RELATED: See the weekend schedule | Photos of every paint scheme, lineup
Tony Gibson, crew chief for driver Kurt Busch and the No. 41 Chevrolet team, arrived at the track Saturday and will call the race after missing the first two days at Texas, a spokesperson from Stewart-Haas Racing confirmed.
The team had announced Thursday that Gibson would miss the first two days of the race weekend at Texas Motor Speedway.
SHR said through its official Twitter account that Gibson, 51, would stay home in North Carolina to care for his wife, who is dealing with an unspecified illness. The team indicated at the time that Gibson planned to rejoin the No. 41 team in time for Saturday’s Duck Commander 500 (7:30 p.m. ET, FOX, PRN, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio), the seventh NASCAR Sprint Cup race of the season.
Johnny Klausmeier served as interim crew chief in Gibson’s absence, according to the team.
Johnny Klausmeier, engineer on the No. 41 car, will serve as crew chief for @KurtBusch today & tomorrow … (1/2)
— Stewart-Haas Racing (@StewartHaasRcng) April 7, 2016
(2/2) @TonyOldman41 is back home in NC with his wife as she is under the weather. He plans to be @TXMotorSpeedway Saturday for the race.
— Stewart-Haas Racing (@StewartHaasRcng) April 7, 2016
Gibson tweeted Saturday morning that he was on his way to the track, and that his wife was in the hospital.
It’s hard to leave this morning knowing @gibson_beth is still in the hospital. Thanks everyone for the support�� pic.twitter.com/G7f2QKp9Gx
— Tony Gibson (@TonyOldman41) April 9, 2016
“It’s a good way to gauge how well we’re prepared for situations like this,” Busch said on Thursday. “Tony Gibson’s a great leader and everybody’s ready to step up when he’s gone.”
Gibson joined SHR in 2009. He has been paired with Busch since the end of the 2014 season, winning two races with the former premier-series champion in that span.
RELATED: Full Texas schedule | Texas in photos
FORT WORTH — Far from feeling any extra pressure to perform at his home track, Texas Motor Speedway, native Texan Chris Buescher fully expects to feel the love and support here, and just maybe complete a breakthrough performance.
The defending XFINITY Series champion from nearby Prosper, Texas transitioned to the Sprint Cup Series full-time this year and is driving the No. 34 Love’s Travel Stops Ford for Front Row Motorsports in a technical alliance with the Roush-Fenway Racing team — the organization he earned the XFINITY title with.
“It’s always nice being back home,” Buescher said smiling. “I’ve got a lot of family and friends coming out, so there’s no extra pressure, but I get to see a lot more people, which is definitely nice.
“It’s the second time coming back here on the Cup side, and I feel like we’ve made some pretty big improvements from where we started this race last year, and we have some pretty good notes to go off of from Fontana this year. Hoping that a lot of that will translate into this race being that the surface is worn out. It is bumpy.
“I feel like there are some places where we can improve, just trying to figure out how to make it all carry over into this race track. I like coming here.”
Buescher, 23, is still looking for his first top-20 showing this season and is coming off back-to-back 33rd place finishes at Fontana, Calif. and Martinsville, Va. His best effort is 28th at Atlanta Motor Speedway — a 1.54-mile track — which is similar to the 1.5-mile Texas track.
Last year he made six Cup starts, earning a career best of 20th at Auto Club Speedway. He was 30th at Texas in the April race.
This is clearly his home field — in every sense of the expression. His parents and longtime friends will be in the grandstands sitting in seats they have had since the facility opened 20 years ago.
And while Buescher fully understands he is in the midst of a huge learning curve, he is hopeful that as he starts giving venues a second and third look the results will improve.
Certainly no one else in Saturday night’s Duck Commander 500 field has raced at this facility so much in so many varied ways. Buescher says he’s competed on the fifth-mile track, the quarter-mile track, the infield road course and remembers winning in a Legends car on the Dirt Track.
His best showing in the XFINITY Series here on the Texas high banks was a ninth place in 2015.
“I’ve been to this facility more times than I can count,” he said. “I’ve watched more races from my parents’ season ticket spot in the grandstands than I can count, so it’s pretty neat. I always know where they’re at and I can actually see them from the driver intro stage, which is pretty neat. They’re right there on the start-finish line and have been here since I think this place opened. It’s been a long time, so it’s pretty neat to be on the other side of the fence now and actually being able to run (on) it.
“Like I said, I watched a ton of races from up in the grandstands, and I’m not a very good race fan because I want to be participating so badly that it drives me nuts watching. It’s nice to be a part of it now.”
Buescher qualified 34th for Saturday night’s race behind three rookies and in front of one. It is the best Cup starting position he’s had. And he is optimistic.
RELATED: See the full lineup for Saturday’s event
“I feel really good about where we’re heading this year on the Cup side,” Buescher said. “It’s been a little bit of a rocky start just looking at our finishes, but we’ve had speed at some of these race tracks — not all of them — but we’ve had speed at a couple to get started here and we just haven’t had things really go our way.
While he hasn’t had the finishes in Cup that he became accustomed to in the XFINITY Series, Buescher does have that thoughtful, calm demeanor that recognizes hard work and experience are the surest ways to advance. Each week Buescher is certain he and his team are a bit better.
“It’s tough, but it’s something that I fully expected,” Buescher said. “I didn’t plan to come over here and be running top 5 in Week 2 after Daytona, but it’s going to be a learning experience. I’ve told the whole team that. I said, ‘Be patient because I have a lot of learning to do.’
“It’s a very new situation, not only for myself but it’s a new crew chief to me with Bob (Osborne), it’s a new team, most of the guys on the 34 are different from what they were last year, and there’s the new relationship with Roush Fenway and Front Row Motorsports. There are so many moving parts that we’re having to try and adjust to right now that it’s gonna take a little bit to get everything flowing smoothly and start running more competitively.
“Until then, yes, it is a hard transition to come off of a championship year and be getting the finishes that we have so far, but it’s not due to lack of effort and it’s not gonna stay where it’s at very long. We’re gonna get better to the point where we start feeling a lot better about our finishes and hopefully where we can start coming back up in points this year.”
RELATED: Busch gets awesome fan reaction on road
FORT WORTH — Kyle Busch was still smiling Friday thinking about the surprisingly huge reaction he received from a video showing him signing a fan’s hat while waiting car-to-car in heavy traffic as they left Martinsville (Va.) Speedway.
Only hours earlier he had been celebrating his first Sprint Cup Series win at the track, and the young lady he interacted with was wearing a Kyle Busch hat.
The video has been shown on most of the national news networks. Busch figures more than 10 million looked at it on his Facebook page in a single day after it was posted Sunday.
“I was surprised at the response it got, certainly,” Busch said. “We were just kinda messing around rolling down the road in traffic the other day and figured we’d give it a shot. I’ve done other things like that before when I just kinda waved at them.
“But her response — it seemed as if it initiated a little more, where I asked her for her hat, gave her an autograph. It probably wouldn’t have happened if she was wearing another driver’s hat,” he said laughing. “I don’t know. Maybe we’ll have to try the flip side of that another day. As far as speaking with her again, we’ve reached (out) and tried to get her information and get her to a race and she wanted to go to Bristol so we’ll see her again next week.”
Asked if he could imagine being that effusive meeting anyone, Busch grinned, shook his head and offered a definitive, “No, not a chance.”
MORE: See all of Kyle’s premier series wins
But he did seem grateful if a bit amazed at the reaction he’s received from interacting with a fan — something he does constantly without the broadcast replays. He recognized, as well, that maybe there is a shift in fans feelings for him. Instead of getting boos, Busch is hearing more cheers and applause after coming back from injury to dramatically earn the 2015 Sprint Cup championship.
“Last year, when I came back, I was booed a little bit, but there was certainly some cheers around being able to get back in the race car, get back to the race track — things like that — but then I started winning again and it kind of went away,” Busch said. “It seemed like not only did I go back to my winning ways, but it seemed like the fans kind of went back to their old ways of how they treated me, but I feel like through the championship and things like that obviously I’ve grown a little bit. But I think my reputation’s kind of grown a little bit as well, and I think it’s just — it’s a never-ending evolution of people in the sport.
“You look at every single driver that’s gone through the sport over the years and they’ve all kind of gone through that — every popular one maybe I should say — Rusty (Wallace), DW (Darrell Waltrip), Dale Jarrett I think, even Bobby Labonte, Jeff Gordon especially and (Dale) Earnhardt. So you’ve seen those transitions happen and I feel like this is maybe mine. … I did start probably a lot younger than many of the other ones did and made a lot more mistakes in my younger age than many of them did, but I think it will be — hopefully will be — pretty memorable by the time it’s all said and done.”
Last week’s Martinsville sweep
Busch’s sweep at Martinsville last week — winning both the Camping World Truck Series and Sprint Cup events — certainly seems to put him on a more solid path to defending his title. He’s ranked third in the standings, only five points behind leader Kevin Harvick. And his victory essentially ensures a spot in the 20116 Chase for the Sprint Cup.
Busch said he put one of the grandfather clocks he won at Martinsville at his Kyle Busch Racing shop and the other is in the foyer of his home.
“I had to turn off the buzzer because it’s close to (son) Brexton’s room, so we don’t get to hear it,” Busch said. “Although we heard it a couple of times while it went off, but then I turned it off.”
The clock is a very real — and potentially very loud — reminder of winning early in the season. It’s a luxury he didn’t have last year while recovering from a broken leg and foot. He missed the first 11 races and had only 15 opportunities to score a win, get into the top 30 in points and secure a place in the postseason.
“I’ve always put extra emphasis on being able to start the season off strong my whole career, and there’s been times where I’ve been kind of behind the eight ball and a little down on myself,” Busch said. “But then there’s also been times where we’ve started out the season really well like this year and we’ve got a win earlier. … Every single year you try to get a win early, so it just kind of alleviates that pressure as the season winds down getting towards the Chase, and it’s nice when you’re able to do that like we were in 2013 and again this year.
“Last year, it was hard. There were times where we came back and we knew we had to run strong and we were crashing out a couple times and it was getting pretty stressful that we weren’t going to make the Chase and that was one of the things where I kind of had something reset and click and turn into something different when we got to Sonoma. We won Sonoma and stuff like that just a week after crashing, finishing last at Michigan.
“So there’s times where it just seems to work and there’s times when it doesn’t. It’s way more fun when it is working.”
Looking ahead to this weekend’s Texas race
This week in Fort Worth, Busch has every reason to be optimistic. The area is home to his team’s Interstate Batteries sponsor, and it has been a fully charged effort from Busch at the 1.5-mile track.
He won this race from the pole position in 2013 and has five top-four finishes in the last six races at Texas Motor Speedway.
MORE: Busch tames Texas, lands 80th XFINITY win
Wheeling the No. 18 Interstate Batteries Toyota for Saturday’s event, Texas is certainly a place to keep Busch’s momentum going as he searches for another title drive. And he comes in with as much pre-race goodwill as he could hope for.
“There’s plenty of things that are out there to achieve,” Busch said. “Being able to win at every single venue — that’s one of the things I’m close to. I’ve got three to go. Getting a Daytona 500, an All-Star race, a Charlotte Coke 600 victory and then from there just being able to continue to add on to the legacy and winning at more venues.
“Just building that win column — it’s at 35, but to be able to build that to 100 or something like that, I think that would be pretty special. Now whether 100 is reachable or not, I doubt it, but we’ll give it our best shot.
“There’s no reason why to not try. Hopefully the championships will pile in there, as well. Whether seven is achievable, probably not, but I’d like to say it is and we’ll give it our best. I’d like to have five, how ’bout that?”
How ’bout it indeed.
FORT WORTH — Looking fit and exhibiting a healthy dose of humor with his humility, NASCAR champion Tony Stewart accepted Texas Motor Speedway‘s award for his charitable contributions to the Texas chapter of the Speedway Children’s Charities organization Thursday night in the track’s grand banquet room overlooking the speedway.
After a brief introduction by TMS President Eddie Gossage at the annual Texas Motorsports Hall of Fame dinner, Stewart accepted the Major General Thomas Sadler Award for his work with “The Smoke Show” and engaged the audience with a speech filled with gratitude and lots of opportunity to smile. The three-time Cup champ looked good and sounded like the Stewart this sport has come to love.
The timing of Stewart’s return to the drivers seat of his No. 14 Chevrolet, however, remains unknown, he said. He suffered a serious back injury in an all-terrain vehicle accident just prior to the start of the season and has been out of the driver’s seat recovering.
“We won’t know anything until the end of the month when we go get scanned again,” Stewart said. “Unfortunately, it’s a lot of waiting right now, which is about to drive me crazy.
“Tomorrow, in my heart [I could be back], but the reality is I’m 45 and I don’t know how fast my bones are healing. It’s not like you go in there every week and get scanned and [get] an update. The hard part is literally waiting until we get scanned and they’ll have a better idea when we can get back in. In the meantime, you’re just waiting.
“I feel confident that when they say I’m ready, I will be ready.”
Stewart spent much of the night signing autographs and posing for photographs with attendees.
This year’s Hall of Fame ceremony inducted the inaugural TMS Cup race winner, Jeff Burton, who was in the audience along with fellow honorees Martin Truex Jr. and Erik Jones. Also in attendance was Clint Bowyer, who introduced Burton and who also will take over Stewart’s No. 14 next season.
Stewart made it clear in his speech that he looked forward to being back in the car competing alongside those active drivers. He has been doing rehabilitation work for his back injury, and also spoke privately Thursday about what looked like a successful effort to cut some weight, as well.
The result, he said, was that he’s ahead of the rehabilitation schedule the doctors have given him, and now it is truly a waiting game for medical clearance.
“I’ve not been a good patient,” Stewart said, smiling. “I went to therapy Monday — I was cleared for it two weeks ago — but I went home and did stuff on the property and figured that was therapy.
“Rehab’s been fun because I actually got complimented for doing things I’m not supposed to do. I said, ‘Where do you think we’re at?’ And he (the therapist) said, ‘Well, because you’ve done everything we’ve asked you not to do, you’re not going to be spending too much time in therapy.’
“That was probably one of the few times that I’ve ever been complimented on doing things I wasn’t supposed to do.”
Stewart-Haas Racing driver Kevin Harvick, who landed the team a Sprint Cup championship in 2014 and contended for another last year, said he’s impressed with all Stewart has done out of the race car to help the team progress. He said Stewart takes a very proactive role.
“He’s on the radios, he’s in the meetings,” Harvick said Thursday. “He’s around and he’s just very engaged in what’s going on and not in the car.
“As you look in the future, he’s calling on the phone wanting to know what we need to do differently to get better. As you look at all those things, those are what you want. You want a competition guy, a driver and him being the owner is definitely something that you want that engagement with.
“His engagement is different than normal owners because he knows so much about the sport and how it works from inside the car.”
Ironically, this man whose made a living with speed spoke about the need to take this recovery slowly and properly. He has been measured and thoughtful in getting back to a competitive level.
“Breaking a leg or an arm is a lot different than when you have something going on in your back because that is your core, [and it] is important to make sure it gets healed right,” Stewart said. “This is important to make sure it heals right, but it hasn’t stopped me from pushing the envelope here and there just to see where I’m at.
“If I get sore at the end of the day, I’m very good about it. I think breaking [my] leg and going through that cycle (in 2013), I learned to just listen to my body and when it’s telling you it’s had enough, then OK, stop.
“The doctor has to go to NASCAR to clear me, so there’s no point in going through the agony (of questioning) when it’s still in their hands. It’s literally about doing what they tell you to do and when they say it’s time to go, it’s time to go.”
RELATED: Final practice results | See the starting lineup
Martin Truex Jr. zipped to the top of the leaderboard in the final NASCAR Sprint Cup Series practice Friday evening at Texas Motor Speedway.
Truex piloted the Furniture Row Racing No. 78 Toyota to a fast lap of 192.390 mph around the 1.5-mile Fort Worth track. He’ll start third in Saturday night’s main event, the Duck Commander 500 (7:30 p.m. ET, FOX, PRN, SiriusXM).
Carl Edwards, who claimed the Coors Light Pole Award in a qualifying session held earlier Friday, backed up his speed with a second-fastest lap at 190.248 mph in the 80-minute final practice. Edwards is scheduled to start first in Saturday’s 500-miler, the seventh race of the Sprint Cup season.
Related: Edwards earns Texas pole
Defending Sprint Cup champion Kyle Busch — and last weekend’s winner at Martinsville Speedway — turned the third-fastest lap in the Joe Gibbs Racing No. 18 Toyota (189.507 mph). AJ Allmendinger, the runner-up to Busch last Sunday, was fourth-best in the JTG-Daugherty Racing No. 47 Chevrolet (189.500 mph).
Joey Logano , who will share the front row with Edwards on Saturday night’s starting grid, completed the top five in final practice (189.480 mph).
Jimmie Johnson, a six-time Texas winner carrying a three-race win streak at the intermediate-sized track, was seventh-fastest in the Hendrick Motorsports No. 48 Chevrolet (189.255 mph).
Austin Dillon led the way in the category of 10-lap averages, posting a 10-lap run of 184.633 mph. Kasey Kahne, Brad Keselowski, Kevin Harvick and Truex completed the top five among the 32 drivers who ran at least 10 consecutive laps in final practice.
RELATED: Race results
FORT WORTH, Texas — Kyle Busch broke his NASCAR XFINITY Series “losing streak” on Friday night and in the process moved into rarefied air in the Lone Star State.
With a dominating victory from the pole in the O’Reilly Auto Parts 300 at Texas Motor Speedway, Busch won for the fourth time in five XFINITY starts this year. His only loss in that stretch was a second-place run after a late blown tire robbed him of victory in his last outing at Auto Club Speedway.
But on Friday night, Busch was back to his winning ways, leading a race-high 150 of 200 laps at the 1.5-mile track, notching his record eighth victory at Texas and extending his own series record to 80 triumphs.
With victories in the Camping World Truck Series and Sprint Cup Series last week at Martinsville, Busch now has three straight NASCAR wins, and on Saturday night he’ll go for a fourth in the Duck Commander 500 Cup race at Texas (7:30 p.m. ET, FOX, PRN, SiriusXM).
But he already has eight winner’s cowboy hats from the XFINITY Series alone (and 12 overall).
“I guess you have a spare one for every day of the week,” Busch said with a grin. “It certainly is a good problem to have. We’ve had some really good runs here over the years, and we’ve been really fast. This NOS Energy Drink Camry was great.
“We got our money’s worth out of it and (crew chief Chris) Gayle got his money’s worth out of it, too, on the pit box today. We had to make some adjustments to it and fine-tune on it to make it better and better.”
Erik Jones, Busch’s teammate at Joe Gibbs Racing, ran second, and Brad Keselowski came home third. JR Motorsports drivers — Chase Elliott, Dale Earnhardt Jr., Justin Allgaier and Elliott Sadler — occupied the next four spots.
Series leader Daniel Suarez finished 16th, one lap down, after spinning in Turn 4 on Lap 77 and saw his margin in the standings over second-place Sadler shrink to one point.
Jones was relegated to the rear of the field after his pit crew jumped over the wall too soon on a stop under caution on Lap 77. But Jones recovered adroitly, powering his No. 20 Toyota through the field to claim the runner-up spot.
“Getting the penalty didn’t help but it wasn’t the reason we ran second either,” Jones said. “We just didn’t take a big enough swing to free it up (on the final pit stop on Lap 148). The track just tightened up as it rubbered up. Then it got slick again and we didn’t keep up with it enough.”
Busch had retaken the lead from Kyle Larson on Lap 120 and opened a lead of more than three seconds before Jeb Burton‘s Ford blew a tire on Lap 144, slammed the Turn 2 wall and collected Blake Koch‘s Chevrolet in the process.
“I was really, really tight, and I was chattering tires all night,” Burton said after he was released from the infield care center. “I went into (Turn) 1, and I thought I had a problem, but it was too late.”
With a strong push from Jones, Busch held the top spot after a restart on Lap 152, and by the time the lap count reached 181 of 200, his advantage had ballooned to 2.9 seconds. The rest was academic, as Busch maintained a comfortable working margin and arrived at the finish line 3.055 seconds ahead of his Joe Gibbs Racing teammate.
Sprint Cup regular Larson, who led 38 laps through the middle stages of the 300-miler, faded to an 11th-place finish in the Chip Ganassi Racing No. 42 Chevrolet.
The series’ next race is the Fitzgerald Glider Kits 300, scheduled next Saturday (12:30 p.m. ET, FS1, PRN, SiriusXM) at Bristol Motor Speedway. It will mark the series’ first use of heats and a main event as part of the Dash 4 Cash bonus program.
Contributing: Staff reports
RELATED: See every car in the field | Get the full lineup
FORT WORTH, Tex. – Carl Edwards didn’t run a perfect lap in Friday’s final round of knockout qualifying, but he had plenty of car to compensate.
“I made a little mistake, and I thought that was going to cost us,” said Edwards, who earned the top starting spot for Saturday night’s Duck Commander 500 (on FOX, PRN and SiriusXM NASCAR Radio at 7:30 p.m. ET) at Texas Motor Speedway with a lap at 194.609 mph. “Fortunately, our car is very fast.
“It’s a huge deal for us to get our first pole of the year, and I just can’t say enough about the guys. That car was great. (Crew chief) Dave (Rogers) has been working really hard. Honestly, the car was better than I was—it was fast.”
In claiming his second Coors Light Pole Award and the 17th of his career, Edwards, a three-time NASCAR Sprint Cup Series race winner at Texas, covered the 1.5-mile distance in 27.748 seconds in the money round, beating Joey Logano and Martin Truex Jr. by .187 seconds.
Though Logano and Truex ran the same speed, 193.306 mph, Logano got the second starting spot on the basis of higher standing in owner points—second to Truex’s third.
Rookie Chase Elliott qualified fourth, followed by Ricky Stenhouse Jr., Denny Hamlin and fellow rookie Ryan Blaney. Six-time Texas winner Jimmie Johnson will try to earn his fourth straight victory at the track from the 11th starting position.
The old pavement at Texas seems to suit Edwards’ style.
“I like it here,” said the driver of the No. 19 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota. “I really enjoy Texas. I have a lot of friends here. This is a fun place to race. The tire, I don’t know what the other guys feel, the tire and downforce package for me lets me feel like I can go into the corner and move around and feel the tire underneath me.
“Even in qualifying, there were times when I got a little sideways, and it slid a little bit, and I could recover, and that’s really fun as a race car driver. Hopefully the race goes well.”
Atypically, Logano made a second run in the final round after falling short of Edwards in his first attempt.
“It was a last-ditch effort,” Logano said. “We were really good in (Turns) 1 and 2. That’s where we beating the 19. And then I went in there the last time, and it didn’t turn like it was, and I was like, “Oh, no, that’s our good area…’
“We actually fixed (Turns) 3 and 4, and we were pretty good down there. But we kind of flip-flopped, and we needed both… Just (with) another run on the tires, it’s so hard to go faster at this track.”
Note: Edwards’ qualifying success broke a streak of 11 straight different pole winners at the track. Edwards’ other Texas pole came in 2013, in a Roush Fenway Racing Ford.
FORT WORTH, Texas — Every week, Kevin Harvick and Jimmie Johnson seem to be the favorites in the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series. The two champions consistently are linked together for their California ties and their ability to run up front. That is especially the case when the series hits an intermediate track, as the two drivers have combined for 10 wins at intermediate venues since 2014.
Yet, Texas Motor Speedway, site of Saturday night’s Duck Commander 500 (7:30 p.m. ET, FOX, PRN, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio) is the rare track Harvick has not won at in the sport’s top series. On the opposite end, Johnson has won three straight at the 1.5-mile facility and five out of the last seven Cup races held here — with no signs of slowing down.
“It’s just this race track,” Johnson said of his recent stranglehold at Texas. “I think tracks with an older surface — the bumpier it is, the more tire wear — it’s just a condition that plays into our wheelhouse. And we’ve hit on some things here over the last few trips and it consistently works for us and it continues to put speed and longevity in the car.
“We weren’t necessarily the best car in all those races, but we were in the top three, top five; and I truly believe if you run there long enough, you’ll have opportunities to win. We’ve been able to win on speed and then being at the right place and being able to take advantage of things, too.”
The three-race win streak has had wide disparities of dominance as Johnson led both more than half a race (fall of 2014) and just six laps (fall of 2015) to take the checkered flag.
Despite Johnson’s dominance at Texas, the six-time series champion knows he will have a willing and able challenger in Harvick.
If he isn’t chasing him, that is.
“Since he’s sat in that No. 4 car, he’s been at the top of everybody’s conscious thought and radar,” Johnson said. “They rolled out in December of 2013, I guess it was, at the Charlotte test session and I wasn’t at that test session, but all I heard about was how much faster they were than the field. And they continue to do that. … We’ve all been essentially chasing the No. 4 in a lot of situations.”
Currently, Harvick and Johnson are 1-2 in the point standings but Johnson got the best of Harvick at Atlanta Motor Speedway in February and Auto Club Speedway in March. Meanwhile, Harvick continued his mastery of Phoenix International Raceway with a win there last month.
For the 2014 series champion, the task of snapping an 0-for-26 drought at Texas and notching a win at one of the four tracks he has yet to win at (Kentucky, Pocono and Sonoma are the others) is plenty of motivation.
“Texas Motor Speedway in general has that little extra flair because of the fact that we haven’t won here on the Cup side,” Harvick said during a stop at Samuel Beck Elementary School in Trophy Club, Texas, on Thursday.
“For us, you are always looking for things to reach out and grab a hold of that motivate you and challenge you. This is definitely one of those places that has that motivation and challenge to it that are fun. Not that everywhere else (doesn’t), just those are different challenges and different goals that you grab on to. This one is easy just for the fact that you have no wins and you want to get that first one.”
Harvick has been gaining ground in his quest to win at Texas with Stewart-Haas Racing. In four races with SHR in the Lone Star State, the 2014 champion has three top-three finishes with two runner-up finishes (both to Johnson). In the last two races, Harvick has led a combined 107 laps at the track. In the 24 races at Texas before that, he led just eight laps (only five of those came during his 13-year tenure at Richard Childress Racing).
“As you look at the last couple years at SHR, it’s been a track where we’ve run well,” Harvick said. “We’ve run a lot better than what I had in the past. It was always one of my worst tracks as we’ve come here in the past. To see the performance level up, I know the guys always put a lot of effort into this race knowing that I haven’t won here. They want to win here, too. It’s a cool place to win. We’ve won a lot here in everything else. Just haven’t cracked that first win in Cup. Hopefully this is the weekend.”