Posted on by Matt Crossman

TALLADEGA, Ala. — An NBC assistant in the broadcast booth had an urgent message to deliver, one of huge importance. As 40 drivers barreled around Talladega Superspeedway at 200 mph a few hundred feet below him, he grabbed a marker and started writing on a dry erase board. “17-13,” he wrote. “Final 5th straight win.”

 

He showed this to Dale Earnhardt Jr., a guest analyst for NBC’s coverage of the race. Upon reading it, Earnhardt Jr. turned around, away from the track, and smiled broadly at Tyler Overstreet, his road manager, and pumped his fist. The handwritten note purported to report the score of the Washington Redskins, of whom Earnhardt Jr. is a big fan. Alas, that news was premature. A few minutes later, the same assistant showed him another dry erase board, this one apologizing for the first and reporting that the Lions had come back to win the game.

 

Junior half smiled, half grimaced and turned his attention back to the race track, where he wished he could be on this sun-kissed fall day. Earnhardt Jr. has missed the last 14 races, and he will miss the rest of the season, with concussion-related symptoms. But talking about the race was the next best thing, and the hour-plus he spent in the booth was vintage Earnhardt — funny, insightful and candid.

 

Wearing dark-framed glasses, sneakers, jeans and a blue and gray plaid shirt, he sat atop a stool between NBC analysts Steve Letarte, his former crew chief, and Jeff Burton, against whom he raced hundreds of times. They lapsed into a conversation like old friends.

 

His eyes darted from the track to the TV screen in front of him to Letarte to Burton. His body language was almost exuberant. He smiled often and at one point raised his hand excitedly when he wanted to interject a point.

 

He seemed relaxed and at ease with Letarte, Burton, play-by-play announcer Rick Allen and the race’s producers. “Has he got in the top 10 yet?” Earnhardt Jr. joked off camera about his replacement, Alex Bowman. “Damn, I told him everything I know.”

 

As his appearance wound down, NBC announced Junior would return to the booth at next week’s race at Martinsville Speedway. Producer Matt Marvin, who was just outside the track in the production truck, keyed the microphone that allows him to talk with the broadcasters off air and told Junior what a great job he had done. He paused for just a second and said, “Next time, if you’re not as good, we’ll kick you out early.”

 

Junior laughed at that. This was the Earnhardt Jr. that fans have loved for more than a decade — living and dying with the Redskins, offering transparent insight into his life and breaking down racing like few others.

 

Consider this exchange with Burton at Lap 68, when Earnhardt Jr. discussed his drafting philosophy: “I look at the air coming off of the front of the car as a boat wake. And it’s very dense coming off of around the headlights of that car that you’re trying to side draft. So you don’t want to continue to be beside that guy as you get toward the front, or pretty much dead even, because you run into that dense air coming off of the lead car. So you have to ‘jump’ that wake, much like if you were water skiing. You also have to get away from him so that he cannot side-draft you, because then you’re both sort of bouncing back and forth. That’s why it’s so much easier to side-draft on the outside, because you can pin the guy on the bottom, side-draft him, drive up the race track and take the lead.”

 

Burton: “Now, you know all the drivers are going to play this race back and listen to all of this, right?”

 

Earnhardt Jr.: “From what I’ve seen, these guys have got it all figured out.”

 

After months of his public appearances being focused almost exclusively on his health, it was refreshing to see him confident and comfortable. At least for this hour, the pensiveness that saturated so much of what he has said lately was gone.

 

And on the topic of his health, he sounded upbeat. The simple fact he was able to make the appearance was a sign of improvement. In previous comments he has said large crowds sometimes trigger his symptoms, and it’s hard to imagine a larger crowd than Talladega. His doctors have encouraged him to challenge himself, and certainly being on live TV would accomplish that.

 

“I’m feeling great and all of the progress that we’ve made over the last several months has been really good,” he said. “Obviously, I’m able to get out and do things. I’m having so much fun at the race track, and to be able to come up to the booth has been a lot of fun for me.”

Posted on by Reid Spencer

RELATED: Race results | Standings | Chase Grid
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TALLADEGA, Ala. — If Joey Logano‘s victory in Sunday’s Hellman’s 500 at Talladega Superspeedway was decisive — in relative terms — the race between Denny Hamlin and Austin Dillon for the final spot in the Chase for the Sprint Cup‘s Round of 8 was anything but.

In an overtime race that went four laps past its scheduled distance, Logano surged ahead after a restart on Lap 191 at the 2.66-mile track and beat runner-up Brian Scott to the finish line by .124 seconds.

Hamlin’s margin over Dillon for the eighth spot in the Round of 8 was much smaller. At the end of 510.72 miles, Hamlin outraced Kurt Busch for third place by .006 seconds — roughly two feet — to score the exact number of points he needed to eliminate Dillon from the Chase on a tiebreaker.

Logano, who won for the second time this season, the second time at Talladega and the 16th time in his career, entered the race on the Chase bubble but settled the issue by leading the final 45 of 192 laps — after Chase hopefuls Martin Truex Jr. and Brad Keselowski fell out with blown engines and failed to survive the Round of 12.

“It’s never a layup here at Talladega,” Logano said. “It’s always close. You never get a big lead. (Crew chief) Todd (Gordon) made some good adjustments during the race and found some speed in the car, so that was pretty neat to see some of that. 

“We got that track position and just hung onto it. I was able to stay on the bottom and try to run the bottom and keep everyone in line, and that worked out really well.”


Hamlin’s success completed a perfect round for Joe Gibbs Racing, which placed all four of its drivers in the Round of 8. Matt Kenseth, Carl Edwards and Kyle Busch spent all 192 laps riding around at the back of the field and finished 28th, 29th and 30th, respectively, but had sufficient margins entering the race to afford the luxury of a strategy that could be summed up in two words — “Don’t wreck.”

“We needed some things to fall our way if we didn’t win the race,” Hamlin said. “Today things fell our way. The last lap, we went out and earned it. I think back all the years that I’ve been doing this, honestly, 11 years. 

“For me, I really truly believe this is the first really great fortune that we had in a Chase in my 11-year career. Things just happened well for us. We went out there and we did our jobs. It was very tough to be able to run against guys that had a lot of teammates up front. I knew that was going to be a problem for us all day. But we were able to have just enough there at the end to get past the 41 (Kurt Busch) and get in.”

Seventh-place finisher Kevin Harvick and 23rd-place Jimmie Johnson already had secured spots in the Round of eight, thanks to their respective victories at Kansas and Charlotte. Kurt Busch completed the Round of 8 field comfortably with his fourth-place result.

Joining Dillon, Truex and Keselowski on the sidelines was Chase Elliott, who came to Talladega 25 points below the cut line and finished 12th after leading nine laps.


Posted on by Nascar

RELATED: Truex scores pole for Talladega

TALLADEGA, Ala. — Martin Truex Jr. will start on the pole in Sunday’s Hellmann’s 500 (2 p.m. ET, NBCSN, MRN, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio) NASCAR Sprint Cup Series race at Talladega Superspeedway.

It was clear sailing around the 2.66-mile track for the driver of the No. 78 Furniture Row Racing Toyota on Saturday.

Meanwhile, dark clouds had gathered elsewhere.

NASCAR officials confiscated the left-front jack bolt from the team during pre-qualifying inspection, and will take the piece back to the sanctioning body’s Research and Development Center in Concord, North Carolina.

“They had a jack bolt that we didn’t feel like met specifications that we have in the rule book,” Scott Miller, Senior Vice President of Competition for NASCAR, said. “Not a real competitive advantage. We will take it back … analyze everything and decide what we are going to do.

“It’s no different than … cars that fail the templates and have to go back through. It’s our job to officiate the sport and this part and the rest of today’s activities are no different than what we do every weekend.”


RELATED: JGR cars have to go back through inspection

Crew chief Cole Pearn said the bolt was the wrong size, not hollow as was initially reported.

“It was a mistake,” he said. “We fixed it; we found another one and moved on. Stuff like that happens all the time. We’re not perfect. I know people like to think that we’re brilliant geniuses that have malicious plans to cheat the system somehow, but sometimes we’re just stupid and make mistakes.

“That’s really just what happened and hopefully it doesn’t turn into anything more than that.”

Miller said such a violation could result in a points penalty, impacting the team’s Chase status, but that it wasn’t always the case.

“I would say it would be unlikely but it has to go through our process,” he said. “We don’t typically do that on a weekend. Because this is the playoffs everybody has a heightened sense of everything but this is no different than things we have done all year and we will treat this one just like we do all year long.”

Both Pearn and NASCAR said that the issue was only with one bolt.

“All other three corners were fine,” Pearn said. “We’re at Talladega; maybe if you’re at Martinsville, and you have all four hollowed out …”

Truex edged fellow Chase driver Brad Keselowski (Team Penske No. 2 Ford) for the top spot. Matt Kenseth (Joe Gibbs Racing), Chase Elliott (Hendrick Motorsports) and Greg Biffle (Roush Fenway Racing) completed the top five as the lineup for the 40-car field was set.

“All the crazy talk going on today is nonsense,” Truex said. “I think people speculate on things and don’t really know what they are.


“The jack bolt issues is really not a big issue. It’s not hollow like what was reported. (NASCAR) didn’t take both, they just took the left front so it’s not a big issue.”

The 78 team did lose its pit stall selection for a fourth warning related to inspections.

Posted on by Holly Cain

TALLADEGA, Ala. — NASCAR asked three Joe Gibbs Racing teams to make adjustments on their Toyotas just before Coors Light Pole Award qualifying Saturday at Talladega Superspeedway.

 

The cars driven by reigning Sprint Cup champion Kyle Busch and his JGR teammates Denny Hamlin and Matt Kenseth were flagged in the minutes before qualifying.

 

As the cars were being rolled out to the track, NASCAR noticed the right rear quarter panels had been manipulated around the deck lid area.

 

NASCAR inspectors pulled the cars out of line, and the teams corrected the issue before going back through tech.

 

Kenseth led the team with a third-place qualifying effort and will start Sunday’s Hellmann’s 500 Chase for the NASCAR Sprint Cup race (2 p.m. ET, NBCSN, MRN, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio) from the second row. Hamlin will start eighth. Busch will begin 14th. Carl Edwards, who drove the only JGR car not tagged at inspection, will start 13th.

 

However, Edwards’ No. 19 team did lose its pit stall selection for a fourth warning related to inspections. Kenseth’s team lost its pit stall selection for the same reason.

 

“The bodies on these cars can be pushed and prodded and these teams are very smart at the areas … for a bunch of little gains,” NASCAR’s Senior Vice President for Competition Scott Miller said. “It’s nothing huge but it’s our job to make sure it’s even across the board and that’s what we do. A little infraction is an infraction, right?

 

“The quarter panels appeared to have been messed with around the deck lid and we brought them back in and rectified it.”

 

Busch said after qualifying that he wasn’t too concerned with the situation.

 

“Not my problem,” Busch said. “I just worry about driving and doing the best I can do there, so did everything right and we ended up exactly where we thought we were going to — 14th — so we’ll take it. That’s fine and we’ll go racing tomorrow and see what happens from there.”

 

He said his No. 18 Snickers Halloween Toyota didn’t really feel any different from Friday practice to Saturday qualifying.

 

“Everything was really the same, you know?” Busch said. “We did some single-car stuff yesterday just barely. Didn’t really do a full mock run or anything and taping it down or anything like that, but knew we had decent speed.”

 

“… We’d love to be able to finish these things and that’s all we’ve got to worry about tomorrow is being able to capture the right amount of points and be able to move on.”

 

Posted on by Holly Cain

RELATED: Chase Grid | Race results

 

TALLADEGA, Ala. — It was high drama for both NASCAR Camping World Truck Series drivers contending for a spot to advance in the series’ Chase on Saturday at Talladega Superspeedway. For John Hunter Nemechek, it was an abbreviated fate; for Daniel Hemric, the action went right to the wire.

 

Neither was able to race into the six-driver next phase of the title Chase, however, which will include William Byron, Christopher Bell, Timothy Peters, Matt Crafton, Ben Kennedy and Johnny Sauter.

 

The motor on Nemechek’s No. 8 Fire Alarm Services Chevrolet blew only 13 laps into Saturday’s 94-lap elimination race. And he was scored in last place in the 32-truck field.

 

Hemric, 25, was caught up in three incidents — two of them multi-truck crashes including “The Big One” with 36 laps remaining that essentially sealed his fate, leaving his No. 19 DrawTite Ford with heavy damage to the rear and left side. But still drivable.

 

He spun out again with 12 laps remaining and pitted for repairs. And despite all the drama, he still finished 11th and on the lead lap.

 

“Today was another statement of what we’ve done all year, battle to the end,” Hemric said, adding, “It was a matter of keep fighting, because you never know. We were trying to put ourselves in the best situation. I promise we made the most out of what was presented to us.”

 

In fact, with six laps remaining, Hemric’s closest competitor in the Chase, Matt Crafton, went behind the wall, his truck smoking when the crew lifted the hood. But even by that point, pulling out a victory remained Hemric’s best option to move on.

 

“Honestly, we were hoping to be in a points battle moving forward, but with knowing that situation was you still need to win races,” Hemric said. “… We’re going to go down swinging. I hate coming up short, but now we have nothing to lose to make that situation a reality.”

 

The first multi-truck crash happened with 51 laps remaining. Hemric’s teammate Tyler Reddick drove into the rear of his Ford while they both were trying to avoid an accident in front of them.

 

Hemric had to make an extended pit stop for repairs, going a lap down at the time but got back on the lead lap a handful of laps later as a result of another accident.

 

“A busy day to say the least. We didn’t qualify where we wanted to but I was around our teammates. I thought we would be OK. We knew coming here the variables of superspeedway racing. … I hate we got caught up in what we did but we did everything we could.

 

“The effort from this team was second to none. We were just a part of a lot of very unfortunate situations there that we couldn’t avoid, couldn’t miss. One, you can rebound from, two, you can probably rebound from, but the third one definitely put us in a bad situation. Hate we couldn’t win a race earlier and get locked in.”

 

The disappointment was also palpable for the 19-year-old second-generation driver Nemechek, whose family-owned team had positioned him for his first try at the series title. Nemechek qualified for the series’ first version of the Chase thanks to wins at Atlanta and again in a controversial close finish on the Bowmanville, Canada, road course.

 

But he hardly even got a shot to race into the next round after his motor let go on the Talladega high banks minutes into the race.

 

“All my temps were fine, I haven’t seen a big blow-up like that in a while,” said Nemechek. “We didn’t even really have a shot to race our way in. But that’s kind of how our last three weeks have been. I haven’t seen a motor blow up like that in a while. Bad stuff can happen at Talladega and unfortunately we got the bad side.

 

“We’ll go back and regroup. I’m very proud of all our guys and now our focus will be on just getting some wins.”

 

Nemechek has a pair of runner-up finishes (2015 and 2016) at next week’s short-track stop, Martinsville Speedway.

Posted on by Holly Cain

RELATED: Weekend schedule | Chase Grid

TALLADEGA, Ala. — Joey Logano smiled a little and didn’t waste any time with his answer.

 

“No.”

 

No, the defending race winner will not race any differently at Talladega Superspeedway on Sunday afternoon despite needing an overwhelmingly positive result to advance to the next round of the Chase for the NASCAR Sprint Cup championship.

 

Eight drivers will move on to challenge for the title. Logano is currently ranked eighth — owning a tiebreaker over ninth-place Austin Dillon.

 

But the eight-year veteran insisted Friday before opening practice at Talladega that his approach and demeanor this weekend would remain the same as it was last year, when he carried a two-race winning streak onto Dega’s high banks and ultimately hoisted that trophy, too.

 

“Honestly, (it’s) not much different, which is a good thing,” said Logano, driver of the No. 22 Team Penske Ford. “I feel like our team is in a good spot. We had a great run last weekend in Kansas. We did make up some points. We’re in a great spot with having a really bad Charlotte, so our team has a lot of confidence in themselves.  

 

“We know we can do this. We’re coming into a race track that we know we’re good at. We know we can win here. Is the situation different? Obviously, it is. Last year, we were locked in. There was nothing to worry about. This year, we’re not, but we still have the same goal, so why should we approach the race any different?”

 

Logano opened this second round of the Chase with a 36th-place finish at Charlotte and rebounded with a third-place effort at Kansas Speedway last weekend.

 

Interestingly, when asked if he felt any pressure racing for his championship life at perhaps the most unpredictable venue in the Chase, the 26-year-old reminded that his approach is full throttle. Never defensive.

 

“I don’t really think about how people are trying to knock me out, I think about how I’m gonna knock other people out,” Logano said. “That’s my attitude. If I’m on defense, we’re not gonna win. We better stay on offense. That’s what this 22 team does. We’re gonna go out there and race hard because that’s what we know how to do when we come to speedways.

 

“Some guys can do it good the other way but, for us, we’re gonna go out there and race hard and try to stay up front, try to keep making our car better for the end of the race and to be there at the end.”

 

There is reason to believe Logano could solidify a Chase position. He has had solid, if inconsistent, results here outside his victory. And Logano’s Team Penske teammate Brad Keselowski won at Talladega this spring and at Daytona this summer.

 

RELATED: Keselowski unfazed by Talladega pressure

 

When asked what matters more, skill and preparation or just plain luck — as many have suggested — Logano didn’t hesitate.

 

“I think it’s all skill and preparation — 100 percent in my opinion,” Logano said. “You create your own luck. That’s what I think. There might be a chance you run over something or something happens, but some things are just meant to be and some things aren’t. But if you can work and do everything you can do and prepare yourself to go out there and be the best, then that’s all you can do. I feel like that makes it, in my opinion, a lot about preparation.”

 

As for Logano, he seemed completely optimistic, perhaps even confident about his chances Sunday afternoon.

 

“Speedway racing isn’t as much of a crapshoot as a lot of people like to believe it is,” Logano said. “It sounds like it’s just an excuse to me. I think there is a lot of strategy and a lot of knowledge that has to go into playing this game.

 

“We’ve had a good, solid speedway program at Team Penske the last couple years and when you come to Talladega you get excited about it. It’s not quite like that for everybody, but for us, we get excited about speedway racing and the opportunity that presents itself this weekend, so we’re ready to get on the race track and see what we’ve got.”

Posted on by Staff Report

RELATED: Race results | Updated Truck Series Chase Grid


A severe multi-truck crash thinned the field in the NASCAR Camping World Truck Series’ fred’s 250 Powered by Coca-Cola at Talladega Superspeedway.
 
The melee was triggered in the 59th of 94 laps, when Ben Rhodes‘ ThorSport Racing No. 41 Toyota was shuffled out of line after a push from Timothy Peters heading into the 2.66-mile track’s first turn. After bouncing off the outside retaining wall, Rhodes’ truck veered back into traffic, touching the No. 86 of Brandon Brown and congesting the high banks.


“It’s just a shame that it ended that way,” said Rhodes, who was running third at the time of the crash. “I just felt a huge shove from the rear and I had no way of controlling it.”
 
With the track blocked, several other drivers piled in. Among those involved: pole-starter Cole Custer, Chase competitors Daniel Hemric, Peters and William Byron as well as Korbin Forrister, John Wes Townley, Tyler Reddick, Chris Fontaine, Dylan Lupton, Austin Cindric, Rico Abreu and Cody Ware.


Although several trucks absorbed hard hits — with Brown’s among the hardest — all drivers were evaluated and released from the track’s infield care center.