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Keep tabs on all the action this weekend at Charlotte

This weekend brings the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series and NASCAR Nationwide Series to Charlotte Motor Speedway.

The Sprint Cup Series Bank of America 500 is on Saturday, Oct. 11, at 7:30 p.m. ET with coverage on ABC.

The Nationwide Series Drive for the Cure 300 is on Friday, Oct. 10, at 7:30 p.m. ET with coverage on ESPN2.

For more information on track times, press conferences and GarageCam, you can check out this weekend’s schedule. For TV times, see this week’s TV schedule.

We know you may not have the time to watch the race action without any interruptions, so if you’re on the go, here’s how to keep up at Charlotte.

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NASCAR.com’s live Sprint Cup Series leaderboard and Nationwide Series leaderboard update in real-time and offer constant text updates of lead changes, cautions, strategies, strong runs and everything in between. From the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series leaderboard fans can also access live standings. On the go? Download the NASCAR Mobile app to follow the leaderboards live from your device.

Lap-by-Lap will keep you caught up even if you can take a peek here and there. Check in now and then to read back through all the laps you’ve missed, or keep an eye on the feed for real-time race updates.

For all the information you need on the Chase for the NASCAR Sprint Cup format check out Chase 101 for an easy-to-follow guide as Kansas is the first race in this year’s Chase for the NASCAR Sprint Cup Contender Round. Fans can also keep up with how their fantasy Chase Grid is doing here.

We’ll also send race updates via Twitter through the official @NASCAR and @NASCARStats handles.

Haven’t tried RaceView yet? If you sign up, you’ll get virtual video of cars on the track from various angles and hear what your favorite team is saying over the radio. Use it as a second screen or as your only screen. Just want to scan the radios? You can have that too with RaceView Audio. On a mobile device? Get RaceView Mobile here.

If you want to be more involved in the on-track action, you can manage your fantasy team on NASCAR.com and follow your team’s performance in NASCAR Fantasy Live. Mobile users can also download NASCAR Connect, a game from OneUp Sports that allows users to play other fans with race predictions, for some off-track competition while drivers battle it out on the track.

Live Press Pass video streams will keep the NASCAR action rolling even after the winner goes in and out of Victory Lane. Catch interviews with the top finishers immediately following the checkered flag for the Sprint Cup Series and Nationwide Series, and stay tuned to NASCAR.com throughout the week for the latest news.

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Lilly Diabetes/American Diabetes Association renew with Ryan Reed

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Roush Fenway Racing officials and Lilly Diabetes/American Diabetes Association have announced a multiyear sponsorship renewal of the Drive to Stop Diabetes program for the No. 16 Ford with NASCAR Nationwide Series driver Ryan Reed.

Reed, 21, is in his first full season in the series. The Bakersfield, California, native is ninth in points heading into Friday night’s Drive For The Cure 300 at Charlotte Motor Speedway (ESPN2, 7:30 p.m.).

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In 29 starts this season, Reed recorded his best finish (fourth) in July at Daytona International Speedway. He made six starts a year ago before competing full-time.

Lilly and the ADA are more than just sponsors for Reed, who was diagnosed with Type 1 Diabetes in 2011.

"I am very excited for the opportunity to move forward and expand the (Drive to Stop Diabetes) program," Reed said. "As someone who was diagnosed and told that my dream of being a professional driver was over, I personally understand the importance of education and awareness as well as tapping into resources to manage my diabetes.

"With so many people living with or at risk for diabetes, it is so important that we continue to educate people about how to get out ahead of it and live with this disease."

For select events throughout the 2014 season, the name of a "guest" diagnosed with diabetes has been featured on the passenger side window of Reed’s No. 16 Mustang.

The Drive to Stop Diabetes program "has been a tremendous success for the association, and we’re excited for what the future holds for this partnership moving into the second year," Suzanne Berry, interim chief executive officer of the ADA, said.

"Ryan’s voice and passion for educating and inspiring all people who are affected by diabetes has accelerated the program beyond our expectations."

Roush Fenway Racing fields three Sprint Cup Series teams with drivers Greg Biffle, Carl Edwards and Ricky Stenhouse Jr. Its Nationwide Series lineup consists of Reed, Chris Buescher and Trevor Bayne.

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RCR No. 3 driver has two points between himself, second-place Regan Smith

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Ty Dillon is aware of his points situation, but the numbers aren’t the focus for the Sunoco Rookie of the Year candidate, nor his No. 3 Richard Childress Racing team.

"We’re looking at them, but we’re looking at trophies first," Dillon, 22, said Oct. 4, moments after finishing fifth in the Kansas Lottery 300 NASCAR Nationwide Series race at Kansas Speedway. "We’ve got to get wins."

Dillon, younger brother of Sprint Cup Series driver Austin Dillon and grandson of team owner Richard Childress, sits third in the series’ standings, trailing JR Motorsports teammates Chase Elliott and Regan Smith.

The Kansas finish allowed Dillon to close the gap on the two somewhat — he now trails Elliott by 40 and Smith by only two points.

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The series travels to Charlotte Motor Speedway next, site of Friday night’s Drive For the Cure 300. It’s one of three Nationwide Series races in the final four events of the season that will be contested on 1.5-mile tracks, with stops at Texas Motor Speedway and Homestead-Miami also remaining. The only non 1.5-mile venue is Phoenix International Raceway.

"We’ve been really strong on these mile-and-a-halves the second half of the year," Dillon said. "Ever since Paul (Menard) kind of kicked it off with a win at Michigan."

Menard competes full-time for RCR in the Sprint Cup Series; Michigan is a 2-mile track, but it’s the intermediate-track program that Dillon has in mind. Short tracks haven’t been the team’s bread and butter; the bigger circuits fall more into its wheelhouse.

Dillon scored his first Nationwide Series win earlier this year at Indianapolis Motor Speedway, a week after finishing fifth at Chicago. He was ninth at Atlanta, seventh on a return trip to Chicago and third a week later in Kentucky, all — except for Indy — 1.5-mile stops.

In 2012 and 2013, he competed in NASCAR’s Camping World Truck Series, scoring three wins and finishing fourth and second in the points standings. He and crew chief Danny Stockman Jr. know what is required to run competitively, and what it takes to win.

His team hasn’t gotten "complacent" since moving up to the Nationwide Series, he said.

"I think in the past we would come to the track, win a race and maybe get complacent with our cars," Dillon said. "The guys have just kept their heads down and kept digging and digging. We’re getting faster and faster each week.

"We’ve got some work to do on the short tracks, for sure, but we’ve got some mile and a halves left to go and we’ve got a lot of confidence going into (them)."

All three of Dillon’s poles this season have come on 1.5-mile tracks — he scored his first at Las Vegas in the series’ third race of the season, added another at Kentucky and the most recent last week at Kansas.

"Getting the pole … was a huge boost and running the way we did, having a car that was capable of me making mistakes and still coming back through the field was a nice relief," he said.

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Chat with fellow NASCAR fans during this week’s on-track activity

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Busch (finally) put his Kansas demons to bed and ascends to No. 2; Do you agree? Vote now!

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Truck Series driver has no problem switching seats

Ryan Blaney has made a habit of deftly bouncing from ride to ride in all three NASCAR national series this season. The cross-training has not only given the 20-year-old plenty of time behind the wheel, it’s made him a more versatile driver as he takes the next step in his racing career.

Blaney, fresh from a third-place finish last weekend in the NASCAR Nationwide Series behind Sprint Cup regulars Kyle Busch and Kevin Harvick at Kansas Speedway, has much more criss-crossing on tap for the closing stages of 2014. He’ll return to his full-time gig driving in the NASCAR Camping World Truck Series on Oct. 18 at Talladega Superspeedway, where he’ll also attempt to make his second career Sprint Cup start the following day.

But first things first: Blaney has another start scheduled on the Nationwide side for Team Penske at Charlotte Motor Speedway this weekend.

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"I’m really excited for Charlotte," Blaney said last weekend in Kansas. "I’ve got Greg Erwin crew-chiefing me, and I think we’re pretty close to how we were at Kentucky, and we had a pretty good run there with Greg. I really like Charlotte and it’s always been a fun race track for me. Looking forward to running three out of the last four Nationwide events."

Blaney has two Nationwide races remaining (Charlotte, Texas) in the Erwin-led No. 12 Penske Ford and one left (Phoenix) with Jeremy Bullins atop the pit box for the No. 22 Mustang. Bullins, who oversaw Blaney’s Sprint Cup debut in May at Kansas, will again be calling the shots for the youngster’s return at Talladega.

While Blaney’s Nationwide car number will vary the next three weeks, the team’s preparation won’t change.

"The races this year that we’ve run the 12 (Nationwide) program, we’re trying to mirror what we’re doing with the 22, so we’ll be in constant contact with them and make sure that’s as good an effort as it can be," Bullins said. "Then we’re all excited to go with him to Talladega here in a couple weeks; that’s going to be a lot of fun."

Blaney will embark on heavier Sprint Cup duty next season running a part-time schedule in the Wood Brothers’ famed No. 21 Ford team, which will share a technical alliance with Team Penske beginning in 2015. He plans to continue driving duties for Penske in Nationwide competition, where he’s recorded top-10 finishes in all but one of his 11 starts this season.

While Blaney has one victory in each the Nationwide and Truck series this year, he’s been on the cusp of several more. In trucks, he also possesses two runner-up finishes and ranks third in standings this season, and has been no worse than fourth his last four times out in the Nationwide tour.

"We’ve been close," Blaney said. "We just haven’t been able to quite get to Victory Lane these last handful of races."

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Hendrick Motorsports driver, employee veterans honor military

Photo credit: D. Jonathan W. Hutchings

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NASCAR Sprint Cup Series driver Kasey Kahne took a break from the pressure of the Chase for the NASCAR Sprint Cup on Tuesday and helped Bank of America employee veterans frame a Habitat for Humanity house at Charlotte Motor Speedway.

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The Hendrick Motorsports driver participated in the build as part of the "Express Your Thanks" campaign to honor and thank members of the military. Bank employees who served in the armed forces took part to meet a goal of providing affordable housing in Charlotte, home of Bank of America’s headquarters.

Habitat Charlotte buyer and soon-to-be first-time homeowner Samantha Ka will move into the house upon completion. She worked side-by-side with Kahne and volunteers, including Bank of America Charlotte and North Carolina market president Charles Bowman. The mother of two will continue to put in sweat equity hours, which began with Tuesday’s one-day frame build.

The bank’s "Express Your Thanks" campaign is in its third year, raising $1.4 million since 2012 with a gold of reaching an additional $1 million by Veterans Day on Nov. 11. Funds raised support military non-profit organizations that transition servicemen and women to civilian life.

After finishing 22nd in the first race of the Contender Round last Sunday at Kansas Speedway, Kahne finds himself ninth in the Chase standings as the series returns to Charlotte for the Bank of America 500 (Saturday, 7:30 p.m. ET, ABC) before heading to Talladega Superspeedway for the final race of this round. After Talladega, the top eight drivers advance to the Eliminator Round.

"You have these two races that mean so much and then the third one is do-or-die," Kahne told SiriusXM NASCAR Radio. " … Pretty much four times it’ll be like that in 10 races. It’s really intense. It feels like there’s so much more on the line with seven races to go, six races to go, four races to go."

Kahne will seek his second win of the season and fourth at Charlotte to automatically advance to the next round. He has an 11.5 average finish at the track with nine top-fives and 12 top-10s in 21 career starts.

"It feels like you’re just about racing for a championship already, and I don’t know exactly how that feels because I haven’t raced for a Sprint Cup championship," Kahne said. "But it just seems like there’s way more pressure all the way until you hit Homestead."

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Longtime car owner joins Lynda Petty, Martin Truex Jr. as quarterly honorees

RELATED: Images of Junie Donlavey’s life in NASCAR

Longtime car owner Junie Donlavey was named the National Motorsports Press Association Spirit Award recipient for the third quarter of 2014.

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Donlavey, who passed away in June at the age of 90, competed at NASCAR’s highest level from 1950 through 2002. The native of Richmond, Virginia, gave numerous drivers their start in NASCAR’s premier series, now known as the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series. That list included two-time champ Joe Weatherly, Jimmy Hensley, Harry Gant and Robby Gordon. Donlavey also aided the careers of drivers such as Ken Schrader and Dick Trickle.

Teams owned by Donlavey made 863 starts, and nine of those teams finished in the top 10 in points in the season standings. His lone win as an owner came in 1981 at Dover International Speedway with driver Jody Ridley.

Donlavey was inducted into the NMPA Hall of Fame in 2009, and in September, the garage area at Richmond International Raceway was named in his honor .

Also receiving votes for the third quarter were Sprint Cup Series drivers Kasey Kahne, Jeff Gordon, Tony Stewart and Kyle Larson.

Other quarterly winners of the Spirit Award for 2014 are Lynda Petty (first quarter) and Martin Truex Jr. (second quarter).

The NMPA Spirit Award is designed to recognize character and achievement in the face of adversity, sportsmanship and contributions to motorsports. Each year, quarterly winners are chosen, and an overall winner is selected by a vote of the NMPA membership.

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Bruce: Hendrick trio, Keselowski not out, just down

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KANSAS CITY, Kan. — For the second time in three weeks, Joey Logano woke up to the realization that he and his No. 22 Team Penske outfit are one step closer to Homestead-Miami Speedway and a chance at this year’s NASCAR NASCAR Sprint Cup Series championship.

A much harsher dose of reality greeted Logano’s teammate Brad Keselowski, as well as Hendrick Motorsports drivers Kasey Kahne, Dale Earnhardt Jr., and Jimmie Johnson.

With two races remaining in the Contender Round of this year’s Chase for the NASCAR Sprint Cup, their chances at advancement are much less likely. Certainly it’s not impossible, given the results that brought each of them this far. But the odds that all four find their way out of the points wasteland in which they currently wander aren’t good.

A win at Charlotte, on tap for this Saturday night, or next week’s stop at Talladega Superspeedway, would guarantee any one of the four the right to fight another day. But the math there doesn’t add up — two winners doesn’t get four drivers into in NASCAR’s Chase.

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Racing their way back into contention won’t be easy. Bad starts in the Chase, regardless of format, have proven to be notoriously difficult to overcome. Under this year’s system, it may be even more so.

Just ask Greg Biffle or Aric Almirola. Those two struggled in the Chase opener at Chicagoland Speedway and went on to prove that two races isn’t enough time to climb back into the title picture. But a fourth driver, Denny Hamlin, did manage the feat. The Joe Gibbs Racing driver was first "on the outside" after finishing 37th at New Hampshire going into the cutoff race at Dover. A 12th-place finish there gave Hamlin new life if not more horsepower.

Obviously, the misfortune that struck Kahne, Keselowski, Earnhardt Jr., and Johnson at Kansas could just as easily bite four others at some point during the next two races. A flat tire here, a broken part there.

It’s hard to make a living or contend for championships, however, based on what could occur. Teams don’t set up their cars, tune their engines or plot pit strategy based on what might happen to others.

The reality of the situation is that it happened to them, and now they must deal with the consequences.

Kahne, eight points out of the top eight, has lived on the edge most of the season, winning late in the year to gain a spot in the Chase and then advancing into the Contender Round by the slimmest of margins.

Keselowski, 22 points out of eighth, enjoyed a strong regular season, then promptly won the opening race of the Chase. The team didn’t rest on its laurels; Keselowski finished seventh at Loudon and second at Dover while leading 78 laps in each of those races.

Earnhardt admitted concern before the start of the second round, acknowledging that his No. 88 team had lost something off its fastball in recent weeks. Still, the sport’s most popular driver didn’t appear to have too difficult of a time advancing to the second round. Now, he finds himself 25 points out of eighth place.

Johnson, the six-time champion, has his back against the wall and there’s no other way to put it. He’s 27 points out of eighth and those two top-five finishes that he rode into the second round might as well have happened in the season’s first two races, for all the good they do him now.

A week from today, all four could be back in the title picture and maybe that will indeed be the case. If Kansas was a nightmare, Charlotte could be the Promised Land. Wrongs can be set right when the sun goes down.

Talladega is 500 miles of opportunity surrounded by chaos. Who can guess what unfolds there?

The four aren’t down and out at this point — just down.

But "out" is clearly visible. And it’s something none of the four expected to see this soon.

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Creatively aligned, and in a similar genre, to the other NASCAR national series marks

RELATED: NASCAR announces XFINITY entitlement sponsorship

NASCAR announced last month that beginning in 2015 Comcast’s XFINITY brand will be the title sponsor for what is currently known as the NASCAR Nationwide Series. In preparation for the transition, planning has already begun with XFINITY in what will be an ongoing process in the coming weeks and months to be ready for January 1, 2015, when XFINITY officially takes the reins of the entitlement.

An integral part to that transition is the development of the official NASCAR XFINITY Series mark, which makes its debut today. The NASCAR XFINITY Series mark is creatively aligned, and in a similar genre, to the other NASCAR national series marks. It is being provided by NASCAR in advance solely for the purpose of allowing teams and tracks to prepare for integration of NASCAR XFINITY Series marks for the 2015 season (i.e. uniform production, paint scheme design, promotional materials, etc.)

Fans will see the new NASCAR XFINITY Series mark in the same places as they see the NASCAR Nationwide Series marks, including NASCAR XFINITY Series racecar windshields, NASCAR XFINITY Series officials’ and drivers’ uniforms, haulers, pace cars, headsets, grass stencils, banners / flags, credentials / hard cards, Victory Lane accessories, websites, media guides, schedules, souvenir programs, tickets, and the NASCAR XFINITY Series championship trophy.

XFINITY is Comcast’s residential service brand and is the nation’s largest video and high-speed Internet provider. Comcast serves business and residential customers in 39 states and Washington, D.C.

What will soon be known as the NASCAR XFINITY Series is the property where names are made and is like nothing else in major pro sports. It features NASCAR’s most talented young drivers regularly competing side-by-side against NASCAR’s finest and brightest stars. It races in some of the nation’s largest markets (Chicago, Los Angeles, Miami) and at the sport’s biggest and most iconic tracks (Daytona International Speedway, Atlanta Motor Speedway, Charlotte Motor Speedway, Darlington Raceway, Talladega Superspeedway, Indianapolis Motor Speedway).

Nationwide remains the series entitlement partner through December 31, 2014, and continues on as an Official NASCAR Partner and Sprint Cup team sponsor for years to come.

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