If the NASCAR Camping World Truck Series Playoffs were beginning its Round of 6 this weekend, Chase Briscoe wouldn’t advance. | See playoffs standings
Luckily for Briscoe, he has two races to change that – Saturday’s Las Vegas 350 at Las Vegas Motor Speedway (8 p.m. ET on FS1) and the fred’s 250 powered by Coca-Cola at Talladega Superspeedway on Oct. 14.
Following his 11th-place finish at New Hampshire last weekend, Briscoe sits a manageable three points behind Kaz Grala for the final transfer spot to the Round of 6.
“I feel like we are taking even better trucks this year than the team brought last year when they earned the 1-2 finish,” said Briscoe, who drives the No. 29 Ford for Brad Keselowski Racing. “It’s really important to go there and get the win to take away a lot of stress for Talladega.”
Saturday’s race will mark Bricoe’s first start at Las Vegas, but it will be his seventh start at a 1.5-mile race track this season. He has two second-place finishes at 1.5-mile courses this season — Texas and Chicagoland.
“Last week wasn’t how we wanted to kick off our playoffs, but all eight of us are so close in points that I have no doubt that we’ll be able to overcome it and get above the cut after Vegas,” Briscoe said. “We just can’t make any mistakes and we can’t struggle like we did last week.”
NASCAR.com spent Tuesday at Roush Fenway Racing in Concord, North Carolina. During the visit, our team got to know theirs a little better. Stay tuned this week as NASCAR.com features unique, all-access content.
CONCORD, N.C. – It was the final lap of the final race of the season when Cale Gale pinched Kyle Busch into the wall and won the Ford EcoBoost 200 NASCAR Camping World Truck Series finale at Homestead Miami Speedway.
Sparks were flying and the two trucks were locked together as they sped across the start/finish line.
That memorable season-ending finish occurred five years ago, in 2012. It was a race, Gale said, “that’s defined me and my career.”
“Yeah it was Kyle Busch; we all know how good of a driver Kyle Busch is,” Gale told NASCAR.com from the Roush Fenway Racing shop. “I think in my situation that particular night … anybody would have done it.
“It was a situation for me where I’d never had a chance to capitalize on a victory like that. I didn’t know what my career would be like after that – I didn’t have a ride in store for the next year. It could have been my last opportunity ever. So I did what any racer would do. It came down to the last lap of the last race of the season and I took advantage of that.”
It was a victory that could have vaulted the 27-year-old Gale into a more prominent role in NASCAR.
Kyle Busch and Cale Gale race side-by-side in 2012. Jared C. Tilton | Getty Images
But it did not.
Next month, Gale, now 32, will return to the Camping World Truck Series for the first time since 2013 for a one-race opportunity with MDM Motorsports. He is scheduled to drive the organization’s No. 99 Chevrolet in the Texas Roadhouse 200 at Martinsville Speedway.
Gale admitted he was “blown away” when he got the call from MDM officials.
“It’s like another dream come true,” he said. “There’s been many a day where — I haven’t completely given up on my dream because I feel like in my heart I’ve sacrificed a lot to be able to race on Sundays, to at least get that opportunity.
“But things happen; things change. I still love racing. I still short-track race when I can; I’m passionate about it. I love coming to work every day, learning about race cars and about suspensions and just being a part of the technology every day that changes. It intrigues me.
“But my happy place is still when I put my helmet on.”
Today, Gale, a native of Mobile, Alabama, works in the engineering department at Roush Fenway Racing. In 2016, he was employed as a shock specialist for RFR’s No. 6 team in the XFINITY Series with driver Darrell Wallace Jr. He began the ’17 season as a shock specialist for Wallace and teammate Ryan Reed.
Near midseason, Gale moved into the engineering department where he began working with the team’s 8-post rig and various simulation programs.
He still races on occasion, he said, but not at the national level. Bowman Gray, Hickory and other somewhat local venues provide the occasional opportunity to slide back behind the wheel.
Gale scored his lone NASCAR victory with Eddie Sharp Racing. The following season he ran just three Truck Series races with Turner Scott Motorsports and posted top-10 finishes at Phoenix and Homestead. But the 2013 Homestead race was his final start in any one of NASCAR’s top series.
Cale Gale edges Kyle Busch at the Homestead-Miami start/finish line in 2012. Todd Warshaw | Getty Images
So what happened? Why did the 2012 season’s final race winner quietly fade away?
“I think the landscape of motorsports has changed over the years,” said Gale, who made his first XFINITY Series start for former car owner James Finch in 2006. “(Finch) was willing to take a chance on me; Kevin and DeLana (Harvick) did the same thing.
“I think if you go back 10 years, the sponsors were there and the teams hired the drivers,” Gale continued. “Over time, I think that the drivers and sponsors were more so together than the teams.
“I feel like as a race car driver there was a time that I was good — I was really good. But I never got the … I won’t say that I didn’t get the opportunity. But to race with the Cup guys you have to do it every week. My opportunity with (KHI) racing on a part-time basis made me so much better as a race car driver.”
Seat time, he said, helped lessen the number of mistakes drivers make while still learning the ropes. His short-track background also taught him about tire management, the importance of avoiding problems and being around for the finish in what were typically 100-lap features.
That approach has also changed.
“Your typical NASCAR races (today) are 40- or 50-lap stints and come in and get four tires,” Gale said. “It’s a different mentality; that’s why I feel like your guys from dirt racing, they tend to rise up a little bit … these guys can drive race cars on the edge.”
MDM is fielding entries in the Camping World Truck Series and ARCA Series in 2017. Eight drivers have made at least one start with the No. 99 Camping World team; Darrell Wallace posted the group’s first Truck Series win at Michigan Speedway.
Can he win? Gale isn’t ready to make such a bold prediction. He’s excited about the opportunity to compete “with that level of competition in that kind of equipment,” he said.
“And really at the end of the day see where I stack up after four years of being out of the seat.”
The business consultant called it a “mountaintop experience.”
JTG Daugherty team owner Tad Geschickter would eventually call it visionary.
Geschickter and his wife/team co-owner, Jodi, were at a crossroads several years ago, unsure of what their future held and thus, what they wanted to do with the race team. The business consultant took them up to a mountain and had them perform a variety of exercises.
One exercise in particular, proved to be extremely telling.
“One of them was draw a picture of your building 10 years from now,” Tad Geschickter told NASCAR.com from the floor of the JTG Daugherty Racing shop. “… We (had) crayons and (I thought), ‘I’m spending my weekend doing this.’ But I drew a picture of a white building with windows and big trees in front of it.
“It’s kind of freaky that’s what we have now.”
• • •
The JTG Daugherty race shop is, indeed, a large, white building framed by trees in Harrisburg, North Carolina. The team fields the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series cars of AJ Allmendinger and Chris Buescher, whom the team added to the lineup this season. There’s a tire room, pit-practice area and, of course, plenty of race cars inside this spacious, white-floored facility.
Geschickter proudly calls this shop “pretty.” Nearly 30 years ago, owning a racing team in NASCAR’s premier series was more of a wistful aspiration than reality for Jodi and him.
“I think the fact that we’re in Cup racing is pretty improbable,” Geschickter said. “I started out selling soap for Proctor and Gamble and in the ’80s, they decided they were going to sponsor a car. Probably the first consumer-package good to look at racing as a viable marketing tool. So, running the Southeast for sales for them, I learned a lot about the sport, especially the business side of it. … I played stick-and-ball sports in college and really missed that part of my life and decided at 30 that I didn’t want to move to the country and sell soap anymore. (I) really kind of wanted to follow my passion, which was team sports.
“Probably naively thought, ‘Well, I understand how sponsorship works, I’m sure we can figure out how to make the race team side of it work,’ ” he added with a smile.
Chris Buescher (right) joined AJ Allmendinger this year as JTG Daugherty expanded to two cars. Matt Sullivan | Getty Images
Geschickter and Jodi began working to make the dream of owning a race team a reality. Like most great things, it began small and humble for the couple — with a barn, a toolbox and a big dream.
“Started kind of like ‘Days of Thunder’ with a barn and dirt floors and a toolbox,” Geschickter said. “Every time we found a dollar we’d spend it back on the cars. Really just bootstrapped for 23 years and now we’re really fighting to get to the next level in Cup racing.”
But the road to success isn’t always fully paved — Geschickter learned the importance of trailblazing early.
And also that a little prayer and doing right by people can go a long way.
• • •
Geschickter knows what it’s like to live with uncertainty. That’s part of starting up any small business — there are highs and there are lows. There’s the cold, hard reality of bills, hiccups and the notion that things don’t always pan out as planned.
Sometimes, though, little miracles creep into the equation.
He can still pinpoint one vivid memory during their first year running the race team.
“It was a Monday and we didn’t quite have enough money for payroll on Friday and really struggled to figure out what we were going to do,” Geschickter recalled with a chuckle. “Said a lot of prayers. Turns out that we were due a royalty check for die-cast cars — we didn’t know that much about the business, didn’t know that check was supposed to be coming.
“Lo and behold, on a Wednesday night, it shows up for the exact amount of payroll. So, there are definitely times with any small business when you look at it and say, ‘How do we make it to the next step?’ I think it’s a miracle that that check showed up. So, I think if you do the right things for the right reasons, and work hard, things are positive.”
Through the journey, Geschickter hasn’t been alone — his wife, Jodi, is his partner, both in life and on the team as a co-owner.
“This sport is so all-encompassing,” Geschickter said. “You never have a day off, you work really hard 12 months a year. I don’t know how you could do it without working together. It’s just the way we’ve always done it. She’s been an equal partner in it. I’m a really big-picture person and I know that about myself — I’m not very good with the details. She’s very detail-oriented. So, as long as we understand what each others’ strengths are and we work toward those strengths, it’s been fun.
Back at the shop, JTG Daugherty Racing is in the midst of preparing for that weekend’s Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series race at Richmond Raceway. Allmendinger and Buescher won’t be racing for a championship this season, but that doesn’t matter much — racing is racing.
This season was one of growth and education for the team. They made the decision to expand to a two-car operation at the end of the 2016 season, bringing on young Buescher to pilot the No. 37 Chevrolet. In his first year with the team, the 2015 XFINITY Series champion has earned three top-10 finishes.
“Chris has been a welcome addition to the family,” Geschickter said. “He’s our kind of person — he’s very sincere, very humble. He’s 24, just starting his craft, has certainly got a ton of talent — already won a NASCAR championship. …
“(We) kind of thought we knew what we had in store for us, but we definitely had some growing pains early in the year. You’re never going to double the size of your organization and get it all perfect. But I really feel like we’re kind of hitting our stride now and feel like we’re getting stronger every week.”
The addition was the most recent change at the ever-growing JTG Daugherty Racing shop. NASCAR analyst and former NBA star Brad Daugherty became a co-owner of the team in 2008, and the team expanded into NASCAR’s premier series the following year with driver Marcus Ambrose. In 2016, Gordon Smith took an ownership stake in the company after developing a deep connection with the Geschickters.
AJ Allmendinger and Brad Daugherty were all hugs after winning Watkins Glen in 2014. Tom Pennington | Getty Images
Ultimately it boils down to the team’s — or family’s, as Geschickter calls it — employees.
“It’s business like any other business; it’s all about people,” Geschickter said. “You want to continue to be cared for, to love where they work. This is their passion — how we let them play their passion, how we know their ideas are valued. Certainly you have to have a strong leader like Ernie Cope, who makes the call at the end of the day. But you also have to have the ability for people to give their input and their ideas to feel like they’re not just putting parts and pieces together, and trying to make it better every day.
“To me, that’s the exciting part of the sport — how you get 100 people who touch your car to do their job perfectly and do it with passion, so you have the best product possible. I feel like we’re getting there — I think we’ve got a great group. It just gets stronger with each person we hire.”
Behind every team though, are great leaders. Leaders, Allmendinger says, like Tad and Jodi.
“What they do for us is unbelievable — the best owners I’ve ever worked for,” said No. 47 driver Allmendinger, who earned the team’s first win in 2014. “The biggest hearts. They’ll bend over backward – whether it’s for the race or just for you personally — for whatever that you need.
“To be able to work for people like that is pretty amazing.”
• • •
As Geschickter looks around the shop of JTG Daugherty Racing and reflects on its roots in racing, he’s smiling.
It’s been quite the ride to get here.
“I wish we took more time to celebrate that (journey),” Geschickter said. “The odds were so long — we didn’t know it at the time with us doing all this.
“But you know, (on) hard days, it would probably do us some good to say ‘Look where we came from, look how far we’ve come.’ “
CHARLOTTE, N.C. — Breast cancer survivors, their families and many NASCAR supporters attended Wednesday’s now-annual Paint Pit Wall Pink gathering at Charlotte Motor Speedway in advance of October’s Breast Cancer Awareness worldwide campaign.
Reigning and seven-time Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series champion Jimmie Johnson spoke to the large crowd gathered trackside on a very warm and sunny morning.
XFINITY drivers such as Hermie Sadler, Cole Custer, Michael Annett, Daniel Hemric, Blake Koch, Spencer Gallagher and Jeremy Clements were on hand to lend support to the cause, as was driver Bubba Wallace, who has participated in this particular kickoff campaign for five years.
“From our sport’s participation and integrating pink detail into the month of October we’ve seen pink race cars, details on hats, gloves, firesuits. … I just feel our NASCAR community has always been very good at giving back and using this platform for awareness,” said Johnson, a Blue Cross and Blue Shield of North Carolina “Live Fearless” brand ambassador.
Johnson led the gathering in painting the pit wall pink — his example followed by a hundred of the people there — breast cancer survivors in pink ribbons and their supporters in pink T-shirts. His Hendrick Motorsports team members will wear pink gloves for the month of October, including the XFINITY Series’ Oct. 7 Drive for the Cure 300.
And Johnson revealed he had a personal health “wake-up call” earlier this year when doctors had to remove carcinoma spots on his shoulder.
“When that ‘c’ word is in your vocabulary — and granted mine was on such a small scale compared to this cause — it still hits you in a particular way,” Johnson said. “Grateful to pick up this positive energy created in this great cause.”
For Koch, who drives the No. 11 LeafFilter Gutter Protection Toyota, this event absolutely hits home. His mother, Angie, is an 11-year breast cancer survivor.
“I’m so thankful for what the race track does and Blue Cross Blue Shield 300 to bring awareness to breast cancer,” Koch said. “It’s such a serious disease and so many are affected.
“My mom is a survivor, it’s been 11 years, now. I was 21 years old and when I got that call from her, it was a very helpless feeling. My mom raised me and I felt like she was the strongest woman in the world, so when you get that call and she sounds scared, that’s not something you like to hear as a son.
“It affected me very very much but showed me how strong she really is to be able to fight that disease and to be able to survive it and be here with me 11 years later. It’s special to me and I won’t miss this event.”
Ryan Luza won his series-leading fourth NASCAR PEAK Antifreeze Series race of the season at Dover International Raceway after overtaking Zack Novak with less than three laps to go. Novak needed the win to advance to the championship round of the playoffs but fell one position short after dominating the race, leading 152 of 200 laps.
The turning point of the race wound up being the final pit stop with 30 laps to go. Novak, who was leading at the time, took two right side tires while Luza took four tires. Luza had to restart ninth, but the call paid off for as it took Luza just four laps to move from ninth to second on the restart.
On the final restart with only six laps to go, Luza restarted second and although Novak got the jump at the green flag Luza quickly closed to the leader’s back bumper. Luza made his move with four laps to go, drawing alongside Novak entering Turn 1. The pair ran side-by-side for a lap before Novak slipped off Turn 2 and slapped the outside wall. The contact hurt his momentum and allowed Luza to take the lead and win by nearly sixth-tenths of a second.
Polesitter Logan Clampitt finished third and Michael Conti drove from 24th on the grid to fourth. Cody Byus rounded out the top five.
For much of the race, Novak was unchallenged at the front of the field. It was smooth sailing until Lap 146 when a caution flew in the middle of a round of green-flag stops. Chandler Krizek and Timmy Hill had not pitted and with the rest of the lead-lap cars following them down pit road under the yellow, Novak found himself third on the restart.
Despite the minor setback, Novak need little more than one lap to re-assume the lead, with Luza following into second. The rest of the race was full of crashes as five cautions waved in the last 45 laps. Cool temperatures and overcast skies made for lightning-fast speeds and tight racing, but tiny mistakes at Dover often lead to big wrecks and this race was no exception.
The leaders’ positions held steady until the fateful pit stop with 30 to go. Novak looked somewhat safe up front, but Luza’s ability to slice through the field so quickly doomed Novak’s chances to beat him without a fortunate caution.
With one race remaining in the 2017 season, the final four is set to run for the championship. Luza and Ray Alfalla each transferred automatically by scoring a win in the first round of the playoffs. They are joined by the two drivers out of the remaining six who scored the most points in the last three events: Clampitt and Bobby Zalenski. Corey Vincent missed transferring by five points.
Homestead-Miami Speedway plays host to the finale and the top four will have their points reset for the winner-take-all culmination to the 2017 season. The eventual champion will also likely have to win the race considering Luza, Alfalla, and Zalenski have combined to win nine of 15 events thus far.
Can Alfalla capture his fourth NPAS crown, or will Luza, Clampitt, or Zalenski beat the veteran to score their first title in iRacing’s premier oval series? Find out in two weeks on iRacing Live as the 2017 NPAS season concludes!
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: Apache Warrior 400 Presented by Lucas Oil at Dover International Speedway
Previous five results at Dover: 11th, 32nd, third, 14th, 17th
Notable: Earnhardt has just one win at Dover, and that came 16 years ago. In 34 starts at the ‘Monster Mile,’ he has 12 top 10 and seven top fives. He finished second in 2013 after starting that fall race on the pole.
Memorable: Earnhardt’s only win at Dover is one of the most memorable in NASCAR history. The Sept. 23, 2001 race was NASCAR’s first return to the track since the 9/11 attacks. Just like he did seven months earlier, when he shouldered the emotional burden of the sport after his father, Dale Earnhardt, was killed on a last-lap wreck in the Daytona 500, Junior was able to lift the spirits of NASCAR Nation when the favorite son returned to Victory Lane. He led 193 of 400 laps, though he later told ESPN.com, “I don’t remember hardly a thing about that race. I remember that amazing pre-race show and then I remember the celebration after we won. It wasn’t about me at that point. It was about celebrating America. And it was about feeling normal again. I remember thinking, ‘OK, we’re back at the track now. We’re all happy again, even if it was just for a few hours. Maybe now it’s OK to smile again. To feel normal again.’ ”
Quotable: “I’m looking forward to Dover,” said Earnhardt in a team release.”Well, I’m especially looking forward to some of the tracks that we have coming up after that — Martinsville, Talladega, Texas, Phoenix, etc. I don’t know how we’re going to do at Dover, it hasn’t been a great track for us the past several years. I appreciate everybody’s support, though, and it does help. We’re going to keep grinding and keep working hard and try to get a good run for everybody this weekend.”
NASCAR issued penalties Tuesday for technical violations from last weekend’s national series events, including a lug-nut infraction by the Stewart-Haas Racing No. 14 team in the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series.
Clint Bowyer drove the SHR No. 14 Ford to a seventh-place finish Sunday at New Hampshire Motor Speedway, but competition officials discovered one unsecured lug nut in a post-race check. NASCAR assessed crew chief Mike Bugarewicz a $10,000 fine for the violation.
L1-grade penalties were issued after Saturday’s events in the NASCAR XFINITY Series and NASCAR Camping World Truck Series.
In the XFINITY race from Kentucky Speedway, the Richard Childress Racing No. 2 Chevrolet failed to make the minimum rear-body ride height requirement. The car was driven to an 11th-place finish by Ben Kennedy. The finish is ruled encumbered.
Crew chief Randall Burnett was suspended from the next XFINITY Series points race and fined $10,000. The team was tagged with a 10-point deduction in the team owner standings, as well as a 10-point deduction in the driver standings.
In the Truck Series, the Kyle Busch Motorsports No. 51 Toyota was found with an improperly sealed rear brake cooling assembly after Todd Gilliland drove to a career-best third-place finish at New Hampshire. The finish is ruled encumbered.
NASCAR officials suspended crew chief Kevin “Bono” Manion from the next Camping World Truck Series points race and fined him $5,000. The team also was handed a 10-point penalty in the team owner standings and a 10-point penalty in the driver standings.
Erik Jones showed off a before-and-after picture from his recent visit to Sport Clips on Monday afternoon. Noticeable not only because Jones takes full advantage of one of the sponsors on his No. 77 Toyota, but because the mullet he’d been growing since early this summer has been chopped off!
A sad day for mullet lovers — even though the 21-year-old now looks every bit of the young talent he is.
Phoenix Raceway and ISM Connect, a pioneer in smart venue technology, today announced a multi-year partnership that includes naming rights for the Raceway’s modernized venue as well as the installation of a groundbreaking digital fan engagement experience. Beginning in 2018, the venue will be known as ISM Raceway.
ISM’s 360° Connect network will provide the modernized venue with advanced, robust technology and data capabilities to create meaningful connections between fans, partners and the venue itself. This will be done through the use of digital display screens, interactive experiences, social media integrations and a mobile app that will give fans access to unique content, in-seat ordering, and more.
“We’re focused on building a world-class facility and the partnership with ISM will further enhance our technology capabilities and create opportunities to better engage with fans,” said Phoenix Raceway President Bryan R. Sperber. “ISM Raceway will serve as a premier motorsports and entertainment destination for generations to come.”
The ISM Connect network will power various fan activations and experiences throughout the venue, including the new infield Fan Zone, new pedestrian tunnel connecting the infield to the new seating areas and one of the two new Canyons – the immersive and interactive entrances. As part of the partnership, ISM Connect will also receive naming rights for one of the Canyons – providing over 20,000 square feet of fan engagement and brand activation that vertically spans multiple concourse levels.
“This partnership underscores our commitment to strengthening relationships and communication between venues, fans, partners and brands through innovative digital solutions,” said ISM Connect Vice President of Operations Jeff Hutchins. “ISM Raceway, powered by ISM Connect’s digital engagement network, will revolutionize how large venues connect every piece of their technology in order to gather and analyze data with the goal of improving the fan experience.”
The partnership with Phoenix Raceway further reinforces ISM Connect’s significant presence in motorsports as the company has brought ISM Vision Powered by BoldVu®, the World’s Largest 360° Digital Engagement Venue Network, to the NASCAR experience across the country.
