Kyle Larson scores first premier series win — recap his breakthrough season here
Richard Petty Motorsports announced Friday that it will field one car next season in NASCAR’s premier series with hopes of returning to a two-car stable in 2018.
The Richard Petty-owned operation plans to focus its efforts on its flagship No. 43 Ford driven by Aric Almirola next year. Brian Moffitt, the organization’s CEO, indicated in a statement Friday that the team plans to lease one of its two charters it has in NASCAR’s top division.
“At the conclusion of the 2016 season, we evaluated how to best improve our on-track product. We feel that it’s in the best interest of our partners and for Richard Petty Motorsports to focus our resources on the No. 43 Ford Fusion and Aric in 2017. A concentrated effort on one team will position us for improvement while giving us adequate time to re-establish our two-car team in 2018. For the interim, we will lease one of our two charters.”
The realignment temporarily shutters the No. 44 Ford team most recently driven by Brian Scott, who retired from full-time competition at season’s end.
Almirola has been with the Petty organization since 2012. He scored his first premier series victory in July 2014 at Daytona International Speedway, landing the No. 43 team its first win since 1999 and punching the ticket for RPM’s only appearance in the Chase for the NASCAR Sprint Cup playoffs.
The Mooresville, North Carolina-based team began producing its own chassis before last season, then endured a significant performance dropoff in 2016. Almirola tumbled from 17th to 26th in the series’ final standings, and Scott managed only a 31st-place result overall in his only season with the team. Almirola and Scott posted just one top-10 finish each in the 36-race campaign.
Friday’s announcement follows two competition changes for RPM in the second half of last season. On Aug. 31, the organization replaced Sammy Johns, its director of operations, with Philippe Lopez and Scott McDougall to oversee competition duties. The organization also made a crew chief change for the No. 43 team on Sept. 13, replacing Trent Owens with Drew Blickensderfer for the final 10 races of the season.
RELATED: 2017 driver tracker
Front Row Motorsports announced Friday its driver lineup for NASCAR’s premier series in 2017, bringing Landon Cassill and David Ragan back to its roster.
Cassill, 27, is back for his second straight season driving for team owner Bob Jenkins, but will shift to the team’s No. 34 Ford. Ragan, 30, last drove for the team in the 2015 Daytona 500 and will take over driving duties on Front Row’s No. 38 Ford.
Ragan, a 10-year veteran in NASCAR’s premier series, brought Front Row Motorsports its first victory in May 2013 at Talladega Superspeedway. Cassill will be entering his seventh full-time season in NASCAR’s top division.
“These are two hard-working guys, both in the car and away from the car working with our partners,” Jenkins said in a release provided by the team. “We went out and got Landon last season because we knew he was talented and we wanted him in our race car, and now we’re really happy he will be back another year.
“And we’re really excited to have David back. He’s a big part of Front Row’s history, bringing us our first win. He’s got a lot of experience in his career — things that you can’t teach — that will be big assets to us and our partners.”
The Statesville, North Carolina-based operation will maintain its technical alliance with Roush Fenway Racing, keeping Roush Yates Engines as its engine provider. The organization indicated that its sponsorship alignment for 2017 will be announced soon.
Ragan drove for the team for three full seasons from 2012-2014, then joined Joe Gibbs Racing after the 2015 Daytona 500 to substitute for Kyle Busch, who suffered severe leg injuries in the season-opening XFINITY Series race at Daytona. After a nine-race fill-in stint with JGR, Ragan completed the year with Michael Waltrip Racing.
He ran one season for BK Racing in 2016, announcing last week that the two sides had parted ways. Ragan fills the vacancy created when Chris Buescher was optioned to JTG Daugherty Racing for 2017.
“It’s a nice homecoming, coming back to Front Row Motorsports,” Ragan said in the team’s news release. “I’ve always had a great deal of respect for Bob Jenkins, how he put together his team and grew it the right way over the years. We’ve celebrated some pretty big highlights together, and now we need to go make more.”
Cassill made his debut in the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series in 2010 and also spent one season (2012) with BK Racing. He joined Front Row in 2016 after three seasons driving for car owners Joe Falk and Mike Hillman Sr.
Despite sharing experience driving for BK Racing, Cassill and Ragan will mark their first season as teammates in 2017.
“I’m really looking forward to working with David,” Cassill said. “I’ve raced alongside him for years and respect him as a competitor. He has a ton of experience with different teams and manufacturers that will make him a great teammate. I’m really proud of what our team accomplished in 2016 in our first year together, and I’m really excited to go and build on that.”
Said Ragan: “Landon was a great addition to the team last year. He’s a smart driver with a lot of good experience, and I’m looking forward to working with him.”
NASCAR premier series driver Ryan Blaney and the Wood Brothers Racing team will be guaranteed a spot in all 36 races in 2017 now that the organization has obtained a Charter through a lease agreement with Go FAS Racing.
Blaney qualified for all 36 races this past season based on his qualifying times in the No. 21 Ford. Two years ago the team missed three races when inclement weather forced the cancellation of qualifying and the field was set per the NASCAR rule book.
Team officials indicated that having a guaranteed starting position takes weather and other concerns that could impact making the starting field off the table going forward.
Go FAS Racing, owned by Archie St. Hilaire, fields the No. 32 Ford in NASCAR’s premier series. Eight drivers made at least one start for the team in 2016, although officials announced Thursday that Matt DiBenedetto would be the team’s driver of record for the ’17 season.
MORE: DiBenedetto joins Go Fas Racing for 2017
While the team leased the No. 32 Charter to the Wood Brothers group, it has also since leased the No. 44 Charter from Richard Petty Motorsports, thus guaranteeing DiBenedetto a starting position as well. Officials with RPM, which also fields the No. 43 for driver Aric Almirola, have not indicated the status of the No. 44 team since the unexpected retirement of former driver Brian Scott at the conclusion of ’16.
“A couple of months ago we were evaluating where we were going to go,” St. Hilaire told SiriusXM NASCAR on Thursday. “We looked at it — I’m good friends with Eddie and Len (Wood) … we said ‘Look, let’s lease the Charter for a year, regroup and see what we want to do long term. …
“The opportunity arose with the departure of Brian Scott that there was an opening for the charter on the 44 team. After we had already signed with the Wood Brothers a few months ago, this opportunity came up.”
The Charter system, which was unveiled before the start of the ’16 season, awarded guaranteed starting positions to those teams that had attempted to qualify for all races from 2013 through 2015. Thirty-six teams met that criteria, leaving four positions available for Open (non-Chartered) teams.
The Wood Brothers team, one of the longest-tenured organizations in NASCAR, ran a limited schedule from 2009 through 2015. It resumed running the full 36-race schedule this past season, one which saw rookie Blaney finish 20th in points.
The offseason gears of change are still churning at Stewart-Haas Racing with the customary preparations before the new season dawns. But the early plans for SHR this year go far beyond paint schemes and subtle aerodynamic tweaks, and even former NASCAR premier series champion Kevin Harvick has the mildest reservations about how smooth a transition it might be.
Harvick addressed Stewart-Haas Racing‘s switch from Chevrolet to Ford for 2017 on Thursday after a holiday shopping spree at Ollie’s Bargain Outlet in Matthews, North Carolina to help families displaced by fire. Harvick’s foundation partnered with the Charlotte Fire Department to host the charitable event for the second straight year.
While that relationship continues, Harvick’s long-running association with Chevy will end next season when he pilots SHR’s No. 4 Ford for the first time. The organization’s behind-the-scenes work to bring its four-car fleet under the blue oval banner has been extraordinary, and Harvick says he’s cautiously optimistic that the overhaul will go over largely without a hitch.
“I think we’d be crazy to think there’s not going to be some bumps in the road just because there’s a lot of things that are changing,” Harvick said. “But I think with the amount of people that we have to go through the transition and do the things that we need to do, I couldn’t ask for a better group of people. It’s a bunch of racers, and I think it’s going to be a long winter, but with a group of racers like we have, we should hopefully fire off where we have been.”
RELATED: Where do Harvick and Childers rank in driver-crew chief pairings?
The move, announced in February, means that Stewart-Haas Racing will no longer rely on an alliance with Hendrick Motorsports for chassis and engines. SHR will have its own in-house chassis developed for the 2017 season plus power from Roush Yates Engines.
“I’m sure that the big parts and pieces will have already had a plan to be adjusted right and we have a plan to work toward that,” Harvick said, “but I think it’ll be all the knickknack stuff that you don’t expect that you’ll probably have to spend the most time worrying about and coming up with a spur-of-the-moment plan. I think everybody’s got a great frame of mind at Stewart-Haas Racing because for us, it’s a huge opportunity to kind of step out of that box.”
RELATED: SHR moving to Ford in 2017
The manufacturer swap isn’t the only significant change coming to Stewart-Haas Racing next season. Clint Bowyer will step into the organization’s flagship No. 14 as the replacement for team co-owner Tony Stewart, who retired from full-time competition at the end of 2016.
The addition to the driver lineup will mark a reunion for both Bowyer and Harvick, who were teammates in the sport’s top series at Richard Childress Racing from 2006-11.
“I’m really excited about Clint just because I’ve known Clint since the first time that he sat in a car at RCR, I was there with him,” Harvick said. “So I know a lot about Clint. Clint and I are really good friends, and he is cut from that same Stewart-Haas racer mold that everybody there is pretty much cut by.”
RELATED: Bowyer eager for move to SHR
As for Stewart, Harvick said, there’s been little slowing down as he steps away from full-time racing in NASCAR.
“You know, I asked Tony, I said, ‘So what’re you going to do to relax?’ ” Harvick said. “He’s like, ‘Relax? I’ve got to go to this dirt race and that dirt race,’ and I’m like, ‘I thought the whole point of retirement was to take some time off and unwind,’ but apparently it means going to dirt races and sitting on the tractor and plowing up the dirt and making sure it’s good for the racers. Sounds like he’s going to be a track operator, a promoter, and all the things in between this winter.”
Go Fas Racing announced Thursday that Matt DiBenedetto will drive its No. 32 Ford full-time in NASCAR’s premier series in 2017.
DiBenedetto joins the Archie St. Hilaire-owned team after two seasons with BK Racing. The 25-year-old California native parted ways with BK team owner Ron Devine last week, one day before teammate David Ragan followed suit.
“We have a great group of people that I am very excited to work with this season,” DiBenedetto said in a release provided by the team. “I am thankful for the opportunity and I look forward to representing the team and sponsors to the best of my ability.”
The move positions Go Fas Racing to have one driver for all 36 points-paying races for the first time since it joined NASCAR’s premier series full-time in 2014. A total of eight drivers piloted Go Fas’ No. 32 last season, with Jeffrey Earnhardt entering the majority of the races — 19. Joey Gase (six races), Bobby Labonte (4), Jeb Burton (2), Patrick Carpentier (2), Dylan Lupton, Eddie MacDonald and Boris Said (one each) were Go Fas’ other drivers.
The team indicated that Can-Am/Kappa, Keen Parts and Visone RV would return as sponsors with more partnerships yet to be announced. St. Hilaire also mentioned his hopes that “a fleet of newer race equipment purchased this offseason” would boost the team’s performance next year.
DiBenedetto has finished 35th in the final standings the last two seasons in NASCAR’s top division. He scored an emotional career-best finish of sixth place last April at Bristol Motor Speedway.
In the fourth and final installment of the Mobil 1 “Our Normal Drives” video series on NASCAR.com, the Official Motor Oil of NASCAR gives fans a look at how the CNC shop manager at Stewart-Haas Racing helps prepare the drivers for their anything-but-normal race day drive.
Check out how John Simmons works behind the scenes to create custom parts which prepare the Stewart-Haas Cup cars for their journeys.
Watch today’s video, which is part of NASCAR Inside Track presented by Mobil 1, then come back for more in-depth looks at NASCAR from Mobil 1.
SHOP: For your favorite die-casts
It’s not often that Dale Earnhardt Jr. loses a popularity contest, but that was the case Thursday when Lionel Racing — The Official Die-Cast of NASCAR — announced its best-selling die-cast of 2016.
For the first time since 2011 it wasn’t Junior’s No. 88 Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet at the top of the list. Instead, it was Earnhardt’s teammate, Chase Elliott, whose No. 24 NAPA Chevrolet claimed the top spot.
“Chase Elliott‘s arrival on the NASCAR scene has been big, and the overwhelming popularity of his first rookie NASCAR Sprint Cup Series die-cast is further proof that race fans relate to him and everything he represents,” said Lionel Racing President Howard Hitchcock in a company press release.
Never fear Junior Nation, as Earnhardt’s car still accounted for four out of 10 of the company’s best sellers.
Making the list for the first time was Kurt Busch, whose Monster Energy Chevrolet secured the seventh spot. Monster Energy recently became the sponsor for NASCAR’s top series, signing a multi-year deal.
Here’s the complete top-10 list of best-sellers for 2016:
1. Chase Elliott No. 24 NAPA Chevrolet
2. Dale Earnhardt Jr. No. 88 Nationwide/Batman Chevrolet
3. Dale Earnhardt Jr. No. 88 Nationwide Chevrolet
4. Dale Earnhardt Jr. No. 88 Axalta Chevrolet
5. Kevin Harvick No. 4 Busch Chevrolet
6. Jimmie Johnson No. 48 Lowe’s/Superman Chevrolet
7. Kurt Busch No. 41 Monster Energy Chevrolet
8. Jimmie Johnson No. 48 Lowe’s 7X Time Champion Chevrolet
9. Dale Earnhardt Jr. No. 88 Nationwide/Gray Ghost Darlington Chevrolet
10. Kevin Harvick No. 4 Busch Light Chevrolet