Posted on by Pat DeCola

RELATED: Full race results | Kyle Larson wins at Dover

DOVER, Del. – Somewhere out there, there’s a 19-year-old still accepting a weekly allowance from his parents.

At Dover International Speedway on Saturday, 19-year-old William Byron raced his way to a $100,000 bonus.

The JR Motorsports driver’s sixth-place finish in the OneMain Financial 200 at the Monster Mile propelled him to the fourth and final XFINITY Series Dash 4 Cash prize, earning himself a cool hundred grand in the process. Thankfully, Byron has a good head on his shoulders and has no immediate plans to visit the Dover Downs casino located on site, but instead joked it could buy “a good education.”

“I don’t know (what my plans are for the money),” Byron said following the race. “It’s definitely a good thing for our race team. Good run for us; we needed that. Just really proud of all the guys on the JRM team and hopefully this is something we can keep building on.”

Byron was the highest-qualifying Dash 4 Cash driver in the final stage, topping a final group of qualifiers that included teammate and points leader Elliott Sadler along with Darrell Wallace Jr. and Brennan Poole.

RELATED: XFINITY Series standings | Byron’s career stats

The young driver set the Camping World Truck Series on fire in 2016, turning heads on his way to a series-record seven wins in 23 races by a rookie. While still winless this year, his XFINITY Series career got off to a stellar start through the season’s first six races with an average finish of 7.67.

Things have stalled a bit since, with the next four seeing a pair of finishes 30th or worse and zero top 10s. He’s hoping Saturday’s finish and earning the Dash 4 Cash prize — which he deemed “for sure the highlight” of his XFINITY career thus far — are signs that his team is starting to put things together to perform.

“To see the execution in the race and get there at the end … I know we got off cycle there and didn’t necessarily get the finish we wanted, but we were still able to charge up through there on new tires and that was exciting. It was fun to race with Elliott and Justin (Allgaier) and everyone that was battling for it,” Byron said.

JRM won three of four Dash 4 Cash prizes, with Allgaier taking Phoenix and Richmond, sandwiched by Richard Childress Racing’s Daniel Hemric taking Bristol.

“For JRM, I think it just shows the strength of our team to execute. I think we keep building and keep getting more speed. We’re executing really well in the race and our teammates are as well. That’s helping everyone get these Dash 4 Cashes and we’ll just keep building on that.”

Posted on by Reid Spencer

RELATED: Race results | Series standings | Detailed breakdown

DOVER, Del. – Saturday’s One Main Financial 200 ended as it started – as a two-man show with pole-sitter Kyle Larson on top.

Larson and Ryan Blaney were in a class by themselves at Dover International Speedway in the 11th NASCAR XFINITY Series race of the season. In winning for the third time in six starts this year, Larson led 137 of the 200 laps to Blaney’s 28.

In fact, Larson now has three wins, a second and a third this season for an average finish of 2.5 – numbers that could rival those of another Kyle, XFINITY Series all-time victory leader Kyle Busch.

“Our cars have been really good on both sides, (Monster Energy NASCAR) Cup and XFINITY,” Larson said. “Especially XFINITY, we’ve been extremely good. We’ve done a really good job adjusting to this new (lower-downforce) aero package.

“This is the best car I’ve had here. At a lot of the tracks we’ve gone to, it seems like this is the best XFINITY car I’ve had this time around. Just a lot of fun. Hats off to (crew chief Mike) Shiplett and the rest of the mechanics at the shop and the engineers – the real reason I’m getting to run up front more often.”

A first-time winner at Dover, Larson collected the eighth XFINITY victory of his career, finishing 1.173 seconds ahead of Blaney. Third-place Daniel Suarez crossed the stripe 14.078 seconds behind the race winner.

Cole Custer ran fourth, followed by Ryan Reed and William Byron, but Byron got the biggest consolation prize. The Sunoco Rookie of the Year candidate collected a $100,000 bonus as the highest-finishing series regular among four drivers eligible for the prize in the last of four Dash 4 Cash events this season.

“Hopefully we can keep building on this,” said Byron, a 19-year-old driver in his first season of XFINITY competition with JR Motorsports. “We got off cycle the last (pit) stop. I wish we could’ve gotten a win, but a hundred grand’s really good. Good top-six for us. Hopefully we can get better next week. I think this is really something to build on.”

MORE: Dash 4 Cash payday goes to Byron

But the day belonged to Larson, who led the first 63 laps and had to win a drag race with Blaney to secure victory in the first 60-lap stage. After the second stage, won by Darrell Wallace Jr., divergent pit strategies shuffled Larson and Blaney to 13th and 14th, respectively, for a restart on Lap 128.

To Blaney, that was the key moment in the race, as his No. 22 Ford lost positions in a near-wreck with Wallace and couldn’t close on Larson despite a subsequent restart on Lap 141, after Blake Koch tangled with Daniel Hemric and Brennan Poole and nosed into the inside wall.

“We almost got wrecked when the 6 (Wallace) got loose below whoever that was, the white car (the No. 90 of Brandon Brown), and that actually cost us the race,” Blaney said. “That allowed Larson to get by us, and he set sail from there, even though there was another restart.

“He was about three rows ahead of us, and I couldn’t run him down by the time I got to second.”

Elliott Sadler’s seventh-place finish allowed him to stretch his lead atop the XFINITY standings. He leads JRM teammate Justin Allgaier, Saturday’s 11th-place finisher, by 12 points. Byron sits third in a 1-2-3 sweep atop the standings by JR Motorsports drivers.

The series’ next race is scheduled for next Saturday (1 p.m. ET, FOX, MRN, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio) at Pocono Raceway.

Contributing: Staff report

Posted on by Pat DeCola

DOVER, Del. — Following up on his Twitter comments earlier this week regarding Kyle Busch’s post-race display of emotion, Brad Keselowski held court Saturday at Dover International Speedway to expound on the topic.

MORE: Busch on emotion: ‘I’m sorry, that’s just who I am’

As a reminder, here is what the Team Penske driver posted on Monday following the Coca-Cola 600 at Charlotte Motor Speedway, where race runner-up Busch dropped his microphone in an abrupt post-race press conference.

Keselowski elaborated after final practice for Sunday’s AAA 400 Drive for Autism (1 p.m. ET, FS1, MRN, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio) during a media session in which he announced his Checkered Flag Foundation will make a $20,000 donation to the National Military Family Foundation.

“The way (the media) portrayed it was his ‘hunger to win,’ ” he said. “Look, there’s some real funny balances in life and especially in this motorsports world, but your desire to win is not connected to getting angry or any of those type of pieces in my mind. That’s one way of expressing it, but it’s not the only way to win. So, when people come out and write articles or the media comes out and says that’s a reflection of him having the most desire to win, it makes me want to throw up.

“Not only is that a terrible message to send to anyone that’s aspiring to be a driver in this sport, that’s a terrible message to send to anyone in general in this world that that is a reflection of your desire to win. … Your desire to win can be expressed in a lot of other ways that are productive.”

Busch addressed the topic after winning the Dover pole in Friday’s qualifying. He said that the frustration of finishing second, with victory slipping out of his reach in the late going of such a prestigious race, contributed to fueling his mood and reaction.

There has been no love lost between Keselowski and the Joe Gibbs Racing driver – each a champion in the sport – over the years. Their conflicts go beyond the race track, extending to their general philosophies on the desire to win and how a competitor should show it.

MORE: Busch, Logano mix it up on pit road following Vegas race

“Everybody is different. I can’t speak for him, specifically, but I can speak for the message,” said Keselowski, a two-time winner in 2017. “If I’m going to set a message for my daughter or kids or fans of mine, I want that message to be that it’s not by any stretch of the imagination the true definition of the most desire or the most passion to win.

“You want to show me desire and passion to win? It’s what you do when nobody is watching. That’s what’s the desire and passion to win. I would say to anyone that aspires to be great in this sport or in life that that’s what they should be looking at and that’s the message we should be sending to other kids, other people in this society and this sport.”

Posted on by Reid Spencer

RELATED: How Dale Jr. stacks up for Dover

DOVER, Del.– Dale Earnhardt Jr. has always been a “gamer.” He was one of the pioneers of iRacing, often spending hours online racing against armchair drivers across the globe.

Now Earnhardt is making full use of technology to up his game on the asphalt.

“We went to the simulator, which is something we’ve been trying to infuse into our process a little bit more,” Earnhardt said after qualifying 11th on Friday at Dover International Speedway. “It’s been bearing some fruit and helping us out and making us feel more confident going into the race weekends.

“We first really experienced that in Kansas and had a great practice the first day. Same thing here, we went to the simulator, picked a few things we liked, threw out some stuff that didn’t work.”

That’s one of the main efficiencies of simulator work – eliminating ideas that won’t work before the car gets to the track.

“We come to the race track and we unload, and there is obviously going to be some comments about the car that we want to fix,” Earnhardt said. “We know what not to mess with that is going to waste a lot of practice time, and we can just hit the things that we thought we liked in the sim. 

“They correlated really well today (in Friday’s practice). We got the car better in race trim. We only made one change and then swapped over really quick (to qualifying trim). Then for qualifying, we improved the car each run … I’m really happy. We’ve been working, trying to get better.”

 

Posted on by Staff Report

Take a look at the stats from drivers that attempted a run of 10 consecutive laps in practices at Dover International Speedway this weekend.

RELATED: Practice 3 results

Pos Car Driver From Lap To Lap Avg Speed
1 42 Kyle Larson 1 10 156.652
2 18 Kyle Busch 1 10 156.188
3 48 Jimmie Johnson 2 11 156.069
4 2 Brad Keselowski 1 10 155.829
5 24 Chase Elliott 1 10 155.802
6 1 Jamie McMurray 1 10 155.693
7 4 Kevin Harvick 1 10 155.664
8 41 Kurt Busch 1 10 155.638
9 21 Ryan Blaney 1 10 155.625
10 20 Matt Kenseth 23 32 155.299
11 11 Denny Hamlin 2 11 155.098
12 19 Daniel Suarez # 13 22 154.613
13 14 Clint Bowyer 19 28 154.423
14 47 AJ Allmendinger 1 10 154.178
15 17 Ricky Stenhouse Jr. 24 33 153.985
16 78 Martin Truex Jr. 24 33 153.921
17 22 Joey Logano 24 33 153.795
18 77 Erik Jones # 18 27 153.664
19 31 Ryan Newman 12 21 153.545
20 34 Landon Cassill 2 11 152.860
21 95 Michael McDowell 11 20 152.815
22 37 Chris Buescher 19 28 152.679
23 38 David Ragan 7 16 152.345
24 5 Kasey Kahne 35 44 152.286
25 3 Austin Dillon 25 34 152.247
26 43 Regan Smith(i) 29 38 151.868
27 10 Danica Patrick 25 34 151.495
RELATED: Practice 2 results
Pos Car Driver From Lap To Lap Avg Speed
1 1 Jamie McMurray 2 11 156.448
2 14 Clint Bowyer 2 11 156.382
3 20 Matt Kenseth 3 12 156.372
4 48 Jimmie Johnson 4 13 156.347
5 21 Ryan Blaney 1 10 156.288
6 18 Kyle Busch 10 19 156.067
7 42 Kyle Larson 27 36 155.881
8 5 Kasey Kahne 2 11 155.810
9 24 Chase Elliott 2 11 155.679
10 3 Austin Dillon 2 11 155.518
11 13 Ty Dillon # 2 11 155.424
12 11 Denny Hamlin 8 17 155.266
13 78 Martin Truex Jr. 18 27 155.078
14 27 Paul Menard 1 10 154.992
15 41 Kurt Busch 19 28 154.828
16 4 Kevin Harvick 15 24 154.550
17 88 Dale Earnhardt Jr. 23 32 154.379
18 2 Brad Keselowski 25 34 154.373
19 31 Ryan Newman 21 30 153.676
20 47 AJ Allmendinger 21 30 153.120
21 32 Matt DiBenedetto 8 17 152.350
22 34 Landon Cassill 17 26 151.175
23 19 Daniel Suarez # 19 28 150.794
24 83 * Ryan Sieg(i) 21 30 148.172
25 51 * Cody Ware 1 10 147.902
26 17 Ricky Stenhouse Jr. 20 29 146.692


RELATED: Practice 1 results

Pos Car Driver From Lap To Lap Avg Speed
1 42 Kyle Larson 2 11 155.569
2 24 Chase Elliott 9 18 154.120
3 11 Denny Hamlin 7 16 154.097
4 51 * Cody Ware 11 20 144.819

* Car must run 10 consecutive laps on the track to be included in the above chart.

Posted on by Staff Report

RELATED: Dover schedule | Final practice results | Best 10-lap averages

Kyle Larson landed atop the leaderboard for final Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series practice Saturday at Dover International Speedway.

Larson clocked a best lap of 157.411 mph in the Chip Ganassi Racing No. 42 Chevrolet. Larson will start fifth in Sunday’s AAA 400 Drive for Autism (1 p.m. ET, FS1, MRN, SiriusXM), the 13th of 36 races in the series this year.

Jimmie Johnson, a 10-time Dover winner in the Hendrick Motorsports No. 48 Chevrolet, was second-fastest with a speed of 157.301 mph in the 50-minute session.

Kyle Busch, who will start from the pole in Sunday’s 400-miler, was third-fastest in the Joe Gibbs Racing No. 18 Toyota at 157.246 mph. He scored his first Coors Light Pole Award of the season — and the 20th of his career — in Friday qualifying.

Martin Truex Jr., Matt Kenseth, Kevin Harvick and Kurt Busch all tied for fourth on the chart with an identical best speed of 157.143 mph.

Austin Dillon, last weekend’s first-time winner in the Coca-Cola 600, was 24th-fastest in the Richard Childress Racing No. 3 Chevrolet.

Kyle Busch sets early Saturday pace in practice

RELATED: Practice 2 results 

Pole-sitter Kyle Busch was fast on Friday and again Saturday morning at Dover International Speedway, topping the morning practice session at 158.040 mph in the No. 18 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota.

Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series rising star Ryan Blaney had the second-fastest speed in the 55-minute session at 157.929 mph in the No. 21 Wood Brothers Racing Ford.

Martin Truex Jr., was third on the Saturday morning speed chart at 157.874 mph in the No. 78 Furniture Row Racing Toyota and will share the front row with Busch for the start of Sunday’s AAA 400 Driver for Autism (1 p.m. ET, FS1, MRN, Sirius XM NASCAR Radio). Jimmie Johnson was fourth at 157.756 mph in the No.48 Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet followed by Kurt Busch at 157.708 mph in the No. 41 Stewart-Haas Racing Ford.

Erik Jones spun on the concrete pavement with just under half an hour remaining in practice, but the rookie saved it and the No. 77 Furniture Row Racing Toyota suffered no damage. Jones returned to the track for the final five minutes of the session. He put up the seventh-fastest speed at 157.556 mph before spinning.

Kasey Kahne, Matt Kenseth and Kyle Larson had 15-minute practice holds for failing pre-qualifying tech multiple times and Kenseth also lost his pit stall selection for the weekend.

Posted on by Staff Report

RELATED: Starting lineup | Full weekend schedule | Summer story lines to watch

At a Glance
What: AAA 400 Drive for Autism; Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series Race No. 13
Where: Dover International Speedway, 1-mile oval in Dover, Delaware
Green flag: 1:15 p.m. ET
TV/Radio: FS1, MRN, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio
Forecast: Mostly sunny with high near 80. Chance of thunderstorms Sunday night. – NOAA.gov.
National anthem: Cassidy Daniels, Nashville recording artist
Grand Marshal: Gordon Ramsay, award-winning chef and TV personality
Race distance: 400 laps, 400 miles
Pit road speed: 35 mph
Caution car speed: 45 mph
Stage lengths: Stage 1 ends at Lap 120; Stage 2 ends at Lap 240; Final stage scheduled to end at Lap 400.

Posted on by Reid Spencer

RELATED: Childress offers first-person account of victory at Charlotte

DOVER, Del. — Race fans worldwide watched Austin Dillon win Sunday’s Coca-Cola 600 at Charlotte Motor Speedway roughly eight hours after Japanese driver Takuma Sato took the checkered flag in the Indianapolis 500.

 

So what were the chances of the two races winners meeting each other by happenstance during the days that followed the races?

 

Purely by coincidence, the drivers were at Teterboro Airport in New York on Tuesday during the media obligations that followed their respective victories. Dillon had just finished an impromptu dinner with his grandfather and team owner, Richard Childress, before coming to Teterboro.

 

“Yeah, that was totally fate,” Dillon told the NASCAR Wire Service on Friday at Dover International Speedway. “We had that dinner – it wasn’t a scheduled dinner, my grandfather was just like, ‘Hey we’re in New York, let’s have a dinner.’ We got done, and we were headed to the airport. Everybody was pretty tired, and we walked through the airport and one of the guys said ‘Hey, I think that’s Takuma Sato.’

 

“He was walking actually out to the plane and we were like ‘Man, we’ve got to get a picture with him.’ His business manager turned around and saw us and he was like ‘Well, this is a great coincidence.’ And he pulled him back in, and we got a couple of pictures, showed off our rings to each other. That was cool. He was a really nice guy and you could tell he was just jacked about the win at Indy.”

 

No doubt the feeling was mutual.

 

Posted on by Reid Spencer

RELATED: Race results | Series standings | Detailed breakdown 

DOVER, Delaware – Veteran Johnny Sauter proved once again that the combination of guile and clean air trumped youthful enthusiasm and superior tires.

Despite racing on tires that were 54 laps older than those of his closest pursuer, 18-year-old GMS Racing teammate Kaz Grala, Sauter got 82 laps out of his last tank of fuel at Dover International Speedway and held on to win Friday’s Bar Harbor 200 presented by Sea Watch International.

The defending NASCAR Camping World Truck Series champion and current series leader finished .270 seconds ahead of Grala, a Georgia Tech-bound engineering student who had received his high school diploma before the race.

For practical purposes, the outcome turned on crew chief Joe Shear Jr.’s decision to bring the 39-year-old Sauter to the pits under caution on Lap 118 of 200, after NASCAR Next member Todd Gilliland ended an impressive series debut performance with a brush with the outside wall to bring out the yellow.

“Joe Shear – what a call that was to try to make it on fuel!” Sauter said afterward. “We knew that we’d have to make a strategy play, because you just can’t pass. It wasn’t our best-handling truck, but we were able to get a win with it.”

After a restart on Lap 122, Sauter moved to the front of the group of trucks that had made pits stops on Lap 118. As green-flag pit stops cycled through late in the race. Sauter moved to the lead, and he maintained the top spot after caution flew for the eighth and final caution when the left-front tire on pole-sitter Chase Briscoe’s Ford rolled free after the jack dropped prematurely during a green-flag stop.

From that point on, Sauter hugged the bottom and kept Grala in dirty air. The victory, which followed three straight second-place finishes, was Sauter’s first of the season, his first at the Monster Mile and the 14th of his career.

“Johnny Sauter is a veteran and a champion for a reason,” said Grala, who took plenty of solace from his runner-up finish.

The winner of the season-opening event at Daytona International Speedway, Grala already had punched his ticket to the Truck Series playoffs.

RELATED: See every 2017 winner

“This was a big day for me, not only for my school life but for my racing life,” Grala said.

Christopher Bell fell out early after cutting a left-rear tire and trying to nurse it to the end of the first 45-lap stage, which Ryan Truex won, leading every lap from the second starting position. Bell hit the wall, finished 25th and dropped 52 points behind Sauter in the series standings.

Grant Enfinger ran third, followed by Ben Rhodes, who led a race-high 71 laps but had to pit for fuel under green on Lap 165 and ran out of time trying to work his way back to the front.

Sunoco Rookie of the Year candidate Austin Cindric finished fifth, a career-best result in the Truck Series. Brandon Jones, Regan Smith, Justin Haley, Noah Gragson and Truex completed the top 10. Two-time series champion Matt Crafton came home 11th and picked up his first playoff point of the season by winning the second stage.