RELATED: Sunday’s starting lineup | Full race day schedule
MARTINSVILLE, Va. — Martinsville Speedway remains one of stock-car racing’s most delightful anachronisms, a true throwback to NASCAR’s old-school roots. The sport that descends twice a year into the Virginia hills is far more modern than it was when it began racing here on dirt in 1949, but the challenge of winning on the premier series’ tightest track has never grown old.
Winning here requires uncommon finesse and all the precision of the track’s well-crafted grandfather clock trophies. Predicting a winner here usually requires less savviness, with a handful of favorites to choose from on a short list that’s become even shorter this season.
Three drivers — Jimmie Johnson, Jeff Gordon and Denny Hamlin — have shared a virtual lock on Martinsville’s clock in recent years, winning 19 of the last 26 NASCAR Sprint Cup Series races on the .526-mile oval that Clay Earles founded nearly 70 years ago. With Gordon trading in his driving gloves for a broadcasting microphone this season, the crowd living in the Martinsville stratosphere has lost a fellow dominator.
Johnson and Hamlin have a chance to reassert their Martinsville mastery in this Sunday’s STP 500 (1 p.m. ET, FS1, MRN, SiriusXM), the first short-track race of the Sprint Cup season. But the door is open for a third party to announce their candidacy for the Martinsville elite.
RELATED: More on Martinsville
Johnson’s eight victories on the historic track rank just one behind his former Hendrick Motorsports teammate Gordon on the all-time list. But his five-race drought — a relatively long dry spell as it relates to Johnson and Martinsville — clearly weighs as the current priority.
“I think this weekend is going to be back to our old ways,” Johnson said earlier this week. “Things evolve and we feel like may have taken our cars and setups in a direction that hasn’t been too good for us. Over the off weekend, I’m hopeful that what (team engineers) Julian (Pena) and Cliff (Daniels) have kind of dug up and the mindset we’re taking is going to prove out. I’m very optimistic we’ll get back to our old ways. We haven’t been where we’ve wanted to be and we have tried to evolve and change and advance the cars, and I think we needed a couple of steps back to be fast.”
Hamlin, the other current resident in the Martinsville ether, has to only rewind to last March to relive the most recent of his five home-state wins. The Joe Gibbs Racing driver likened the feeling of walking through the Martinsville tunnel to showing up at his home track in the go-karting days of his childhood and riding the confidence that stems from being in a familiar place.
But in sizing up his biggest competition at the track where he’s enjoyed the most success, Hamlin called his own number.
“Myself — I don’t know how many pit road penalties I’ve had here at this race track or why I choose to push it on pit road knowing that I have the speed on the race track that we’ve shown,” Hamlin said Friday. “I think I’ve had two in the last bunch of races, just consecutively. That’s been a challenge and last year in the fall race I beat up my car pretty good trying to come back through the pack the second time or maybe it was the first time I had a penalty. I think it’s me just being a little more cautious on pit road and making sure that I’ve got a car that can finish the race with all four fenders.”
The prime candidate to replace Gordon in the Martinsville triumvirate might be Joey Logano, who won his third straight Coors Light Pole Award at the track in Friday’s qualifying. He’ll have the benefit of the first pit stall in Sunday’s 500-lapper as he searches for his first Sprint Cup grandfather clock to match the one he brought home in the Camping World Truck Series last March.
RELATED: Logano earns Coors Light Pole | Logano carries extra motivation
But Logano will also have to overcome the hard feelings from the most recent Martinsville race, where Matt Kenseth intentionally wrecked him from victory contention last November. It’s part of a twofold goal for the Team Penske driver this weekend: turning a negative into a positive from last fall’s altercation and backing up the No. 22 Ford’s qualifying speed in the main event.
“To be quite honest with you it’s hard to erase it from your mind. It happened. It’s in the past though, but it is something that drives you,” Logano said. “You’ve got to use things like that to motivate you — not only you and your team. I think re-watching the race and stuff like that, if that doesn’t give you a little fire, nothing does. I know I felt really excited and really pumped up and jacked up to come to this race track and show what we’re made out of. This is a good start.”
RELATED: Complete race results
MARTINSVILLE, Va. — Kyle Busch, come get your clock.
Leading a race-high 123 of 255 laps, Kyle Busch pulled off an overtime victory in Saturday’s Alpha Energy Solutions 250 NASCAR Camping World Truck Series race at Martinsville Speedway and filled a major hole in his resume by securing the coveted grandfather clock that goes to the victor.
“I’ve got a couple owners’ ones, but never one of my own,” said Busch, who got an excellent launch on the final restart and won the two-lap dash to the finish by .425 seconds over John Hunter Nemechek, who took over the series points lead with the runner-up finish.
Driving the No. 18 truck he owns, Busch also gave crew chief Wes Ward his first victory in the series, and he did it with one set of fresh tires still available. The win was Busch’s 45th in the series.
“This is just a day we’ve been looking for for a long, long time,” Busch said. “We’ve never necessarily had all the pieces go together like we should have. And I didn’t know the pieces were going to go together today, the way the cautions (11 of them) played out, the way the tire strategy was playing out — when to pit, when not to pit, how to do all that.
“Wes and I both leaned on each other, and we both had no idea, so we just dumbed into this, I think, but it all worked out.”
Busch last came to pit road on Lap 135, and Ward kept him on the track under both the sixth and seventh cautions, which occurred on Lap 186 and Lap 199, respectively. By then, the die was cast, and Busch ran the remainder of the race with his third set of Goodyears sitting behind pit wall.
As it turned out, he didn’t need them. Busch was so strong on restarts that he was able to open distance between the No. 18 Toyota and his pursuers, even when those chasing had superior rubber.
With a determined run in the outside lane, Nemechek was able to hold off third-place finisher William Byron, who was driving for Busch.
“I was able to hang tough on the outside, get around William there at the end,” Nemechek said. “That was the big key for us to finish second — if not we were probably going to lose a couple spots.
“Those restarts were hectic at the end. I just kept spinning the tires on the restarts. We’ve got to go back and look at some things. I could never get to Kyle.”
Nemechek left Martinsville with a three-point lead in the series standings over eighth-place finisher Parker Kilgerman, but not without some bruised feelings on the part of Daniel Suarez, who got shuffled back when Nemechek was battling eventual fourth-place finisher Kyle Larson for second on a wild restart on Lap 225.
Suarez pulled up next to Nemechek under a red flag for a multi-car wreck on Lap 236 and ultimately was a victim of a six-car incident (in Turns 3 and 4 on Lap 246) that sent the race to overtime, five laps beyond its scheduled distance.
Nemechek wasn’t sure why Suarez was upset.
“I don’t really know,” Nemechek said. “I know that we were beating and banging, and he moved me a couple of times, so I don’t really know what his deal was.”
For Busch, on the other hand, the deal was simple. He now has his first grandfather clock and a chance to complete an unprecedented Martinsville sweep, should he win Sunday’s NASCAR Sprint Cup Series race at the .526-mile short track (1 p.m. ET on FS1).
Busch acknowledged he learned a few things in Saturday’s race that could help him on Sunday, so perhaps there’s a second clock in the reigning Sprint Cup champion’s immediate future.
MARTINSVILLE, Va. — Successful late model drivers Claire and Paige Decker, along with cousin Natalie Decker, all hoped to take the green flag in Saturday’s Alpha Energy Solutions 250 NASCAR Camping World Truck Series race at Martinsville Speedway.
Claire, 21, and Paige, 23, are sisters from Eagle River, Wisconsin, and both made the field, qualifying 31st (92.038 mph) and 30th (92.389 mph) respectively.
They are only the second pair of sisters ever to compete in the same Truck Series race, joining twins Amber and Angela Cope. Paige would finish the race 25th while Claire finished in the 27th position.
Claire, a former NASCAR Drive for Diversity competitor, drove the No. 10 Chevrolet owned by Jennifer Jo Cobb. Paige was behind the wheel of Mike Harmon‘s No. 74 RAM, having finished 30th in Harmon’s truck in her series debut at Martinsville last fall.
Cousin Natalie, 18, also a D4D alumna, was driving the No. 14 Chevrolet owned by Bob Newberry but did not make the field after qualifying in 38th place for a 32-truck field.
All told, 18 female drivers have competed in Truck Series races, led by Cobb, who has 117 starts. Cobb also boasts the best finish by a female in series history — sixth at Daytona in 2011. The highest finish by a female at Martinsville belongs to Deborah Renshaw, 15th in 2004.
Only once in NASCAR national series history have more than three women competed in the same race. That happened in the Truck Series at Martinsville in 2010, when the Cope twins, Cobb and Johanna Long all took the green flag.
On nine other occasions, three women have raced in the same NASCAR national series event: twice in Sprint Cup, four times in the XFINITY Series and four times in the Truck Series.
MARTINSVILLE, Va. — Jimmie Johnson wasn’t thinking about passing Dale Earnhardt on the all-time win list as the Hendrick Motorsports driver pulled away from Kevin Harvick and everyone else two weeks ago to score his victory at Auto Club Speedway.
Career win No. 77 might has well have been No. 14 or 42 for the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series driver.
Getting No. 76, which came earlier this year at Atlanta Motor Speedway? Now that one was big, the six-time series champion said.
“There was a really interesting post that I saw that had Dale and myself standing there and our stats,” Johnson said Friday morning at Martinsville (Va.) Speedway. “And I was like ‘Wow.’ For me, everything was about tying him. Passing him, I hadn’t put a lot of thought into it. It was all about tying him.”
The Auto Club race, where Johnson pulled ahead and into sole possession of seventh place on the all-time win list, was too hectic, too last-minute to ponder the possibility. It was also the conclusion to a week of he and teammate Dale Earnhardt Jr.’s back and forth regarding their Batman v. Superman paint scheme promotion.
“Fontana was all about the Superman car, trash talking Junior, we win the trash talk, five laps to go and we’re going to finish ninth or whatever,” he said.
“(Then) killer pit stop, great restart, great couple of laps, we’re in Victory Lane and just having an awesome time. It was more about those series of events than it was about (passing) Dale.”
The battle for No. 78 begins here this weekend at Martinsville, site of Sunday’s STP 500 (1 p.m. ET, FS1, MRN, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio) and where Johnson has won eight times.
Johnson, 40, admits that he pays little mind to records. To hear them, he said, “just blows my mind.”
It took the former off-road racer just 13 starts to win his first Sprint Cup race, and the first championship came in his fifth full season. From 2003-10, he and his No. 48 team won 53 races and five consecutive championships.
Even though he lived it, Johnson said he still has trouble comprehending such an incredible run of success.
“I didn’t even know what was going on in that period of time,” he said. “We were just having fun and looking forward to the next race. Life was simple in a lot of ways. Just married, finding my footing in the team, everything was climbing. Everything was just getting better and better and better every day and all this neat new stuff was going on.
“Even leading into our championship in ’13, really when the streak came to an end, have a couple of years off, recalibrate (and then) finally look back, it’s like wow. That was pretty insane. Five had never happened before. Holy crap.
“Again, it’s just wild to look back on it all. I can’t believe we did it.”
What has been the key to his success? There are others still active that have been around longer, enjoyed their own success but not come close to rivaling what Johnson, crew chief Chad Knaus and the No. 48 team has accomplished.
“It’s not just me, for starters,” he said.
A large part has been because of the consistency of the team. He’s been at Hendrick Motorsports since moving up to Sprint Cup, and HMS has set the standard for competition for many years. He and Knaus have been paired together since the beginning and sponsor Lowe’s has been in a primary role exclusively.
Still, Johnson has done his part. Lessons learned early in his career, he said, continue to pay dividends.
“I’m a coachable athlete. I don’t know if everyone is,” Johnson said. “Chad isn’t the smoothest with his delivery but again because I’m coachable and I’m willing to learn — and honestly I think because of all the years of not having success but doing just enough to make it to the next level, those were humbling years. Years that I had to keep an open mind about what I was doing, what the cars were doing, and I really think that helps me today. I think that’s a big part of it because when you go through it — every year there are new tires, (there’s been) three or four generations of cars, engine packages, gear rules now, all the stuff.
“If you say ‘this is how I drive a car, make it work for me,’ you’re going to be fine for a window (of time), but when it changes, it might leave you or it might come into your (driving style).
“To stay so consistent over many generations of cars, I think you just have to keep an open mind and I think my early years taught me that and wired me for that.”
Johnson said he hasn’t begun to think about stepping way and continued success will likely only prolong his career. Good news for his fans, not so good for the competition.
With two wins already in his pocket through five races, Johnson’s streak of multiple win seasons is at 15 and counting. He’s two years removed from title No. 6, with subsequent points finishes of 11th and 10th. The battle for a record-tying seventh title, a mark currently shared by Earnhardt and Richard Petty, is attainable, but certainly not guaranteed.
Johnson, understandably, wants No. 7. But he doesn’t want the pursuit of it to change who he has become.
“Without a doubt I have a shot at history that I need to really put a strong effort for,” he said. “I feel that in my heart; I have that support at home. We want to go for that.
“If that happens quickly, I don’t know what happens then. If it takes a long time, that might be like ‘sweet.’ If it never happens, I’m happy.
“And that’s the thing that I’m trying so hard now to race with — being content with what I’ve accomplished and racing for the right reasons in my opinion, because I enjoy it, because I’m competitive. I’ve never been driven by stats and I don’t want to fall into that trap.
“I look back and think that the lessons I’ve learned and the road that I’ve been on has led to the success. I don’t … want to change and be driven by having to have a seventh championship. Because I never thought I’d have one to start with. I don’t want to change who I am along the way.”
Name: Sadie
Hometown: Chevy Chase, Maryland
Current City: Brooklyn, New York
Member since: 2009
Getting to know Sadie
Q. Why did you join the Official NASCAR Fan Council?
“Because I absolutely love NASCAR and want to do everything I can to support the sport. I also feel I have a unique voice from many other NASCAR fans, living in New York City and not even owning a car.”
Q. How did you first become interested in NASCAR?
“The first race I watched was the 2003 Daytona 500 and I instantly fell in love. Even though it was rain shortened, I loved the way the commentators described the strategy and the technical aspects of the sport. As I learned more about the drivers and picked favorites, I was hooked forever.”
Q. What makes NASCAR special for you?
“I love introducing new people to NASCAR and explaining the strategies as well as the different driver personalities and associated rivalries. Many people think it’s just about turning left, but when I convince them to watch (or attend) a race with me, they get the reason I’m so obsessed. I’ve also met so many incredible people across the country attending NASCAR races. I make friends at every event.”
Q: Do you have any favorite NASCAR memories or traditions?
“My favorite memory of all time was winning a pass to Victory Lane in ’08 at Watkins Glen when my favorite driver (Kyle Busch) won the race. I was so excited, jumping up and down, that one of the crewmembers brought over the huge champagne bottle so I could celebrate with the team! Incredible!”
Q: Do you have a favorite in any of the following categories?
Driver: “Kyle Busch“
Track: “Richmond”
Memorabilia: “I don’t have much space in my tiny Brooklyn apartment, but I do keep out a collection of signed diecast cars. One of the coolest diecasts I have is the throwback Wrangler #3 that Dale Jr. won the Daytona Nationwide race with, signed by him.”
Sponsor: “Wrangler (such a good looking car)”
Q: If you could go to any NASCAR race/track, where would you go?
“Talladega”
Q: What do you like to do in your free time?
“I love to knit. I get a lot of knitting done while watching NASCAR.”
Q: Tell us about your family. Do you have children and/or pets?
“I have a wonderful husband of 12 years who knows more about racing than he ever wished.”
Q: What’s your dream car?
“If it’s a dream, let’s go Maserati.”
FROM ALL OF US AT NASCAR, WE THANK SADIE FOR HER CONTINUED SUPPORT AND LOOK FORWARD TO HEARING FROM HER IN 2016.
Matt Kenseth concedes that he doesn’t necessarily circle Martinsville Speedway race dates on his calendar. And that was before he was parked for wrecking Joey Logano there last fall.
When it comes to performance, Martinsville’s super tight .526-mile track has been a supreme challenge for Kenseth, who is winless there in 32 tries.
However, Kenseth and his Toyota teammates approach Sunday’s STP 500 (1 p.m. ET, FS1, MRN, SiriusXM) feeling like it’s their race to lose — with statistical upturn to prove their confidence warranted.
“There wasn’t much I enjoyed about racing at Martinsville until I came to Joe Gibbs Racing. … I’ve learned a lot from my teammates and have gotten some pretty competitive runs in, so I’m looking forward to this weekend,” Kenseth said. “Martinsville is always one of my biggest challenges of the year, but it can be a lot of fun when our cars are running well.”
And their cars are running well. Three of Kenseth’s Joe Gibbs Racing teammates are ranked among the top five in the standings (Carl Edwards, third; Denny Hamlin, fourth; Kyle Busch, fifth). New Toyota driver Martin Truex Jr. is 11th and Kenseth is 15th.
Hamlin, the defending winner of this race, has proved himself a Martinsville master — winning three straight races in 2009-10 and boasting five of the prized grandfather clock winner’s trophies. He has an eye-popping 11 top-five finishes in 20 starts there.
But Hamlin is also the only Toyota driver with a win at NASCAR’s smallest track.
Busch, who missed this race last year recovering from leg injuries, has three top-five finishes in his last six races there and won the pole position in 2014.
Kenseth has finished among the top six in four of six starts there since transitioning to Toyota and equaled a career best runner-up showing in 2013, his first year with Gibbs. He had only three top-five finishes at Martinsville in his previous 26 starts.
Edwards, who has only one top-five result in 23 Martinsville races, finished 17th and 14th at Martinsville in his maiden Toyota season in 2015 but returns this year with Hamlin’s former Martinsville-winning crew chief Dave Rogers. Like Kenseth, Edwards has a renewed outlook for Martinsville thanks to his teammates.
“Dave Rogers (crew chief) and this No. 19 crew like a challenge — getting me to Victory Lane at Martinsville is going to be a good one,” Edwards said. “I have struggled there, but I truly have no reason not to run well at this race. It’s because I’ve got great cars and great teammates.
“Denny Hamlin‘s help last year really stepped up my performance there. We ran really well in the spring last year. That was really a turning point for me. We learned a lot and hopefully we can build on that.”
Furniture Row Racing driver Truex has never won at Martinsville, either, but his back-to-back sixth-place finishes in 2015 give him momentum for this weekend.
All in all, only six drivers on this weekend’s grid have won at Martinsville, and with the exception of the recently retired Jeff Gordon (who won in 2015 and 2013) and his Hendrick Motorsports Chevy teammate Jimmie Johnson (who won in 2012-13) it’s been a reasonably diverse group of winners.
Dale Earnhardt Jr., Kurt Busch, Ryan Newman, Tony Stewart and Kevin Harvick have all earned clocks in the last seven years.
RELATED: Practice 1 results
Brian Vickers topped the leaderboard in Friday’s opening NASCAR Sprint Cup Series practice at Martinsville Speedway, wheeling his No. 14 Stewart-Haas Racing Chevrolet at 97.182 mph. Vickers is temporarily filling in for the injured Tony Stewart.
Right behind him was reigning race winner Denny Hamlin in the No. 11 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota, clocking in at 97.108 mph.
Rounding out the top five were Joey Logano in the No. 22 Team Penske Ford (97.088 mph), Ryan Newman in the No. 31 Richard Childress Racing Chevrolet (97.053 mph) and Kyle Larson in the No. 42 Chip Ganassi Racing Chevrolet (97.023 mph).
Series points leader Kevin Harvick was 17th-fastest with a speed of 96.381 mph in the No. 4 Stewart-Haas Racing Chevrolet.
With rain in the forecast, many drivers began — rather than ended — practice in qualifying trim. If today’s qualifying session were to get rained out, the starting lineup would be set by practice times.
Trevor Bayne spun and smacked the wall with less than a minute remaining in the 80-minute session and sustained significant damage to the No. 6 Roush Fenway Racing Ford. He will resort to a backup car.
“In qualifying trim I thought our car drove good, it handled good, but I was really lagging in the braking zones,” Bayne said. “We were giving up two to three-tenths into both corners and I tried to just push the braking zone a little bit more and it started wheel-hopping really bad. There was nothing I could do about it. Once it started bouncing I tried to save it and once it got backwards stood in the gas and it just backed in.
“The back-up car will be good. I hate that we worked on that one in race trim and I tore it up, but I just feel really bad about it. I think this might be the first one I’ve got to for a back-up in practice, but they’ll get it ready for qualifying.”
The Sprint Cup Series returns to the track at 4:15 p.m. ET for Coors Light Pole Qualifying (FS1).
Practice 3 | Results
Cole Custer topped the leaderboard in Friday’s final NASCAR Camping World Truck Series practice at Martinsville Speedway at 95.694 mph in the No. 00 JR Motorsports Chevrolet.
Right behind Custer was John Hunter Nemechek in the No. 8 NEMCO Motorsports Chevrolet at 95.511 mph.
Rounding out the top five on the leaderboard were Ben Rhodes in the No. 41 ThorSport Racing Toyota, Kyle Busch in the No. 18 Kyle Busch Motorsports Toyota and Spencer Gallagher in the No. 23 GMS Racing Chevrolet.
Series points leader Parker Kligerman was 17th-fastest with a speed of 93.599 mph in the No. 92 RBR Motorsports Ford.
The Camping World Truck Series returns to the track Saturday at 11:15 a.m. ET for Keystone Light Pole Qualifying (FS1).
Practice 2 | Results
Ben Rhodes topped the leaderboard in Friday’s second NASCAR Camping World Truck Series practice at Martinsville Speedway at 95.448 mph in the No. 41 ThorSport Racing Toyota.
Right behind Rhodes was William Byron in the No. 9 Kyle Busch Motorsports Toyota at 95.367 mph.
Rounding out the top five on the leaderboard were Cole Custer in the No. 00 JR Motorsports Chevrolet, Tyler Reddick in the No. 29 Brad Keselowski Racing Ford and Spencer Gallagher in the No. 23 GMS Racing Chevrolet.
Series points leader Parker Kligerman was 15th-fastest with a speed of 94.115 mph in the No. 92 RBR Motorsports Ford.
The practice’s only caution came out when Natalie Decker spun her No. 14 Chevrolet.
Practice 1 | Results
William Byron topped the leaderboard in Friday’s first Camping World Truck Series practice at Martinsville Speedway at 95.309 mph in the No. 9 Kyle Busch Motorsports Toyota.
Right behind him was Timothy Peters in the No. 17 Red Horse Racing Toyota.
Rounding out the top five were Kyle Busch (No. 18 Kyle Busch Motorsports Toyota), Johnny Sauter (No. 21 GMS Racing Chevrolet) and Cole Custer (No. 00 JR Motorsports Chevrolet).
Series points leader Parker Kligerman was 21st-fastest with a speed of 92.619 mph in the No. 92 RBR Motorsports Ford.
Daniel Hemric (8th, 93.915 mph) and Brad Keselowski Racing teammate Tyler Reddick (14th, 93.451 mph) had trouble keeping their Fords going once on the track, but recovered after teams got a chance to work on them.
RELATED: Larson sidelined after hard hit at Auto Club
MARTINSVILLE, Va. — Kyle Larson says he feels no ill effects from a heavy crash two weeks ago at Auto Club Speedway, despite soreness in his upper body and legs that lingered for a handful of days after the impact.
Larson declared himself fit Friday in advance of Sunday’s STP 500 (1 p.m. ET, FS1, MRN, SiriusXM) at Martinsville Speedway, where he’s running double duty this weekend in the NASCAR Sprint Cup and Camping World Truck Series.
“Yeah, I feel fine,” said Larson, who opted out of an extracurricular sprint-car race in his home state of California last week to rest up and heal. “I was only sore for just a few days. I’m pretty surprised I healed up as quick as I did. I was definitely pretty sore right after it and the next day, but then I got a lot better. Went and saw a chiropractor and after that, I was pretty good.”
Missing Martinsville this weekend wasn’t a serious concern for Larson, but last year told a different story. The Chip Ganassi Racing driver fainted as he wrapped up a Saturday afternoon autograph session last March, then sat out the historic track’s spring event the next day as a precaution, watching from a hospital bed as fill-in driver Regan Smith wheeled his No. 42 Chevrolet.
“I remember, I got through the whole thing and right at the end, I was just talking to a fan and kind of just got light-headed and passed out,” Larson said. “It was pretty weird, but it took me a little bit afterward to be able to remember the time from when I passed out to when I got to the care center.”
Further evaluation, including a battery of tests from a Charlotte-area neurologist, pointed toward dehydration as the cause of Larson’s fainting spell. But it also raised the issue of driver health and pre-race medical certification for NASCAR’s participants.
That matter came under further scrutiny this week with Dale Earnhardt Jr.’s announcement that he would donate his brain for medical research of sports trauma upon his passing. Larson welcomed the decision, saying the impact of helping the study of brain injuries could have a reach far beyond the world of motor sports.
“Any extra data you can get is great for us, great for the sport,” Larson said. “We wreck a few times a year, we’re not getting hit in the head as much as football players, but concussions still happen in our form of racing. For him to donate his brain hopefully may help and make every sport better.”
Larson has more on his plate schedule-wise this weekend, joining GMS Racing to make his first career Truck Series start at the .526-mile bullring. But Larson said the decision to double-dip wasn’t completely designed to make up for lost time last year.
“I think it’s more so just because I’ve run here, this is my third year now and I still feel like this is probably the track where I run the worst at,” said Larson, who has fared no better than a 19th-place finish in four Sprint Cup tries here. He’ll start 17th in Sunday’s 500-lapper.
“So to just be able to get more laps, I think helps a lot. So far today, I feel like it’s helped. I was able to practice the truck before Cup practice, which helps get your rhythm. Hopefully it helps keep my rhythm before qualifying because normally you have such a big break before qualifying. In the race (Saturday), it’ll just help my rhythm and help me understand how to pass better.”