Posted on by Team Release

The following statement is attributed to Barney Visser, Furniture Row Racing team owner:

“As Furniture Row Racing looks ahead to the 2018 Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series season, the Denver, Colo. based team is not planning to field the No. 77 Toyota as a second car entry. It is our organization’s goal to operate a two-car team in the future and we will continue to seek sponsorship funding for the No. 77. Our 100 percent focus for next season will be on the No 78 Toyota Camry, which will be driven by Martin Truex Jr.”

RELATED: Key players in NASCAR’s Silly Season

Posted on by Nascar

MARTINSVILLE, Va. — He says there are times when his phone will vibrate and wake him in the middle of the night and he picks it up, fully expecting to find a text message from his son.

But Adam Wright died Aug. 20.

“It’s tough. It’s been really, really tough,” Pete Wright says and if you’ve got any compassion at all you feel terrible for bringing up something so personal and so heartbreaking.

“They say you aren’t supposed to ask why, but I can’t help it. He was one of the nicest kids in the world who never hurt anyone.”

Adam Wright was just 33 when he lost his life in a single-vehicle crash near his home in Troutman, N.C.

He had followed his father’s footsteps into NASCAR, worked for a few teams, then left to start his own business. But the sport eventually drew him back and he was most recently working with driver Michael Annett and JR Motorsports in the NASCAR XFINITY Series.

• • •

Pete Wright has been here many times. Too many to count. But this time it was different for Wright, a longtime crewman and mechanic who has seen the underside of more race cars than he can recall.

Wright was at Martinsville Speedway Tuesday, working with his Hendrick Motorsports teammates on the Wheel Force Transducer car for Chevrolet.

It’s data gathering and nowhere near as exciting as when 40 cars go rushing off into the first turn under bright, sunny skies. WFT testing consists of logging laps and recording data. And repeating the process again and again and again.

But for Wright, it was the first time he had been back to a race track, he said, since his son’s death.

“I can’t tell you how many times I’ve picked up my phone and started to text him,” Wright said, his voice trailing off.

The phone rang that night and it was friends of the youngster calling to tell the father that his son had been killed.

Then it rang again and it was the police telling him his son had died.

These days when Pete Wright hears it ring, he says doesn’t know what to think. He says he has nightmares.

A native of nearby Franklin County, Wright has been around race cars most of his life. He was a part of Terry Labonte’s championship-winning effort. The one in 1984. Who else on a crew in ’84 can still be found at the track today? Not too many, I can guarantee you that.

There are several teams here at Martinsville on this muggy Tuesday, testing for the upcoming First Data 500 at month’s end. Some are still in contention for this year’s Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series championship and looking to get any advantage they can before returning in less than three weeks.

Others aren’t Playoff contenders and simply hope to improve and end the year on a strong note.

In the meantime, conversations with Wright start and stop as fellow crewman stop by to say hello and express their regrets.

We’re told that going back to work and getting back into old routines will help in such situations. The mind will stay busy.

“That’s what they say,” Wright said, “but I can’t say it’s really helped any.”

Posted on by Staff Report

RELATED: Full schedule for Talladega

NASCAR announced penalties Wednesday from last weekend’s national-series doubleheader at Charlotte Motor Speedway.

The Joe Gibbs Racing No. 19 Toyota team for Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series rookie Daniel Suarez was found with one lug nut unsecured after Sunday’s Bank of America 500. Wednesday, crew chief Scott Graves was fined $10,000 for the infraction.

The penalty marked the fourth time this year that Graves has been fined that amount, with other single-lug fines coming after Pocono in June, New Hampshire in July and Bristol in August. Graves took over crew chief duties for the JGR No. 19 on March 29.

Two teams in the NASCAR XFINITY Series were fined for ride-height violations — the No. 11 Kaulig Racing Chevrolet driven by Blake Koch and the No. 19 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota of Matt Tifft — after their entries measured too low in post-race inspection.

Both teams were docked 10 points from the drivers’ and team owners’ standings, and crew chiefs Chris Rice (Koch) and Matt Beckman (Tifft) were each fined $10,000.

The points deduction applies to teams’ point total after the XFINITY Playoffs’ Round of 12 and before the drivers’ standings reset for the next round. Tifft finished the Charlotte race with a 16-point cushion, so the penalty does not prevent him from advancing in the postseason.

Posted on by Kelly Crandall

RELATED: Dale Earnhardt Jr.’s complete history at Talladega

For his final full-time season as a driver, NASCAR.com will offer an analytical preview on Dale Earnhardt Jr. ahead of every remaining Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series race.

Race: Alabama 500 

Date: Sunday, Oct. 15, 2 p.m. ET (NBC, MRN, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio)

Previous five results at Talladega: 22nd, 40th, second, first, 31st

RELATED: All of Dale and Dale Jr.’s Talladega victories

Notable: It didn’t take Dale Earnhardt Jr. long to pick up where his father left off at the 2.66-mile superspeedway, winning four times in his first seven visits to the track. That includes four straight victories that began in the fall of 2001 and went until the spring of 2003. Since then, Earnhardt has added two more wins to his resume, making him the winningest active driver at Talladega. Of course, he’s also the active leader in top-five finishes (12) and laps led (960). In other words, Talladega really is “Earnhardt Country.”

Memorable: Winning at Talladega does not come easy and Earnhardt has had his share of dramatic moments. The 2004 season was the inaugural year of a playoff format in NASCAR, and Earnhardt arrived at Talladega third in points and looking for some momentum going into the final few races. The dominant car on the day, Earnhardt lost his track position when the caution flew on Lap 180 (of 188) as he made his final pit stop and crew chief Tony Eury Sr. quickly called for two tires. With five laps to go, Earnhardt restarted 11th, but he didn’t stay there long. Charging to fourth with four laps to go and to the lead with three laps to go, Earnhardt picked up his fifth victory at Talladega and leaped into the points lead. At least he did for a few days as Earnhardt would be fined and docked 25 points for having used a four-letter word in his Victory Lane interview.

Quotable: “I’d like to fly under the radar a little bit,” Earnhardt said in a team release. “I don’t want to put too much pressure on us – it messes up the way you think, the way you use strategy in the race, everything. But Talladega is a great track and a great opportunity to win. I think we’ll also have a chance to win at Martinsville and Texas, and some of these other tracks we go to.”

Posted on by Jason Lofing

RELATED: Full season results | Standings

Ryan Luza won the 2017 NASCAR PEAK Antifreeze Series championship, outlasting his three rivals in the winner-take-all season finale at Homestead-Miami Speedway. The race, and championship, came down to a late duel between Luza and Logan Clampitt as the two restarted from the front row with five laps remaining. Luza had the lead and with it, control of the restart, and he rocketed out to a lead at the drop of the green. Clampitt was able to quickly clear Michael Conti to settle into second, but Luza’s speed was too much as he pulled away on his way to Victory Lane.

Clampitt finished runner-up, 0.7 seconds behind, while Conti wrapped up a solid season with a third-place effort. Brad Davies was fourth and championship contender Bobby Zalenski rounded out the top five.

Notably missing from the front of the field at the end was three-time NPAS champion Ray Alfalla. Alfalla started fourth and looked to be a contender early on. That all changed on Lap 92 when Alfalla was caught up in a crash and sustained heavy damage to his right front. The repairs cost him three laps and relegated him to a disappointing 30th-place finish.

Luza and Clampitt started the race much like they finished — on the front row. Luza started on pole and sprinted out to an early lead as the first 73 laps ran without a caution flag. The first round of green-flag pit stops briefly cost Luza the lead but by Lap 50 he had reclaimed the top spot as Alfalla moved into second. While Alfalla could occasionally match Luza’s pace, the leader had more consistent lap times as he slowly built the gap as the second round of stops approached.

The two leaders pitted together on Lap 67 with Alfalla unwilling to give up ground on old tires. However, the race was turned upside-down on Lap 74 when a caution flew in the middle of green-flag stops. The caution was costly for Luza, Alfalla, and Zalenski, as all three had pitted before the caution and were trapped outside the top 15. On the other hand, Clampitt had yet to pit and was the leader, which put him in the driver’s seat for the championship as the race approached halfway.

Clampitt would restart second after losing a spot on pit road to Kenny Humpe while his closest competitor for the title, Luza, was way back in 18th. As the three tried to battle back to the front, disaster struck for Alfalla on Lap 92 headed to Turn 1. Matt Bussa got turned around by Taylor Hurst, which sparked a melee. Alfalla was running right behind the incident and had no time to avoid the several spinning cars in front.

With Alfalla eliminated, the attention turned to Luza and the frequent cautions were helping him regain his lost track position. By Lap 100 he was already up to eighth and with fresher tires than the cars in front. Five laps later he was in second with Clampitt in his sights. Clampitt’s lead quickly evaporated, and on Lap 110 Luza cleared him coming off Turn 2 to regain the lead.

After taking the lead, Luza drove away from the rest of the field and would have cruised to a comfortable victory over Conti if not for a flurry of late-race cautions. Luza never faltered on the restarts, though, and held on to win the $10,000 champion’s prize.

Luza’s fifth win of 2017 capped off a dominant campaign as the Texan also sat on three poles and earned 10 top-five finishes.

With 2017 in the books, all eyes look toward the NASCAR iRacing Pro Series where the future talent of the NPAS is groomed. It was not that long ago when Luza, Clampitt, and Zalenski cut their teeth on the junior circuit going to show that talent can develop quickly. Assuming the NPAS championship format remains for 2018, the final four would have to be the odds-on favorites. They clearly had the strongest performance all season with 11 of 16 wins and 31 top 10s coming from the finalists. However, the field is stacked with talent and potentially could receive 10 newcomers depending on the results of the NiPS.

As the NPAS heads into a five-month offseason, we hope you join us again in March at Daytona.

Congratulations to Ryan Luza on his first NPAS championship!

Posted on by Zack Albert

MORE: Denny Hamlin unveils Martinsville scheme

There’s a certain amount of crazy that’s associated with Talladega Superspeedway, a track with tendencies toward three- and four-wide racing, wild finishes, underdog winners and multi-car stack-ups.

 

NASCAR’s schedule makers tried to relieve some of the pressure on the crazy valve this year, moving the Alabama track’s date in the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series Playoffs from an elimination cut-off point to the middle event in the three-race Round of 12.

 

Denny Hamlin, however, has a proposal to swing the nutso pendulum the other way, creating an incentive-laden free-for-all on NASCAR’s biggest oval.

 

“I think it should be the last race before the playoffs,” Hamlin said Tuesday from the NASCAR Hall of Fame. “I think that is the ultimate wild-card spot, and if you want to see the craziest Talladega race ever, it would be right before the playoffs started. You’re going to have 28 cars or so with their last opportunity to make it into the playoffs. To me, it’s a no-brainer where it should be on the schedule, but getting the tracks to agree to something like that is going to be very hard.”

 

Hamlin’s remarks came after he helped dignitaries unveil a FedEx-Walgreens paint scheme for his No. 11 Toyota for Martinsville Speedway later this month. Looming first is this Sunday’s Alabama 500 (2 p.m. ET, NBC, MRN, SiriusXM), the fifth of 10 races in the postseason and a potential ping-pong-ball tumbler for most of the dozen drivers still in the running for the championship.

 

NASCAR’s 10-race playoff format has evolved since its debut in 2004, but has always had Talladega in the heart of its mid-autumn swing. Hamlin’s proposal would remove the only restrictor-plate track from the postseason, but such a schedule shift would open the door toward tantalizing possibilities as a last-chance qualifier.

 

The horsepower-sapping engine rules for Talladega serve to level the playing field in ways few other tracks do, bunching cars into tight packs and producing a spawning ground for first-time winners. That “anything can happen” atmosphere would only ratchet up the stakes of a wild-card race for the final playoff berth, with bubble drivers in protection mode against 11th-hour Cinderellas with double-parked pumpkin carriages.

 

Hamlin says he’s all for shaking things up, and that the idea has been broached in discussions among his fellow drivers and NASCAR officials.

 

“It’s been floated. It’s been floated with a side of push in it,” said Hamlin, who is part of the 10-member drivers’ council. “I think that it would be the ultimate cut-off race. Talk about not knowing whether you’re in or out until the last lap, that would be the race.”

 

In the meantime, the Playoffs field will have to contend with another new wrinkle for this season: the dangling carrot of stage points awarded at the two midrace intermissions. The added premium for finishing among the top 10 at those intervals should subvert the strategy of falling to the rear of the field to avoid multi-car crashes.

 

It’s a tactic that Joe Gibbs Racing employed with three of its four entries in this race last season, with Matt Kenseth, Kyle Busch and Carl Edwards all playing it safe while Hamlin — “on an island by myself” in a precarious points position — raced near the head of the pack.

 

This year, Hamlin says, the true chaos may unfold late in the race, but that stage-point incentives have the possibility of stirring up the drama early on.

 

“I think everyone’s going to race up front, battling for stage points. I think that they moved the schedule to make that a middle that it’s a good thing. It’s going to do all the things that they wanted it to do as far as competition-wise, there’s no laying back, there’s no ‘let’s just ride this day out.’ Obviously, it’s going to make for exciting ends of stages in my opinion, and that’s where you have to be really aware of the wrecks that could possibly happen.”

 

Should Hamlin make it through the Talladega-to-Kansas thicket that completes the Round of 12, he’ll find some familiar turf at Martinsville to kick off the postseason’s final three-race elimination. Of his 31 career premier-series wins, five have come at the .526-mile track in his home state.

 

When he returns, Hamlin will have a new look to his No. 11 ride, a one-race special to promote a new association between primary sponsor FedEx and Walgreens.

 

“I would nominate this for my permanent paint scheme,” Hamlin said, standing behind a car with splashes of white integrated into the predominantly purple-and-orange design. “It’s cool for FedEx to be able to use their NASCAR platform to unveil great partnerships like this. Yes, there’s extra pressure. If I make it to the Round of 8, there will be quadruple the pressure to go win at that race track, so nothing would be better than to win in this car.”

 

Posted on by Track Release

RELATED: Sonoma Raceway issues statement on North Bay fires

SONOMA, Calif. (Oct. 10, 2017) – Sonoma Raceway will open its 50 Acres campground to evacuees seeking temporary refuge from the Northern California fires.

 

The raceway, which is equipped to handle up to 2,000 campers during its major event weekends, will open its largest campground to evacuees in RVs beginning this afternoon. The 50 Acres campground is located directly across from the raceway on Highway 121 and has not been affected by the fires.

 

Those in need of RV camping at Sonoma Raceway should enter the campground at Gate 6 on Highway 121, a quarter-mile north of Highway 37. The raceway will team up with United Site Services to offer basic RV services, including water/sewage service, to campers during their stay. The campground is dry with no hookups.  

 

For on-site assistance or directions, visit the Sonoma Raceway main office or front gate at 29355 Arnold Dr. in Sonoma. For more information, contact Sonoma Raceway at 800-870-7223 or email [email protected].

Posted on by Nascar

MARTINSVILLE, Va. — His contract with FOX is up at the end of 2018 but Jeff Gordon said he hasn’t considered ending his role as a NASCAR analyst with the television network.

“I never said anything about not coming back,” Gordon said Tuesday when asked about rumors he would not return to the booth.


“I think maybe some people are misunderstanding. I was doing something with Adam Stern (of “SportsBusiness Daily”) talking about my role at Hendrick. I said how much I really enjoyed TV, my contract is up in ’18 and I haven’t had any discussions about what beyond that holds.”
 

Gordon won four Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series titles and 93 races while competing for Hendrick Motorsports. He and team owner Rick Hendrick have a long, close relationship and Gordon remains an integral part of the four-team organization. He was at Martinsville Speedway Tuesday with the No. 24 team and driver Chase Elliott during the opening day of a two-day organizational test for the series.

 

He retired from full-time competition at the end of 2015, but did return briefly in ’16 to fill in for the injured Dale Earnhardt Jr. at the request of Hendrick.

Gordon works alongside lead announcer Mike Joy and fellow analyst, and three-time series champion, Darrell Waltrip in the booth during the FOX portion of the NASCAR season.

 

“My offices are at Hendrick Motorsports,” Gordon said. “I’m not just friends with Rick, we’re partners. So I’m always going to be talking about what’s going on at Hendrick.”

Posted on by Nascar

MARTINSVILLE, Va. — Jeff Gordon, a four-time series champion and nine-time race winner at Martinsville Speedway, spent time with driver Chase Elliott and the No. 24 Hendrick Motorsports team here Tuesday during the opening day of a two-day organizational test for Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series teams.

Gordon, who retired from full-time competition at the end of 2015, won 93 times in the Hendrick Motorsports entry in addition to his four titles. His final victory came here in ’15 at the tiny .526-mile track and earned him a berth in the Championship 4 at Homestead-Miami Speedway.

“Just watching and hanging out with the guys,” Gordon told NASCAR.com during a lunch break that consisted of chicken tenders and waffle fries.

“(Chase) ran pretty good here at the last race … but it’s a tricky place. Alan (Gustafson, crew chief) and I were talking about them testing up here and he said ‘Hey, if you’re available, we’d love to have you up there.’ ”

Elliott, the son of 1988 series champion Bill Elliott, is one of 12 drivers still in contention for this year’s Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series title. While he has yet to score his first win in the series, Elliott has finished second in three of the four playoff races contested, and is fourth in the standings as the series prepares to head to Talladega Superspeedway this weekend for Sunday’s Alabama 500 (2 p.m. ET, NBC, MRN, SiriusXM NASCAR).

Gordon, 46, currently serves as a race analyst for FOX during its NASCAR broadcasts; he also continues to work for Hendrick Motorsports. Although he joked that there was “nothing” he could help Elliott or the team with at Martinsville, he did say that watching other cars and the lines different drivers were running could be helpful.

“See if there is something you can learn from that,” Gordon said. “This place, it takes discipline; there is a rhythm and a discipline and I’ve come here for many, many years and every time I came here for a race I had to find it again.”

Elliott, 21, will be making just his fifth career start at Martinsville when the track hosts the First Data 500 on Oct. 29. He finished third here in the spring race.

“It’s definitely helpful for us,” Elliott said during the lunch break. “We don’t have many opportunities to test in general so when you can come test at a track that you struggle at, we typically don’t get to do that.”

He said he hoped to “find some consistency in what I’m doing behind the wheel and really some of the things I did here in the spring. …

“Just trying to find that rhythm if it exists and if so find it and try to have our stuff prepared as much as we can for the race when we come back.”

While he is winless in 71 career starts, Elliott does have six runner-up finishes. His fifth came two weeks ago at Dover, when what seemed to be a breakthrough victory slipped from his grasp in the waning laps of the race.

MORE: Elliott dejected after chance at first win slips away

Gordon said he has been impressed with how Elliott bounced back the following week, finishing second at Charlotte.

“Man he rebounded unbelievably like it never even phased him,” Gordon said. “Even as hard as he is on himself I think the pretty cool thing is that he doesn’t allow that to affect him for long. I think that’s really important.

“All the second-place finishes, I mean you hate to finish second but finishing second is still pretty darn good.”

Posted on by Nascar

MARTINSVILLE, Va. — Landon Cassill said Tuesday he isn’t sure what his next move will be now that he’s been informed he will not be back with Front Row Motorsports in 2018.

 

“The most important thing for me and my family is just (to) prepare for the future, figure out where I want to go next and what I want to do,” Cassill told a group of reporters Tuesday during an organizational test at Martinsville Speedway. “My wife and I are going to have a new baby next week; so we’re really excited about that. We have a lot of good things to be excited about in our lives.”

 

Cassill, 28, said he was informed by FRM General Manager Jerry Freeze on Monday that he would not be retained for the ’18 season.

 

FRM currently fields two full-time entries in the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series, the No. 34 Ford driven by Cassill and the No. 38 Ford of teammate David Ragan. The organization has two career wins in the series — Ragan won at Talladega in 2013 and Chris Buescher collected the win at Pocono last season.

 

Cassill said the news, first reported by JeffGluck.com, was “definitely upsetting because I think I did a good job for the team and for my sponsors and I certainly work hard for everyone. But it is the business; it’s how the sport goes.”

 

A native of Cedar Rapids, Iowa, Cassill has made 253 starts in the MENCS in an eight-year span. In addition to FRM, other teams he has driven for include BK Racing, Phoenix Racing and Circle Sport Racing.

 

He also has 118 career starts in the NASCAR XFINITY Series and eight starts in the Camping World Truck Series.

 

His best finish in the MENCS has been fourth at Talladega Superspeedway in 2014. This season, he had a top finish of 16th in the season-opening Daytona 500. He is 32nd in points as the series prepares to head to Talladega for Sunday’s Alabama 500 (2 p.m. NBC, MRN, SiriusXM NASCAR).

 

“It’s definitely a challenging time in the sport for these teams and drivers and sponsors as well,” Cassill said. “They have to make decisions almost every single year now.

 

“It’s definitely tough; I’ve been through this before and it seems like my work ethic and my ability to work with these guys, teams has always carried me.”

 

Cassill said he wasn’t given a particular reason for the driver change, only that “they were planning on radical changes.”

MORE: Key players in ‘Silly Season‘