Posted on by Staff Report

RELATED: Practice 1 results

 

Martin Truex Jr. rose to the top of an ever-changing leaderboard Thursday to lead the opening NASCAR Sprint Cup Series practice at Texas Motor Speedway.

Truex, the Daytona 500 runner-up, powered to a best lap of 192.892 mph around the 1.5-mile track in the Furniture Row Racing No. 78 Toyota. His lap was significantly slower than the track qualifying record of 200.111 mph set by Tony Stewart in October 2014.

“We were off a little bit at the start and got better each run and on our last run, felt really good about it,” Truex said. “It’s been a while since I’ve had a pole. I’ve had a few poles here at Texas and we’re going to be going for another tomorrow. I feel like we have a good shot at it.”

Brad Keselowski was second-fastest at 192.164 mph in the Team Penske No. 2 Ford in preparation 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. He was just three thousandths of a second faster than Penske teammate Joey Logano, who posted the third-fastest lap of 192.143 mph in the No. 22 Ford.

Austin Dillon clocked the fourth-fastest lap (191.612 mph) in the Richard Childress Racing No. 3 Chevrolet. Brian Vickers, making his fifth start of the season in place of the injured Stewart, was fifth-fastest at 191.578 mph in the Stewart-Haas Racing No. 14 Chevrolet.

Jimmie Johnson, winner of three straight Texas races and five of the last seven at the Fort Worth track, was sixth-fastest in the 85-minute session at 191.360 mph in the Hendrick Motorsports No. 48 Chevrolet.

Defending Sprint Cup champion Kyle Busch, last weekend’s winner at Martinsville, was 28th-fastest in the Joe Gibbs Racing No. 18 Toyota.

Coors Light Pole Qualifying is scheduled Friday at 2:45 p.m. ET, with final practice set for 6:30 p.m. ET.

Posted on by Staff Report

RELATED: Practice 1 results | Final practice results


Erik Jones made a clean sweep of Thursday’s NASCAR XFINITY Series practices, pushing atop the leaderboard in the final session at Texas Motor Speedway.



Jones, driving the Joe Gibbs Racing No. 20 Toyota, blazed to a speed of 183.830 mph in final prep for Friday night’s O’Reilly Auto Parts 300 (8:30 p.m. ET, FS1, PRN, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio.) He netted his first XFINITY win last April at the 1.5-mile Fort Worth track.



Kyle Busch, the defending Sprint Cup champ and a three-time winner this season in the XFINITY Series, turned the second-fastest lap (182.297 mph) in JGR’s No. 18 Toyota.



Sprint Cup regular Kyle Larson was third-best at 181.922 mph in the Chip Ganassi Racing No. 42 Chevrolet. Ty Dillon (181.269) was fourth-fastest in the Richard Childress Racing No. 3 Chevy.



Daniel Suarez and rookie Brandon Jones tied for the fifth-best spot at 181.147 mph.



Coors Light Pole Qualifying is set for Friday at 4:45 p.m. ET, broadcast on FS1.



Jones shows muscle in early Texas session


Defending race winner Erik Jones topped the speed chart in opening NASCAR XFINITY Series practice Thursday at Texas Motor Speedway.



Jones registered a best lap of 186.968 mph in the Joe Gibbs Racing No. 20 Toyota in preparation for Friday night’s O’Reilly Auto Parts 300. The 1.5-mile track was the site of Jones’ first XFINITY win last April.



Ty Dillon claimed the second-fastest lap, driving the Richard Childress Racing No. 3 Chevrolet to a speed of 183.968 mph in the 85-minute session. He is a former winner at the 1.5-mile track, prevailing at Texas in the Camping World Truck Series in 2013.



Dillon was followed by RCR teammate Brandon Jones at 183.175 mph, third-fastest in the No. 33 Chevrolet. Jones’ JGR teammate Daniel Suarez was fourth-best at 182.865 mph in the No. 19 Toyota.



Brennan Poole and Jeb Burton tied for the fifth-fastest lap with identical speeds of 181.837 mph.



Sprint Cup champion Kyle Busch, winner of three of the last four XFINITY Series races, was ninth-fastest in another Gibbs-owned Toyota.

Posted on by Staff Report

JR Motorsports and Dale’s Pale Ale have extended their sponsorship arrangement according to the NASCAR XFINITY Series organization, a move that will include primary branding of the group’s No. 88 entry for three races in 2016-2017.


Terms of the multi-year agreement were not announced.


Regan Smith, who competed for JRM full-time from 2013-2015 and currently wheels the No. 7 Tommy Baldwin Racing ride in the Sprint Cup Series, will return to the JRM organization for the Aug. 19 XFINITY event at Bristol Motor Speedway, the first of three races when the No. 88 entry will feature Dale’s Pale Ale as primary sponsor.


Officials have not announced the two remaining events, or the driver or drivers, in which Dale’s Pale Ale will be featured.


The craft beer, a product of Oskar Blues Brewery, served as primary sponsor for one event with JRM last season.


Dale’s Pale Ale will also serve as an associate sponsor on the JRM No. 1 entry driver by Elliott Sadler for the remainder of the 2016 season.


Kelley Earnhardt Miller, JRM general manager, said the partnership with the craft brewery has been “fun and rewarding.”


“For us, there is nothing more fulfilling than renewing partners,” Earnhardt Miller said. “Dale’s Pale Ale has seen the value in sharing its product, and the craft beer revolution, with our many fans. We’re looking forward to building on that, both on and off the track.”


“We had a hell of a good time racing with JR Motorsports in 2015 and connecting with NASCAR fans over red, white and blue cans of Dale’s Pale Ale,” said Dale Katechis, founder of Oskar Blues.


“We like to buck convention and do things our way. We see a similar hard-working, hands-on, American-made attitude in JR Motorsports and NASCAR fans and we’re proud to be a multi-year sponsor of the iconic No. 88 Chevrolet.”


JRM fields three full-time entries in the XFINITY Series — the No. 1 of Sadler, the No. 7 with driver Justin Allgaier and the No. 88, which will feature several drivers sharing seat time throughout the season.

Posted on by RJ Kraft

RELATED: Gaughan talks strategy for Bristol heat races

 

FORT WORTH, Texas—Brendan Gaughan is aware of the talk that he might retire after the 2016 NASCAR XFINITY Series season. He even has that conversation every year.

 

“Every year, I almost retire,” Gaughan said at Texas Motor Speedway, site of Friday’s NASCAR XFINITY Series O’Reilly Auto Parts 300 (8:30 p.m. ET, FS1, PRN, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio).

 

“When I closed my team down in 2007 and the way it closed down was personally pretty difficult. I never thought I’d race again from there in NASCAR. We’ve been talking about that for years. What happens is, my father some days is — I think best way I can put it is what my grandfather used to say — trying to tell my father a secret is like telling the Las Vegas Sun. He likes to talk when he gets around reporters.”

 

Gaughan was referring to a story that ran in the Las Vegas Review-Journal last month during the NASCAR Sprint Cup and XFINITY Series weekend indicating that 2016 would be it for Gaughan. And while he considers it each year, he’s not ready to call it a career just yet.

 

“Every year he (his dad) and I talk about retirement,” Gaughan said. “Every year I talk about it, he talks about it, one of us does, one of us doesn’t. We always are saying it and discussing it. But it’s always been the same strategy in my eyes. If I can’t win races, I don’t want to be here.

 

“… As long as I can keep winning races and being up front and if we can make this Chase and keep competing for wins and championships, I think we will stay around as long as I can keep going.”

 

Gaughan, 40, has been around the sport a long time and bounced around a little bit before spending the past five seasons with Richard Childress Racing. In 2014, he captured his first two Nationwide (now XFINITY) Series victories. Through five races in 2016, Gaughan has three top 10s and is sixth in the point standings.

 

Part of what has helped Gaughan in recent seasons is an arrangement he worked out with Childress that allows him to spend most of his time at his Las Vegas home with his wife and two kids.

 

“A couple years ago, I was spending 18 and 20 days apart from my family pretty regularly and that was just making life very difficult. I’m lucky. I never felt that I should part from the team; I’ve always been a team guy. I played college sports (at Georgetown University). I live with my team, I’m at the shop everyday. I’ve done that my entire career since I owned my team. Luckily for me at RCR, there are seven guys on my race team that have been with me since 1999, 2000, 2002. They’ve been with me since I was in my early 20s. Life was getting difficult and they said ‘Go home.’

 

“… It’s been great and it’s actually what helped us win those couple races in the middle of 2014 and what made us run so good last year. My home life was much happier and in doing that, it made racing go better … I’m still doing the same stuff, I’m just not in the shop every day.”

 

In the summer, the family will head for their North Carolina house and Gaughan will spend more time at the shop. The veteran driver credits being able to have that freedom to those around him.

 

“When you have great people around you, you can get away with sometimes taking the next step in life.”

Posted on by RJ Kraft

RELATED: Full schedule for Texas | Standings going into Saturday’s race


FORT WORTH, Texas — Kevin Harvick doesn’t understand why people keep speculating that he is not going to stay with Stewart-Haas Racing as it makes a manufacturer switch to Ford for the 2017 season.


“As far as I know, I thought I had a team extension that had two more years on my contract anyway,” Harvick said at Samuel Beck Elementary School on Thursday.

“I don’t know what everybody is talking about because of the fact that I do have a relationship with SHR, the contracts that we are in, the situations that we’re in are already there. I just let everybody just keep talking about it just because there is really nothing to it.”


An SHR team spokesperson said the team does not discuss contract details.


“I feel like I’ve got the best organization that I could possibly fit with,” Harvick said. “I think I got the best crew chief in the garage. Got everything that we spent years lining up. It would seem silly trying to do something different. Nothing’s changed.”


Those words echo what Harvick, who has driven a Chevrolet his entire Cup career, has been saying since the news of SHR’s move from Chevrolet to Ford was announced in late February.

Harvick took to Twitter on Thursday night to reiterate that he plans to drive the No. 4 car for a long time, a message that the official SHR account retweeted.


At SHR, Harvick and crew chief Rodney Childers have teamed to win the 2014 championship and nine wins in 78 starts together entering Saturday night’s NASCAR Sprint Cup Series Duck Commander 500 (7:30 p.m. ET, FOX, PRN, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio) at Texas Motor Speedway. Harvick comes into the race as the points leader with a win, three top fives and five top 10s in the books thus far. Childers inked a multi-year extension to remain at SHR in June of 2015.


On top of that, Harvick’s words about three-time champion, friend and SHR co-owner Tony Stewart‘s involvement while sidelined with a back injury sounds like a driver who is in no hurry to leave.


“I think we are getting a glance into the future,” Harvick said. “I think as you see Tony so engaged and so a part of what we are doing, so much around the cars and people and in tune with what’s going on. Very encouraging for all of us to see what we are going to be looking at down the road as far what he wants to do and how he is going to fit in with the communication. That’s been exciting for me.”

Harvick was at the Trophy Club, Texas school to speak to students on Thursday morning as the special guest for a full assembly where he presented fourth-grader Jenna Johnson with a scale replica die-cast of a winning paint scheme she drew for Lionel Racing’s “Design A Die-cast” competition among 11 schools and 6,500 students competing in Texas Motor Speedway‘s Speeding To Read program. The 2014 champion also took student questions and officiated a tricycle race.

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Bristol Motor Speedway announced on Wednesday that Peyton Manning will act as an Honorary Race Official and accompany fellow Nationwide spokesperson Dale Earnhardt Jr. through driver introductions and sit atop the No. 88 pit box during the Sprint Cup Series Food City 500 (April 17, 1 p.m. ET, FOX).

 

This will be Manning’s first NASCAR experience, courtesy of Nationwide.

 

“I’m thrilled to get a chance to watch Dale compete at Bristol Motor Speedway,” said the recently retired Manning. “I want to thank Nationwide for bringing me to one of the great NASCAR tracks to watch what I’m sure will be an exciting race in front of some of the most passionate fans in the sport.”

 

Manning is a beloved public figure in Tennessee, known not only for his NFL career — in which he won a Super Bowl title with Denver in February — but also attended the University of Tennessee in Knoxville. At UT, Manning finished his career holding 42 NCAA, SEC and Tennessee records. He won the Maxwell Award as the nation’s most outstanding player, the Davey O’Brien National Quarterback Award, the Johnny Unitas Golden Arm Award and Player of the Year honors his senior season, securing his All-American status in 1997.

 

“It’s pretty awesome that Peyton Manning is coming out to Bristol. I think he’s going to enjoy watching the race there because it’s such an amazing race track,” Earnhardt Jr. said. “It’s awesome to have a legend like him coming to participate and enjoy our sport. He’s going to enjoy his experience, I’m sure, and we’re excited to have him.”

 

Posted on by Nascar

The No. 18 Joe Gibbs Racing team with driver Kyle Busch was the only NASCAR Sprint Cup Series team issued a written warning following Sunday’s STP 500 at Martinsville (Va.) Speedway.

The team failed the Laser Inspection Station (LIS) twice during pre-race inspection on Sunday. Teams requiring three or more passes before being cleared by inspectors receive a warning from NASCAR.

Busch won the race, the sixth stop on this year’s 36-race schedule, leading 352 of the 500 laps contested.

It is the first written warning for the No. 18 team this season.

In the Camping World Truck Series, which also competed at Martinsville this past weekend, the No. 22 AM Racing entry of driver Austin Wayne Self received a warning for truck trailing arms that did not meet NASCAR specifications. The infraction was discovered during opening-day inspection on Thursday.

Both penalties were announced Wednesday by NASCAR.

Self failed to qualify for the Truck Series race, but competed in the No. 44 of Tommy Joe Martins after Martins damaged his primary entry in qualifying and the team did not have a back-up for the race.

Failing inspection twice, either pre-qualifying or pre-race, results in a written warning. A third failure will also result in the loss of 15 minutes of practice time.

Teams receiving four warnings forfeit the opportunity to select a pit stall, either for the event in question if selection hasn’t taken place or at the next event if pit stall selection has been completed.

Posted on by Nascar

RELATED: Kenseth honors Steve Byrnes’ family a year later

 

CHARLOTTE, N.C. — Matt Kenseth spent the majority of his most recent Sunday afternoon running in the top five at Martinsville Speedway, but when the STP 500 came down to a final 11-lap dash, the Joe Gibbs Racing driver began dropping like a stone through the field.

 

Hoping to battle teammate Kyle Busch for the victory, Kenseth instead found himself searching for any opening that would allow him to drop down to the inside and stop the free fall.

 

By the time Busch took the checkered flag, Kenseth had plummeted to 15th.

 

It was another missed opportunity for the 2003 NASCAR Sprint Cup Series champion, whose No. 20 Toyota has had plenty of speed but not a lot of good fortune in 2016.

 

“I thought when eight cars stayed out, the way my car handled and the way it would restart … and being on warm tires and all (that) stuff, I knew that it probably wasn’t going to be good,” Kenseth said Tuesday during an appearance at the NASCAR Hall of Fame. “But I didn’t think it would be that bad.

 

“I never thought I would get shuffled to 15th. I thought I would have been able to somewhere find a gap, pop in there fourth or fifth or something like that and hopefully make a position or two up. I knew that my chances for a win were greatly diminished, but I didn’t think that I would fall back that far.”

 

Busch and JGR teammate Denny Hamlin each now have wins (Hamlin scored in the season-opening Daytona 500). Teammate Carl Edwards posted a solid sixth-place finish on Sunday and sits fourth, just behind Busch, in the points standings after six of 36 races.

 

Kenseth is 14th in points but showing no signs of concern as the series prepares to head to Texas Motor Speedway this week for Saturday night’s Duck Commander 500.

 

It’s a long season and there are a lot of laps to be run between now and September, when the field for this year’s 16-team Chase field will be set.

 

His team’s results thus far have been disappointing, “but we’ve run pretty good,” Kenseth said. “We were in contention to win a couple of races, neither of them worked out. We had fast enough cars, if all the stars had aligned maybe even won a couple more.

 

“If you run good enough, over time the law of averages is going to work out and you’re going to win some races and get some (good) finishes. It’s just tough to go through when you’re not getting the finishes.

 

“I’d much rather run the way we’re running and perform the way we’re performing and not get the finishes than be a 15th-place car and luck into a ninth-place finish or something like that.”

 

Kenseth, 44, has the best average finishing position among active drivers at TMS (8.2) and only six-time series champion Jimmie Johnson has a better driver rating. But his last two starts on the 1.5-mile track haven’t been particularly memorable with finishes outside the top 20. Kenseth missed last year’s Chase race at Texas while serving a two-race suspension.

 

Two of his 36 career victories in the series came at Texas — both earned while he still was competing for Roush Fenway Racing.

 

“I don’t see anybody hanging their heads around (the team’s shop),” Kenseth said. “I don’t think we need a group intervention. … We’re all grown-ups, been doing it for a long time. I think Jason (Ratcliff, crew chief) understands, I understand, I think my crew guys understand. …

 

“It’s easy to dwell on the negatives and be like, ‘Man we were in the process of making a pass for the lead and hopefully win the race and a caution came out and we finished 15th.’ Is that disappointing? Yeah it’s disappointing. But you’ve got to keep it all in perspective.

 

“You’re going to have days where things go right, as well. Like I said, it all starts with performance. … Sometimes it’s painful, but if you’re patient enough you’re going to end up getting the results eventually.”

Posted on by Staff Report

NASHVILLE, Tenn. — Each week millions of NASCAR fans — a massive television and digital audience — tune in to watch NASCAR Sprint Cup Series events, and today CMT announced an unprecedented six-hour, three-night special event dedicated to the fearless men who took stock car racing out of the backwoods and into the national spotlight with “NASCAR: The Rise of American Speed,” premiering Sunday May 8, May 15 and May 22 at 10 p.m. ET/PT.

From Stephen David Entertainment, the Emmy Award-winning company behind the miniseries “The Men Who Built America,” “Gold Fever” and “The World Wars,” the special event is not only a unique look into NASCAR’s legendary beginnings, but in the spirit of racing, it is a no-holds-barred account of the sport’s early pioneers and ascension to national prominence. The film features archival footage, re-enactments and interviews with NASCAR personalities and experts including Dale Earnhardt Jr., Jeff Gordon, Kevin Harvick, Matt Kenseth, Brad Keselowski, Kyle Larson, Joey Logano, Richard Petty, Tony Stewart and Darrell Waltrip.

From bootleggers settling their differences through racing to a singular vision from “Big Bill” France that launched an empire, NASCAR has always been and continues to be a family affair with a long history of “racing royalty” to be shared and passed along. Time and again, fathers, sons, brothers, uncles and nephews would race together — Ray Parks, Junior Johnson, Richard Petty, Dale Earnhardt and more — they were family best friends, rivals and heroes.

In “NASCAR: The Rise of American Speed,” these drivers, mechanics and owners come to life through character-driven scenes that unfold chronologically across the three nights, starting with NASCAR’s founding fathers and concluding with racing’s great modernizers and current superstars of the track.

“Our longstanding and unwavering connection with NASCAR and its fans makes CMT the perfect home to bring the high-octane true story of NASCAR to life,” said Jayson Dinsmore, executive vice president of development for CMT. “This first-of-its-kind television event will take viewers deep inside the enthralling and thrilling rise of an American premiere sports and relentless obsession.”

“NASCAR has one of the most exhilarating and inspiring origin stories in all of sports,” said Zane Stoddard, NASCAR vice president of entertainment marketing and content development. “Our collaborative relationship with CMT and Stephen’s unique style of production will bring it to life in a way our fans haven’t experienced before.”

It’s the story about how a generation of Southern bootleggers and gangsters pursued their version of the American dream and created an industry that defined them. Despite a destitute South, they became wildly rich, while in the process forming the nation’s greatest racing league through their persistence, sweat and moonshine.

The success of NASCAR surpassed even their wildest dreams and inspired a new generation of Southern icons. But in the race to always go bigger and faster, sometimes there were casualties along the way. “NASCAR: The Rise of American Speed” is a tale of fearless men who didn’t just live their lives, they raced them to the finish.