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Team Penske announced a multi-year partnership extension with Autotrader on Thursday. A website that allows consumers to shop for cars online, Autotrader will adorn both the Nos. 2 and 22 Sprint Cup Series cars of Brad Keselowski and Joey Logano, respectively.

“We are fortunate to expand our relationship with Autotrader beginning in 2016,” team owner Roger Penske said in a release. “The entire Autotrader team has embraced motorsports and the marketing opportunities that racing brings over the last couple of years and we are excited that they view Team Penske as a long-term partner. As Penske Automotive Group continues to work with Autotrader to promote our vehicles, we look forward to bringing Autotrader to Victory Lane with our cars and help them build their brand along the way.”

Keselowski will feature the brand for the first time in his career on his No. 2 at Atlanta Motor Speedway on Feb. 28 and Bristol Motor Speedway on Aug. 20, while Logano will run an Autotrader scheme on April 17 at Bristol and a co-branded No. 22 with Autotrader/Shell-Pennzoil at Kentucky Speedway on July 9. The brand — which has sponsored Team Penske since 2014 — will also serve as an associate sponsor throughout the 2016 season.

Both Keselowski and Logano will participate in the season-opening Sprint Unlimited non-points race, which takes place Feb. 13 at Daytona International Speedway.

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RELATED: Who’s on the move for 2016?

HScott Motorsports announced Thursday that it will relocate its headquarters to Mooresville, North Carolina, leaving its former South Carolina home in Spartanburg. The team also revealed that new driver Clint Bowyer will have a familiar car number for 2016.
 
Bowyer, who will make a one-year stop with HScott before shifting to replace owner/driver Tony Stewart at Stewart-Haas Racing, will drive the No. 15 Chevrolet this year in the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series. It’s a transposition for HScott, which inherited the No. 51 when it purchased the team from James Finch in 2013.
 
Bowyer used the No. 15 the last four seasons, his entire tenure with Michael Waltrip Racing, which folded at the end of the 2015 campaign.
 
HScott — which also fields a Sprint Cup entry with driver Michael Annett — will set up shop at the former TriStar Motorsports location, a nearly 50,000-square-foot building in Mooresville. TriStar, a longtime multicar team in the NASCAR XFINITY Series, lists a new address on its website in Statesville, North Carolina, approximately 20 miles north of its former headquarters.

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Sprint Cup Series champion Kyle Busch is set to get back behind the wheel of a race car at the end of this month, Kyle Busch Motorsports announced Wednesday.


Busch, who underwent offseason surgery in mid-December to remove two metal plates in his left foot and a metal rod and screws in his right leg, will race in the 200-lap ARCA/CRA Super Series Late Model event scheduled as part of SpeedFest 2016 on Sunday, Jan. 31 at Crisp Motorsports Park in Cordele, Georgia. Busch, a three-time SpeedFest winner, will pilot KBM’s No. 51 Camry with primary sponsorship from Rheem Heating and Cooling and major associate sponsorship from JEGS.com.


“I’ve always enjoyed racing at SpeedFest and I’m looking forward to the opportunity to go back this year thanks to the support from Rheem Heating and Cooling and JEGS.com,” Busch said in a team release. “Everything went well with my latest surgery and I feel really good. Without an opportunity to get in a Sprint Cup Series car before we get to Daytona, running this race will be a good tune-up prior to Speedweeks.”


The plates, rod and screws had helped to stabilize his foot and leg following injuries suffered in an accident last February at Daytona International Speedway. He is expected to be fully recovered in time for the start of the 2016 NASCAR season.

Posted on by Zack Albert

A 2015 rewind and a 2016 preview for the top five finishers last season in the NASCAR XFINITY and Camping World Truck Series. Today: Tyler Reddick, the second-place finisher in the truck series standings.

Team: Brad Keselowski Racing No. 19 Ford (2015); Brad Keselowski Racing No. 29 Ford (2016)

Wins: 2 (Daytona, Dover)

Strides: Reddick’s breakout season featured not only a breakthrough into Victory Lane — twice — but remarkable consistency. His tally of 19 top-10 finishes in 23 races left him just 15 points behind champion Erik Jones at year’s end.

Setbacks: “Unfortunately, I found ways to lose that third win multiple times,” Reddick said of his several brushes with the checkered flag without cashing in during the latter stages of 2015.

Quoteworthy: “Obviously, we’d set our goals to win the championship and we knew that was going to be difficult and we were going to have to work very hard. We did work very hard, but unfortunately for our team, we fell just short of that, but to some good company and some tough competition. So we know where we’ve got to get better, how we’ve got to get better and we will do this during the offseason.”

What’s next: Reddick returns for truck owner Brad Keselowski, switching teams within the organization but while keeping his core crew and other personnel intact. He also gains a teammate in Daniel Hemric, who moves over from NTS Motorsports.

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RELATED: Top story lines for 2016

 

The 2016 NASCAR Sprint Cup Series Sunoco Rookie of the Year competition will be exciting.

 

It features two NASCAR XFINITY Series champions in Chase Elliott and Chris Buescher, proven talent in Ryan Blaney and Brian Scott, and a man with a legendary last name: Jeffrey Earnhardt.

 

NASCAR.com’s Kathy Sheldon and Jessica Ruffin make their picks for which driver will rise above the other yellow-stripers in his first full-time Sprint Cup Series season.

 

SHELDON: Ryan Blaney‘s ready to roll as Wood Brothers Racing gets back to a full-time Sprint Cup schedule in 2016. Admittedly, I’m a bit biased in that the Wood Brothers’ status as ground-breakers, legends, gentlemen competitors and sort of lone wolves in the era of mega teams endear them to me. (I voted for Glen Wood as the best driver ever of the No. 16 car, for instance.)

 

But Blaney’s reputation stands on its own, too. He brought the famed No. 21 car home in fourth place in the 2015 spring Sprint Cup race at Talladega — a place that rattles the teeth of even seasoned veterans like Jeff Gordon. He had another top 10 in the Sprint Cup fall race at Kansas, and who knows how much better his premier series performance would have been in 2015 had he not been denied the chance to race his way into several events because rain canceled qualifying?

 

RUFFIN: This year’s rookie class is one of the best we’ve seen in years. And there’s no doubt in my mind that Blaney will showcase his talent again this year on the race track — he may even nab a couple wins.

 

But I’ve got one rookie in my mind who’s also driving a legendary car number: Chase Elliott, who will be piloting the No. 24 Chevrolet for his first full-time season in the Sprint Cup Series. Elliott may only be 20 years old, but he’s got the voices of veterans in his head. From his famous father Bill Elliott to seasoned crew chief Alan Gustafson to the former No. 24 wheelman himself Jeff Gordon, Elliott has no shortage of assistance in his budding career. The stakes are high for the young driver and the Hendrick Motorsports shop employees won’t let him onto the track without the proper tools to succeed. After all, they do know how to win.

 

SHELDON: No question, this will be a heated battle, Jessica. Elliott certainly is set up for success. But I believe Blaney’s Sprint Cup experience will pay dividends in 2016.

 

Take away four engine failures and a crash in his 16 Sprint Cup starts last season, and Blaney’s average finish is 17.8 — nothing to sneeze at. Given the team’s technical alliance with Team Penske, I have no doubt equipment problems will be minimized. And none other than Edsel Ford II is pushing for this team to succeed.

 

Blaney will also be aided by crew chief Jeremy Bullins, who is no stranger to success from his three-year run as the crew chief for Team Penske‘s XFINITY Series entry (from 2012-14). The combined power of Ford, Penske and Wood Brothers can compete with a Hendrick Motorsports superstar on the rise. It’s pretty exciting to think we’re witnessing the birth of the next generation of Sprint Cup heavyweights.

 

RUFFIN: With all the young talent arriving into the series, this truly is an exciting time in the sport. It will be fun to watch the young guns of NASCAR earn their stripes this season.

The Wood Brothers have certainly put together a force to be reckoned with this season — between Blaney’s raw talent, Sprint Cup experience and all-star partners on the race track with Brad Keselowski and Joey Logano, Elliott will have quite the competition this season both for the Sunoco Rookie of the Year title and for Victory Lane.


But Elliott’s a triple-threat, too — groomed to be a racer from his childhood and already the owner of the 2014 XFINITY Series championship title, the young driver received a small taste of Sprint Cup competition during his five starts in 2015 in the No. 25 Hendrick Motorsports ride. Apart from his crash at Darlington — a track christened “The Track Too Tough to Tame” for a good reason — and 38th-place result at tricky Martinsville, Elliott’s trio of top-20 results at Richmond, Charlotte and Indianapolis show that he can hang with the big boys of NASCAR. And Dale Earnhardt Jr., Jimmie Johnson and Kasey Kahne will certainly be there to help their newest teammate out during any growing pains.

 

SHELDON: What makes this argument so fun is Elliott and Blaney are such good friends. That pair alone is enough reason to use Periscope — bowling video gold. Maybe we should really be debating who will win the most championships in his long, glorious Sprint Cup career?

RUFFIN: I absolutely agree, Kathy. And let’s not forget reigning XFINITY Series champion Chris Buescher — his success last season proved that he could throw a wrench into the Rookie of the Year contest this year. Each of these drivers is primed for an extraordinary career — no matter who comes out on top, we’re likely to witness history in the making.

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RELATED: Learn more about the NASCAR Hall of Fame

In a different era, in which stock cars driven to and past their limits didn’t break with frequency, there’s no telling how many races or championships Bobby Isaac might have won.

Isaac, the 1970 NASCAR premier series champion, won 37 of his 309 starts. But he was a DNF — did not finish — 129 times.

His 49 poles rank 10th all-time, with 19 — a still-standing, single-season mark — coming in 1969. Only 38 drivers have won 19 or more poles in a career.

Nobody ever had to tell Isaac to “stand on it.”

“Bobby was a never-give-up kind of guy,” said Buddy Parrott, a member of Isaac’s No. 71 K&K Insurance Dodge crew and a 49-time winner as a premier series crew chief for NASCAR Hall of Famers Richard Petty, Rusty Wallace and Darrell Waltrip among others. “Bobby had no fear.”

Isaac’s accomplishments are such that he’ll join the NASCAR Hall of Fame’s Class of 2016 along with Jerry Cook, Terry Labonte, O. Bruton Smith and Curtis Turner. Their induction will take place Jan. 22 in Charlotte, N.C. The ceremonies will be broadcast live at 8 p.m. ET by NBCSN.

Isaac, born on a farm near Catawba, North Carolina in 1932, saw his first stock car race at nearby Hickory (N.C.) Motor Speedway and at age 17 bought a 1937 Ford and put roll bars in it. He flipped the car on the race’s second lap but that didn’t dampen his desire.

Working at a variety of low-paying jobs, Isaac began racing the NASCAR late model sportsman circuit. He survived but sometimes just barely.

“One time I drove 200 miles to drive a fellow’s modified car with $4 in my pocket,” he once said. “I figured that I’d have enough to buy gas and get down there and eat a hot dog before the race. The gas was $3 but I had to put two quarts of oil in my car so I was broke when I left town. When the feature started my stomach was not only growling but I didn’t have enough gas to get back home.

“I drove that car as hard as I could and won. I had to win.”

Isaac, described by some as “mercurial,” went sportsman racing fulltime in 1958, driving for Ralph Earnhardt. He won 28 feature events, competing against the likes of NASCAR Hall of Famers Ned Jarrett and David Pearson.

Isaac, at age 28, competed in his first premier series event in 1961. Driving a Dodge for Ray Nichels, he won his first race in 1964 — a 50-lap Daytona 500 qualifier in which he edged Jimmy Pardue in a photo finish after Richard Petty ran out of fuel.

With factory-supported teams jumping in and out of the sport in the mid-1960s, Isaac went from top ride to no seat at all. His fortunes changed in 1968 when he was hired by Indiana insurance magnate Nord Krauskopf and paired with legendary crew chief Harry Hyde, whose larger than life persona was captured as Harry Hogg in the film “Days of Thunder.”

Over the course of five seasons, 1968 to 1972, the trio’s “Poppy Red” Dodges won 36 times — 17 alone in 1969 when Isaac won 17 times in 50 starts. Bedeviled by 19 failures to finish, Isaac wound up sixth in the championship standings.

Isaac “only” won 11 times in his championship season, but the DNFs were reduced to just nine.

The K&K team is remembered best for its winged Dodge Charger Daytona, the needle-nosed, high rear-wing version of the standard Charger. Remarkably, Isaac visited Victory Lane only once in that model, at Texas World Speedway in 1969, his 20th career win and first on a superspeedway.

“We won a lot of short-races, but we couldn’t pull it all together on the big tracks until the last race of the season,” said Isaac in Greg Fielden’s book “NASCAR: The Complete History.” “Winning the championship gave me personal satisfaction, but I’d rank it second to the Texas win.

“The way I look at it, it took me seven years to win a superspeedway race and only three years to win the championship.”

In September 1971 the team took its winged car to the Bonneville Salt Flats in western Utah where Isaac set 28 speed records, including a 217.368 mph “flying kilometer” mark. “That car weighed 3,900 pounds and it had 650 horses in the motor,” Hyde told Car and Driver’s Bob Zeller in May 2002. “And when Bobby set it sideways, it looked like a hydroplane on water. He came by at 200 mph broadside with a big rooster tail of salt comin’ out the back.”

Driving part-time schedules for a number of owners, Isaac ran his last premier series race in 1976. He returned to Hickory Motor Speedway the following year where, on Aug. 14, he pulled out of a sportsman race feeling ill and was taken to a local hospital where he succumbed to heart failure at age 45.

Isaac was inducted into the National Motorsports Hall of Fame in 1979 and the International Motorsports Hall of Fame in 1996. In 1998, NASCAR honored him as one of its 50 Greatest Drivers of all time.

Tickets are available for the NASCAR Hall of Fame Induction Dinner and Ceremony (limited quantities available). Individual ticket and ticket packages are available at ticketmaster.com, the NASCAR Hall of Fame Box Office or by calling 800.745.3000.

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Ford teams competing in NASCAR’s Sprint Cup Series will be working with a newly designed Fusion body in 2016, but don’t expect them to toss away last year’s notes just yet.



“I think a lot of what we learned last year is still relevant, even with the body change,” Todd Gordon, crew chief for driver Joey Logano and the No. 22 Team Penske entry, told NASCAR.com Wednesday. “NASCAR keeps us in a pretty tight tolerance of where the balance of the cars are.



“We went down the common template, COT car (path) for awhile … where it was just a decal difference between the cars. (NASCAR) gave the manufacturers back the ability to identify their cars, which I think is great for our sport. But even with that, as it goes through the process, the manufacturer has to submit it, it’s wind tunnel tested and they look for similar aero attributes out of all the cars.



“This change, I think, is a slight improvement for us. They’ve looked at what they could do to build more brand awareness of the upcoming Fusion model and anytime you get a new platform to work on there are new areas to explore. … But the total as far as a balance standpoint, the cars are very, very similar, body spec to body spec (from ’15 to ’16).”



Ford officials unveiled the new 2017 Fusion production car as well as the ’16 NASCAR entry Jan. 11 during the North American International Auto Show (NAIAS) in Detroit.



Gordon said the majority of the parts provided to race teams by Ford are new for ’16 as the automaker mirrored the on-track piece with the production version. “Just trying to make things a little bit better and create a car that has more brand identity to the upcoming model,” he said.



“Obviously there are NASCAR surfaces that you have to stay within and work around.”



Much of what will initially be learned about the car and how it should perform on the track will be done through the use of off-track tools — simulation programs, CFD and wind tunnel development. Validation will come in the wind tunnel and eventually on the track.



“Ford has done some of that to try and understand some of the sensitivities,” he said, “and what we need to be aware of.”



Gordon made the trip to Las Vegas Motor Speedway this week where teammate Brad Keselowski is one of four drivers taking part in a two-day Goodyear tire test. Ford, Chevrolet and Toyota teams testing are shaking down the 2016 rules package that will be used at tracks other than superspeedways this season, in addition to providing Goodyear officials with tire data.



“You get to see it, hear it, feel it, be a part of it and ask questions as you want,” Gordon said. “And you get the 100 percent rundown instead of the CliffsNotes version when you get back. I think when you can do that, it’s always good to do it. It’s tough to do it mid-season because it’s such a requirement on time.”



As for the rules package, Gordon said he agrees with NASCAR’s continued lower downforce direction and believes it will be good for the entire sport. It was clearly beneficial for the No. 22 team as Logano posted career bests in wins (6), top fives (22), top 10s (28) and poles (6) this past season.



At Kentucky and Darlington, where a similar rules package was first used, Logano led laps and posted top-five finishes.



“The direction I don’t think is bad for us; I think it lends to some of the things we focus on and I think it lends to our driver’s talent,” Gordon said. “As we reduce downforce … you’re going to create more of a premium on driver talent, driver ability and team ability to refine the small pieces. It seems like as we go forward with this package, as we go down that road, those are the things that make the differences.”

Posted on by Holly Cain

A 2015 rewind and a 2016 preview for the top five finishers last season in the NASCAR XFINITY and Camping World Truck Series. Today: Ty Dillon, the third-place finisher in the XFINITY Series standings.
 
Team: Richard Childress Racing No. 3 Chevrolet
 
Wins: 0
 
Strides: Dillon, 23, may not have found his way to the XFINITY Series Victory Lane last season, but his third-place finish in the championship standings was a career best. He opened the season with back-to-back third-place showings and it wasn’t until the series’ second trip to Daytona International Speedway last summer that he recorded a finish worse than 14th. That Daytona race and the fall race at Dover marked the only times the rising star finished lower than 15th on the season earning a legitimate — if winless — run toward the title.
 
Setbacks: Three top-five finishes in the first seven races — and 12 on the year — would normally predicate a championship run, but Dillon met his match in series runner-up Chase Elliott and eventual champ Chris Buescher, who won races and raised the title bar.
 
Quoteworthy: “I got better as a driver, matured and grew up a lot. We had quite a few opportunities to win races but it wasn’t in the cards this year. We fought hard all year despite a couple races that set us back and took us far out of contention. I was proud of our perseverance. As a driver it makes you stronger and better able to challenge for a championship.”
 
What’s next: There has been a lot of talk about Dillon moving up to the Cup level for 2016 and although he is expected to make Cup starts, Dillon will be challenging again for the XFINITY Series title. The only two drivers to better him for last year’s trophy — Buescher and Elliott — have moved on to the Cup ranks making him very much the contender to beat this season in XFINITY.

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RELATED: Buy tickets for Pocono races

Pocono Raceway announced Wednesday that it has added supplementary SAFER Barriers and extended the pit wall.

 

The Pennsylvania track enlarged the existing SAFER Barrier by 6,600 feet and extended pit wall by 100 feet as part of a series of enhancements. Officials are also expected to cover all outside walls and install an additional 5,100 feet of SAFER Barrier before the 2017 season.

 

“We are always looking to make our track safer for drivers, teams and fans and these enhancements do just that,” Track President and CEO Brandon Igdalsky said in a release. “As cars and technology change and evolve, so do tracks. We are adapting to ensure Pocono Raceway is as safe as possible. We will continue to monitor races and technology and aggressively add safety measures where appropriate.”


Pocono Raceway is the most recent of several tracks that have increased their SAFER Barrier parameters in the past year. The 2.5-mile track will play host to seven NASCAR events this season in all three major series, with the XFINITY Series making a trip to the Tricky Triangle for the first time in the track’s history.

RELATED: Purchase Pocono tickets | Full 2016 schedule