Posted on by Staff Report



Qualifying at Daytona International Speedway has undergone a few different formats over the past five years. The rules for this weekend’s NASCAR Sprint Cup Series and NASCAR XFINITY Series races are different from the procedures at intermediate and short tracks or road courses.


There will be two rounds of qualifying with drivers turning one timed lap. The top 12 will advance to the final round. Each driver will take a warm-up lap, the timed lap and a cool-down lap before returning to pit road.

Vehicles will be lined up and released for the first qualifying round in the order of their respective fastest single lap speed posted in the combined practice sessions, in ascending order (slowest to fastest). NASCAR will release drivers at a predetermined interval. The sanctioning body reserves the right to have more than one vehicle on track at a time. It’s likely that two vehicles will be on track at the same time, but the second vehicle won’t impede or help the one it follows on track.

Following each lap, NASCAR will impound vehicles, and there will be a 10-minute break between rounds. Only during that break may teams make adjustments, and they will only be allowed to adjust tape and use a cool-down unit at that time.

The final-round qualifying order will be set from slowest to fastest speeds in the first round, with starting positions 1-12 determined by the fastest laps in that second session.


Posted on by Staff Report



As the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series and NASCAR XFINITY Series compete in Daytona Beach, Florida this weekend, cars in both series will feature decals showing support for the victims of the June 12 tragedy at Orlando’s Pulse nightclub and their families.

 

Decals with “#OrlandoUnited” will be placed on cars running in both Saturday’s Coke Zero 400 Powered by Coca-Cola (7:45 p.m. ET, NBC, MRN, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio) and Friday’s Subway Firecracker 250 Presented by Coca-Cola (7:30 p.m. ET, NBCSN, MRN, SiriusXM) at Daytona International Speedway.

In addition, the NASCAR Foundation has made a $25,000 donation to OneOrlando, an organization that is providing support to the victims’ families.

 

“For our country, it was devastating for all the families involved,” team owner Joe Gibbs said Thursday morning. “… We’re (honored) to be a part of this program to honor those that lost their lives.”


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When the idea first surfaced of honoring active military units on the windshields of NASCAR XFINITY Series cars at Friday’s Firecracker 250 Powered by Coca-Cola (7:30 p.m. ET, NBCSN, MRN, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio), someone asked Jesse Iwuji which driver’s car he’d like his last deployment station, USS Comstock, featured on.

Iwuji, the NASCAR K&N Pro Series West driver in his first full season who also is in active service in the U.S. Navy until 2017, didn’t hesitate: Darrell Wallace Jr.

“I’ve followed him a lot and I really love what he’s done in the series,” said Iwuji, who will attend this weekend’s races at Daytona.

Like Wallace, Iwuji is African-American and a lifelong race fan. Like Wallace, Iwuji is trying to make a name for himself in the sport.

Like Wallace, Iwuji has shown great promise, but still is searching for his first win this season.

With so many similarities, somehow when Wallace first heard that his No. 6 Roush Fenway Racing Ford would honor Iwuji at Daytona International Speedway for Friday’s race, his predominant thought settled on the major difference between the two drivers.

“I didn’t know he was a Navy Lieutenant, so that’s really cool,” Wallace said.

Many XFINITY Series drivers will learn new facts about the units displayed on their race cars this weekend. Part of ‘NASCAR: An American Salute,’ the program honoring military units and installations is a counterpart to the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series’ tribute during the Coca-Cola 600 over Memorial Day weekend where cars featured names of service men and women who died while in active duty.

Several XFINITY Series teams have direct connections to the units, such as driver Elliott Sadler, whose windshield will be adorned with Fort Campbell’s “3RD BCT 101ST ABN” to honor JR Motorsports employee Lee Langley, who served for six years at the Army base as an infantry team leader in the 101st Airborne Division.

And then there’s Iwuji and Wallace. The two drivers met a couple times in the past year that Iwuji has been driving professionally, but rather than discuss Iwuji’s six years of active duty in the Navy, each time the two settled on their shared passion: racing. Iwuji peppered Wallace with questions about how he prepares for races, and how he manages the full-time job of driving.

“I’m still brand new and still learning a lot,” said Iwuji, who earned his first top 10 in his fifth start, “so I definitely have a long way to go.”

Sometimes, Wallace has the same feeling. But after 14 XFINITY Series races this season, Wallace has five top 10s and two top fives. He’s currently ninth in the driver’s standings, with seemingly a fairly secure spot in the 12-driver XFINITY Chase.

But he’s also winless. His second-place finish at Dover in May was a career best — and it was just enough to leave Wallace yearning for more.

“We’re knocking on the door for our first win,” Wallace said. “We need to clean up some areas that we’re lacking in right now. We’re kind of treating this (Daytona) as a test session because we have the Chase format. We can go to the race track and bring a different package to try each and every weekend. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. … Hopefully we can get a win to lock us into the Chase, and then win a Chase race each and every segment, and then put ourselves in a position to win the title, win the title and everybody’s happy.”

It seems a simple formula, though Wallace also knows there are significant strides to be made in the second half of the season.

It all starts with this weekend’s race, when he’ll have USS Comstock plastered atop his windshield.

“Hopefully it brings us some good luck, and hopefully it makes us ‘military strong’ so we can muscle some guys out of the way and get our first win,” Wallace said.


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RELATED: Series standings | How the XFINITY Chase Grid looks

Brennan Poole remembers his last restrictor-plate race: The one he won and then lost.

The driver of the No. 48 Chip Ganassi Racing-owned, DC Solar-sponsored Chevrolet survived a chaotic overtime finish in April’s Sparks Energy 300 at Talladega Superspeedway to cross the finish line first.

He took what was thought to be a celebratory victory lap around the 2.66-mile superspeedway. He drove back to the finish line and waited patiently to be handed the checkered flag.

But officials determined that Poole wasn’t out front when the caution appeared for a crash involving race leader Joey Logano, second-place Elliott Sadler and Blake Koch as the field rushed toward the finish line.

Logano ended up in the wall. Sadler kept his foot in the gas. Poole zoomed past both and thought he took the checkered flag.

But after checking replays and conferring, officials eventually determined it was Sadler in the lead when the caution lights came on.

And so it was Sadler (JR Motorsports) celebrating in the winner’s circle.

Poole, in just his fourth career restrictor-plate start, finished a career-best third.

Sour grapes? Not from the 25-year-old native of Woodlands, Texas.

“We basically won the race … for five minutes which was awesome,” Poole told NASCAR.com.

Coming off an eighth-place finish at Iowa two weeks ago and heading to Daytona International Speedway, Poole likes his chances as the NASCAR XFINITY Series returns to another restrictor-plate track.

As a matter of fact, Poole, who is eighth in points, would like his chances no matter where the series was headed this week.

“I really believed in this team and the group of guys we put together for this year,” he said. “I really trust everyone on this team and I think that’s important.

“I knew it was probably going to take us a few races to get going.”

His first start as a full-time driver in the series (he ran a limited schedule in ’15), began with a disappointing 27th-place result at Daytona, site of Friday’s Subway Firecracker 250 (7:30 p.m. ET, NBCSN, MRN, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio).

He has finished 14th or higher in all but one race since then.

“Once we cleaned up those little mistakes and learned how to work together … I really feel that any week we could be that team that wins the race,” he said. “And we’ve been really close. … We’re still working on our car having a little bit more speed more consistently, but I still feel like we’re a team that can win any week.

“I think when you start getting that confidence and as a team you start believing that this could be our week … it doesn’t really change your approach to the race but it just changes the feel of the weekend. I don’t know how to explain it, it’s just this feeling. You get like this extra (pop) in your step; you just feel like you can win, like you can beat these guys. When you have that as a team and everyone feels that way, it’s just really special.”

He returns to Daytona hunting not only for that first career win, but a spot in the series’ Chase as well.

The XFINITY Series Chase, in its debut this season, will consist of 12 teams competing in the elimination-style playoff over the final seven races for the championship. Stops at Kentucky, Dover and Charlotte make up the first round, from which eight drivers will advance.

Kansas, Texas and Phoenix will determine the final four that will race for the title at Homestead-Miami Speedway.

Thus far, only three full-time XFINITY Series drivers have earned wins this season – Sadler, Erik Jones (2) and Daniel Suarez.

“I feel like we’re coming off another top 10, we feel like we should be a car in the top 10 every single week and we feel like we should contend for wins,” he said. “If we can hit our stride as soon as that Chase starts then we’re going to be really tough.”

Poole’s car, as well as that of the organization’s No. 42 driven this week by Justin Marks, will feature a digital camouflage paint scheme at Daytona, honoring those that have served or are currently serving in the U.S. military.

RELATED: See Poole’s paint scheme for this weekend

The names of active military units and installations will be featured on all NASCAR XFINITY Series entries this weekend, displayed on the windshields of the cars, as part of the NASCAR: An American Salute program.

“I have a bunch of friends in the military … and wanted to do something cool for them, as well as those who are continuing to fight for our freedom,” Poole said. “It was just something that was special to me. It’s an honor.”


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Darrell Wallace Jr. didn’t spend his XFINITY Series off-weekend lounging on a Caribbean beach or roaming a new city away from the race track.


Instead, the No. 6 Roush Fenway Racing driver was behind the wheel.


Of a go-kart, that is.


“Actually got right into (racing) but not with my (No. 6) guys,” Wallace said Wednesday at one of NASCAR’s offices in Charlotte, North Carolina. “I went go-kart racing, just try to get back into that and have some fun. Locals whooped me, but still had a lot of fun being able to do that. So, I was still racing, but nothing on the major scale.


“(I was) able to learn all the hard (stuff) that went along with go-kart racing. God, it was so tough. I forgot everything that I remember from 13 years ago. Just putting that all together was actually a lot of fun – we had some speed, just the driver forgot how to drive a go-kart,” he joked.


Lucky for Bubba, this weekend’s stage at Daytona International Speedway will be slightly bigger, faster and with a lot more drafting. And while it’s not one of Wallace’s favorite tracks, it appears he hasn’t forgotten how to wheel a superspeedway car: the sophomore driver kicked off the 2016 season with a solid sixth-place result at the Florida track and led multiple laps in the ’15 season-opener.


Combined with his most recent pair of consecutive top-10 finishes and a runner-up at Dover in May, this weekend’s forecast looks more sunny than stormy for the No. 6 driver.


“We’re just trying to look in-depth at what we’re doing for our program and see how we can be better,” Wallace said. “We know we’re a top-10 race team each and every weekend. We’ve had some bad luck and some of it’s been on us, that we’ve jeopardized those races and we’ve ended up outside of that.


“But (to have) these last two, now it’s starting to get the second half of the season, after that the Chase is starting. So we have to start coming up with a good game plan that we need to bring to each and every track and each and every weekend, so we can unload with a lot of speed and what we need to be competitive. We’ve been doing that (recently).”


They’ve had additional support off-track as well: Loudmouth Exhaust Systems made its debut on the No. 6 car at Dover International Speedway, where Bubba recorded a career-best second-place result. Since then, the company has graced the car as a primary sponsor for three races and will adorn the No. 6 this weekend at Daytona International Speedway.

In a world where sponsorship puts cars on track and lack of it takes names off entry lists, the new partnership has been huge for the 22-year-old racer, who has been transparent about his team’s struggles to find primary partners.


“Sponsorship is the name of the game,” Wallace said. “We’re still working hard to find that full-time primary sponsor, but Loudmouth has been a great partner of ours for a number of races now … They’ve been a huge help to our program to keep us going to the race track each and every weekend. (I’m) trying to do everything I can, as possible, to land that big-time sponsor.”


Wallace’s sponsor schedule has come with some uncertainty — he said he doesn’t even know who is sponsoring his next XFINITY Series race at Kentucky Speedway on July 8. With the goal of landing a full-time sponsor, he’s taken a more involved approach than many drivers do, whether it’s grabbing lunch with potential partners or meeting with those ready to sign on the dotted line.


“I try to be more hands-on, just so I can get a better understanding of what we’ve got and how I can be better at representing myself for my brand and my team,” Wallace said.


“I think one thing that’s powerful is the drivers gain this personal relationship with the sponsor,” he added. “And that’s when you see the Lowe’s that’s with Jimmie Johnson, you see those M&M’s with Kyle (Busch) — they have this great relationship with the driver. There’s no middle man and I think that’s important.”


He’ll have another chance to impress Loudmouth — as well as other potential partners that Wallace says are in the works — this weekend at Daytona International Speedway with Friday’s Subway Firecracker 250 Powered by Coca-Cola (7:30 p.m. ET, NBCSN, MRN, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio). Another top 10 would be great, but a win would be even better for the young driver.


“(I’m) excited to have them back on the car at Daytona,” Wallace said. “Hopefully we can bring the same amount of luck with them and get a win.”


Posted on by Staff Report



PJ Stergios (ineX Racing) won his third NASCAR PEAK Antifreeze Series race of the 2016 season, beating Slip Angle Motorsports’ driver Ray Alfalla at Chicagoland Speedway. The two were the class of the field in the series’ first race after the summer break, but Stergios pulled-off the victory with better long-run speed and a superior pit strategy.


Alfalla settled for second, 2.2 seconds behind the winner after starting from the pole and leading a race-high 90 of 167 laps. Chris Overland was third, more than seven seconds behind Stergios.


Taylor Hurst and Justin Bolton rounded out the top five.


On the short runs Alfalla was in a class of his own, but the race came down to long-run speed with only one caution being thrown for Timmy Hill’s (Aftermath) spin entering pit road during the first round of stops. Alfalla, who was the leader at the time of the caution, led the field down pit road but lost the lead to Dylan Duval (The TEAM) on the pit exchange.


On the ensuing restart Duval held-off Alfalla for six laps before finally giving way as he simply could not match the speed of two time champion’s Ford Fusion. However, as the run wore on Stergios began to reel Alfalla in. By the time green-flag pit stops were imminent, Stergios’ Ford was right on Alfalla’s bumper and inherited the lead when Alfalla was the first to pit.


Due to pitting a lap sooner than Stergios, Alfalla returned with a sizable margin over his nearest competitor. Stergios almost immediately started cutting into the margin and by the time 25 laps had elapsed in the run he was within striking distance of the lead again. On Lap 98 Stergios made his move to the bottom in Turn Three in an attempt to take the lead but Alfalla hung tough on the outside to keep Stergios at bay.


Unable to clear Alfalla, Stergios devised a new plan to take the lead. On this run Stergios pitted a lap before Alfalla; this allowed him to take the lead and build a gap of nearly three seconds. With only one more pit stop needed before the finish, Alfalla was now chasing the lead for the first time all race.


On this run Alfalla had more speed and began to reel Stergios in despite a near disaster with Overland that saw Alfalla on the receiving end of an inadvertent tap from behind entering Turn One. The contact sent Alfalla into a slide but he masterfully recovered and continued his pursuit of Stergios.


Alfalla was only a couple car lengths behind Stergios when the final pit window opened and once again it was Stergios getting the jump on Alfalla on pit road. By pitting a lap earlier for the second run in a row, Stergios saw his lead grow to over four seconds. Alfalla started to close the gap again but stalled-out midway through the run and was unable to mount a challenge.


The win could prove critical for Stergios’ championship hopes as he cut into Alfalla’s points lead. Alfalla now leads by just 11 points as the top two continue pulling away from the rest of the field. Kenny Humpe retained third place in the standings but lost ground after a twenty-eighth place finish due to a blend line violation while leaving pit road. Humpe’s poor result allowed Jake Stergios to move into a tie for third in the standings despite finishing P14 in the Windy City.  However, Humpe and Jake now sit a distant 85 points behind Alfalla. Overland bookends the top five, jumping in front of Corey Vincent and making for three ineX Racing drivers in the first five positions.


Week 10 of the 2016 NASCAR PEAK Antifreeze season takes the sim racers to another 1.5-mile track: Kentucky Speedway. While Chicagoland and Kentucky are equal in length, the similarities end there. Kentucky’s surface is very rough, flat, and wide making it a challenge to create an optimal setup. Will Stergios and Alfalla continue to duel for the victory or can Humpe or another driver spoil the party at the front? Be sure and catch all the sim racing action in two weeks on iRacingLive when the NASCAR PEAK Antifreeze Series drivers take on Kentucky!



Posted on by Staff Report



RELATED: Watch the incident from Gateway

 

NASCAR penalized drivers John Wes Townley and Spencer Gallagher on Wednesday for their roles in an incident in Saturday night’s Camping World Truck Series race at Gateway Motorsports Park.

After a review of the on-track altercation and ensuing physical quarrel in the Drivin for Linemen 200, competition officials fined Townley $15,000 and assessed Gallagher a $12,500 fine. Both of the drivers have been placed on probation until Dec. 31. 

The two drivers collided in the 145 of 200 laps Saturday night, with Gallagher’s GMS Racing No. 23 Chevrolet sending Townley’s No. 05 Athenian Motorsports Chevy for a spin in Turn 1. The two made contact again 10 laps later in the same turn, leaving both trucks with heavy damage after impact with the outside retaining wall.

After both drivers exited their trucks unhurt, a brief verbal spat escalated to a wrestling match on the track with Townley landing a smattering of punches before the two were separated. Gallagher finished 22nd and Townley 23rd in the 32-truck field.

Among other penalties announced Wednesday, the teams of NASCAR Sprint Cup Series drivers Dale Earnhardt Jr. and Matt Kenseth received written warnings for failing pre-qualifying inspection at Sonoma Raceway.

 

The Joe Gibbs Racing No. 20 Toyota team for Kenseth was issued a warning for failing two trips through the Laser Inspection Station (LIS) before Coors Light Pole Qualifying. The Hendrick Motorsports No. 88 Chevrolet team of Earnhardt failed body template inspection twice before Friday’s Sonoma qualifying.


Posted on by Staff Report



Beginning at 1:30 p.m. ET on Thursday, NASCAR.com will be streaming a special edition XFINITY Series GarageCam from Daytona International Speedway that will honor NASCAR Salutes. 

The segment will be 30 minutes long, featuring co-hosts Jonathan Merryman and Chuck Bush, along with special guest, Jesse Iwuji, an aspiring NASCAR driver who’s currently a surface warfare officer in the U.S. Navy. 

The show will also include a scrolling ticker highlighting the units from the four branches of the military. Watch the live show today at 1:30 p.m. ET here.