Tyler Reddick paced the field in Friday evening’s practice session at North Wilkesboro Speedway, turning a fast lap of 123.640 mph (18.198 seconds).
Reddick was one of two drivers to log more than 100 laps in the session, setting his fastest time on Lap 54. He turned 101 laps, behind only Joey Logano’s 110.
Chase Elliott (All-Star Race), Bubba Wallace (All-Star Open), Christopher Bell (All-Star Race) and Erik Jones (All-Star Open) completed the top five. See the full results below.
NORTH WILKESBORO, N.C. — Ricky Stenhouse Jr. held court at the back of the Hyak Motorsports hauler Friday afternoon, feet kicked up along a row of director’s chairs. His placement in the garage was just about where we last saw him at North Wilkesboro Speedway, where he tussled with Kyle Busch at the end of last year’s NASCAR All-Star Race.
Mention of that proximity made Stenhouse smile and motion with his thumb to his right. “The trailer’s in the same spot,” he says, but it seems the altercation was a few doors down.
The hot-button moment from last season was an All-Star Race powder keg, resulting in a $75,000 fine to Stenhouse for throwing and landing a punch that ignited a brawl among the rival crews. A year removed from that post-race fracas, the pair of one-time combatants arrived back at North Wilkesboro to open the All-Star festivities with cordiality restored and some added perspective.
“Oh yeah, we’ve talked,” Stenhouse told NASCAR.com. “I mean, I’ve apologized to him for like, ‘hey, sorry that kind of got out of hand.’ And on the other hand, he’s like, ‘yeah, it’s kind of deserving, right?’ So he knew what he did on purpose, and so I would say we both probably could have done things different, but yeah, just part of it.”
The heart of the issue stemmed from contact between the two drivers shortly after the green flag waved. Stenhouse’s No. 47 Chevrolet took the brunt of the fender-banging, and he parked his car in the Richard Childress Racing No. 8 pit stall in disgust with just two completed laps in the books.
Stenhouse ominously hinted that he’d handle the situation in post-crash interviews, and because the 0.625-mile track has no infield tunnel for pedestrian or vehicle traffic, he had the remaining 198 laps to consider his next course of action. After Busch dismounted on pit road, Stenhouse was waiting to greet him and the conversation escalated from there.
“I wouldn’t say regrets. I think I would still be fired up if I got crashed on Lap 1 again this weekend — on purpose, obviously,” Stenhouse said, looking back. “So I mean, if you get crashed on accident, it’s one thing. Crashed on purpose is a totally different thing, especially an exhibition race, not going for the win. So yeah, I mean, definitely no regrets. I think I gained a decent amount of fans out of it. It cost a little bit, but yeah, it’s part of it. I think, hopefully this year, I don’t plan on being out the first lap and plan on making the end of the race, so hopefully that all works out.”
Busch, winner of the 2017 edition of the All-Star Race, said that the two have sorted out the differences they had back then.
“I haven’t looked back on any of it, but him and I have just soft-spoken, just kind of how we were beforehand,” Busch said. “If there’s occasions where we’re next to each other at driver intros, you know, it’s no big deal. Just is what it is. Move on and put that behind us.”
One year later, the two drivers are in close quarters again — this time, with their positioning in the Cup Series Playoffs standings. After next weekend’s Coca-Cola 600 (Sunday, May 25, 6 p.m. ET, Prime Video, PRN Radio, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio), the circuit will be exactly halfway through the regular season, and the competition for postseason spots is already ratcheting up.
Stenhouse is on the plus side of the bubble, 14 points up on the provisional elimination line. The single-car team has made the most of its consistency, with no DNFs and a sixth-place result two weeks ago at Texas being the most recent of their two top 10s.
“We’re thrilled where we’re at, because I know that we’ve got more potential in our race car,” Stenhouse said. “We haven’t nearly got the speed out of our car that I feel like we have in it somewhere, so we’re continuing to look for that. We’re continuing to try and figure out how we can qualify better. That’ll make our race days go better, but we’re executing, we’re finishing races well, making sure we get to the end and capitalizing on that. So if we can get our car speed better, then I think that’ll put us right where we need to be come season end, obviously, depending on winners and things like that, but to be where we’re at right now in points, we’re definitely thrilled.”
Busch is still mired in the longest winless streak of his career, which reached 69 races since his last triumph (Gateway, 2023). He’s currently the first driver outside of the provisional 16-driver playoff field — minus-7 behind RFK Racing’s Ryan Preece — and though he’s cooled since an early-season stretch of three consecutive top-10 finishes (Atlanta, Circuit of The Americas, Phoenix), he’s been encouraged by the attention to details so far.
“I mean, I would presume it’s just a lot of little things, you know?” Busch said. “So that’s basically what you’re dealing with in this day and age — just so many little details. If you can find 100 small, tiny details, then that’s going to all add up. So guys at the shop have been doing a good job and working on all of that, whether it’s car build or little things in the setups and whatnot. Then, that’s where it’s coming from.”
SPEEDWAY, Ind. — It was another productive full-day of work at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway for NASCAR star Kyle Larson and his McLaren Racing IndyCar team on Thursday. The current NASCAR Cup Series championship leader added 63 laps to his Indy resume continuing to familiarize himself with the car during a six-hour practice at the track – the third session of the week in anticipation of the May 25 Indianapolis 500.
Larson’s best lap Thursday was all deuces, 222.222 mph around the 2.5-mile speedway; 17th fastest among the 34 cars on track ultimately vying for the 33-car Indy 500 field. His fastest lap of the three days of official practice was on Tuesday when he recorded a top speed of 223.985 mph.
The 2021 NASCAR Cup Series champ has now turned 215 total laps in three days preparing for the May 25 Memorial Day “Double,” when the 32-year old Californian will race in the Indy 500 Sunday afternoon and then fly to Charlotte, N.C. to run NASCAR’s longest race of the season, the Coca-Cola 600, that same evening for his Hendrick Motorsports team.
He will join the late John Andretti, Tony Stewart, Robby Gordon and Kurt Busch to run the two premier races on the same day.
Not only has Larson truly put the work in this week to prepare for his second Indianapolis 500 start, but Thursday his McLaren Racing Team Principal, Tony Kanaan completed a Refresher Test on track too.
Most team executives don’t find themselves behind the steering wheel, but the 2013 Indy 500 champion Kanaan will jump in Larson’s No. 17 HendrickCars.com McLaren Chevrolet should the race be delayed and threaten Larson’s ability to return to his full-time job in the NASCAR Cup Series’ No. 5 Chevy in time for the green flag at Charlotte Motor Speedway.
“I truly didn’t think it was any different,’’ said Kanaan, who ran 30 laps to show series officials he was still proficient should he be called into race action in relief of Larson. They were his first laps in the new hybrid technology being used in the cars.
“I think the only answer I can give you is probably I had a two-year pause so I had time to reset a couple things,’’ Kanaan said of the new cars. “I truly didn’t think there was anything different. By myself, it was going to feel good. I knew we had a decent car. Honestly, it was good to feel the difference with deploying. I think it’s been a talk. Honestly, probably had to run in traffic a little bit. I truly didn’t feel anything.”
While Larson’s speed hasn’t topped the charts, he has proven to be fast and consistent. And on Thursday, he also proved to be nimble. Larson was directly behind Christian Rasmussen’s car on a lap with just under two hours remaining in practice when Rasmussen got loose, nicked the wall and spun in front of Larson.
Fortunately, Larson was able to power through with no damage.
“Thankfully when he spun, he spun down the track,’’ Larson said of the near-miss.
Overall, he was pleased with the day, finishing up with pit stop practice after his laps on track.
“Practice went pretty good today,’’ Larson said. “I thought our car was a little bit more competitive in dirty air so I was thankful for that.”
The field has primarily been working on race pace, but Friday’s upcoming practice is called “Fast Friday” for a reason. That’s when the teams will focus more on pure qualifying speed. Indianapolis 500 qualifying is Saturday and Sunday to set the 33-car field. Team Penske’s Scott McLaughlin started on pole position in 2024. Larson started fifth last year and finished 18th.
Team Penske’s Josef Newgarden was fastest overall Thursday putting Team Penske cars atop the speed chart for the second time in the three days of practice so far. The two-time defending Indy 500 winner set Thursday’s pace with a lap of 226.632 mph in the No. 2 Penske Chevrolet – his first time above the 226-mph mark and only the second driver to eclipse 226 mph. In fact, he was so confident in the car Thursday he only ran 35 laps, calling it a day 45 minutes before the checkered flag flew.
Chip Ganassi Racing’s Scott Dixon – the 2008 Indy 500 winner – was second fastest on Thursday with a lap of 225.457 mph in the No. 9 CGR Honda. Juncos Hollinger Racing’s Conor Daly was third quickest, the Indianapolis-native a resounding crowd favorite.
Larson’s McLaren Racing teammate Pato O’Ward was fourth fastest in his first appearance in the top tier of the speed chart this week, followed by another former Indy winner, 2014 champ Ryan Hunter-Reay for Dreyer and Reinbold Racing.
Chip Ganassi Racing’s Alex Palou – the current NTT IndyCar Series championship leader – has set the fastest mark of the three days with a lap of 227.546 mph on Wednesday. He was sixth quickest on Thursday.
Cars return to the track Friday with practice from noon-6 p.m. ET (noon-4 p.m on FS2 and 4-6 p.m. ET on FS1). Qualification Draw will be held at 6:15 p.m. ET to set Saturday’s qualifying order.
If you‘re trying to find a predictor of the eventual NASCAR Cup Series champion, the winner of the All-Star Race might be a good place to look.
In three of the last five years, the All-Star Race winner has gone on to win the title: Chase Elliott at Bristol in 2020; Kyle Larson at Texas Motor Speedway in 2021; and Joey Logano at North Wilkesboro Speedway last year.
Add Ryan Blaney’s All-Star victory at Texas in 2022, and you have another impressive statistic: the organization that has won the All-Star Race has won the Cup championship in four of the last five years — Hendrick Motorsports in 2020 and 2021 and Team Penske in 2022 and 2024.
Moreover, Logano credits last year’s March 14 tire test at North Wilkesboro, leading up to the All-Star Race, as one of the factors that flipped the switch for Team Penske and propelled him toward his third Cup championship.
As one of 20 drivers already qualified for the event, Logano will defend his victory in Sunday’s NASCAR All-Star Race at the iconic 0.625-mile short track (8 p.m. ET on FS1, MRN Radio and SiriusXM NASCAR Radio).
“I’m looking forward to getting up there,” Logano said. “The track’s really wide for a repave. It’s a really good race track. I’m looking forward to seeing where it gets to this year. Last year it widened all the way out to the wall. …
“Where the dominant lane is will be interesting, even in qualifying.”
Three more drivers will be added to the 20-driver field before the green flag, two from the 100-lap All-Star Open and one chosen through the All-Star Fan Vote.
Qualifying for both the Open and All-Star Race will take place on Friday and includes a Pit Crew Challenge component. Those time trials will set the starting order for a pair of Saturday heat races that will determine the grid for the All-Star Race.
The first 75-lap heat sets the order for the inside row of the All-Star lineup, with the second heat ordering the outside row. The qualifiers from the Open and Fan Vote will be added to the rear of the field.
Front Row Motorsports driver Noah Gragson has won the last two Fan Votes. Josh Berry and Ty Gibbs are the two Open winners at North Wilkesboro. Berry already is eligible for this year’s All-Star Race because of his victory in March at Las Vegas.
The All-Star Race itself is scheduled for 250 laps (up from the 200 laps run in the first two editions of the race at North Wilkesboro), with a competition caution to take place at or around Lap 100.
In addition, a single, optional promoter’s caution — at the discretion of Speedway Motorsports Inc. CEO Marcus Smith — can be used to reshape the race before Lap 220 but cannot be used after Lap 200 if preempted by a naturally occurring caution.
There are six former winners of the NASCAR All-Star Race already qualified for Sunday’s 41st running of the event: Larson, Logano, Blaney, Elliott, Kyle Busch and Denny Hamlin.
Larson has three All-Star Race victories to his credit (2019, 2021 and 2023) and can tie NASCAR Hall of Famer Jimmie Johnson for most all-time with another win.
Hendrick Motorsports has compiled a series-best 11 All-Star victories. Team Penske is next with five. Busch claimed the most recent All-Star victory for Toyota in 2017.
Logano relishes not only the competition but also the history North Wilkesboro embodies.
“It was shut down for years, just sitting there empty,” Logano said. “Now you see it come back, and so many people are there. They did such a tasteful job renovating the place, where they’ve kept a lot of that old feeling but a lot of the newer amenities fans have become accustomed to.”
Corey Heim has been the dominant force in the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series this season.
With three victories already in hand, the driver of the No. 11 Tricon Garage Toyota is the only winner of multiple races in the series so far this year.
Atop the standings by 64 points over second-place Chandler Smith, Heim also is the defending winner of Saturday’s Window World 250 at North Wilkesboro Speedway (1:30 p.m. ET, FS1, NRN Radio, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio).
He’s the only driver to lead laps in every race this season, and he’s the only active North Wilkesboro winner entered in Saturday’s race.
Heim, however, will face a stern challenge from a driver doing double duty in both the Truck Series event and the NASCAR All-Star Race on Sunday.
Kyle Busch is making his second Truck Series start of the season, this time in the No. 07 Spire Motorsports Chevrolet. In February, Busch won at Atlanta in Spire’s No. 7 Silverado, extending his career record for victories in the series to 67.
“It’ll be my first time racing a truck at North Wilkesboro and my first time racing with (crew chief) Allen (Hart) and the No. 07 group, so practice will be important for us this week,” Busch said.
“The 07 team has shown good speed winning with (Kyle) Larson (at Homestead-Miami Speedway) and picking up a couple runner-up finishes in recent weeks, so hopefully we can continue the momentum they’ve been building and put our Gainbridge Silverado in Victory Lane this weekend.”
In the week leading up to the 2025 All-Star Race at North Wilkesboro, it was fitting that NASCAR’s star of stars delivered a performance worthy of the title.
Not only did Kyle Larson win his third race of the season at Sunday’s AdventHealth 400 in Kansas City, but he also barely gave the field a chance — starting on pole, sweeping both stages, and leading 221 of a possible 267 laps (82.8 percent). His reward: a 149.7 Driver Rating, just a fraction shy of the perfect 150.0 mark outlined in the official rating formula.
(In football terms, Larson came up just short of a perfect 158.3 passer rating — a feat we see only once or twice per NFL season, if that often.)
For Larson, it was his second near-perfect performance in the span of just four races, joining the 149.6 he posted at Bristol. And that was on the heels of a 149.7 at Bristol last fall and a literal 150.0 at the Charlotte Roval in the 2024 playoffs. At this point, it’s clear: Larson is the one active driver who can roll into any track on any weekend and utterly destroy the field through the sheer force of perfection (or at least near-perfection).
So just how much more likely is Larson to unleash one of these super-dominant performances than a typical driver? Let’s compare the frequency at which Larson has posted a Driver Rating within various ranges over his career to the overall Cup Series average since the stat became available in 2005:
As we can see, Larson posts an above-average Driver Rating far more often than the typical driver. (He’s also much less likely to have a bad day than the average driver.) And while most of his competition hovers near the middle of the distribution — the “Cup average” sweet spot is around a 70.0 rating — Larson’s distribution skews heavily toward the extreme right tail of the chart.
He’s logged a rating of 140 or higher in 5.6 percent of his career races, making him 6.8 times more likely than the average driver to turn in that kind of dominant day. Narrow it further to ratings of 145 or higher, and Larson does that in 2.9 percent of his races — 6.9 times the Cup average.
That’s still not exactly a routine occurrence, as it can sometimes seem when Larson is on one of these red-hot streaks. But it is as close to a common sight as this kind of thing can get — at least among current-era drivers.
If we go back to 2005, the earliest season when we have data on Driver Rating, Larson has the best frequency of 140+ rated races (5.6 percent), and only Jimmie Johnson (at 3.4 percent) was more likely to have a 145+ rating in any given race than Larson at 2.9 percent. Only Kevin Harvick — at 4.7 percent and 2.5 percent, respectively — was all that close to Larson and Johnson in those categories of dominance:
So if Johnson is Larson’s only current-era peer, what about previous eras?
We don’t have Driver Ratings for seasons before 2005, but we do know what goes into the Driver Rating formula. Given that, we can use what data we do have for each pre-2005 race, plus a technique called Logistic Regression, to estimate the odds that a driver posted a rating of 140 or higher in any historical race since the modern era began in 1972. (Specifically, we’ll use data points like whether or not a driver won the race, their share of laps led, their starting grid position and where they finished the race — all of which are strong predictors of Driver Rating for the years where we do have data.)
Suppose we apply this to all Cup Series races from 1972-2004. In that case, we find that only six drivers are estimated to have a higher share of races with a rating of 140+ than Larson’s career 5.6 percent rate: Mark Donohue (16.6 percent), Cale Yarborough (14.5), David Pearson (12.2), Jeff Gordon (7.6), Bobby Allison (7.0) and Dale Earnhardt Sr. (6.4):
Beyond Donohue, the remaining five drivers on the list are a who’s-who of NASCAR royalty — led by Cale Yarborough, with a staggering 14.5 percent estimated frequency of 140+ rated performances. (That’s more than 2.5 times Larson’s rate in modern cars.) Known for his utter dominance during the 1970s, Yarborough even had a couple of wins where he led every lap, so it’s not implausible that he might have rattled off a near-perfect Driver Rating that often as well. It was a different sport back then — one where Yarborough once averaged a record-low finish of 4.5 over a full season, providing another verifiable benchmark of domination from the Hall of Fame legend.
With that in mind, it’s a bit surprising to see Richard Petty fall below Larson on this list. The King’s name is synonymous with dominating the NASCAR record book, but the model estimates a lower share of 140+ rated races than Larson. In part, that’s because he led fewer laps per win on average (43.3 percent) than peers like Yarborough (54.8 percent), and in part it’s because Petty’s unusually long career — which stretched until age 54 in 1992 — likely diluted his peak stats as well.
Anyway, all of this helps add even more context to just how dominant Larson has been, particularly in recent seasons. He may not win the title every year, but when he’s on, nobody buries the field quite like the driver of the No. 5 car. As we saw at Kansas, Larson can make a 267-lap race feel like a breezy Sunday drive. And while a few all-time legends may have reached similar heights more often in their primes, nobody in this current era has a higher ceiling — or hits it more often — than Larson does.
MOORESVILLE, N.C. — Christopher and Morgan Bell are too young to grasp the reference, but they are reveling in a NASCAR home version of “The Newlywed Game” on their beige sectional couch.
Each armed with a dry-erase whiteboard and marker, the Bells, who have become one of the most high-profile couples in the Cup Series since last year, are trading goofy wisecracks, gentle compliments and playful jabs like everyday husband-wife duos once did on a nationally televised game show.
And their competitive fire is as evident as on Sundays when Christopher Bell is winning races in the No. 20 Toyota with the demonstrative and fervent support of his wife, Morgan, atop the pit box. As their now-famed Poochon, Sadie, dozes between them, the Bells joust over who knows more about the others’ favorite school subjects, coffee orders and social media platforms.
“That was good,” Christopher says despite being trounced by Morgan (who knows much more than her husband about their ideal date nights, dance moves and musical artists). “Hopefully, this is good content.”
The Joe Gibbs Racing star would know, having become an unwitting king of NASCAR content while emerging as a perennial championship contender the past three seasons.
Last year, Christopher and Morgan unexpectedly were thrust into the first season of the Full Speed docuseries.
During Christopher’s three-race winning streak at Atlanta, Circuit of The Americas and Phoenix, the FOX Sports cameras often lingered on Morgan, whose emotional and tense expressions and gestures reflected the dramatics.
Meet the Bells, NASCAR’s new power couple — but a very reluctant one at that.
“I won’t watch this, just so you know,” Christopher explains while being interviewed about being prominently featured in Full Speed. “I did not watch Full Speed 1. I will not watch Full Speed 2.
“I don’t watch my own interviews. I don’t know why. Morgan tries to get me to watch, and I’ll spend time watching with her, but it’s never something that I would pick to watch.”
Morgan got Christopher to submit to viewing some of the first season but concedes he never would binge-watch his Netflix appearances, much less even consume snippets on Instagram.
“That’s something that he doesn’t do,” she said. “Like even if you are scrolling social media and there’s his interview from post-race on your phone, he’s going to either walk out of the room or turn the phone off. He just doesn’t want to watch or hear himself in his own interviews.”
Of course, it isn’t quite so comfortable, either, for Morgan, who now occupies an omnipresent role formerly played by famous NASCAR wives such as Kim Burton and DeLana Harvick.
“Kind of interesting or odd, I guess,” Morgan said about her late-race cameos on national TV. “I don’t know. I guess I hope it never comes across like bad or weird, but there’s been very, very, very few races that I’ve missed, and nine times out of 10, I’m going to sit right there where you always see me from start to finish.
“That’s just … it’s our whole life. So, I don’t know how you couldn’t be completely immersed in what we do.”
The Bells have grown accustomed to making some of their private life public and view the tradeoff as worth it for spreading the gospel of NASCAR and motorsports.
But it’s still awkward.
“It always felt like a better idea until you got in the moment, and then whenever their cameras are on, it’s just hard to open up and to be not guarded,” Christopher, 30, said. “It gets easier with time, but it still is just very uncomfortable and a skillset that you have to acquire for sure to just ignore the cameras. Whenever you’re watching any sort of TV show, you want it to be normal, but it’s just not normal. Everything that you do is somewhat staged. It’s very difficult to feel like just completely yourself whenever the cameras are on.
“But I think it’s important to showcase our sport. And hopefully if Full Speed does anything, it educates the general population a little bit more. It takes education to understand, ‘Hey, these guys aren’t just hitting the cruise button on the highway and making laps.’ There’s more to it.”
Said Morgan, 29: “It’s definitely even harder for him just because he loves to keep to himself and would rather people know nothing about him other than the fact that he races for JGR in the 20 car.”
James Gilbert | Getty Images
Christopher and Morgan first met as teenagers in 2010 at an Ohio dirt track through a mutual friend who raced online with Christopher. Hailing from a Norman, Oklahoma, family with no racing background, Christopher was living mostly in Ohio while trying to break into the sprint car scene.
Meanwhile, Morgan Kemenah’s family was fully immersed in the motorsports culture of middle Ohio. Her father, Brian, and uncle Chad were part of numerous championship teams.
“There was always a race car in our garage,” Morgan said. “So that’s what I did every weekend. I went to the dirt track.”
Bell hardly needed an introduction. “She comes from a very, very heavy motorsports family,” he said. “Her dad is a Hall of Fame sprint car crew chief, and her uncle is a Hall of Fame driver.”
It wasn’t without first-date drama. Christopher crashed the prior night at a track in Greencastle “and was probably slightly concussed” when he met Morgan and her mother, Stacy (who was persuaded by her daughter to drive them to Bloomington).
“He’s like, ‘I have this like horrible headache,’ and my mom was like, ‘Oh, do you want some Advil?’ and he says, ‘Sure,’ ” Morgan recalled with a laugh. “And then he thought my mom was trying to poison him because technically the bottle says take two, but she’s like, ‘Was your headache really bad? Then I would take four.’ ”
Christopher took Stacy’s advice and then the checkered flag several hours later to kick off a whirlwind romance.
Morgan would skip her senior prom for an Eldora Speedway race (which Bell didn’t win). The week after her high school graduation in 2015, she watched Christopher race on Memorial Day in Lawrenceburg, Indiana.
The next day, she and Christopher flew to Charlotte, North Carolina, as he began his pavement career in Late Models.
They crashed on an air mattress in the spare bedroom of a friend’s apartment for a couple of weeks. Future JGR teammate Chase Briscoe slept on a couch in an adjoining room.
The move away from dirt in pursuit of NASCAR was jarring for Morgan.
“She used to get so mad at me whenever I first started running asphalt,” Christopher said. “She grew up sprint car racing. She was confused. I was a dirt track racer running USAC midget cars full time, and so I think she expected me to go to sprint cars.”
Said Morgan: “Most dirt racers’ dream is to become a sprint car World of Outlaw(s) racer. He was always like, ‘Yeah, to be a professional race car driver and make a living racing cars, you have to be an Outlaw.’ So that’s what I thought. And honestly even before I met him, sprint cars were the only race cars that existed in my world. It was sprint cars or bust.”
A few days after their first date in Bloomington, Christopher got the call that he’d be making his Kyle Busch Motorsports debut by practicing an asphalt Late Model. He texted Morgan, who responded, “Why?”
“I was like, ‘What are we doing?’ ” she recalled.
Chris Trotman | Getty Images
Morgan was a faithful supporter a year later as Christopher made his Truck Series debut — which also marked her regular appearances on the pit box. She was there when Bell won on Eldora’s iconic dirt in his third start driving a KBM truck.
Her presence was met with initial skepticism. Toyota Racing Development executive Jack Irving, who helped manage the manufacturer’s TD2 driver development program and was a mentor to Christopher, had questions about the long-term prospects of a 20-year-old rising star and his 18-year-old traveling companion.
“Jack was just like, ‘Man, are you sure you want your girlfriend going with you to these races?’ and then after a little bit, he realized that she’s serious,” Christopher said. “She’s likely going to be my wife. I mean, it was because we were young. Jack was like, ‘You can’t just bring a random girl.’ But no, she wasn’t a random girl.”
She estimates having been on the pit box for all but a handful of Christopher’s 329 national series starts in NASCAR, watching virtually all in their entirety. Because of extreme heat at Texas Motor Speedway a few years ago, she retired to their infield motorhome for fear they’d both be too ill otherwise. “If he ends up in a wreck after the race just being so hot and sick, I’m not going to be any good if I’m laying on the floor next to him exhausted from the heat,” Morgan said.
Noting that Morgan is “far more emotional than I am,” Christopher said there’s a yin and yang to their race track relationship. Morgan helps Christopher when he’s “disgusted” with a ninth place at Texas, and Christopher helps Morgan get over the close losses that leave her on the verge of being inconsolable.
“There wasn’t a moment where I realized how into it she was,” he said. “I think it’s just we literally built this life together. So like everything, we just took it as it came, and the deeper that we got into it, it just became both of us together.
“And literally since my dirt full-time days to my late model days to my truck days to Xfinity days and Cup days, she has lived it and gone through the trials and tribulations together.”
Considering herself a No. 20 Camry team member, Morgan enjoys coordinating race day outfits around the car’s sponsors. She recently bought a pair of gold trousers at Target because “they’re DeWalt yellow,” which is harder to find than red (Rheem and Reser’s) and green (Interstate Batteries). When Christopher was sponsored by JBL, she intentionally shopped for orange.
“I’m not as crazy about it anymore, but our colors now are a little more conducive to being easier to match,” she said.
Her pre-race ritual is to wish every team member well on her way from the car to the pit box because “they can have as big of an effect on our day as anything. They can win our race, and they can lose it.”
A bundle of nervous energy, she often lightly taps the shoulders of William Hartman, a No. 20 engineer, during the race.
“What’s William thinking here? ‘Get this psycho lady off the pit box,’ ” Christopher said with a laugh while watching a recent video of his wife’s excitable in-race behavior.
James Gilbert | Getty Images
Morgan goes from giggling to lightly sobbing after watching the same video, explaining that “this is what the Netflix people always get out of me.”
During Full Speed, Morgan gets emotional in multiple on-camera sitdowns and concedes the interviewers were “really good at always asking the questions that would get me hard, hard in my feels. I would normally end up in tears, and I’ve heard they have shown that quite a few times in the show. That’s just what it is. They filmed with us during the most stressful part of the year.”
There’s a long history of NASCAR drivers’ wives being emotionally invested while watching from the pit box. Morgan is a little leery, though, about being compared with Kim Burton, who has been one of NASCAR’s most famous cheerleaders for three decades (initially for husband Jeff and more recently for son Harrison).
“That’s what I get scared of because sometimes I feel like people like make fun of Kim,” Morgan said. “And I will say there are times where I’m like, ‘Take a deep breath, Kim!’ but I guess there’s times she’s probably just as passionate.”
During Bell’s victory at Circuit of The Americas, FOX showed Morgan Bell and Samantha Busch in succession as they rooted on their husbands battling for the lead.
“People were like, ‘Oh yeah, the TV broadcast was basically pinning you and Samantha on each other,” Morgan said. “And I’m like, ‘Oh, that’s great!’ It looks like Sam and I are going at it or something. I honestly didn’t even realize that they were doing that.”
During a Full Speed interview, Morgan notes “the playoffs create great things for the people who aren’t living in them,” and some of the series’ most compelling moments are at the expense of the Bells’ frayed nerves.
After the controversial finish at Martinsville, Morgan is shown angrily screaming, “Are we in or we out?” The series also revisits the 2023 championship finale as Christopher and Morgan share a tearful embrace after his exit at Phoenix. (“Hopefully this isn’t my last shot,” Christopher says softly.)
“The ups and downs of it are massive, for sure,” he said. “And we got to experience both of those.”
But there also are the everyday life moments for the Bells, who were engaged in 2018, married in February 2020 (a week before Christopher’s Daytona 500 debut) and moved into their house on Lake Norman in January 2022.
The neighbors are enthusiastic supporters of the show, which details their fandom (a No. 20 flag hangs from a nearby house on the block), their dog-sitting of Sadie and their passion for landscaping.
“That is really nice that they showcase our neighbors do care a lot about us,” Morgan said. “I feel like Christopher’s most talked about moment from last season was him loving grass, which right now looks pretty good. He’s been texting our neighbors the past couple days that, ‘All of our grass looks real green, guys!’ ”
Christopher smiles when reminded that Full Speed documented his fascination with an immaculate lawn on the corner of their street.
“He’s the most meticulous guy in the world,” Christopher said of the house’s owner. “He’s the benchmark. But my grass will never get there until I actually dedicate time to doing it myself, which I’m not going to do in the near future, So I got what I got.”
Also heavily featured in their personal lives is Sadie, the 7-year-old Bichon Frise-Poodle mix that they got as a puppy. A 7-pound runt of the litter, Sadie became a star after a viral meme of her sitting in Christopher’s lap.
“He’d always sit in that chair pre-race, and Sadie would always hop in his lap,” said Morgan, who originally posted the photo to social media. “So every time she did it, I took a picture because I thought it was cute.”
Sadie has a new playmate, another Poochon (but twice the size) they got March 31. Though she was sent to a two-week board and train (to cure some “not good puppy behaviors”), Bailey could become the family’s biggest star yet. (“She’s more outgoing than Sadie,” Christopher said.)
And that would be just fine with the Bells, who ultimately hope that Full Speed presents them (along with other drivers and their families) as “normal people. Like point blank, the end,” Morgan said. “They’re all normal people. They’re just like everybody who’s watching it.
“Their job might be one of the cooler jobs that a lot of people don’t have. But outside of that, they are just normal people.”
Nate Ryan has written about NASCAR since 1996 while working at the San Bernardino Sun, Richmond Times-Dispatch, USA TODAY and for the past 10 years at NBC Sports Digital. He is a contributor to the “Hauler Talk” show on the NASCAR Podcast Network. He also has covered various other motorsports, including the IndyCar and IMSA series.
Tim Connolly never wanted to own race cars. He just wanted to drive them.
However, you don’t always get what you want. And in racing, sometimes if you want to compete, you need to own the race car.
“My happy place is with the wheel in my hand as all drivers are,” said Connolly, who was recently named as one of the NASCAR Whelen Modified Tour’s 40 Greatest Drivers. “I never wanted to be a car owner. It was a necessity to drive a race car. That’s why most of the guys do it.”
Connolly’s NASCAR Whelen Modified Tour career, which started in 1988, saw him win nine times and secure a runner-up championship result in 1997 while driving Bob Garbarino’s legendary Mystic Missile Modified.
He stepped away from the series in 2002 but returned in 2023, now as the owner and driver of the Mystic Missile after receiving Garbarino’s blessing.
Since then, he’s competed in 23 Modified Tour events as the driver of the No. 4 Mystic Missile. However, Connolly has been absent from the series so far in 2025 while he recovers from his third spinal surgery.
“The reality is you start to realize you don’t bounce (back) like you used to and you break a little easier and your recovery time takes a little bit longer,” Connolly said. “My back is doing great, and I feel great. Just trying to be a little bit smart and a little bit patient.”
That’s where 2008 Daytona 500 champion Ryan Newman comes in.
Tim Connolly pilots the No. 4 Mystic Missile Modified during practice at North Wilkesboro Speedway on Oct. 20, 2024. (Photo: Ted Malinowski/NASCAR)
Newman, himself a four-time Tour winner, is always looking for opportunities to race Modifieds. Last year he reached out to Connolly to enquire about driving the Mystic Missile, but the two couldn’t come to terms, and Newman instead drove for John-Michael Shenette in a few events.
“With all due respect, he’s no spring chicken anymore. I don’t mean that in a bad way, just at some point he’s going to have to step out of the seat,” Newman said. “Not knowing where his mind was at on all that stuff, I wanted to be respectful of it but also put my name in the hat if we could ever put something together.”
With Connolly sidelined due to his surgery and Newman looking for a car to drive in Sunday’s FaithFest Evangelistic Ministries 150 at North Wilkesboro Speedway (2 p.m. ET on FloRacing and The NASCAR Channel), everything came together.
“Basically, we worked on the Wilkesboro race, and we had enough time,” said Newman, who secured several sponsors, including IGA, First Sanitation, The Ragg Co., Fairvalue, Findley Properties and Mathis Equipment to make the opportunity possible. “He brought the race car down to the FURY shop and gave us an opportunity to work on it and get it all ready to go with Ryan Stone. I look forward to the opportunity.”
As the pair discussed the idea of Newman driving for Connolly at North Wilkesboro, it became obvious to Connolly that Newman understood his position as a driver who never really wanted to be a car owner.
That made it a bit easier for Connolly to step aside and trust Newman to take the wheel of the Mystic Missile this Sunday afternoon.
“When Ryan and I finally got down to the meat and potatoes here a few weeks ago, I believe it was a Monday morning, and we’re on the phone,” Connolly explained. “I said, ‘You know Ryan to me it’s kind of funny. I was a college quarterback, the baseball pitcher, the business owner and race car driver.’ I said, ‘I never,’ and when I got to I never he interrupted me. He said, ‘I know, you never wanted to be a car owner. I get it.’
“I said, ‘You know Ryan, if I was ever to put a guy in the car, you would be it. Well, except maybe Kyle Larson if he wanted to.’ And he chuckled.”
To Newman’s credit, he understood Connolly was going to have a hard time watching someone else drive his race car. That’s why he broached the subject carefully, a strategy that ultimately led to the opportunity Sunday at North Wilkesboro.
“It’s kind of a delicate subject to talk to a guy about wanting his seat because he’s a driver-owner, but I’ve been in that situation before,” Newman said. “My first pavement sprint car ride was with a guy named Ron Koehler at Winchester in 1999, and he was at a point where Winchester was a little too fast for him.
“I’ve been in that position to try and delicately and politely ask, ‘Hey, if you’re thinking about it, I might be your guy.’”
This will be Connolly’s first time operating as strictly a car owner during a Modified Tour event. Luckily, he knows someone he can lean on for advice and guidance in such a situation.
Garbarino, a three-time Modified Tour champion car owner and one of Connolly’s closest friends, will be making the trip from his home in the Northeast to join Connolly and Newman at North Wilkesboro.
Tim Connolly walks to his car prior to the Toyota Mod Classic 150 for the NASCAR Whelen Modified Tour at New York’s Oswego Speedway on Aug. 31, 2024. (Photo: Bryan Bennett/NASCAR)
For Connolly, the opportunity to share the weekend with Garbarino is one on which he would never pass.
“I called Mr. Garbarino before I got too committed with Ryan, just out of respect,” Connolly said. “I called him back last week and I said, ‘You know, this is really your legacy.’ I joked at first. I said, ‘This is my first venture being a car owner outside of the seat, and I really need some mentoring in car ownership. Could you please come down?’
“He chuckled a little bit. I said, ‘This is really your legacy. You need to be there more than I do.’”
For Newman, the goal is to go to North Wilkesboro, race up front and prove himself worthy to carry on the legacy of all the drivers who have come before him in the Mystic Missile.
After all, Mr. Garbarino will be watching.
“When I first started racing Modifieds, I raced against the Mystic Missile,” Newman said. “I knew the quality of the equipment that they had, and I was happy when I beat it, and I’ve been beaten by it, as well.
“When Tim Connolly carried on that legacy and tradition, I took note of it, but at that point I was still racing against it. I think it’s awesome for me, being where I am at my career, and you can tag that however you want to.
“A place like North Wilkesboro, Tim Connolly, the Mystic Missile and the history of Modified racing, it’s at least two or three chapters of a book somewhere.”
NASCAR Cup Series managing director Brad Moran joined the “Hauler Talk” podcast to explain why Chris Buescher’s team was given an L1 penalty after finishing eighth at Kansas Speedway.
The rule violations were found when Buescher’s No. 17 Ford was inspected at the NASCAR R&D Center this week. Moran said the maximum 2 inches of reinforcement behind the front bumper foam had been exceeded.
“Unfortunately, the No. 17 did not meet the rule and had a larger area than what is permitted to be bonded into the nose piece,” Moran said. “They can work in that area, but they went too far would be the simplest terms of putting it.”
The Roush Fenway Keselowski Racing team was penalized 60 driver and owner points, five driver and owner playoff points and fined $75,000. Crew chief Scott Graves also will be suspended from the All-Star Race and the Coca-Cola 600.
NASCAR has meted out harsher L2 penalties for modified parts, and Moran explained why this penalty fell into the L1 category.
“As the car was being developed, we recognized we were doing damage to the nose of the car and didn’t want to be using up good parts (on repairs),” Moran said. “We put out communications that were very clear and specific that teams could strengthen behind the foam, which is where there was cracking and damage during the races.
“It was an area around the foam that you’re allowed 2 inches, and it was beyond that, which is a rule violation. They were allowed to modify that area but not to the extent they did, and that’s why it turned it into an L1.” …
The latest episode of “Hauler Talk” also recapped last weekend at Kansas, where numerous Cup teams had tire trouble in practice and the race. NASCAR managing director of racing communications Mike Forde explained how Goodyear conducts “pressure sweeps” to set minimum tire regulations by using predictive computer modeling to determine durability for certain camber and PSI (pounds per square inch) settings. At Kansas, the minimum PSI for the left rear tire was 22 pounds, but Forde said Goodyear confirmed several teams were running well below that.
Forde said NASCAR doesn’t enforce or officiate Goodyear’s minimum tire pressures because “we get that teams are pushing the envelope. It adds strategy and makes it lot more interesting. … We trust the teams to police themselves. They don’t want to get the drivers hurt. There’s been an incredible emphasis on safety over the last two decades, and teams are part of that. They’re not going to put drivers in an unsafe position just for the sake of speed and winning.” …
During the podcast, NASCAR senior director of racing communications Amanda Ellis provided a peek into a drivers-only meeting held last Saturday at Kansas. Among the topics were the logistics for the Mexico City race next month and a new aerodynamic device for superspeedway racing.
Other topics covered during the 14th episode of “Hauler Talk,” which explores competition issues in NASCAR:
— Why Layne Riggs was disqualified for an improperly secured bed cover after finishing second in the Truck race at Kansas.
— How NASCAR determined Dawson Sutton intentionally caused a yellow to earn a two-lap penalty.
— A review of the qualifying and race formats for the 2025 All-Star Race.
Click on the embed above to listen or search for “Hauler Talk” wherever you download podcasts to hear it on your phone, tablet or mobile device.
Nate Ryan has written about NASCAR since 1996 while working at the San Bernardino Sun, Richmond Times-Dispatch, USA TODAY and for the past 10 years at NBC Sports Digital. He is a contributor to the new “Hauler Talk” show on the NASCAR Podcast Network. He also has covered various other motorsports, including the IndyCar and IMSA series.
NASCAR assessed an L1-level penalty to the No. 17 RFK Racing team on Thursday following last weekend’s Cup Series race at Kansas Speedway.
During inspection this week at the R&D Center in Concord, North Carolina, series officials discovered that the No. 17 Ford was in violation of Sections 14.1.C (overall assembled vehicle rules) and 14.5.4.G (front bumper cover) of the NASCAR Rule Book. The team went over the maximum reinforcement allowed for its front bumper covers.
As a result, the team and driver Chris Buescher were each assessed with the loss of 60 championship points and five playoff points, and the team was fined $75,000. Additionally, crew chief Scott Graves has been suspended for the next two races through Charlotte.
The team released a statement on Friday stating that it was continuing to evaluate a potential appeal to the penalties assessed to the No. 17 Ford but decided that Graves would begin serving his suspension effective immediately. The team named Doug Randolph as the acting crew chief, beginning with All-Star Weekend at North Wilkesboro Speedway.
Buescher drove the No. 17 Ford to an eighth-place finish in Sunday’s AdventHealth 400, which was won by Kyle Larson. Before the penalty, Buescher was 12th in the point standings, but he dropped to 24th afterward.
Thursday’s penalty announcement also impacted the current Cup Series Playoffs standings, moving Buescher out of the provisional 16-driver field and jostling other drivers around the elimination line. Before the 60-point deduction, Buescher was 33 points above the line — he now drops to minus-27. Ryan Preece moves from minus-7 to +14 as the provisional 16th driver in the field, which nudges Kyle Busch to the last driver out at minus-7.
The Cup Series is at North Wilkesboro Speedway this weekend for Sunday’s All-Star Race (8 p.m. ET, FS1) before returning to points-paying action in the Coca-Cola 600 on May 25 at Charlotte Motor Speedway (6 p.m. ET, Prime Video).