Trust fund established for Jason Leffler's son

Posted on June 15, 2013 by

A celebration of Leffler’s life set for Wednesday

In honor of NASCAR driver Jason Leffler, who lost his life in a racing accident this week, a trust fund has been established for his five-year-old son, Charlie Dean.

This trust will serve as the official Leffler Family fund, with all monies going directly to Charlie’s needs. Turner Scott Motorsports co-owner Harry Scott Jr., former Braun Racing owner Todd Braun and Steve Overholser, CFO of Great Clips, will serve as trustees.

Donations can be made to The Charlie Dean Leffler Discretionary Trust at:  

The Charlie Dean Leffler Discretionary Trust
 c/o SunTrust Bank 
232 Williamson Road
 Mooresville, NC 28117

A celebration of Jason Leffler’s life will be held on Wednesday, June 19. The service will be at Grace Covenant Church, located at 17301 Statesville Road in Cornelius, N.C. at 1:00 p.m. In lieu of flowers, donations can be made to The Charlie Dean Leffler Discretionary Trust.

Posted on June 14, 2013 by

Junior brimming with confidence at Michigan; other drivers take notice

BROOKLYN, Mich. — The newest installment in the Superman series to make it to the silver screen, “Man of Steel” has endured some mixed reviews heading into its opening weekend, hovering around 60% out of a 100 rating from well-known movie review site RottenTomatoes.com.

As for Dale Earnhardt Jr.’s No. 88 Chevrolet, which has a paint scheme inspired by the Last Son of Krypton himself, there’s been nothing but favorable returns from some of the toughest critics in NASCAR — his teammates.

“I thought Junior had a very impressive run last week,” Hendrick Motorsports teammate Jeff Gordon said. “He was very competitive and it was great timing for them because (Michigan International Speedway) is a track that I know he likes and does well at; he did well last year. So, if this is a window of opportunity for him, it’s opening.”

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“He could win here again,” added Kasey Kahne, another teammate. “He was really good here last year and they’re always right there and consistently in the top 10.”

Earnhardt Jr. was one of the fastest drivers in Friday’s opening practice session, his National Guard “Man of Steel” Chevrolet clocking in fifth at 199.922 mph to Kahne’s chart-leading 200.619. He was a little faster in qualifying at 200.100 mph, but ended up placing 12th. Earnhardt shouldn’t take his marginal qualifying position to heart, considering that in his last two races here he finished fourth and first, starting 22nd and 17th, respectively.

“Hopefully (the car is) as fast as it looks good. That is going to be more important to be able to repeat and get the win this weekend,” Earnhardt said. “We feel pretty good coming in to this race.”

The annual expectation ahead of each of the two Michigan races is that Earnhardt will run well at the track, as his average finish of 10.5 at the track in the past eight races ranks among his best. Not many could have predicted that he’d be riding a wave of momentum from the week before, however, following a third-place finish at Pocono.

The fact that Earnhardt now sits in fourth place in the Sprint Cup standings is impressive. After all, he had not a single top-five finish in all of April and May following three in the first five races.

“We had a great run last week that sort of hopefully got us back in the right direction,” Earnhardt said. “We started the season off so promising, the best that I had ever started a season. It just seemed like things were going so perfectly and it’s the way it is in this sport. You will think you have everything going in the right direction and then odds and fate and everything else got in the way.”

While Earnhardt is currently in no danger of missing the Chase for the NASCAR Sprint Cup, a win at Michigan is almost a necessity to ensure he stays near the top of the standings. He and third-place Clint Bowyer are the only two drivers in the top eight without a win. Meanwhile, some of Bowyer’s best tracks — Sonoma and New Hampshire, two tracks where Earnhardt struggles — are on the horizon.

“We feel like we are coming through a stretch of races and race tracks, if you take out Sonoma, that we should run pretty well at and have a lot of confidence at,” said Earnhardt. “Not that we won’t go to Sonoma and hope to run well, we will, but the track record (13 starts, no top-10 finishes) speaks for itself there.”

Perhaps there’s a little extra jolt that comes along with racing at one of his favorite tracks, but Earnhardt appears rejuvenated and ready to make a summer run as he tries to secure his first Sprint Cup championship. Now 38 years old, he isn’t surprised that there is concern over his age and his motivation after 15 years of Cup racing, but he’s as determined as ever.

“I feel like I have good energy. I’m not burning out,” said Earnhardt. “I think that the passion and the commitment probably goes before the physical end of it goes in this particular sport. I feel like I’m in the best opportunity of my career. There is a ‘seize the moment’ kind of feeling because I’m in such good equipment around such good people.

“We want to win more races. We want to win numerous races and multiple races in a season. We want that to be the status quo. We want that to be the norm.”

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Posted on June 14, 2013 by

Death of friend Leffler casts pall over weekend

BROOKLYN, Mich. — Averaging a fourth-place finish over the past three weeks of racing, which includes his first win of 2013 and his re-insertion into the Chase for the NASCAR Sprint Cup picture, by all means Tony Stewart should have had a noticeable spring in his step when he set foot in the media center at Michigan International Speedway on Friday afternoon.

The pep was missing, but who could blame him?

In addition to crashing his car in the opening practice session Friday morning and being forced to go to a backup, Stewart had to swallow the tough reality that his close friend and former roommate Jason Leffler had passed away Wednesday from injuries sustained in a sprint-car racing accident at Bridgeport Speedway, a dirt track in Swedesboro, N.J.

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“I’ve known Jason a long time; we grew up racing together,” Stewart said. “I knew him as a friend, as a roommate, as a teammate. I know that he loved nothing more than being behind the wheel of a race car. He was a racer; he didn’t care what he raced, when he raced. That’s all he wanted to do was be in a race car, and it was fun to have a roommate like that. It’s just a reminder of how dangerous our sport is.”

The news of Leffler’s passing was a sobering notice that despite the advancements the sport has introduced to maintain safety for everyone involved at the track, accidents can happen.

“We’ve had a lot of safety innovations over the last 15 years since I’ve been in Cup,” Stewart said. “It’s just proof that I don’t know that they’ll ever get to the stage where anybody is totally immune to getting hurt in a race car. It’s the scenario that we’re in and there isn’t anybody that gets behind the wheel that doesn’t know that going in.”

The situation that the driver of the No. 14 Chevrolet and his team now find themselves in with unexpectedly having to mourn the loss of a friend will make it difficult to focus on the task at hand, as a visibly shaken Stewart focused most of his press conference on honoring the memory of Leffler. However, the fact remains that Stewart has momentum on his side right now and can’t afford to take his foot off the gas, as a nine-race stretch from Las Vegas to Darlington without a top-10 put him in a deep hole.

“I feel like our organization is gaining on it. I’ve been really encouraged the last couple of weeks and the last three weeks we’ve made big gains,” said the three-time Sprint Cup champion. “Until I had the problem today, we were third on the sheet at the time that I crashed the car, so I feel encouraged that we’re gaining ground on it and starting to get back to form.”

He was 62 points out of 10th place in the points standings after a 15th-place finish at Darlington, but a seventh-place finish at Charlotte, a victory at Dover and a fourth-place finish last week at Pocono have him just 17 points out of that crucial spot. Despite having just one win at Michigan that came 13 years ago, Stewart does fare reasonably well here, with 19 top-10s in 28 starts. It’s also just one of five tracks that he has double-digit top-fives (11).

“This weekend I was really anxious to get on track to see where we were. The last two weeks, we had the advantage of having tests at Pocono and Dover but we didn’t do that for here, so I wanted to see how we’d come out of the box here,” Stewart said. “I was pretty encouraged by what I was seeing so far during the day, so I feel like we’re gaining on it. I don’t know where we need to be yet, but we definitely have made big gains so I’m pretty encouraged by that.”

Stewart ended up 35thon the leaderboard for the opening practice, with a best speed of 194.963 mph. After wrecking his first car, he spent the rest of the session focusing on figuring out how to get around the corners.

“I think as the session went on, the track got more grip to it. Pretty slippery at the beginning ‘til it started getting some rubber on the track,” he said. “It seems that watching the times, obviously we had a problem and I got loose and caught (the wall) then just ran the race track trying to get around the corner it seemed the longer the session went, the better the track got.”

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