This is the third year in which Mobil 1 has worked with NASCAR Green, and as Tony Stewart, driver of the No. 14 Stewart-Haas Racing Chevrolet, says, “This year we’re bringing it to the customers.”
Find out from Stewart and Dr. Mike Lynch, NASCAR VP Green Innovation/STEM Platform, how the program has expanded.
And to see how you can help NASCAR Green make a difference for the environment, log in to NASCARGreen.com.
Chat with fans during the weekend at Dover International Speedway.
RELATED: Buy Darlington tickets | ’16 throwback schemes | SHOP: Mears gear
Casey Mears revealed his throwback No. 13 paint scheme for the Bojangles’ Southern 500 (6 p.m. ET Sept. 4, NBC, MRN, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio) at Darlington Raceway on Tuesday via “NASCAR America.”
Mears joins the likes of Kevin Harvick, Dale Earnhardt Jr., Danica Patrick, etc., who have all unveiled throwback schemes for the Labor Day weekend event.
The scheme pays tribute to the late Smokey Yunick — a colorful and pivotal mechanic in stock car racing who served as crew chief for No. 13 drivers Curtis Thomas, Johnny Rutherford and Mario Andretti. In his 10-year career, Yunick earned 22 premier series wins as a crew chief and was crew chief to Herb Thomas’ Cup series championships in 1951 and 1953.
Mears said he’s excited to be running the Smokey Yunick tribute scheme on his GEICO Chevrolet.
“Out of all the history of NASCAR I’d have to say he’s probably one of the top five most innovative people in the sport,” Mears said of Yunick. “We feel fortunate to be able to run a paint scheme that has so much meaning and cool history in NASCAR. Hopefully, we can go to Darlington and do a good job with that car in the Bojangles’ Southern 500 and Smokey’s family will be proud.”
Smokey’s daughter Trish is already proud.
“My dad loved racing at Darlington, tire problems and gnats alike,” said Trish Yunick. “It’s so special to us to have him remembered in this way. The Germain Racing car looks great. I look forward to seeing the black-and-gold 13 on the track again. I am thrilled that Smokey’s legacy is getting a chance to be in front of the next generation of NASCAR fans and hope it encourages renewed interest in his story.”
Yunick was crew chief to many drivers with many different numbers — but in line with his bold attitude, the No. 13 was the number he ran to be unconventional and a bit provocative.
“Nobody used number 13, it had no sponsors, and it was gold and black,” said Mario Andretti, who raced the Chevrolet for Yunick in 1966. “It was an attention-grabber. That car, with Curtis Turner driving, was on pole in 1967 when I won the Daytona 500. … The stories behind that car, including stories about Smokey and Curtis Turner are worth revisiting.”
Germain Racing team owner Bob Germain Jr. said Darlington’s throwback weekend is becoming a highlight of the racing season, showcasing NASCAR’s roots.
“Smokey Yunick’s famous number 13 Chevrolets are part of those roots,” Germain added. “He raced many car numbers, but it’s my understanding he enjoyed the mysterious or daring nature of the 13 number. Our fans have really spoken up on Twitter asking us, GEICO, Casey and Bootie to race this paint scheme.”
‘Rowdy’ has already been on another level in 2016 and then he goes and finds the fix to his Achilles’ heel in Kansas, finally conquering the track.
Another race at his hometown track came and went without a win, but Edwards wasn’t hurt much in the standings and still has a strong grip on third.
Kyle Busch is quickly narrowing Harvick’s points lead, but he’ll be fine if he keeps up the kind of performance that has led to a series-high nine top 10s.
Johnson was unable to replicate his 2015 spring win at Kansas, but he’s likely over it and licking his chops to get this weekend going at Dover, his best track — and the one that shockingly knocked him out of the Chase last year.
Keselowski won the 2012 fall race at Dover, leading 14 laps. He’s led 109 at the track since then, but has yet to land in Victory Lane again.
Busch has been on a mega rise lately. He’ll have to take inspiration from his brother conquering Kansas to tame the Monster Mile, however, as he’s finished in the top 10 just 25.8 percent of the time in 31 starts.
Logano was an unfortunate participant in a late-race wreck that parked him in 38th, but has a good shot to rebound at Dover, where he hasn’t finished worse than 11th since 2011.
Sure, Earnhardt has a win at Dover — but it came nearly 15 years ago. Overall, he’s still enjoyed a nice stretch at the track since 2011, finishing no worse than 17th in eight races.
Saturday night’s race certainly stung for Truex, but his race-high 172 laps led are a statement to the rest of the series that a single-car team like Furniture Row can be among NASCAR’s elite.
With a win in hand, Hamlin certainly has the flexibility to get aggressive like he did on Saturday, but the end result (a wreck) lands him with his seventh finish outside the top 10 since he won the Daytona 500.
How many of you out there had Austin Dillon being eighth in the standings well into May, ahead of Dale Earnhardt Jr., Martin Truex Jr., Denny Hamlin and Matt Kenseth?
That said — Kenseth appears to be turning things around and could soon surpass Dillon in the standings if he goes on a run, which he’s more than capable of.
Since crashing at Vegas, Elliott has an average finishing position of 8.625, but the "Monster Mile" has a way of taming rookies.
Blaney is riding the wave of his first top-five of the year, but will be faced with a similar challenge to Elliott in his first trip to Dover in a Cup ride.
Kahne doesn’t have a great history at Dover, but did average a fifth-place finish in two races there last year in one of his most challenging seasons to date.
Good news for Ryan Newman: He has three wins at Dover.
Bad news: They all came before 2005.
From 2008-14, McMurray went 13 straight races without a top 10 at Dover — before notching one in each of last season’s events.
Don’t be fooled by Stenhouse’s low number of top-10 finishes (two). The No. 17 team and Roush Fenway as a whole have vastly improved over 2016.
Allmendinger has run as high as first or second in five of the past seven races, which is a great sign for another of NASCAR’s single-car teams.
For the fourth straight race, Larson failed to improve his finishing position from his starting position, but should have a good shot to reverse that trend this weekend. In four career Dover races, he has an average finish of 7.2.
DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. — Daytona International Speedway formally welcomed Axalta Coating Systems as its fifth Founding Partner on Monday.
The 150-year-old company will name the center injector of the newly remodeled speedway — its 32,000 square feet of “branding and engagement opportunities” will occupy not only center “stage” for the facility, but also will be the largest available injector space. Sunoco, Toyota, Chevrolet, and Florida Hospital own the naming rights for the other four injectors.
Axalta executives joined Speedway leaders such as ISC Chief Executive Officer Lesa France Kennedy and newly named Daytona International Speedway President Chip Wile for the occasion on a bright, sunny Monday afternoon just outside the site of Axalta’s new branding opportunity.
“Axalta has been an incredible partner in our sport for many years,” France Kennedy said, noting “their activation will enable us to further enhance the fan and spectator experience, which is the main focus of our new stadium.”
Wile — in his first major press conference since being named president of NASCAR’s most famous track — said he fully expected the relationship with Axalta would help the track “be taken to the next level.”
Speaking to the excitement the brand brings and noting its longtime relationship with the sport — including its former sponsorship of recently retired driver Jeff Gordon‘s Chevrolet and currently with Dale Earnhardt Jr.’s — Axalta Chairman and CEO Charlie Shaver called the DIS union “a huge milestone for us” and expected it to be a “a bit of a blank canvas to start the next 150 years” of the company.
“We wanted a presence,” Shaver said. “And the appeal for us is furthering a relationship and having that presence. We have the branding rights, but also a relationship.”
Shaver said he initially considered his company’s branding opportunities at DIS more than a year ago as construction of the new facility was still in full swing. He said he even sat down with multi-time NASCAR champion owner, and longtime NASCAR participant Rick Hendrick to discuss ideas.
“We talked about where the sport is and where it could be,” Shaver said.
He noted that the company is technology-based and it will feature a strong business-to-business relationship in using its new DIS platform.
“During the year we’ll bring groups of customers with us to the track,” Shaver said, noting it has more than 120,000 company-based relationships and that most customers would “jump at the chance” to come to Daytona International Speedway.
The relationship between Axalta and DIS gives the company not only naming rights for the center injector, but branding rights inside the new-look track and the central “neighborhood” area that overlooks the track’s famous start/finish line.
Photo credit: Dover International Speedway
Dover International Speedway announced Monday that it has completed track enhancement projects ahead of this weekend’s NASCAR tripleheader, including expanded use of energy-absorbing barriers.
The 1-mile Delaware track said that it has added 479 feet of the SAFER (Steel and Foam Energy Reduction) barrier system along the inside retaining wall on the backstretch and into Turn 3. Of that distance, 78 feet was placed along the existing concrete wall with the remaining 401 feet extending a new steel-post wall into the third-turn entrance.
The Monster Mile also lengthened pit boxes, removing three stalls to adjust to the new 40-car maximum field size in NASCAR’s top two divisions. The alterations expand each pit stall by 2 feet to a length of 34 feet. The stalls remain 16-feet wide.
Dover also added 550 feet of new asphalt in the area behind pit road, leading from the start-finish line to the entrance of the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series garage.
The track hosts all three NASCAR national series this weekend — the Camping World Truck Series on Friday, the XFINITY Series on Saturday and the Sprint Cup Series on Sunday.
RELATED: Watch live stream here | Inside look on official NASCAR inspection
From 8-11 a.m. ET on Tuesday, NASCAR.com will live stream the post-race inspection process.
The three-hour look takes you behind the scenes as NASCAR officials inspect NASCAR Sprint Cup Series vehicles following Saturday’s GoBowling 400 at Kansas Speedway.
The cars being inspected this week are: the No. 18 Toyota of Kyle Busch (winner of Saturday’s race) and the No. 4 Chevrolet of Kevin Harvick (runner-up in Saturday’s race). There was no random car selected this week.
For more information on what the inspection process entails, click here.
Two instances of bodywork modification — one mid-race, one post-race — caught the eye of NASCAR officials during last Saturday’s Sprint Cup Series race at Kansas Speedway.
Scott Miller, NASCAR Senior Vice President of Competition, detailed those circumstances in a Monday morning appearance on SiriusXM NASCAR Radio’s “Morning Drive” program.
Kyle Busch scored his third Sprint Cup victory of the season in Saturday night’s GoBowling 400, breaking an 0-for-16 drought at the 1.5-mile Kansas City track, historically a stumbling block for the reigning series champ. Busch’s exuberant post-race burnout shredded the right-rear tire, causing significant damage to the fender of the Joe Gibbs Racing No. 18 Toyota.
The notion of damaging a winning car to aid its path through post-race inspection became a trending topic during last season’s Chase for the NASCAR Sprint Cup playoffs, with drivers describing the tactic as almost commonplace. The No. 18 car will get a full going-over this week at the NASCAR Research & Development Center in Concord, North Carolina.
“We really don’t like to see that happen,” Miller told SiriusXM. “There was a little bit of a rash of it last year and we kind of got that in check, and this is the first time we’ve seen it in a while. We certainly don’t like to see it, but I believe Kyle was very happy because he’s really, really struggled at that race track and he just got a little overzealous there with the celebration.
“We’ve had a lot of JGR cars through NASCAR, so we have a pretty good idea of what they’re doing with their stuff so I don’t … it’s not that suspicious to me, really.”
The other bodywork issue that drew officials’ attention, Miller said, involved the Chip Ganassi Racing No. 1 Chevrolet for driver Jamie McMurray . The team was flagged on Lap 30 in the 267-lap race for unapproved adjustments to the car’s body during a pit stop. Miller used a football analogy to describe the alteration.
“We’ve gone to great lengths to get bracing in the side of the cars and define how all the parts and pieces have gotta be, and that’s for one reason — so that the sides don’t cave in and the quarterpanels don’t cave in,” Miller said. “Their jackman looked like an offensive lineman throwing a block at the side of their car, so it caved the side in. We saw it, didn’t like it, and back down pit road they came to fix it. That’s just how it works. You can’t pull on the skirts or cave the sides in or alter the body of the car on pit road, and that’s what they did.”
The penalty mandated that the No. 1 team make an unscheduled stop to restore the bodywork to its original condition, drawing a stern protest from CGR crew chief Matt McCall. Miller said replays of the violation helped soothe the situation.
“By the time he actually knew what video we had, he’d calmed quite down,” Miller said.
Miller also said that NASCAR officials have experienced no major issues with teams properly fastening lug nuts in the two Sprint Cup races since clarifying the rules. The change has required officials to perform extra pre- and post-race checks for all 40 cars, but that the process has gone smoothly.
“We haven’t had any problems since we asked them to comply with that, so it’s actually been going pretty good,” Miller said. “It’s a little bit more work on us, but our guys are handling it really well and things have been good so far.”
Martin Truex Jr. led a race-high 172 laps on Saturday night at Kansas Speedway, which serves as the “home” track for Denver-based Furniture Row Racing. A mechanical issue kept him out of Victory Lane, but his single-car team was the class of the field — just ask race-winner Kyle Busch.
“The 78 was probably the fastest car,” Busch said of his Toyota teammate.
It’s something to get used to.
Furniture Row Racing, owned by Barney Visser and stationed near the Rocky Mountains as opposed to “Race City USA,” has developed into one of the premier teams in NASCAR while operating under the radar to the west of the Mississippi River.
RELATED: Learn more about Furniture Row
Coming off a year in which the single-car organization qualified for the Chase for the NASCAR Sprint Cup for the second time in three years, and then promptly followed that with a berth in the Championship 4 Round at Homestead-Miami Speedway, the organization may be even better in 2016.
This season’s results prove last year’s playoff push was no fluke. A manufacturer change from Chevrolet to Toyota brought alignment with Joe Gibbs Racing, and Truex is consistently one of the fastest cars every week. He and Furniture Row appear in excellent shape to qualify for the postseason for the second consecutive year, and perhaps another deep run is possible.
Here’s how driver and team got to this point.
The past
Visser began his career in the manufacturing business more than 40 years ago, starting the Furniture Row company in 1972 after growing up dreaming not of racing, but of business. That drive turned into a successful career in the west as the owner of several retailers — but when Visser decided to cut back, he caught the NASCAR bug.
Racing as a hobby at Colorado National Speedway led to his desire to start a NASCAR XFINITY Series team, which has evolved into the successful single-car Sprint Cup team. (The first year in Cup was 2005.)
The organization earned its first win in 2011 when Regan Smith won the historic Southern 500 at Darlington Raceway. In 2013, Kurt Busch qualified for the postseason and would finish the season 10th in points, then the best standing in team history.
That changed last year. Truex Jr. joined the company before the 2014 season after losing his ride at Michael Waltrip Racing when that organization went from three cars to two.
In 2015, Truex and first-year crew chief Cole Pearn led Furniture Row to its second-ever win when he conquered the “Tricky Triangle” of Pocono. It capped a four-race stretch in which Truex led 454 laps and asserted Furniture Row as a premier series power.
A technical alliance with Richard Childress Racing buoyed Furniture Row, then running Chevrolets, last year — and Truex would advance deeper into the Chase than any of RCR’s three drivers.
The present
Speed hasn’t been a problem for Furniture Row Racing after the switch to Toyota. If anything, the team has been faster this year.
“If we were going to run and be happy running in the middle of the field week in and week out, we would have been fine where we were,” Furniture Row General Manager Joe Garone said before the season. “But Chevrolet has their hands full. They have plenty of teams and, as a new one coming in we were always going to be the bottom team. They can only spread themselves so thin. So, honestly, there wasn’t the opportunity for us to get to the upper tier.
“Toyota looked at it completely differently. They could see the benefits that we bring to the table as a single-car team partnered with one of their teams, and they jumped right on board.”
Truex has one top-five and four top-10 finishes through 11 races, but that doesn’t fully tell the story. His 370 laps led are behind only Joe Gibbs Racing‘s Kyle Busch and Carl Edwards and Stewart-Haas Racing‘s Kevin Harvick.
His average start (12.2) and average finish (12.7) both rank in the top 10 in NASCAR; only six other drivers can say the same.
In short, there’s been plenty of speed, just not finishes — Kansas was shaping up to be one of the most dominant showings of the season until a fluke tire issue caused the No. 78 to pit from the lead late.
“I couldn’t believe it,” Truex said after the race. “It’s frustrating, but that’s how it goes. We’re going to win some races (this year), for sure. We keep bringing cars like that, we’re going to win some. … It’s tough, but it happens. It’s part of racing.”
Watch: Truex Jr. stays positive after tough finish
The future
Truex Jr. and Furniture Row Racing have proven to be a good fit, and the addition of sponsors such as Bass Pro Shop and Auto Owners Insurance help the team move toward a reality of running two cars.
In July of last year, Visser told SiriusXM NASCAR Radio: “We’d like to have (a second team) by ’17. … We think maybe ’17 it’s going to roll around the way we need it to. We’re going to have to attract the sponsors. When we finally get the sponsors, we’ll be able to do it.”
A technical alliance with Joe Gibbs Racing will likely prove fruitful for years, as the JGR Toyota Camrys appear to have a leg up on the field, and Truex himself sits above Denny Hamlin and Matt Kenseth in the points standings.
“I don’t like to look back, but I think it’s safe to say that we had the opportunity to have two win stickers on our car at this point of the season,” Truex said before Kansas, which could have been win No. 3. “We’ve gone through a major transition by switching to Toyota and having a new technical alliance with Joe Gibbs Racing. I truly feel that we’ve come a long way in a short period of time, and feel the rest of the season looks promising for our Furniture Row Racing team.”
KANSAS CITY, Kan. — Matt Kenseth led just three laps of Saturday’s GoBowling 400 at Kansas Speedway, but the No. 20 spent much of the night knocking on the door.
After two late restarts and a four-car crash that Kenseth’s Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota avoided, he finished fourth behind winner Kyle Busch, Kevin Harvick and Kurt Busch, respectively.
A fourth-place finish is Kenseth’s best mark of the season — a season sprinkled with bad luck and simply bizarre circumstances at times.
“You always want the finishes,” Kenseth said after the Saturday night race. “We’ve run up front, terrible finishes. A lot of races we haven’t even finished this year. So you always want to get the finish.
“I felt like we ran better than all three cars that finished in front of us so that part I guess is a little bit disappointing. The 78 ( Martin Truex Jr. ) had us covered but those other guys I felt like after 10 laps we were probably better than they were. Still didn’t quite get the finish.”
Martin Truex Jr. and the No. 78 team know about bad luck. After dominating much of the race and leading 172 laps, a tire problem sent the Furniture Row Racing Toyota down pit road for an unscheduled stop that put them a lap down.
“I don’t know what the racing gods have against me,” Truex radioed to his team after coming on Lap 216 in to fix a vibration after something got jammed up in a wheel.
“Did everyone search their souls and figure out who’s livin’ wrong?” Truex’s team radioed on a subsequent caution as Truex fought to a 14th-place finish.
Kenseth has seen his share of rotten luck this season, but despite race-ending crashes at Las Vegas and Talladega and a tangled black-flag situation at Atlanta — where he had dominated before a pit road violation and communication mixup — Kenseth doesn’t feel like dark forces are to blame.
“All our problems we’ve had all year haven’t necessarily been luck,” Kenseth said. “I feel like everybody did a good job tonight. We executed everything good. We just weren’t quite fast enough and weren’t quite in the right positions. We got a decent finish so that was good.”
Kenseth comes out of Kansas up one place in the drivers point standings to 14th, 121 points behind series leader Harvick.
Kenny Bruce contributed to this report.
