, N.C. — Joe Gibbs Racing enters the 2018 season with a new team dynamic — a mix of two second-year drivers with two established stars of the sport. For Kyle Busch, who fits into the latter category, it’s an opportunity to continue a mentorship that pre-dates the young drivers’ rise to NASCAR’s top division.

Busch, 32, and 37-year-old Denny Hamlin bring a wealth of experience to JGR’s lineup for the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series campaign; both are perennial playoff contenders with 10 or more years with the same organization. Daniel Suarez, 26, is in just his second year with the Gibbs group, and 21-year-old Erik Jones is the team’s newbie, having just completed his rookie season with JGR ally Furniture Row Racing.

But Suarez and Jones are far from fresh-faced newcomers sporting name tags and needing awkward introductions.

Busch has had a working relationship with both drivers for years.

“Obviously, it’s a unique opportunity for me being one of the elder statesmen, if you will, of the sport, let alone Joe Gibbs Racing and being able to lead our younger guys,” Busch said Tuesday morning during the NASCAR Media Tour hosted by Charlotte Motor Speedway. “Erik and Daniel, those guys have come through Kyle Busch Motorsports, so it’s been fun to watch them progress through the years through the Truck Series, Xfinity Series and now being into the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series.

“I’m looking forward to working with them and continuing to see their progress, but also working to continue to be one of the leadership guys at our team and being able to race on for championships for years to come.”

CAREER STATS: Kyle Busch | Denny Hamlin | Erik Jones | Daniel Suarez

Hamlin said Tuesday that Matt Kenseth’s voice will be missed at team meetings, but he expects to lean on Jones and Suarez for information, as well.

“Erik was already there last year in the meetings, so we don’t really bring someone in new. Erik started to become more outspoken as the year went on, and so did Daniel. I’m sure their second year in will be even more magnified,” Hamlin said.

“Me and Kyle are both vocal enough in our meetings that it just depends on what happened to who that weekend who gives the most information,” he said, adding the weight of performing well rests on all of the team’s shoulders.

Both young drivers excelled during their time with Kyle Busch Motorsports. Jones landed seven victories in the NASCAR Camping World Truck Series for KBM, and Suarez scored one before his move to Xfinity competition for Gibbs.

Suarez will be rounding into his second year with Joe Gibbs Racing, continuing with the No. 19 Toyota that Carl Edwards vacated with his sudden retirement before 2017 season. Jones shifted into the No. 20 team, replacing Kenseth, after a year of seasoning with a place-holder Furniture Row Racing team.

Jones said he’s still getting familiar with his new team, but having crew chief Chris Gayle make the same move with him has helped smooth out any kinks.

“There were a lot of unknowns last year at this point for myself at least, going into a new series with a new team, a new group of guys — it was just a lot of things that were really unsettled and weren’t really all figured out yet,” Jones said. “At least having everybody in place and knowing Chris, knowing the Cup Series one year better than I did last, it’s definitely an advantage. I have a better feel for the cars and everything to expect there in what’s going to be week-in and week-out and how the season kind of rolls and progresses.

“We’ll see how it all goes, but I’m definitely at a more comfortable point with the Cup Series than I was a year ago.”

Posted on January 23, 2018January 23, 2018 by

CHARLOTTE, N.C. — Kurt Busch’s immediate sights are set on defending his 2017 Daytona 500 crown. But in the long term, the No. 41 driver also has an eye on other projects, from sports cars to broadcasting.

“I feel like I have a lot more to do in racing, whether it’s the NASCAR level or anything else, sports cars,” Busch said at Charlotte Motor Speedway Media Tour on Tuesday. “Done some drag racing, done some Indy Cars. But to me, I’m just trying to learn more about the whole product that happens with racing and that is to work with guys like FOX or NBC. … Just trying to continue to move forward and to learn all that I can.”

He’s getting a head start this offseason, too; the Stewart-Haas Racing driver will serve as a guest commentator at a Supercross event next week, as well as help ESPN with coverage of the X Games in Aspen, Colorado, which run from Jan. 25-28.

Busch signed a one-year contract with Stewart-Haas Racing on Dec. 12, 2017, after spending more than four months as a free agent when SHR didn’t pick up his contract option in August.

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Nonetheless, Busch assures that his interest in other ventures doesn’t mean that he’s hanging up his NASCAR fire suit after this season. He says he likes “to have options.”

“There are still so many balls in the air but you have to be smart in this day and age,” Busch said. “You can’t just have one plan because things change pretty quickly.”

Busch wouldn’t be the first driver to transition from racing to broadcasting if he were to choose that path; Dale Earnhardt Jr. will spend his first year in racing retirement covering NASCAR, as well as the Super Bowl and the Winter Olympics for NBC. Jeff Gordon is a regular member of the FOX booth, a move he made following his retirement at the end of the 2015 season. Other drivers such as Kevin Harvick, Brad Keselowski and Clint Bowyer have participated in race coverage for Xfinity or Camping World Truck Series events.