Posted on by Nascar

RELATED: Full race results | Post-Pocono standings

LONG POND, Pa. — Justin Allgaier was patiently waiting out Saturday’s rain-interrupted Pocono Green NASCAR XFINITY Series race in his JR Motorsports team hauler.



Crew members wandered back and forth between the hauler and the garage stall, where the No. 7 Chevrolet was in a state of mid-repair.



The red flag was out, putting work on the car on hold.



And then rain-interrupted became rain-shortened.



“Honestly, I’m hoping we can get back out there,” Allgaier said before the inaugural XFINITY Series race at Pocono Raceway was called with 53 of 100 laps completed. “If we don’t, we won’t be able to get back out there and get those points.



“But that’s how racing goes, right?”



Rain showers came and went, negating constant attempts to return the track to race-ready conditions.



Finally the decision was made to call the race officially completed.



And Allgaier found himself saddled with a 39th-place finish in a 40-car field, only the second result outside the top-12 this season.

MORE: Relive the day in photos

Just moments after a restart following a competition caution (Laps 17-19), Allgaier’s Chevrolet had slid up into the outside wall in the Tunnel Turn. There was no contact from another vehicle but both the car and Larson’s expectations suffered heavy damage.



“When I went to turn down into Turn 2, I started wrecking as soon as I turned off the wall and ultimately ended up crashing more toward the exit,” he said. “It was one of those crashes that seemed like it was never going to end.



“It was just one of those situations where maybe it was just aero. Get behind two cars, having a car behind me just unhooked the car that much.



“The part that’s frustrating is this is one of those race tracks on our schedule that I had circled, that I couldn’t be more excited to come to. I’d been asking (track president) Brandon Igdalsky if he could make it happen for like the last six years.



“The fact that we finally got it here and then here we are making, what, 16, 17, 18 laps, something like that? A frustrating day for sure.”



The frustrations have been few and far between this season for the soon-to-be 30-year-old.



In his first start with the team this year at Daytona, he finished 12th. He finished 10th or better in the next six races and the previous three heading into Saturday’s event. The only bump came at Richmond, where Allgaier raced off pit road with the lead only to crash after contact with Brennan Poole on the restart and wound up 35th.



Third in points coming into the series’ 12th stop, the Pocono result dropped him four spots to seventh and he now trails points leader Daniel Suarez by 53.



The team’s consistency hasn’t been surprising, he said, but that it came so quickly was somewhat unexpected.



Former XFINITY Series driver Regan Smith won twice with the team just last year and finished fourth in points before making the move back into the Sprint Cup Series garage.



The driver change was significant; the crew, headed up by crew chief Jason Burdett, for the most part has been left intact.



“I knew that the group at JR Motorsports that I was getting was a great group,” Allgaier said. “I knew they worked really well together, that things would be pretty seamless as far as how well they worked … a few changes from what they had last year but for the most part pretty similar.



“Obviously, the communication between the crew chief and driver and all that takes time to figure out if it’s going to work or not. That’s probably the part that surprised me. … I’m not surprised that we’ve had the season we’ve had, but I am surprised that we did it as early as we did.”


Sprint Cup Series regular Kyle Larson, who led 27 of the 53 completed laps, won Saturday’s inaugural event — his first XFINITY Series win of 2016.

Posted on by Staff Report

RELATED: Full schedule for NXS

 

Danica Patrick is the latest NASCAR star to join FOX Sports’ NASCAR XFINITY Series coverage in 2016. The Stewart-Haas Racing driver will be in the booth for the Pocono Green 250 (1 p.m. ET today, FOX, MRN, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio) for the inaugural XFINITY Series race at the 2.5-mile “Tricky Triangle.”

 

Earlier this year, FOX announced that Clint Bowyer, Brad Keselowski and Patrick would join Kevin Harvick in returning to serve as rotating race analysts for XFINITY Series coverage in 2016. Also joining the mix this year was Carl Edwards.


Bowyer served as an analyst for the two XFINITY races at Atlanta and Las Vegas, as well as the Charlotte race over Memorial Day weekend. Keselowski served as an analyst for the races at Fontana, Bristol and Dover while Edwards was in the booth for Texas.

Former crew chief Larry McReynolds, who is also part of FOX Sports’ NASCAR Sprint Cup Series coverage, will be in the broadcast booth for the Iowa race, FOX’s final XFINITY telecast of the season.

FOX will air 14 XFINITY Series races in 2016, with FS1 telecasting 10 races and FOX televising four.

Posted on by Staff Report

RELATED: Results


Defending Sprint Cup Series champion Kyle Busch topped final practice at Pocono Raceway Saturday afternoon, landing a quickest lap of 176.901 mph in his No. 18 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota. “The Tricky Triangle” is one of two tracks where “Rowdy” remains winless — Charlotte Motor Speedway is the other. 


Kyle’s old brother Kurt Busch was next on the speed charts (176.800 mph) in his No. 41 Stewart-Haas Racing Chevrolet.


Jimmie Johnson showed speed during the final minutes of the session in his No. 48 Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet to earn a top-three speed (176.710 mph).


Martin Truex Jr. , the defending race winner and last week’s Coca-Cola 600 victor, was fourth-quickest (176.291 mph) in his No. 78 Furniture Row Racing Toyota while current series leader Kevin Harvick took fifth in the 55-minute session (176.125 mph) in his No. 4 Stewart-Haas Racing Chevrolet.


Sunday’s pole-sitter Brad Keselowski ended practice in the sixth spot, wheeling his No. 2 Team Penske Ford around the 2.5-mile track at 175.792 mph.


The 40-car field returns to the track Sunday for the Axalta ‘We Paint Winners’ 400 (1 p.m. ET, FS1, MRN, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio).

Posted on by Staff Report

RELATED: Drivers pay respects to Ali


Boxing and cultural icon Muhammad Ali, who passed away Friday at age 74, has a direct connection to NASCAR — specifically, to Hall of Famer Bill Elliott.


Yes, “The Greatest” and “Awesome Bill” have a history that dates back to 2001 when Elliott sported a likeness of Ali on his No. 9 Dodge while driving for Ray Evernham.


The special paint scheme was revealed at historic Bristol Motor Speedway, and then run June 10, 2001, at Michigan International Speedway. Ali lived in Michigan at the time.


The scheme partnered Ali and NASCAR in a promotion of the Special Olympics, and also to support a new diversity scholarship program that Dodge had implemented and NASCAR was supporting.


Ali thrilled drivers that day when he unexpectedly walked into the drivers’ meeting and earned a standing ovation.


“If I had a fast car, I’d be out there racing against you,” Ali said, according to a 2001 report in the Daily Press (Virginia) newspaper. The legendary boxer later gave the command to start the race.


The partnership certainly left a mark on Chase Elliott who, like Ali’s daughter Laila, followed in his father’s footsteps.


Posted on by Staff Report

All-time great and boxing champion Muhammad Ali passed away Friday at the age of 74.


A transcendent sports and cultural icon who inspired many, drivers, teams and track all paid tribute to “The Greatest.”




Posted on by Staff Report

PHOTOS: Best at-track pics Saturday from Pocono

Caution came out for rain on Saturday at Pocono Raceway on Lap 52 of the scheduled 100 laps in the Pocono Green 250 NASCAR XFINITY Series race.

Kyle Larson was leading at the time of the caution in the No. 42 Chip Ganassi Racing Chevrolet. The race was red-flagged after 53 laps and called after nearly two hours of delay. Larson was declared the winner of the first-ever XFINITY race at the Tricky Triangle.

NASCAR dried the track in an effort to get the race back underway, but storms persisted. Since the race passed its midway point, it was considered official.

Rain is also in the forecast for Sunday’s NASCAR Sprint Cup Series Race, the Axalta ‘We Paint Winners’ 400 (1 p.m. ET, FS1, MRN, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio.)

Get weather updates on NASCAR.com or the NASCAR Mobile app.

Posted on by Staff Report

Dale Earnhardt Jr. will serve as a guest driver analyst in the FOX NASCAR television booth for the XFINITY Series race at Michigan International Speedway on June 11, FOX Sports announced Saturday during the broadcast of the Pocono Green 250 event at Pocono Raceway.

 

The driver of the No. 88 will offer commentary for live coverage of the Menards 250 presented by Valvoline (June 11, 1:30 p.m. ET, FS1, MRN, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio), joining announcers Adam Alexander and Michael Waltrip for the entirety of the 250-mile event.

 

This marks Earnhardt’s broadcasting debut, as he joins a fleet of Sprint Cup regulars that have served as guest commentators in the past: Kevin Harvick, Brad Keselowski, Joey Logano, Carl Edwards, Denny Hamlin, Clint Bowyer and Danica Patrick.

Patrick served as a guest analyst for the XFINITY Series’ Pocono Green 250 on Saturday, while Bowyer offered guest commentary at the previous series event at Charlotte Motor Speedway.

Posted on by Zack Albert

LONG POND, Pa. — An incident between Ryan Reed and Ryan Sieg on the race track spilled over into a garage altercation involving their crews during a rain delay in the NASCAR XFINITY Series’ inaugural event at Pocono Raceway on Saturday.
 
Reed and Sieg made contact in the 24th lap of the Pocono Green 250, a bump that sent Sieg’s No. 39 RSS Racing Chevrolet into the outside retaining wall. Reed continued but crashed on Lap 40, putting his Roush Fenway Racing No. 16 Ford behind the wall for extensive repairs.
 
With both drivers and crews in the Pocono garage during a rain delay that ultimately halted the race after 53 of a scheduled 100 laps, Sieg and Reed engaged in a shouting match that evolved into a crewmember scrum. The drivers were physically separated, but hurt feelings persisted even after the incident had died down.
 
“Went over to talk about what happened with Ryan Reed, but he obviously does nothing wrong,” Sieg said. “I guess he’s just brain-dead or stupid, I don’t know which one. Probably both. We got wrecked. Any time you get around him, you always see him up in the fence or he always gets up in the fence. Just hate it. We had a really good car, and this is our car next week for Michigan, so now we’re going to have to go back and thrash, which just sucks, you know what I mean.”
 
By coincidence, the teams’ haulers were parked next to each other in the XFINITY garage.
 
“I tried to talk to him, but there is no talking to him,” Sieg said. “It wouldn’t get through, you know what I mean. I figured he’d say, ‘I apologize,’ or whatever, but no, he didn’t say that. It escalated and then he wouldn’t shut his mouth, so I figured I’d shut it for him but none of his pit guys would let me do it, so it is what it is.”
 
Reed had his own version of what happened, saying he hoped to discuss the incident later in a less heated environment.
 
“It was just a racing deal. Emotions run high, obviously, and that’s racing,” said Reed, the winner of the Daytona season opener last year. “I look forward to talking about it in a calm, cool, collected manner and working it out. Obviously we both race every week, and it’s not going to do us any good to go out there and get into a battle royal, but at the end of the day, it’s going to take two parties to agree and I think that we need to sit down and have a mature conversation and when that happens, then that happens.”
 
The two drivers, both in their third full season of XFINITY competition, had similar issues running in close quarters last weekend at Charlotte Motor Speedway. Sieg was inching toward a top-10 finish when contact with a laps-down Reed derailed his run.

 

Through 12 races both drivers are currently in the NASCAR XFINITY Series Chase field.
 
“I think he was upset about just racing each other hard,” Reed said of their most recent run-in, “and so like I said, I have no problem sitting down and talking about it and working through, and if he’s mad at me, I’ll listen. We can go give each other room or we can go out there and wreck each other, but I don’t see what good that does.”

MORE: Complete race results

Posted on by Reid Spencer

RELATED: Full results | Standings | Chase Grid

 

LONG POND, Pa. — The maiden voyage of the NASCAR XFINITY Series at Pocono Raceway was shorter than planned, but race winner Kyle Larson wasn’t complaining.
 
NASCAR awarded the checkered flag in the Pocono Green 250 to Larson when the race was red-flagged after 53 of 100 scheduled laps and then called because of persistent rain.
 
The victory was Larson’s first of the season and fourth in the series, but it was a source of frustration to runner-up Erik Jones, who arguably had the fastest car and was closing rapidly on Larson when a rain shower blew in from the west and stopped the action.
 
Ty Dillon finished third, followed by Kyle Busch and Joey Logano. Ninth-place finisher Daniel Suarez maintained an 11-point lead in the series standings over Elliott Sadler, who ran sixth.
 
The caution flag flew for the fifth time on Lap 52, when a stormed cell drenched Turn 3 and began to move over the entire track. Another shower followed and then a steady rain, forcing NASCAR to shorten the race.
 
Larson likely was the only driver in the field who welcomed the downpour.
 
“I’m happy with it,” Larson said. “Now that the race is over and we got the win, it can clear out so we can race (on Sunday) for the (NASCAR Sprint) Cup race … I had kept a gap on him (Jones) for about four laps when he was in second.
 
“The rain was coming, and it was starting to sprinkle on his windshield. We weren’t quite to halfway yet (when a race becomes official), so I wasn’t really saying much on the radio, but once we did get to halfway, it started coming down a lot harder. We were going to be racing a lot harder in the next lap or half a lap maybe, so I’m happy that it started downpouring when it did.”
 
Before the race was stopped, Jones had moved from fourth on a Lap 44 restart to second place and was pressuring Larson for the lead when rain began to fall in earnest.
 
“It’s pretty frustrating,” said Jones, who has two wins, three runner-up finishes and a pair of thirds in 12 races this season. “You look at this whole year, and it’s kind of been a season of just missing it by that much.
 
“We’ve missed a few races with penalties and circumstance and the way things worked out, and today was another one of those days where I thought we had a good shot at the win, and the way it played out, it just didn’t work out for us.”
 
Larson had surged into the top spot on Lap 35 and stayed on the track under the fourth caution of the race, brought about by a violent collision between the Ford of Ryan Reed and the Chevrolet of Jeremy Clements.
 
After the restart on Lap 44, Larson pulled away to a lead of nearly two seconds before Jones starting gaining ground on the No. 42 Chevrolet. Jones was roughly one car-length behind when NASCAR threw the caution flag for rain.
 
A lap later, the sanctioning body red-flagged the race. During the stoppage, however, an ongoing feud between Reed and Sieg boiled over into a shoving match in the garage. Contact between their two cars had preceded Reed’s accident with Clements.
 
“You can’t race around the kid,” Sieg said of Reed, a Roush Fenway Racing driver. “He’s got a lot of money, and he’s got a Roush car, but he can’t drive it. … Money can’t buy skill, obviously, with him. We had a really good car, but it just sucks that it’s torn up here in the garage, and we’ve got nothing to show for it.”
 
Reed was more restrained in his comments, appropriately so because of the circumstances. It was Reed’s car that good loose in side-by-side racing and initiated the first contact with Sieg. Subsequently, a cut tire on Reed’s Ford led to his brush with the wall and the collision Clements’ Chevy, which was collected when Reed spun down from the outside wall to the center of the track.
 
“Emotions run high, obviously,” Reed said. “It’s racing. I look forward to talking about it in a calm, cool, collected manner and working it out. Obviously, we race every week, and it’s not going to do us any good to go out there and get into a battle royal.”
 
The brouhaha in the garage marked the end of the excitement, however, as the rain persisted, and NASCAR called the race just before 4 p.m., after a stoppage of one hour, 35 minutes.