Posted on by Zack Albert

During a Wednesday news conference at the NASCAR Hall of Fame, Winston Kelley — the shrine’s executive director — acknowledged some personal hesitation with confronting heights. But Kelley and a host of others in the NASCAR community say they’re happy to set aside their trepidation for a good cause.

“If it’s for the kids, I’m willing to do it,” Kelley said in Wednesday’s kickoff to the first Charlotte edition of “Over the Edge,” a rappelling challenge and fundraising event scheduled Sept. 25-26 to benefit area education and healthcare services for children. The philanthropic program is the result of a joint effort with the Friends of the NASCAR Hall of Fame Foundation and The NASCAR Foundation.

RELATED: Success story at ‘Over the Edge’ Daytona

Hall of Famer Richard Petty and NASCAR Vice Chairman Mike Helton were also on hand to support the initiative — in voice, if not in a wall-scaling capacity. Petty said that Darrell Wallace Jr., his rookie driver in the famed No. 43, would take part, and Helton announced company contributions for participating employees.

“Every day or every week, we hear someone in our industry that’s given back to the sport and it makes you incredibly proud of being a part of NASCAR, the NASCAR Hall of Fame and The NASCAR Foundation and everything that they do,” Helton said. “… As part of the league and the regulating body, we get told we’re over the edge a lot. But this is a real deal. This is fun.”

The event is capped at 130 spots, with each participant to raise $1,000 or more for the foundation’s charities. Going over the edge will mean a 10-story trip downward from the new Embassy Suites Charlotte Uptown with the NASCAR Hall of Fame and its plaza as a backdrop.

Hall of Famer Rusty Wallace and International Speedway Corp. CEO Lesa France Kennedy plan to be back for their second such event, with JTG Daugherty Racing driver Chris Buescher also joining in.

The Charlotte event follows the first NASCAR-related Over the Edge fundraiser, held last November at the corporate headquarters in Daytona Beach, Florida. That debut raised $200,000 for the Daytona community, sparking conversation about expanding the program to another hub of the stock-car racing industry.

“It was such a success in Daytona that Lesa came to me and said we should do it in Charlotte,” said Nichole Krieger, The NASCAR Foundation’s executive director. “We started looking around and it made perfect sense for the Embassy Suites to host us. … It’s an important community to us like Daytona is, and we just think it’d be great to do something here in Charlotte.”

For more information about the program — including registration, sponsorship and volunteer opportunities — visit CharlotteOverTheEdge.org.

Posted on by Chase Wilhelm

Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series teams will no longer be required to start the race with the tires on which they qualified, according to Wednesday’s official NASCAR Rule Book update.

Starting on the qualifying set will be optional beginning with the Coca-Cola 600 at Charlotte Motor Speedway on May 27 (6 p.m. ET, FOX, PRN, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio).

Teams will be allotted four sets of practice and qualifying tires moving forward, with the exception of superspeedway events, which will have three sets. For enhanced weekend and superspeedway events, teams will be allowed to carry over their qualifying set to the race. If teams do not put laps on their qualifying set, teams will then be required to carry over a scuff practice set for the race.

Wednesday’s rule book update also reflects that teams have been granted one less set of tires for practice and qualifying, and one more set for the race.

For example, teams were allotted five total sets for practice and qualifying tires at Las Vegas Motor Speedway in March. When teams return to Las Vegas in September for the first race of the NASCAR Playoffs, four sets will be permitted.

Posted on by @nascarcasm and Steve Luvender

As the internet battled Wednesday over whether a viral audio clip said ‘Laurel’ or ‘Yanny,’ our own Steve Luvender and @nascarcasm got into a heated debate over the clip on Slack, when they should have been doing something productive.

The transcript is as follows:

Steve Luvender: YANNY

NASCARCASM: LAUREL

Steve Luvender: YANNY

NASCARCASM: LAUREL

Steve Luvender: YANNY

NASCARCASM: DARRELL

Steve Luvender: DANNY

NASCARCASM: DALE

Steve Luvender: DENNY

NASCARCASM: DONNIE

Steve Luvender: DAVEY

NASCARCASM: DERRIKE

Steve Luvender: DIBENEDETTO

NASCARCASM: BUESCHER … AS IN CHRIS NOT JAMES, SORRY WANT TO CLEAR THAT UP

Steve Luvender: I MISS SEEING JAMES TEAR UP THE TRACK. IT’S BEEN A WHILE. I HOPE HE’S DOING WELL

NASCARCASM: GOSH ME TOO. ALSO, DARNELL

Steve Luvender: BELL

NASCARCASM: BILL (SEE: AWESOME FROM DAWSONVILLE)

Steve Luvender: DID YOU SAY DAWSONVILLE OR AUSTIN DILLON

NASCARCASM: I LOST TRACK STEVE … LET’S SAY DILLON

Steve Luvender: THAT’S OK. I FORGET WHAT WE WERE YELLING ABOUT ORIGINALLY. SOMETHING ABOUT A DRESS THAT’S BLUE AND BLACK

NASCARCASM: NAH IT WAS ABOUT HEARING TWO ENTIRELY DIFFERENT THINGS — LIKE WHENEVER WE HAVE CONFERENCE CALLS WITH WARD BURTON. I’LL ASK YOU “DID HE SAY ‘SPATULA THE POLECAT UP THE BANANA PATCH’” AND YOU’LL BE LIKE “NO I THINK HE SAID ‘FLIM FLAM WHAM BAM ANDOUILLE SAUSAGE MOLAR.’”

Steve Luvender: OH, YEAH, LIKE THIS VIRAL VIDEO I SAW YESTERDAY. THEY SAID YOU’D EITHER HEAR “YANNY” OR “LAUREL” BUT I JUST SAID I HEARD “YANNY” TO SOUND COOL. I REALLY HEARD “DENNY”

NASCARCASM: YOU HEARD “DENNY?” I HEARD “DALE”

Steve Luvender: DENNY

NASCARCASM: PLAIN AS DAY … DALE

Steve Luvender: DENNY. HOW COULD YOU EVEN HEAR ANYTHING ELSE?

NASCARCASM: IF DALE HAS A DALE CALL I WONDER IF LAUREL HAS A LAUREL CALL. LIKE, YOU BLOW IT AND EITHER LAUREL OR YANNY SHOWS UP

Steve Luvender: LAUREL SHOWS UP VIA FEDEX, A COMPANY THAT SPONSORS WHICH DRIVER?

NASCARCASM: RAISE HELL AND PRAISE LAUREL

Steve Luvender:  CARL?

NASCARCASM: DARL … ington sorry that was weak

Steve Luvender: “YANNY LAUREL” SOUNDS LIKE A VENTRILOQUIST IN TRAINING TRYING TO SAY “DANIEL SUAREZ” WITHOUT MOVING THEIR LIPS

NASCARCASM: PAUL MENARD NEVER MOVES HIS LIPS BUT HE ALSO DOES NOT OWN A PUPPET SO I GUESS THAT MAKES HIM LIKE 50 PERCENT A VENTRILOQUIST. LIKE, HE’S GOT HALF OF IT DOWN.

Steve Luvender: HOW DO YOU KNOW PAUL MENARD DOESN’T OWN A PUPPET?

NASCARCASM: I MEAN I GUESS I’M UNFAIRLY GENERALIZING WHO KNOWS WHAT SKILLS HE MAY HAVE. HE MAY HEAR BOTH YANNY AND LAUREL. MAYBE HE CAN JUGGLE TOO.

Steve Luvender: YOU’RE PROBABLY RIGHT. A MAN WITH SUCH IMPRESSIVE FACIAL-HAIR-GROWING ABILITY SEEMS TO HAVE NO BOUNDS TO HIS TALENT. I’M GLAD WE CAN AGREE ON SOMETHING

NASCARCASM: DALE

Steve Luvender: DENNY. (oh crap I have a meeting be back soon)

NASCARCASM: YOU WIN

Posted on by Pat DeCola

Elijah Burke just can’t thank all the guys back at the shop enough.

The recent College at Brockport graduate charmed the internet this week with his post-graduation, NASCAR-style interview.

From all the thanking and giving credit, to his “PR person” swapping out his graduate cap for a sponsor cap mid-sentence to even holding his Coca-Cola label-out (Coca-Cola Racing Family member Joey Logano would be proud), Burke nails it.

Looking for a job in the industry, he may have succeeded — his viral tweet has garnered the attention of a few tracks, even NASCAR itself.

In this day and age, it pays to stand out from the crowd. Burke has done just that, and says he drew inspiration from similar viral video from about five years ago. Talk about recall.

“I had the idea for this type of video a few weeks before graduation,” Burke told NASCAR.com. “I remembered Elliot Johnson from the Atlanta Braves giving a NASCAR-style, post-race interview after a game once; that made me realize you can truly apply the NASCAR interview to anything.

“I thought to myself ‘why not graduation?’ I’ve had a couple of tweets reach 1,000 favorites before, but never did I expect this kind of response. It’s truly humbling and rewarding and couldn’t have come at a better time with respect to finding a job. I’d just like to thank my mom, dad, sister, extended family, friends, and all the guys back at the shop for all the hard work they’ve put in this season.”

Posted on by Steve Luvender

With a new rules package, a modified race format, no points at stake, and $1 million on the line, the 2018 Monster Energy NASCAR All-Star Race will be one of the greatest spectacles in recent memory.

Even if you’ve already formed your own opinion of what’s going to happen when the green flag flies Saturday (8 p.m. ET, FS1), you can randomly create your own hot takes and predictions with our handy All-Star Race Hot Take Generator.

 

Posted on by Staff Report

Hertz will put you in the driver’s seat, but we’re not quite sure if their upgrade options include a chance to drive William Byron’s No. 24 Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet. At any rate, it’s a pretty cool car, and Byron tweeted out the new scheme after the announcement that Hertz will be a primary sponsor for the No. 24 for multiple races in 2018 and 2019 in the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series.

RELATED: Byron adds Hertz as primary sponsor

Posted on by Team Release

CONCORD, N.C. — The Hertz Corporation, one of the world’s largest vehicle rental companies, has joined 12-time NASCAR Cup Series champions Hendrick Motorsports as a primary sponsor of leading rookie of the year contender William Byron and his iconic No. 24 Chevrolet Camaro ZL1 team beginning in 2018.

As part of the two-year agreement, Hertz will be primary sponsor of the No. 24 team in four points-paying Cup Series races in both 2018 and 2019 and an associate-level partner in all other events. Additionally, Hertz will sponsor Byron in the non-points 2018 NASCAR All-Star Race weekend events at the driver’s hometown track of Charlotte Motor Speedway.

RELATED: Byron reveals new paint scheme

“We’re incredibly excited about the opportunity to join Hendrick Motorsports and sponsor William Byron and his No. 24 team,” said Hertz chief marketing officer Jodi Allen. “This is a perfect partnership. Hendrick Motorsports has a proven legacy of winning in an incredibly popular and iconic sport. Hertz is also an iconic brand with a 100-year history of success delivering superior service to car rental customers. At Hertz, ‘we’re here to get you there,’ whether that’s to a NASCAR event, business meeting or vacation destination.”

The Hertz Corporation operates three leading rental car brands — Hertz, Dollar and Thrifty — each dedicated to supporting travelers with top-rated vehicles and exceptional customer service. Hertz offers an array of products and services, including the award-winning Hertz Gold Plus Rewards® loyalty program, which provides a fast and seamless rental experience, as well as Ultimate Choice®, which allows customers at more than 55 top U.S. airports to choose the car that is right for them. Hertz also has a large and diverse fleet featuring a mix of vehicles from the company’s Adrenaline, Dream Cars®, Green Traveler and Prestige collections.

“We’re pleased to welcome Hertz as a new partner,” said Rick Hendrick, owner of Hendrick Motorsports. “It’s a tremendous organization that has a worldwide footprint and does a lot of good in the community through its Hertz Giving initiatives. With William and the No. 24 program, we see numerous opportunities to work together to positively impact their company and brand. All of us look forward to collaborating with the entire Hertz team.”

Byron, 20, leads the 2018 Cup Series rookie of the year standings after 12 races. The Charlotte, North Carolina, native is coming off winning the NASCAR Xfinity Series championship in 2017 — a season that included wins at Iowa, ISM Raceway and the historic venues of Daytona and Indianapolis, where he became the youngest winner of a major race in the track’s 108-year history.

“It’s really special that a leading brand like Hertz has so much confidence in me,” Byron said. “It motivates me to continue working hard and doing everything I can to make sure we deliver results for them. I’m happy to welcome Hertz to the Hendrick Motorsports family and look forward to having a lot of success with them in the months and years ahead.”

Posted on by Zack Albert

NASCAR has handed down five penalties for a flurry of rear-window violations this season, hitting teams with fines, points deductions and suspensions to key personnel.

After the most recent — the third such sanction in the last two weekends — those penalties will soon get tougher.

The Chip Ganassi Racing No. 42 team was the latest to draw an L1-grade punishment, absorbing penalties Tuesday for a caved-in roof and rear-window area on the car driven by Kyle Larson in last weekend’s event at Kansas Speedway.

RELATED: More on post-Kansas penalties

With inspections and infractions becoming a growing part of the circuit’s week-to-week operations, Scott Miller, NASCAR senior vice president of competition, said the sanctioning body is exploring more rigid penalties for improper alterations to the rear-window area.

“This issue with the rear windows is really bad for all of us,” Miller told NASCAR.com. “It’s bad for the sport, it’s bad for the broadcasters … it’s bad for the teams, and the reason why this one is so bad is the optics of it. It’s like everybody sees these things. They’re out in the open and it gets all of the negative wheels spinning in directions that we don’t need them spinning in.

“So what we plan on doing is, moving forward, any of these rear window penalties, we’re probably going to ramp it up to the high end of the L1 scale. We’ve kind of been in the middle and if we need to ramp it up further than that to where we get this under control and stop (this), then we’re prepared to go further. So yeah, we will change our stance on this because this needs to stop.”

So far this season, penalties for such violations have fallen in the middle range of the NASCAR Rule Book’s L1 guidelines, which span fines of $25,000 to $75,000, car chief suspensions from one to three races and points deductions from 10 to 40 points.

Miller has spent part of his career on the opposite end of rule book enforcement, serving as a crew chief for multiple teams before joining NASCAR’s competition department. The trend of searching for aerodynamic advantages in the rear window area may be a relatively recent development, but the ongoing practice of teams trying to exploit gray areas in the rules is not.

“There’s performance there, so they’re going to try to get it as close to the edge as they can,” Miller says. “When you do that, you always run the risk of it running afoul when things happen out there on the race track. It’s like the dynamics of the race track are fairly hard to predict and when you’re pushing the envelope with the strength of that structure, things can go wrong in a hurry.”

Posted on by Zack Albert

NASCAR handed down an L1-grade penalty Tuesday to the Chip Ganassi Racing No. 42 Chevrolet team of Kyle Larson for an improper rear window support discovered in post-race inspection after last weekend’s event at Kansas Speedway.

The No. 42 team was found in violation of Sections 20.4.h (vehicle body) and 20.4.8.1.b&c (rear window support and structure) in the 2018 NASCAR Rule Book, with the rear window not flush to the rear deck lid and the rear window support braces not keeping the rear window glass rigid in all directions.

RELATED: Miller: Expect penalties to ramp up

As a result, No. 42 crew chief Chad Johnston was fined $50,000, and car chief David Bryant was suspended from the next two points-paying events on the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series schedule. Bryant will be available this weekend at Charlotte Motor Speedway for the non-points Monster Energy NASCAR All-Star Race.

Scott Miller, NASCAR Senior Vice President of Competition, told NASCAR.com the violation was similar to other technical infractions found earlier in the season. Those punishments included penalties for a bowed roof on the Las Vegas-winning No. 4 Ford of Kevin Harvick in March, a rear-window penalty to the No. 9 team after Texas in April, and last week’s sanctions to the No. 14 and No. 19 teams for similar unapproved bodies earlier this month at Dover.

“The industry has kind of seen a rash of this type of thing lately with the rear windows,” Miller said. “The teams have obviously found some performance in that area and they’re kind of pushing the envelope, not to say that anyone wants their stuff to come back looking like that and be illegal, but they’ve obviously found performance and they’re pushing the envelope, and when you do that, sometimes it pushes over the edge. I think that’s the case with this one and the case with the other ones we’ve had here recently with the rear window violations. It’s kind of more of the same.”

The penalty takes away the benefit of the playoff point Larson earned with his stage win at Kansas. The team was also docked 20 points from the drivers’ and car owners’ standings. The penalty drops Larson from 10th to 11th in the Monster Energy Series points.

Larson led a race-high 101 laps and finished fourth in Saturday’s KC Masterpiece 400 at the Kansas track, rallying after late-race contact with the No. 12 Ford of Ryan Blaney.

RELATED: All Access of the Blaney-Larson contact | Larson rallies for fourth after contact

Chip Ganassi Racing issued a statement early Tuesday evening, saying that the organization would not appeal the penalty. “Although all parties agree that the infraction was unintentional and the result of contact, we will not appeal the penalty so that we can focus our energy on the All-Star Race and the Coca-Cola 600,” the statement read.

Miller, however, addressed that collision Tuesday, indicating that the No. 42 car’s body deformities were not completely the result of on-track contact.

“We don’t believe that was the entire cause,” Miller told NASCAR.com. “I mean, there’s a possibility that it could have exacerbated the situation a little bit, but we have evidence that shows that there were things happening before that contact.”

NASCAR also announced that the Team Penske No. 22 Ford team for driver Joey Logano was penalized for having one lug nut not safely and securely mounted in a post-race check. Competition officials issued a $10,000 fine to No. 22 crew chief Todd Gordon for the safety infraction.

Posted on by Team Release

CONCORD, N.C.  (May 15, 2018) – Leavine Family Racing and Dumont GROUP will debut a special throwback-inspired paint scheme aboard Kasey Kahne’s No. 95 Camaro ZL1 for the Monster Energy NASCAR All-Star Race at Charlotte Motor Speedway.

Kahne’s Dumont JETS Camaro ZL1 is sure to bring back memories for his fans who helped vote him into the 2008 All-Star Race thanks to the Fan Vote. Kahne is the only driver who has won the fan vote for the event and then gone on to win the million-dollar payout in the non-points event.

RELATED: All-Star Race: What you need to know | All-time All-Star Race winners | Eligible All-Star Race drivers

“It was so awesome that the fans voted us into the All-Star race back in 2008,” recalls Kahne. “It really was special to get voted into the race, and then to have a great car to be able to drive our way to the front in order to make strategy calls that put us in position to win. Our paint scheme for this weekend looks so similar to that scheme we ran in 2008’s event, that it’s been cool to see it in the shop as the guys have been getting ready for this weekend. I’m looking forward to racing it this weekend, and hopefully the paint scheme can bring us the same result we had 10 years ago.”

Kasey Kahne performs a burnout after winning the 2008 NASCAR All-Star Race.
Kevin C. Cox | Getty Images

Dumont JETS will be featured as a primary sponsor for the first time in NASCAR. The full-service aircraft charter, sales, maintenance and parts organization began its partnership with LFR at the start of the 2018 season. Dumont JETS has associate partner branding for the season aboard the No.95 and will also have a primary paint scheme at Dover in October.

“Dumont JETS is excited to have our first primary paint scheme in the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series this weekend at the All-Star Race,” said Kevin Wargo, Director of Dumont JETS and Dumont GROUP. “We know that fans will enjoy the throw-back scheme as much as we do! We have enjoyed working with Leavine Family Racing and Kasey Kahne, and are looking forward to continuing the partnership on and off the track.”

This year’s Monster Energy NASCAR All-Star Race will be comprised of four stages: Stage 1 ends on Lap 30; Stage 2 ends on Lap 50; Stage 3 on Lap 70; and Stage 4 on Lap 80. NASCAR Overtime will be in effect for all stages of the event, and stages will not end under a caution. Along with a slightly different format for this year, the rules package the cars will run will be different as well. Restrictor plates will be used, which typically are currently only run at superspeedways. A six-inch high spoiler (with two 12-inch “ears”), a 2014-style splitter on the nose of the cars, as well as aero ducts are also part of the package competitors will be running. This new package for the weekend was created to promote more passing on the track, as well as to tighten the competition. NASCAR ran a similar package on the Xfinity Series cars at Indianapolis Motor Speedway in 2017 and the race saw a record number of lead changes.

MORE: Cast your All-Star Race vote

Kahne has competed in 14 All-Star races so far during his career and has earned one win, two top-five finishes, four top-10 finishes, and one pole award in the non-points event. He’s completed 1,121 of 1,313 (85.3 percent) career laps and has led for a total of 69 laps in All-Star Race competition.

The Monster Energy NASCAR All-Star Race will take place on Saturday, May 19 at 8:00 pm ET. The race will be broadcast live on FOX Sports 1, Sirius XM Channel 90 and MRN Radio.