Take a look at where the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series drivers will pit on Sunday at Kansas Speedway in the Hollywood Casino 400 (3 p.m. ET on NBCSN, MRN, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio).
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KANSAS CITY, Kan. — Post-qualifying inspection at Kansas Speedway on Friday night yielded a violation in the No. 21 Omnicraft Auto Parts Ford driven by Ryan Blaney, and the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series playoff driver will have to start Sunday’s Hollywood Casino 400 from the rear of the field (3 p.m. ET, NBCSN, MRN, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio).
Officials found a problem with the rear of the car, saying in a statement later Friday night “the package tray did not maintain its original shape.”
Blaney had qualified the car third overall — which would have been his best start since winning the pole here at Kansas in May. As a result, his team will make the last pit stall selection for Kansas, and also for next weekend’s race at Martinsville Speedway. Monster Energy Series teams will qualify for Martinsville hours prior to the race, so pit stall selections for that event are determined by qualifying order at Kansas.
Blaney enters the Round of 12 cutoff race ranked seventh in the standings, nine points above the cutoff line. The top eight drivers following Sunday’s race will advance to the Round of 8.
RELATED: Truck Series Playoff standings
Christopher Bell’s current wave of performance comes at an opportune time, nearly halfway through the NASCAR Camping World Truck Series Playoffs. His next challenge comes in the Round of 6, which will set the field for the championship race at Homestead-Miami Speedway on Nov. 17.
Bell will kick off the final three-race stanza Saturday, Oct. 28, at Martinsville Speedway, hoping to keep the hot hand and protect his edge in the points standings. He joins defending series champ Johnny Sauter, Matt Crafton, John Hunter Nemechek, Ben Rhodes and Austin Cindric as the six remaining drivers in championship contention.
There are no more off weeks on the Truck Series schedule, which goes from diminutive .526-mile Martinsville to 1.5-mile Texas Motor Speedway before concluding the round at 1-mile Phoenix Raceway. Those events will trim the postseason field from six drivers to four for the Homestead-Miami finale.
Bell already carries a significant advantage in the Round of 6 standings, having amassed 47 playoff points to date. That total includes five points for each of his five race victories, one point for each of seven stage wins, and his 15-point bonus for claiming the Regular-Season Championship.
That effectiveness has given the 22-year-old Bell a 20-point margin over Sauter and a 34-point cushion over the cut line. The Oklahoma native has finished no worse than third place in the last four races, and his sweeping victory (overall race win plus two stage wins) in the last round’s opener at New Hampshire only solidified his grip on the top spot.
Like Bell, Sauter and Crafton are also vying for a return trip to the Championship 4 showdown. Each have had their share of success at Martinsville: Sauter has three career Truck Series wins at the Virginia short track, and Crafton has two.
RELATED: Kansas qualifying order | Full Kansas schedule
KANSAS CITY, Kan. – Jimmie Johnson knows he needs to do better at qualifying, but he’s not sure how to accomplish that goal.
The numbers don’t lie. Johnson’s average starting position through 31 races this season is 17.0. His previous low mark was 14.3 in his 2002 rookie year.
The mid-pack starting spots have had dire consequences. The seven-time champion’s lackluster efforts in time trials have translated to a career-worst average finish of 15.8. Though Johnson has won three times this season, he has finished in the top five only one other time.
Only one previous time in his career has Johnson failed to crack double digits in top fives. That was 15 years ago, when he posted six top-five results in his rookie season.
But the real negative of mediocrity in time trials manifests itself in stage racing. Starting from an average of 17th on the grid, Johnson has had difficulty accumulating stage points to any significant degree.
WATCH: Johnson says, ‘We are a team that thrives on adversity’
As a consequence, he’s eighth in the standings, fighting to retain a spot in the Round of 8 in the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series Playoff. It doesn’t help that the driver who is seven points behind him — Kyle Busch — has eight poles this season and an average starting position of 7.1.
That’s an average advantage of 10 spots over Johnson, or 10 points, to start every race. That’s why qualifying is No. 1 on Johnson’s to-do list of areas to improve.
He will start 12th at Sunday’s Hollywood Casino 400 (NBCSN, 3 p.m. ET) after another subpar effort.
“It hasn’t been a strong suit of mine, and over the last couple of years, it has slipped even more,” Johnson told the NASCAR Wire Service on Friday at Kansas Speedway, site of Sunday’s Round of 12 elimination race. “This year, we knew before the season ever started that the importance of qualifying was going to ratchet up and be two to three times more important, essentially.
“Even with all that awareness and the thought process and attempts to raise our qualifying performance, we haven’t yet. And we’re looking at every option possible. Again, here this weekend, I personally am trying to find the right rhythm that is needed out there on the track to put up that lap time. Through practice and the three rounds of qualifying, at some point I can sneak the speed out of the car and post a good lap, and for whatever reason trying to back that up or do it lap after lap, just haven’t been able to pull that off.”
RELATED: ‘Father figure’ Jimmie Johnson guiding Byron, Bowman
It’s not that Johnson has neglected qualifying in preparing for each race.
“We’ve spent a lot of time focusing on it, and we’re almost to a point now where we overthought it,” he said. “Are we slowing ourselves down from overthinking it in some regards?
“We’re aware and trying hard and have been trying hard to get that right. Hopefully, we get it.”
As an added incentive, Friday’s pole winner at Kansas Speedway earned the No. 1 pit stall next week at Martinsville, where the stall closest to the exit from pit road is a huge advantage.
But Johnson can’t worry about that now. If he doesn’t survive Kansas in the top eight, Martinsville won’t matter, where a possible record eighth championship is concerned.
RELATED: Qualifying results | See every car | Full schedule for Kansas
KANSAS CITY, Kan. – You can’t blame Martin Truex Jr. for looking ahead.
The Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series leader didn’t need to win the pole position at Kansas Speedway, having already qualified for the NASCAR Playoffs’ Round of 8 with a victory two weeks ago at Charlotte.
But by posting the fastest lap in Friday’s knockout qualifying session at the 1.5-mile track, Truex got a leg up on a trip to the Championship 4 race at Homestead-Miami Speedway, because the time trials at Kansas came with a significant bonus — first choice of pit stalls for the Oct. 29 Round of 8 opener at Martinsville Speedway.
For the record, Truex ran the fastest lap of the afternoon in the final round of qualifying for Sunday’s Hollywood Casino 400 (on NBCSN at 3 p.m. ET), covering the distance in 28.719 seconds (188.029 mph) to beat Kevin Harvick (187.682 mph) for the top starting spot by .053 seconds.
But Truex had to push his car to the limit in the final round to earn his third Coors Light Pole Award of the season, his second at Kansas and the 15th of his career.
“I was shaking a little — I’m not going to lie,” Truex said. “My heart was beating. It gets the adrenaline going so high to put down a lap like that, to go the fastest you’ve gone all day in that final round.
“We put it all together. We got the balance better, and I stepped up and put it on the line out there, and it stuck. The commitment level was high, and the car handled it well. That’s always a good combination.”
Ryan Blaney had qualified third but his time was disallowed following post-qualifying inspection as it was found that the package tray on the No. 21 Wood Brothers Racing Ford did not maintain its original shape. As a result of that, Blaney will start from the 40th position in Sunday’s race.
RELATED: Blaney’s time disallowed, will start last in elimination race
Matt Kenseth will start third and Denny Hamlin fourth, as playoff drivers garnered the top four spots on the grid. Daniel Suarez was fifth, followed by Erik Jones and Kyle Busch, as Toyota drivers claimed six of the top seven starting positions, the only exception being the Ford of Harvick.
Because qualifying at Martinsville is on the same day as the race, pit selection at the .526-mile short track was tied to qualifying at Kansas, where the No. 1 pit stall gives a driver unfettered egress from pit road.
“It was definitely on our minds,” said Truex, who has won a series-best six races in a dream season for the No. 78 Furniture Row Racing team. “We talked about it. It was like ‘It’d be pretty nice to go to Martinsville and have the No. 1 pit stall.’
“It was definitely on our minds, but I don’t know if it really played into how we got the job done or not. But it was definitely good timing, more than anything, because that’s going to be huge for us going into the Round of 8 next week.”
Harvick, the 2014 series champion described his qualifying session as “three sketchy laps,” but feels he has a competitive car for the race that will trim the playoff field from 12 drivers to eight.
“I think we have a car that can be capable of staying up there and hopefully having a chance to win the race at the end,” Harvick said. “It’s a good start to the weekend. That’s half the battle when you’re trying to collect stage points in the first stage and get pit stall selection and try and gain all the advantages that you can on Friday.
“That’s something that our team did a good job at this year. I feel like our cars are a lot faster from the beginning of the year on the mile-and-a-half race tracks, and we’re on the game. It’s been a fun few weeks.”
Seven-time champion Jimmie Johnson, who currently leads Kyle Busch by seven points for the final spot in the Round of 8, and will start 12th. Playoff driver Jamie McMurray qualified eighth in the fastest Chevrolet.
Playoff drivers Kyle Larson and Chase Elliott will start 13th and 14th, respectively. Ricky Stenhouse Jr., the only playoff driver who failed to make the second round, will take the green flag from 24th.
Contributing: Staff report
KANSAS CITY, Kan. — After last weekend’s disagreement with crew chief Mike Bugarewicz, Stewart-Haas Racing driver Clint Bowyer faced questions about the relationship with his pit boss Friday at Kansas Speedway.
Specifically, if a change needs to be made.
“I don’t know. It’s not time to, you know, start … it’s time to start thinking about that, but at the end of the day, it’s about depth in our organization and building and organization,” the Stewart-Haas Racing driver said. ” … Who knows? There could be a lot of different things that happen in the offseason for Stewart-Haas. You don’t know. I don’t know that. And you don’t know that or anybody else. I think time will tell and paint a lot clearer picture.”
After exiting his wrecked No. 14 Ford in last Sunday’s Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series Playoffs race, Bowyer and Bugarewicz could be seen jawing at each other before the veteran driver headed to the garage area.
MORE: Best photos from Kansas
The eight-time winner and 2012 championship runner-up chalked it up to “confusion,” but emotions have occasionally flared in Bowyer’s first season in the No. 14 car, which previously was driven by three-time champion and owner Tony Stewart.
Bowyer’s first season with SHR, while enjoying a significant increase in results and performance over his 2016 campaign with now-defunct HScott Motorsports, has seen its share of ups and downs. The No. 14 team has accumulated 12 top-10 finishes through 31 races, but Bowyer remains winless since 2012.
RELATED: See photos of the road course layout, test
A two-day test at the Charlotte Motor Speedway road course produced plenty of valuable insights into the track that will serve as the elimination race in the Round of 16 in the 2018 Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series Playoffs.
Want more? Well, see for yourself.
Below is a 360-degree view of the 2.42-mile, 18-turn road course layout, from the cockpit of the No. 27 Richard Childress Racing Chevrolet piloted by Daniel Hemric.
When the video starts, select the arrows in the top left of the screen to change the view in real time.
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RELATED: Full weekend schedule | Updated Playoffs standings
KANSAS CITY, Kan. – Matt Kenseth isn’t sure yet if he’ll have a good chance of advancing in the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series Playoffs, but he knows he must avoid a ‘bad’ day on Sunday.
His body of work at the 1.5-mile Kansas Speedway points to a positive potential.
Kenseth hasn’t finished worse than 14th at the track since October of 2009 — a streak that includes 10 top-10 finishes in the last 14 races here and back-to-back wins in 2012-13 in a Jack Roush Ford and a Joe Gibbs Toyota, respectively.
Sitting in 10th place in the Playoffs standings heading into Sunday’s Hollywood Casino 400 (3 p.m. ET, NBCSN, MRN, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio), Kenseth needs a win to automatically advance or get some help from his fellow competitors ahead of him. He enters Sunday’s race eight points below the cutoff line, where Jimmie Johnson sits in eighth place and just one point behind Kyle Busch in ninth. To earn a position in the next round of the playoffs on points, he’ll need to be aggressive by earning valuable stage points and hope the former champions aren’t so fortunate.
Only 30 points separate places three (Kyle Larson) through 10, and stage wins will be at a premium.
“Last time we were here we ran bad from the second we unloaded until we were done with the weekend,” Kenseth said. “I’m optimistic we’ll unload a decent speed today, it will drive decent, we’ll get it driving good tomorrow, I hope. Charlotte (two weeks ago) was a struggle. Never got to drive good the whole weekend. Didn’t run very well. Talladega is Talladega. Hopefully we can go this weekend and perform well.’’
The last time Kenseth was at Kansas — and he describes it as a “bad” day — he finished 12th. He led 273 laps in the previous four races and sat on the pole for the spring race in 2016.
So the 2003 Cup champion actually comes to the track as a legitimate favorite to hoist a trophy. He has finishes of 11th or better in four of the five 2017 playoff races, including mile-and-a-half tracks like Kansas, Chicago and Charlotte.
Kenseth’s body language and remarks in a press conference Friday might indicate he truly doesn’t know what to expect during this vital playoff weekend – race favorite or not. But his performance here gives gives him every reason to be optimistic.
“I think after they paved it, we had a couple years there where we just had really fast cars, then kind of things went right in the race, we were able to capitalize on that,’’ Kenseth surmised of his results at Kansas.
“You’re only as good as your last race. Our last one here we ran really, really bad. Looking forward to getting on the track today and hopefully redeeming ourselves this weekend.
“Obviously winning has been important to us. We haven’t been able to do that in about a year and a half. With all that being said, if we can’t run good here, we’re probably not going to run good anywhere the rest of the year. …
“This always has been one of my better race tracks from a driver standpoint. It’s a pretty basic race track, mile and a half, still not very bumpy. There’s multiple banking. But your intermediate stuff, if it’s ever going to run good, it should run good here. So hopefully we can make it run good.”
RELATED: Full Kansas schedule
KANSAS CITY, Kan. – Jimmie Johnson, seven-time champion and two-time father, took the kids to lunch Wednesday ahead of his upcoming business trip to Kansas.
It wasn’t Genevieve and Lydia occupying the car seats in Johnson’s dad-mobile, however. It was his 2018 Hendrick Motorsports teammates, Alex Bowman and William Byron.
Just taking the kids to lunch.@AlexBRacing @WilliamByron pic.twitter.com/gWrBDVNB08
— Jimmie Johnson (@JimmieJohnson) October 18, 2017
The duo – who, ages combined, have a mere one year over the 42-year-old veteran – will respectively step into the roles previously filled by Dale Earnhardt Jr. (No. 88 Chevrolet) and Kasey Kahne (Byron will take over the No. 24 Chevrolet, with incumbent Chase Elliott switching to the No. 9 with his current 24 crew) next season.
Despite being locked into the zone of his own championship pursuit in the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series Playoffs – with the prospect of being on the wrong side of the cutoff line looming in Sunday’s Kansas Lottery 400 (3 p.m. ET, NBCSN) – Johnson has begun to take the future of Hendrick Motorsports under his wing.
The lunch was more than just grabbing some food (perhaps tacos, at Johnson’s new Charlotte restaurant, Southbound) – it offered a chance for the upstarts to get inside the mind of one of NASCAR’s most prolific drivers of all time.
And part of that mentality? Just having a good time, cracking jokes and enjoying life.
“We were just going out to lunch; as a group we were just doing some things in the simulator and stuff like that. It was fun to kind of take that picture,” Byron said Friday before hitting the 1.5-mile track for practice ahead of Saturday’s XFINITY Series Playoff race, the Kansas Lottery 300 (3 p.m. ET, NBC). “The funny part was supposed to be being in the car seats. That was funny.”
More seriously, Johnson has spent time in the simulator over the past few weeks with his pupils, guiding the protégés and offering his tips and tricks to particular tracks.
The lessons are invaluable, and could pay dividends immediately. Johnson is the all-time wins leader at the Kansas City track — his three wins tied with Jeff Gordon — and Byron is aiming to continue his run atop the playoff standings with a solid showing in his first XFINITY start here.
Thanks to Johnson’s tutelage, Byron enters the weekend with a champion’s mindset.
“That was cool to kind of spend time with him and pull from his knowledge and just learn how he was going to approach this weekend,” said Byron. “It seems like he’s really ready to go. “We’re going to take the same approach and try and execute this weekend and hopefully have a good weekend.”
RELATED: Practice 1 results | Full schedule for Kansas
Kyle Larson sped to the top of the leaderboard in first Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series practice Friday afternoon at Kansas Speedway.
Larson pushed the Chip Ganassi Racing No. 42 Chevrolet to a best lap of 189.056 mph around the 1.5-mile Kansas City track. He sits third in the NASCAR Playoffs standings ahead of Sunday’s Hollywood Casino 400 (3 p.m. ET, NBCSN, MRN, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio), the final race in the postseason’s Round of 12.
Kevin Harvick, a two-time Kansas winner, was second-fastest in the 85-minute session, clocking 187.500 mph in the Stewart-Haas Racing No. 4 Ford. Kyle Busch was third in the Joe Gibbs Racing No. 18 Toyota with Ryan Blaney fourth in the Wood Brothers Racing No. 21 Ford.
RELATED: Qualifying results | Blaney’s time disallowed
Series points leader Martin Truex Jr. turned in the fifth-fastest lap in the Furniture Row Racing No. 78 Toyota, as championship-eligible drivers swept the top five. Both he and Brad Keselowski (24th-fastest in first practice) have automatically advanced to the Round of 8 by virtue of their victories earlier in the current round.
Driver Comparison
Kyle Busch
Martin Truex Jr.
Kevin Harvick
All Others
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The top spot changed hands several times over the last half-hour of practice as teams turned their focus to making mock qualifying passes. Coors Light Pole Qualifying is scheduled Friday at 6:15 p.m. ET (NBCSN) for the sixth event in the 10-race Playoffs.
Dale Earnhardt Jr.’s Hendrick Motorsports No. 88 Chevrolet brushed the outside retaining wall at the exit of Turn 4 at approximately the 15-minute mark of practice.