Is Chase setting up for another Harvick title?

Posted on November 7, 2015 by Reid Spencer

FORT WORTH, Texas — Kevin Harvick has never won a NASCAR Sprint Cup Series race at Texas Motor Speedway.

In 25 starts at the 1.5-mile track, the reigning series champion has scored just five top-five finishes.

But the smart money says Harvick is going to be a player in Sunday’s AAA Texas 500 (2 p.m. ET, NBC, PRN, SiriusXM), and the performance of the No. 4 Stewart-Haas Racing Chevrolet in Friday’s knockout qualifying session underscores that assertion.

True, Harvick was 15th fastest in the first round of time trials, posting a lap at 196.178 mph, more than two miles an hour slower than the 198.282 mph recorded by session leader Brad Keselowski.

In the second round, Harvick ran 196.542 mph, good enough for third fastest as other drivers slowed down. In the final round, Harvick posted the second fastest speed at 195.993 mph, securing the outside-front-row starting position next to Coors Light Pole winner Brad Keselowski.

The bottom line was that Harvick maintained his speed as others fell off the pace, suggesting the 2014 series champ will be a factor during Sunday’s second of three races in the Eliminator Round for the Chase for the NASCAR Sprint Cup.

“The team did a great job,” Harvick said after qualifying. “Pretty much ran the same speed in all three rounds there. Didn’t quite have the raw speed in the first round, but this is a race track where you want the car to keep going as long as you can.

“I felt like we had a good start to our race trim practice (on Friday) and going to have a good spot to start on Sunday.”

That should be cause for concern for the other seven drivers still eligible for the series championship. Next on the schedule after Texas is Phoenix, where Harvick has seven victories, including the last four in a row and five of the last six.

After that, it’s the Nov. 22 Championship Round at Homestead-Miami Speedway, where Harvick won last year to clinch his first championship.

Posted on November 7, 2015 by Reid Spencer

RELATED: Full race results

FORT WORTH, Texas — Brad Keselowski‘s love affair with the Lone Star State continued in full force on Saturday with a hard-fought NASCAR XFINITY Series victory in the O’Reilly Auto Parts Challenge at Texas Motor Speedway.

Keselowski grabbed the lead from Coors Light Polesitter Austin Dillon on Lap 189 of 200 after a restart with 16 laps left in the race. The No. 22 Team Penske Ford finished 1.137 seconds ahead of the No. 88 JR Motorsports entry driven by Kevin Harvick, who passed Dillon for the runner-up spot with four laps left.

The victory was Keselowski’s second of the season, his second at the 1.5-mile speedway and the 34th of his career. The eighth win of the season for the No. 22 Ford (accomplished by Keselowski and teammates Joey Logano and Ryan Blaney) clinched the third straight XFINITY Series owner’s championship for Roger Penske.

“To get our team owner, Roger Penske, No. 4 as far as XFINITY championships go, I’m really proud of that,” said Keselowski, who also won a series title as a driver in 2010. “When I came to (Team Penske) in 2010, we didn’t have any, and now we have four in five years, so I’m really proud of that accomplishment.”

In his last four starts at Texas, Keselowski has won twice and finished second twice. In his last 12 XFINITY Series starts at the Cowtown track, Keselowski has posted 11 finishes of seventh or better.

Victory Lane, however, hardly seemed a likely destination for Keselowski in the early going. Harvick and Kyle Busch dominated the opening laps and came to pit road running 1-2, respectively, for pit stops under caution on Lap 79.

But a broken shifter proved Busch’s undoing, as his No. 54 Toyota was limited to fourth gear and fell out of the running for the victory. Under that same caution, the second of the race, Harvick returned to pit road twice because of a loose wheel and spent the bulk of a subsequent 34-lap green-flag run regaining the positions he lost.

Kyle Larson also took a turn at the front of the field, leading 50 laps before a tire rub finally popped his left rear on Lap 176 and sent his No. 42 Chevrolet spinning through the tri-oval and out of the lead, handing the top spot to Harvick, who was in close pursuit.

Harvick came to pit road with the lead but left in third place under caution on Lap 181, leaving Keselowski and Dillon to battle for the top position after a restart on Lap 185.

“First off, Austin Dillon was really good and he was one of the toughest guys to beat,” Keselowski said in Victory Lane. “He ran a heck of a race. Harvick looked really good, Kyle Busch looked really good and Kyle Larson I thought was going to run away with the race until he had that flat.

“There was a lot of competition out there today, and that makes this win very special for the whole Discount Tire Ford team.”

Erik Jones ran fourth behind Keselowski, Harvick and Austin Dillon, with Ty Dillon taking the fifth spot. Chris Buescher came home 11th but moved closer to the series title. With two races left, he leads eighth-place finisher and reigning series champ Chase Elliott by 24 points.

“It isn’t comfortable yet,” Buescher warned. “It is a cushion that we have, and I guess you average that out to 12 spots per race, so if we go out and finish top-10 the last two, we should be in good shape.

“That would be cutting it too close for comfort, but we need to just have some solid runs the next two weeks.”

Kevin Harvick snagged the runner-up position, finishing just behind fellow Cup-regular Keselowski.

Posted on November 7, 2015 by Pat DeCola

RELATED: Race results

FORT WORTH, Texas — Points racing is an aspect of motorsports that drivers typically don’t cop to, even though it’s often the safest and most logical way to secure a championship as a season nears its closing races.

XFINITY Series standings leader Chris Buescher reluctantly admitted he spent Saturday’s O’Reilly Auto Parts Challenge hoping to keep his points lead secure ahead of the season’s final two races, avoiding trouble when he could and driving defensively.

The Texas native would’ve loved to pick up his first home state win, but knows there’s a bigger task at hand.

“We had to points race a little bit today,” Buescher said on pit road after coming home 11th. “You get in situations where you come up on lapped traffic, which was extremely difficult today. Came up on situations where we were three-wide and you just have to ease up. Especially if somebody had caught us from any distance; just try and cut them some slack in order to preserve our championship hope. There was some points racing today, as much as I hate to admit it. It’s going to be part of our next two weeks.”

Buescher’s points lead now sits at a healthy 24 points over defending series champion Chase Elliott and 30 over Ty Dillon, both of whom are expected to move up to the Sprint Cup Series in 2016 while Buescher continues to sharpen his skills in the XFINITY Series for another season.

Considering he was already doing the math just minutes after stepping out of his No. 60 Roush Fenway Racing Ford Mustang, don’t expect the strategy to change for Phoenix or Homestead — especially as the intensity mounts.

“It isn’t comfortable yet. I’m not using that word,” Buescher said. “It is a cushion that we have and I guess you average that out to 12 spots per race so if we go out and finish top-10 the last two, we should be in good shape. That would be cutting it too close for comfort but we need to just have some solid runs the next two weeks.”

Even though Buescher isn’t comfortable enough to shift into cruise control — figuratively speaking, of course — you’d think the pressure would be on those below him in the standings, whose best bet is to just capitalize on any mistakes he makes while needing to turn in their strongest performances of the year.

But is it?

“I know as the weeks go on, (Buescher’s) going to feel more pressure to make sure he doesn’t mess up and hopefully I’m there to capitalize,” said Dillon, who made up some ground as the highest-finishing series regular, in fifth. “I was just trying to win the race. We did the best that we could do today and with him finishing 11th, it was a good day for us. It’s going to take that mistake and he’s doing the right thing now and we’ve just got to keep managing our own race and try to get in Victory Lane and gain max points.

“… If I’m wasting my time focusing on what (Buescher’s) doing,” Dillon said. “I’m going to be in trouble.”

Posted on November 6, 2015 by Nascar

FORT WORTH, Texas – NASCAR Sprint Cup Series drivers arrived at Texas Motor Speedway Friday still grappling with the fallout from last weekend’s crash involving Matt Kenseth and Joey Logano, two of this season’s most successful competitors.

Kenseth (Joe Gibbs Racing), was suspended for two races for crashing into Logano (Team Penske) with less than 50 laps remaining in Sunday’s Goody’s Headache Relief Shot 500 at Martinsville Speedway. Logano was the race leader at the time of the crash; Kenseth was nine laps down.

Logano, who swept all three races in the Contender Round of the Chase for the NASCAR Sprint Cup, was going for a fourth consecutive victory. Kenseth had been eliminated from Chase contention the previous weekend.

“I guess the implications aren’t really clear on how things work and what kind of trouble you can get yourself into,” fellow Chase competitor Martin Truex Jr. (Furniture Row Racing) said Friday at Texas. “Racing is racing. Guys have wrecked each other since racing started, OK? That’s not going to change. Guys get mad all the time.

“I think people will go about it differently now because of what happened this week, for sure. How far that goes, I’m not real sure. We’ll have to wait and see.”

Logano leads the series in wins this season with six; Kenseth has five victories. The Martinsville incident dropped Logano to last among the eight drivers trying to qualify for the four who will compete for the championship at Homestead-Miami Speedway later this month. To earn a Championship Round spot for the second consecutive year, Logano will likely have to win either this weekend’s AAA Texas 500 or next week’s Quicken Loans Race for Heroes 500 at Phoenix International Raceway.

Logano said he didn’t know if NASCAR’s actions could change how some drivers react in certain situations, but added that it likely won’t alter his own.

“Probably not,” the 25-year-old said. “Does it change the way other people would handle a situation? I can’t answer that. I don’t know.

“I think we all did learn what NASCAR’s stance is on this and that is something we will all put in our memory bank and know that going into the future.”

MORE: Kenseth’s two-race suspension upheld

Four-time series champion Jeff Gordon, winner of the Martinsville race and for now the only driver qualified to compete for the Championship 4, said he understood the reasoning behind the severity of the penalty.

“NASCAR wanted there to be a line and I like it when they draw a line,” the Hendrick Motorsports driver said. “… We don’t like judgment calls. We like things to be clear. And I think we’re all pretty clear now.

“Yeah, it’s gotten the people talking. It’s gotten the media talking and the fans talking and it’s created only more build-up to what’s already a very exciting Chase format and close to the season. I don’t want to say I look at it as a positive, I just think that it does bring more eyes to the sport and then they can choose and decide how they go from there.”

Kenseth will return to the No. 20 Toyota for Joe Gibbs Racing in the season-finale at Homestead. In his absence, Erik Jones will handle the driving duties for the team. Jones will start sixth in Sunday’s race.

Carl Edwards, who joined JGR prior to the start of the 2015 season, said he’d spoken to Kenseth briefly. That his teammate was suspended, he said, “was a shock.”

“I think everyone will be on pretty decent behavior because of that,” Edwards said. “If that’s how it’s going to be, we definitely have to be careful.”

Posted on November 6, 2015 by Nascar

FORT WORTH, Texas — Joey Logano defended his approach to how he races others and said he and his team are focused on advancing to the Championship Round of this year’s Chase for the NASCAR Sprint Cup Friday when he met with members of the media at Texas Motor Speedway.

A week after an on-track altercation with Joe Gibbs Racing‘s Matt Kenseth left the Team Penske driver last in the field of eight Chase drivers, Logano said the resulting two-race suspension of Kenseth wasn’t his concern, or his call to make.

“That is NASCAR who looked at that in the way they needed to and made the decision they felt was right,” he said. “It doesn’t affect me. I don’t have a horse in that race.”

The message, he said, “is that you can’t do that.

“What happened has happened. It is in the past at this point; it is in the rearview mirror.

“The only way we will get in the Chase is if we keep looking out the windshield.”

Logano was leading at Martinsville when contact with Kenseth sent his No. 22 Ford, as well as Kenseth’s Toyota, into the wall. The accident occurred on Lap 454 of the scheduled 500-lap event. Kenseth, involved in an earlier wreck, was nine laps down at the time of the crash.

“I’m not convinced it’s a bad thing,” Logano said. “Our team’s more fired up than ever. I am more focused than ever. I am pumped up about being here at the track today. What happened last week is what happened last week.

“Is it the way we wanted it to go? No, of course not. Did we get the finish we felt we deserved that day? No, but this team has plenty of confidence coming off three in a row and in position for four. There is plenty of confidence and more drive than there has ever been. I am not convinced this whole thing is a bad thing.”

Logano swept the three-race Contender Round of the Chase, winning at Kansas, Charlotte and Talladega. His six victories this season are tops for NASCAR’s Sprint Cup Series.

NASCAR officials suspended Kenseth, the 2003 series champion, for two races and placed him on probation two days after the Martinsville race. An appeal by the team was upheld, as was a final appeal, although Final Appeals Officer Brian Moss reduced the probationary period, initially six months, to run only through the end of 2015.

It was not the first incident between the two Sprint Cup Series drivers. At Kansas last month, Kenseth spun after contact from Logano as the two were racing for the lead. While Logano went on to win the race, Kenseth was unable to recover the following week at Talladega (where he needed a victory to advance to the next round) and was eliminated from the Chase.

Now Logano finds himself trying to climb back into contention.

“Our Chase, we are not out of it by any means,” he said. “We have plenty of time to get ourselves back in. I feel confident that we can do it.”

The Kansas incident was “hard racing.”

“I had a great race going there for the lead and there were some blocks thrown and the third time I kept my nose in there,” he said. “I was re-watching the spring race from Texas here and I was racing (Kevin) Harvick and at the end of the race … he was on the inside of me and I took the risk of blocking. I took that risk and I knew the consequences. He moved me out of the way. … I felt like in that case I was in the wrong. … I wouldn’t say Harvick and I are the best of friends, but I didn’t have a problem with what he did. … When you make moves like that, you know the risk you take.”

With Kenseth on the sidelines for this week’s AAA Texas 500 and next week’s stop at Phoenix International Raceway, JGR officials have tabbed Erik Jones to fill the seat in the No. 20 entry.

Jones, a full-time competitor in the Camping World Truck Series, has one official career start in the Sprint Cup Series, filling in for the injured Kyle Busch earlier this season at Kansas. He finished 40th.

He also replaced JGR teammate Denny Hamlin at Bristol in April when Hamlin was sidelined with what team officials said was a “neck spasm.” Because Hamlin started the race, it was not considered an official start for Jones, and Hamlin was credited with the 26th-place finish.

Posted on November 6, 2015 by Staff Report

NASCAR Next development drivers Rico Abreu and William Byron are scheduled to make their first NASCAR national series start next weekend, attemping their Camping World Truck Series debuts at Phoenix International Raceway.

The 23-year-old Abreu is set to drive the No. 31 Chevrolet with for Bob Newberry-owned NTS Motorsports in the Nov. 13 Lucas Oil 150 (8:30 p.m. ET, FS1, MRN, SiriusXM). AccuDoc Solutions will provide sponsorship.

Byron, 17, will drive a new entry for Kyle Busch Motorsports, wheeling the No. 09 Toyota with sponsorship from Liberty University. The truck will be part of a four-team effort for owner Kyle Busch, who will also field entries for Erik Jones, Daniel Suarez and Matt Tifft at the 1-mile oval.

Byron claimed the drivers’ championship with a four-win debut season in the NASCAR K&N Pro Series East. Abreu finished fifth in the K&N East standings with one victory in his first season.

Both Abreu and Byron were named part of the 12-driver NASCAR Next class for 2015-16 on May 5.

Posted on November 6, 2015 by Staff Report

RELATED: Texas starting lineup

Matt Crafton landed the Keystone Light Pole Award in Friday afternoon qualifying for the NASCAR Camping World Truck Series.

Crafton, the two-time defending series champion and last weekend’s winner at Martinsville Speedway, drove the ThorSport Racing No. 88 Toyota to a pole-winning lap of 181.397 mph on the 1.5-mile track. His third pole of the season was his third at Texas and the 10th of his truck series career.

Spencer Gallagher, who posted a 180.953 mph lap in the GMS Racing No. 23 Chevrolet, will start second in Friday night’s WinStar World Casino 350 (8:30 p.m. ET, FOX Sports 1, PRN, SiriusXM). Rookies Daniel Hemric and Brandon Jones will make up the second row, qualifying third and fourth respectively.

Series leader Erik Jones qualified fifth in the Kyle Busch Motorsports No. 4 Toyota, carrying a 10-point lead over Crafton entering the 21st of 23 races this season. Tyler Reddick will start 17th and ranks third, just 13 points off the top.

Jeb Burton, making his first truck start of the season, qualified eighth in the JR Motorsports No. 00 Chevrolet.

Crafton was fastest in the first of two rounds of single-truck qualifying with a best lap of 181.056 mph. Johnny Sauter, his ThorSport teammate, just missed the 12-driver cutoff for the final round, turning the 13th-best lap in the No. 98 Toyota.

Tyler Young‘s first-round qualifying attempt ended early when his No. 02 Chevrolet erupted with smoke under the hood. No drivers failed to qualify for the 32-truck field.

Posted on November 6, 2015 by Staff Report

Homestead-Miami Speedway announced Friday that all seats for the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series season finale — which is expected to be Jeff Gordon‘s final race — are sold out.

According to a release provided by the 1.5-mile track, all premium seats have been sold out since September and only limited RV camping areas remain for the Nov. 22 Ford EcoBoost 400 (3 p.m. ET, NBC, MRN, SiriusXM).

“There will be many story lines heading into the Championship Round at Homestead-Miami Speedway, one of which will be Jeff Gordon vying for a fifth championship title in his final Sprint Cup Series season,” said track president Matthew Becherer. “We saw last year that the new Chase format gives our fans the opportunity to truly witness history during the Ford EcoBoost 400, and we fully anticipate that again with this year’s race.”

The south Florida track joins Phoenix International Raceway among tracks announcing grandstand sellouts for Sprint Cup events in recent weeks. The field of four championship drivers will be finalized Nov. 15 at the 1-mile track in the Arizona desert.

Champions will be crowned in all three NASCAR national series during Ford Championship Weekend at Homestead. The XFINITY Series will host its final race of the season Nov. 21, and the Camping World Truck Series will conclude its 2015 campaign Nov. 20.

Posted on November 6, 2015 by Staff Report

RELATED: Full results from practice

Austin Dillon launched atop Friday’s lone practice for the NASCAR XFINITY Series at Texas Motor Speedway.

Dillon, the 2013 series champ who is now a regular in the Sprint Cup Series, pushed the Richard Childress Racing No. 33 Chevrolet to a best lap of 184.363 mph in the two-hour, 25-minute session, the only tuning prep for Saturday’s O’Reilly Auto Parts 300 (3:30 p.m. ET, NBC, PRN, SiriusXM).

Brad Keselowski was second-fastest in the Team Penske No. 22 Ford with a lap of 184.256 mph around the 1.5-mile track. Erik Jones, Regan Smith and Daniel Suarez completed the top five.

Sprint Cup regular Kyle Busch, a seven-time XFINITY Series winner at Texas, was sixth-fastest in the Joe Gibbs Racing No. 54 Toyota.

Series leader Chris Buescher turned the 12th-fastest lap in the Roush Fenway Racing No. 60 Ford. He enters the 31st of 33 races this season with a 27-point edge on defending champ Chase Elliott (10th-fastest), a 33-point cushion on Smith and a 36-point advantage over Ty Dillon (ninth-fastest).

Darrell Wallace Jr. was seventh-fastest in practice, but scraped the right side of his Roush Fenway Racing No. 6 Ford against the Turn 4 wall late in the session.

Coors Light Pole Qualifying for the XFINITY Series is scheduled for Saturday at 12:15 p.m. ET on NBCSN.