Dale Jr., Larson lead Friday practices at Sonoma

Posted on June 24, 2016 by Staff Report

Practice 2 | Results

Dale Earnhardt Jr. led the final Sprint Cup Series practice on Friday at Sonoma Raceway with a high-speed of 95.298 mph.

The driver of the No. 88 Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet was fourth-fastest in the opening session at the Northern California road course.

Casey Mears (No. 13 Germain Racing Chevrolet) was second-fastest to Earnhardt Jr. with a speed of 95.255 mph.

Joe Gibbs Racing teammates Denny Hamlin (95.243 mph) and Carl Edwards (95.157 mph) were third and fourth-fastest, respectively.

Defending race winner Kyle Busch was fifth-fastest (95.144 mph), completing the top-five fastest on the leaderboard. The No. 18 driver brought out a quick red flag during the final session when the left side of his No. 18 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota struck a rabbit.

Current Sprint Cup Series points leader Kevin Harvick was 18th-fastest (94.518 mph) in the Sprint Cup Series’ final practice session of the weekend.

Kyle Larson, who was fastest in the opening session, was 11th-fastest (94.963 mph) in the closing session.

The Sprint Cup Series returns to the road course at 2:15 p.m. ET on Saturday for the Coors Light Pole Qualifying (FS1).

Practice 1 | Results

Kyle Larson soared to the top of the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series leaderboard Friday at Sonoma Raceway.

Larson powered the Chip Ganassi Racing No. 42 Chevrolet to a best lap of 95.141 mph on the 1.99-mile California road course. His speed was shy of the track qualifying record of 96.568 mph that he set in Coors Light Pole Qualifying last year.

Jamie McMurray, Larson’s teammate in the No. 1 Chevy, was second-fastest at 94.544 mph in the opening 1-hour, 55-minute session. McMurray suffered slight damage to the right-rear fender after a Turn 11 run-in with Tony Stewart late in the session.

Former Sonoma winner Martin Truex Jr. turned the third-best lap (94.498 mph) in the Furniture Row Racing No. 78 Toyota. Dale Earnhardt Jr. (94.430 mph) and Carl Edwards (94.319 mph) completed the top five in opening preparation for Sunday’s Toyota/Save Mart 350 (3 p.m. ET, FS1, PRN, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio).

Defending race winner Kyle Busch clocked the 14th-fastest lap in the Joe Gibbs Racing No. 18 Toyota. The reigning Sprint Cup champion scored an emotional victory in this race last year, winning for the first time since suffering severe leg injuries in the 2015 XFINITY Series opener.

Jimmie Johnson was best in the category of 10-consecutive-lap average, leading Matt Kenseth and Denny Hamlin under that heading.

The session was interrupted by a lengthy red flag shortly after the practice began when Regan Smith‘s Tommy Baldwin Racing No. 7 Chevrolet leaked an overflow of oil. With the problem remedied, Smith recorded the 34th-fastest lap of the 41 drivers entered.

Posted on June 24, 2016 by Staff Report

NASCAR licensee Dusenberry Martin Racing unveiled its cover for the new NASCAR Heat Evolution (PS4, Xbox One, Windows PC) video game with cover athlete Carl Edwards on Friday at Sonoma Raceway. The game will be released Sept. 13.

In partnership with Toyota, DMR had a unique contest to determine the cover athlete — awarding the top-finishing Toyota driver in May’s Sprint All-Star Race the opportunity to be on the cover. Edwards beat out his Joe Gibbs Racing teammates and made history along the way as the first Toyota driver to be featured on the cover of a NASCAR video game.

Edwards finished fourth in the 113-lap event, ahead of teammates Denny Hamlin (ninth) and Kyle Busch (10th). Martin Truex Jr. and Matt Kenseth were also eligible.

As NASCAR’s exclusive console simulation style video game licensee, DMR has revolutionized the game by starting from the ground up, with a new developer, publisher and game design for the first NASCAR-branded game to be available on next-generation consoles.

NASCAR Heat Evolution will immerse fans in the door-to-door excitement of stock car racing and allow users to live the experience of taking the checkered flag. Whether a casual or hardcore gaming fan, NASCAR Heat Evolution will dynamically adapt to any skill level and deliver a true-to-life racing experience. The new game will feature all of the top drivers, teams, and incredibly detailed tracks and environments, giving fans the opportunity to feel what it is like to be a racing legend.

“Our company is a team of highly skilled gaming veterans with a proven record of success in NASCAR game development and publishing. Our commitment to the NASCAR community is to consistently deliver fun, engaging and high-quality NASCAR games to the market,” DMR Chief Executive Officer Tom Dusenberry said in May at Charlotte.

DMR, whose licensing agreement with NASCAR Team Properties runs through 2020, partnered with Monster Games to create NASCAR Heat Evolution, bringing more than 100 years of combined NASCAR games experience to the project.

DMR President Ed Martin said, “To deliver an all-new NASCAR game experience, we assembled an all-star team of NASCAR game experts and started with a clean sheet of paper. What the DMR and Monster Games teams have come up with is going to amaze NASCAR fans.”

More information can be found at NASCARHeat.com. Fans can also follow NASCAR Heat Evolution on Twitter via @DMRNASCARHeat and@DMRacingGames.

Posted on June 24, 2016 by Staff Report

Jeffrey Earnhardt will honor his grandfather Dale Earnhardt with a special paint scheme during the Sprint Cup Series’ Bojangles’ Southern 500 at Darlington Raceway on Sept. 4, Go Fas Racing announced Friday.

Aligning with the race’s throwback theme, Earnhardt’s No. 32 Ford scheme will combine features from the Nos. 2 and 3 Wrangler Chevrolets driven by “The Intimidator” in 1981.

“Sometimes things just fall together at the right time,” Go Fas Racing owner Archie St. Hilaire said in a team release. “When we were going through the process of which paint scheme to run for this year’s race at Darlington, the idea of a tribute to Dale Earnhardt’s 1981 season stood out to all of us above the rest. Throw in the fact that we get to have Jeffrey showcase his family’s heritage and pay tribute to his grandfather, as well — that’s just icing on the cake.”

Dale Earnhardt wheeled the iconic blue-and-yellow scheme to 17 top-10 and nine top-five finishes that year, including a sixth-place result in that season’s running of the Southern 500. He would go on to earn seven championships, tying Richard Petty for a record that stands unbroken in the Sprint Cup Series.

“I’m pretty excited to have the famous yellow and blue paint scheme in honor of my grandfather for this year’s Southern 500,” said Jeffrey Earnhardt, the son of Kerry Earnhardt. “My grandfather ran this paint scheme in 1981, when he started the season as the No. 2 car driving for Rod Osterlund. When Richard Childress purchased the team halfway through the season it became the famous No. 3 car, so you have that 32 connection, so it’s pretty cool to have the chance to bring it back this year. I know we’ll have a lot of fun with it, and hope all the great fans enjoy it as well.”

This marks the second year Darlington will host a throwback-themed race: the campaign premiered last season with rave reviews from the industry, drivers and fans. This year’s theme will focus on the 1975-84 time period of racing.

The 2016 running of the Bojangles’ Southern 500 will take place Labor Day weekend (Sept. 4) at 6 p.m. ET on NBC, MRN and SiriusXM NASCAR Radio.

Posted on June 24, 2016 by Zack Albert

With the Daytona Rising project’s transition to gleaming motorsports stadium reaching completion this year, International Speedway Corporation’s next initiative aims to bring similar enhancements to other tracks in its portfolio.

Lesa France Kennedy, CEO of ISC, revealed during NASCAR’s preseason media tour that two tracks in particular — Phoenix International Raceway and Richmond International Raceway — were targeted for comparable improvements. Speaking Thursday after her induction into the Cynopsis Sports Hall of Fame in New York, Kennedy provided updates on the two tracks, which both host two annual events for the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series.

“We’re continuing to look at both Phoenix and Richmond,” Kennedy told NASCAR.com. “They’re terrific markets, first of all, and also facilities that I think would really benefit to take it to the next level with some of the features that we saw at Daytona Rising that worked well and that our fans enjoyed. We’re continuing to work on the plans. As you know, sometimes it takes several years to develop the plans and then to go through the construction process, but we’re deep in the middle of it with both of those. We’ll look forward to those plans rolling out.”

Daytona International Speedway‘s transformation spanned approximately two and a half years from the Rising project’s groundbreaking in July 2013 to its full-fledged debut at Speedweeks in January and February. Kennedy said no specific timetable was in place for plans at Phoenix or Richmond.

“We’re very active right now,” Kennedy said. “We’ve been looking at both of those tracks, but also all of our tracks. Those are the two that we’re laser-focused on right now.”

Among other ISC updates provided Thursday:

— Kennedy said that the selection process for a new track president at Darlington Raceway was nearing completion. The vacancy at the historic South Carolina track was created in April, when Chip Wile was named to the same post at Daytona International Speedway. Wile replaced Joie Chitwood III, who was promoted to Chief Operating Officer at ISC.

Wile’s nearly three-year tenure helped rejuvenate the 1.366-mile track with a signature feature, the nostalgic NASCAR Throwback weekend. Darlington also returned to its traditional Labor Day place on the Sprint Cup schedule in 2015.

“Darlington has such a great heritage, so it is important to find the right fit and the right person,” Kennedy said. “I think it’s so important, too, for that person to have great industry relationships. We’ll have an announcement here, I’d say in the very, very short run about our selection, so that should come out very soon.”

— Ahead of February’s Daytona 500 and surrounding events, Chitwood — then Daytona’s track president — estimated that the Daytona Rising project was at 98 percent completion for Speedweeks. Regarding that last 2 percent, Kennedy said that the final touches for the 2.5-mile track’s enhancements were in place for Daytona’s second Sprint Cup race of the season.

“Joie’s a hard-charging individual and he would always be at 98 percent because he continues to push us on those final details to the end,” Kennedy said with a laugh, “but it’s going to be in great shape and we’re ready to kick off the Coke Zero 400 on July 2 (7:45 p.m. ET, NBC, MRN, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio). I feel like everything is ready to go.”

Posted on June 24, 2016 by Zack Albert

International Speedway Corporation CEO Lesa France Kennedy was inducted Thursday into the Cynopsis Sports Hall of Fame.

Kennedy was feted at the organization’s fifth annual Sports Business Summit in New York. She joined ESPN founder Bill Rasmussen (left in the above photograph) and Major League Baseball executive Billy Bean as inductees recognized for their roles in transforming the sports world and its influence on popular culture.

Mark Lazarus, the chairman of NBC Sports Group, presented Kennedy for enshrinement. Kennedy, who called the ceremony at Three Sixty° event space in Manhattan “a huge honor,” said she shared a bond with her fellow inductees at the annual summit.

“We all came from sports and had different perspectives,” Kennedy told NASCAR.com, “but the common theme with everyone in the discussion in the room today was about fans and the fan experience.”

A large component of Kennedy’s plan for enhancements debuted this season at Daytona International Speedway‘s Speedweeks, when the Daytona Rising vision came to life. The $400 million project, which broke ground in July 2013, reshaped ISC’s flagship facility with state-of-the-art amenities.

PHOTOS: Daytona through the years

“It took a look at the fan experience in a very different way with the first true motorsports stadium, but I think the most important thing to point out is that the fans really will tell you what they want if you’re listening to them,” Kennedy said. “If you’re able to take those ideas and deliver on it, it goes a long way.”

Attending the summit with Kennedy was her son, Ben Kennedy , fresh from scoring a pair of top-10 finishes last weekend in a NASCAR national series doubleheader at Iowa Speedway.

“It’s really exciting not only to be here, but to see the event done in the fashion that it was,” he said. “… Just really proud of her and proud of all her accomplishments.”

Forbes magazine named Kennedy the Most Powerful Woman in Sports last December, marking the second time she had been selected for the business magazine’s award.

Posted on June 24, 2016 by George Winkler

SONOMA, Calif. — Jimmie Johnson is known for his California cool, but ask him about Sonoma Raceway and the six-time Sprint Cup Series champion becomes animated.

He looks skyward for the right words to say, the body moves forward in the chair and the arms come up ever so slightly.

Even after 77 victories in 16 years in the premier series, there are still proverbial dragons for Johnson to slay.

One such dragon is the 1.99-mile road course here, where Johnson has won just once, back in 2010.

The yearning for a victory in Sunday’s Save Mart 350 (3 p.m. ET, FS1, PRN, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio) is clearly evident on Johnson’s face as he explains why he’s highly motivated for this weekend.

“I still have a personal thing for me, coming here, The Glen and Bristol,” Johnson said. “Those three tracks. With my driving style and my background, those should be my best tracks and they’re not. And it drives me crazy that they’re not.”

Not so crazy is the fact Johnson is pretty much locked in the 2016 Chase with wins at Atlanta and Fontana. A victory at Sonoma would give the California native a sweep of NASCAR’s races in the Golden State this year. He won at Sonoma and Fontana in 2010, but that was when NASCAR staged two events in a season at the Southern California track.

In order to pull off the California double, he’ll need to tame not only the 12 turns of the track, but also what has been an unpredictable event. Sonoma has produced 10 different winners over the past 11 races.

“It’s a wild-card race,” Johnson said. “… But I think we’ve seen a real interesting shift in the last 10 years where the road-course ringers have come in and they aren’t taking the trophies home. … I think it really shows the versatility we have as drivers and the teams as well.”

To Johnson’s point there aren’t many road-course ringers on the entry list this year. Besides AJ Allmendinger, a Sprint Cup regular who won in 2014 at Watkins Glen en route to the Chase, Patrick Carpentier (No. 32 Go Fas Racing) is the only driver who would fit the road-course ringer description.

And like ‘Dinger, who is from Los Gatos, Johnson (El Cajon) also hails from California. They are part of nine California drivers set for Sunday’s race, including Kevin Harvick and Casey Mears (both from Bakersfield), Kyle Larson (Elk Grove), Josh Wise (Riverside), Matthew DiBenedetto (Grass Valley), Dylan Lupton (Sacramento) and Cole Whitt (Alpine).

Would another win in California be just the tonic for Johnson, who has just one top-five finish in the past six races?

“Absolutely,” Johnson said. “First of all, there’s nothing quite like winning. Winning is very special and unique in our sport. And the road courses, I felt like coming into my Cup career, that with my off-road background I would just excel and take off on road courses. But coming in, I was good for a couple of laps and I’d melt the tires off the car and I really had to learn discipline where to make time and where to save the tires. It’s a tough balance.”

Posted on June 24, 2016 by George Winkler

SONOMA, Calif. — What better place to talk technology than Sonoma Raceway, which is nestled in wine country less than 100 miles from Silicon Valley and the epicenter for many of the country’s top minds in the field of computer sciences.

So perhaps it was no coincidence that NASCAR and Microsoft debuted their first race management app on Friday and that it will be in use this weekend for the Toyota – Save Mart 350 (Sunday, 3 p.m. ET, FS1, PRN, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio).

Steve O’Donnell, NASCAR executive vice president and chief racing development officer, and Microsoft’s Mike Downey, the principle architect of the app, were on hand to unveil the new technology during a presentation that lasted about 30 minutes. It’s the latest in an ongoing relationship between the sport and the technology leader that has grown steadily in recent years.

“NASCAR has really put an emphasis, especially over the last 18 months, on technology and new technology and how we can bring things more quickly to the fans, really put them inside the driver’s seat,” O’Donnell said. “But equally as important is how we can work together to be more efficient from a governing standpoint, especially when it comes to race control.”

By bringing six different data categories, such as historical data, timing and scoring, pit road officiating, video replay and car positioning, into one app, O’Donnell said it would allow race directors to relay messages to teams more quickly than the current system where data is analyzed on multiple screens from multiple feeds.

Information can be gleaned during the race as well as immediately afterward, so the goal, at least from a competition standpoint, is that the decisions in what is perhaps the fastest of fast-moving sports can be made more quickly.

For example, if there’s a violation on pit road, NASCAR officials will be able to cut video and send it to the teams, along with a message. This would replace today’s method of relaying the message over the airwaves. NASCAR is counting on this being a more accurate and efficient way to deliver their in-race messages.

The Microsoft Race Management App was built with Windows 10 leveraging the Microsoft Azure platform and the technology giant worked with NASCAR in order to get the look and feel, and practical usage, right.

As with most technology, this is version 1.0 and both NASCAR and Microsoft expect improvements to be made after the app takes its opening laps at Sonoma.

“This first phase is around consolidating operations and systems like this, collecting more information,” Downey said. “As we go forward, we want to help NASCAR better utilize that information that we are helping them collect. … So this is really the first of a multi-staged approach to use data to better inform how NASCAR both runs their races and how they tune their races to create an even better product for their fans.”

Microsoft and NASCAR introduced a mobile inspection application in late 2014 that took that process from being paper-driven into the digital age. And now the race management app is taking the sport’s technology to the next level.

Posted on June 23, 2016 by Nascar

RELATED: Chase Grid

NASCAR Sprint Cup Series drivers and teams resume the pursuit of a position in this year’s Chase for the Sprint Cup this weekend as the series heads to Sonoma Raceway and the year’s first road-course stop.

Ten drivers have all but officially secured berths with one or more victories through the series’ first 15 races. If there aren’t at least 16 winners following the cutoff race at Richmond International Raceway on Sept. 10, the remainder of the field will be determined based on points positions. Last season, there were 11 winners, leaving five positions to be awarded based on points.

Ten drivers have found themselves 16th in the standings at some point this year. Five have advanced; four have fallen by the wayside for now and one, Ryan Blaney, heads to Sonoma situated in the 16th position.

Blaney, driver of the Wood Brothers No. 21 Ford, is aware of his situation, but says he pays no mind to his past or current points placement.

“I don’t care about it,” he said during a recent organizational test for teams at Kentucky Speedway. “I really don’t look at it.”

Blaney has been as high as 12th in the standings and as low as 21st. With 11 races remaining before the field is set for the 10-race, championship-determining format gets underway, there’s little reason to panic.

He enters Sunday’s Toyota/Save Mart 350 (3 p.m. ET, FS1, PRN, SiriusXM NASCAR) with an 11-point cushion on Hendrick Motorsports driver Kasey Kahne and is 19 points ahead of 18th-place Trevor Bayne (Roush Fenway Racing).

Richard Childress Racing driver Ryan Newman (15th) is five points ahead of Blaney. Jamie McMurray sits 14th — the driver of the Chip Ganassi Racing No. 1 Chevrolet is five up on Newman and 10 on Blaney.

“I don’t like to look at that stuff,” Blaney reiterated. “I think if we go on the race track and perform the way I know we should, and run toward the front of the field like we can do week in and week out, that stuff will take care of itself.”

Sunday’s race will be Blaney’s first Sprint Cup start on a road course but he is not alone. Fellow Sunoco Rookie of the Year candidates Chris Buescher, Chase Elliott, Brian Scott and Jeffrey Earnhardt will be making their first Sprint Cup road-course starts as well.

Both Blaney and Elliott (Hendrick Motorsports) have one road-course win apiece in the Camping World Truck Series and both came at Canadian Tire Motorsport Park. Buescher (Front Row Motorsports) won at Mid-Ohio in 2014 while competing in the XFINITY Series.

The Wood Brothers Racing team is making its first appearance at a road-course since the 2008 season when former driver Marcos Ambrose wheeled the No. 21 from 43rd to a third-place finish at Watkins Glen International. Blaney’s father, Dave, also competed in that race.

One of roughly a half dozen teams competing without a Charter this season (and thus no guaranteed starting spot in the 40-car fields), Wood Brothers Racing has eight road-course wins to its credit. Marvin Panch scored the first in 1965 at The Glen; Dan Gurney won four times and NASCAR Hall of Fame member David Pearson three at Riverside International Raceway.

Blaney and his team, led by crew chief Jeremy Bullins, have one top five and six top-10 finishes this season. Two of the last three starts, however, have resulted in finishes of 20th (at Charlotte) and 17th (at Michigan), sandwiched around a 10th-place run at Pocono.

A brush with the wall late in the second half of the Michigan race sent his No. 21 entry to pit road. Although he restarted 29th, Blaney did gain 12 positions in the closing laps of the 400-mile race.

“We had a bad day,” Blaney said. “It was unfortunate because we had a really good car. We should have run in the top five pretty easily. Just the circumstances we were put in really hurt us.”

Michigan was the most recent outing for the series. Teams will return to the 2-mile track in August.

For now, though, Sonoma is the focus.

Two practices are slated for Friday on the 12-turn, 1.99-mile layout. Qualifying for the 40-car field is scheduled for Saturday.

Posted on June 23, 2016 by Holly Cain

SAN FRANCISCO — Looking out over a sunny and scenic San Francisco Bay — Alcatraz Island in the foreground and the Golden Gate Bridge in the distance — reigning Daytona 500 winner Denny Hamlin lunched with media members on Thursday ahead of Sunday’s Toyota/Save Mart 350 at nearby Sonoma Raceway.

It’s the first of two road course NASCAR Sprint Cup Series races of the season and the challenging 1.99-mile, 12-turn Northern California track has crowned seven different race winners in the last seven years.

Kasey Kahne (2009), Jimmie Johnson (2010), Clint Bowyer (2012) and Carl Edwards (2014) are on that list. Martin Truex Jr. (2013) and Kurt Busch (2011) are also among the recent victors.

And who could forget Kyle Busch‘s triumphant win here last year — his first victory since returning from severe leg injuries after missing the first 11 races of the year. He went on to win three of the next four races after Sonoma, including three in a row, to ensure his place in the Chase for the NASCAR Sprint Cup postseason field, and he ultimately hoisted his first championship trophy.

With a new Chase format that rewards regular-season winners with a position in the 16-driver, 10-race playoff format, the emphasis on winning has never been greater. It also has created a unique set of circumstances where early-season winners feel they can use other races to test new ideas and feel out nuances to their car that may pay out in the fall playoffs.

But because there is no road course in the 10-race Chase, this week’s stop at Sonoma Raceway is a unique offering on the schedule.

And Hamlin — who has yet to win on a road course — says the lack of a road course event in the Chase does affect the approach this weekend.

“There really isn’t any experimenting here,” Hamlin said. “Unless someone in the road-course department has come up with a different setup and is like, ‘Let’s try this,’ you’re really not coming with an experimental car or anything like that. This is what you’ve got.

“This is a big event, we take a lot of pride in running really well out here in Sonoma. It’s a long way to come just to go through any motions and pack up on plane and go home. I get as frustrated here as anywhere when I don’t run well and I’m as proud, and have my chest out when I do run well. It’s a big race for us personally and for team members. It’d be a trophy I’d love to have.”

WATCH: Hamlin previews race while driving through city

The other side of it is that for drivers who have excelled on road courses, the Sonoma race — and the Watkins Glen event in August — stand as two prime opportunities to earn a Chase playoff spot.

Jamie McMurray, who has four top-five finishes in the Rolex 24 at Daytona, and his Chip Ganassi Racing teammate Kyle Larson — who won Daytona’s 24-hour sports car race in 2015 — consider these two tracks to be potential difference-makers. They both are still looking for a win this season.

McMurray has won three pole positions at Sonoma, but his best showing was a runner-up back in 2004. His only other top-five finish (fourth place) came two years ago. Larson has two top-five starts at Sonoma, but his best Cup finish is 15th here last year.

Who could forget AJ Allmendinger‘s dramatic and emotional victory at Watkins Glen in 2014? The California native won the pole at Sonoma last year — and started on the outside pole in 2014 — but ended up in 37th place both times. His best Sonoma showing is seventh in 2009.

“There’s 10 of us (2016 race winners) with nothing to lose, and we’re being super aggressive right now,” said Hamlin, driver of the Joe Gibbs Racing No. 11 FedEx Toyota. “Then the other 30, this is their opportunity to punch their ticket in to the Chase and they are getting more aggressive.

“No one is looking at points at Sonoma. They’re out here to win. It’s the only type of course I haven’t won on, except in the XFINITY Series. It used to be I’d come to the road-course races and finish in the top 10 pretty easily. Now it’s just a battle.”

Posted on June 23, 2016 by Holly Cain

Sam Hornish Jr. didn’t even have his official NASCAR license or “hard card” when he received a call from Joe Gibbs Racing last week asking if he’d like to drive the team’s No. 18 Toyota in the Iowa Speedway XFINITY Series event on Father’s Day Sunday.

After the deal was formalized last Wednesday afternoon for the 36-year-old to make his first NASCAR start of the year — five months into the 2016 season — the former XFINITY Series championship runner-up hastily arranged to take the NASCAR mandated drug test. Fortunately, he had turned in all his other medical paperwork before the season started “just in case” he got the phone call as he did last week.

Lastly came the job of quickly packing all his racing gear. Some of it was at the family home in Ohio where the Hornish family was last week, and other parts of it were in the family’s North Carolina house.

“I didn’t want to put all my eggs in one basket, I knew I couldn’t carry-on everything, but I did put some things in there in case my checked bag got lost,” Hornish shared with NASCAR.com this week, his voice still exhilarated for what turned out to be a thrilling victory at Iowa — with no preparation other than the event’s scheduled time on the track.

“It was huge especially after the year we had last year, just to get the opportunity was fun,” Hornish said. “I knew with the strength of the 18 car there was opportunity. I was a little bit nervous just because you get into that kind of race car and having been out of the car as long as I was, you just kind of wonder if everything is going to work out the way you think it should.

“I don’t know how it could have been much better.”

The best part for the 2006 Indianapolis 500 winner was that it was the first time his young family was all in attendance to see him hoist a trophy.

“Ever since first Father’s Day in 2008 and Addison was just a baby, I remember waking up at Michigan — my first year in the Cup Series –and she was sitting there on the bed,” Hornish recalled. “I remember thinking how cool it would be to take her to Victory Lane. The other races I won my family (wife Crystal and including his other two children Eliza and Sam Hornish III) they didn’t happen to be there. Even my dad, who was there, was driving my bus for me so he’d leave the track when the race started.

“It feels good you won, but you want to share it with somebody. I can’t remember how many times in the XFINITY Series I finished second and the kids were there. I remember thinking, am I ever going to be able to make this happen?”

Even thinking about it half a week later makes Hornish emotional.

Many have wondered when the talented driver will give NASCAR another shot after he nearly won the XFINITY Series championship but struggled to post good results in four full Cup Series seasons with the Team Penske and Richard Petty Motorsports operations and several half-season efforts in between.

Having had NASCAR success — challenging for the 2013 XFINITY crown — and won three IndyCar championships and an esteemed Indy 500 ring, Hornish said this week that he is most proud of having his children present with him in Victory Lane.

The time out of the car Hornish has spent in a most unusual — yet exceedingly gratifying way.

He is a devoted member of a prayer group in Charlotte, North Carolina. And in May, he and his father made a long-awaited 11,000-mile road trip to Alaska. It was something the two had talked about doing for half a decade but always put on hold because of racing. Now he had the time.

“A lot of other people were saying, ‘Too bad you’re not getting any wheel time,’ and I told them, ‘Man I’m getting some wheel time,’ ” Hornish shared with a laugh. “I did close to 11,000 miles of driving during the month of May.”

Perhaps the most surprising and interesting thing Hornish has done out of the race car is find a place in the classroom — as a substitute teacher.

He’s taught physical education to first-graders and a music class — yes music — to students from kindergarten to eighth grade.

“Most of the kids just know me as Addison’s dad,” Hornish said.

And right now, that feels pretty good.

Even before he drove to Victory Lane last weekend, Hornish had secured two XFINITY starts for Richard Childress Racing and he will be in the No. 2 Chevrolet at the next Iowa race and the series’ second Kentucky stop.

“That’s what I know right now and in a lot of ways, I hope there will be more,” Hornish said. “At this point in time, one of the hardest things is explaining to people, I could be out there racing right now, if I didn’t want to run well. I’m fortunate that I can be choosy.”

And he added — his voice unmistakably filled with emotion, “After everything that happened last week, it’s like you got the ice cream sundae with whipped cream and the cherry on top.

“I keep thinking how blessed I am all those things got to happen. Without getting too sentimental, I kept thinking to myself for the past six to seven months, if I could just win a race and have them there, that’s all I need.

“Then I can be happy about everything I’ve done, whatever the ups and downs were.”