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No. 3 driver sneaks up leaderboard late; Harvick takes second practice before being involved in crash

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Kevin Harvick may have taken the ninth spot in each the morning Nationwide practice and early afternoon Sprint Cup practice, but the third time was the charm for the Chevrolet driver, as he earned the top spot in the second practice for the Jeff Foxworthy’s Grit Chips 300 on Friday at Bristol Motor Speedway in Tennessee.

Harvick ran a total of 55 laps, his 51st being his best with a best time of 15.488 seconds and best speed of 123.889 mph. Justin Allgaier (15.505), Trevor Bayne (15.515), Sam Hornish Jr. (15.531), and Brad Keselowski (15.540) rounded out the top five.

With just over five minutes remaining in practice, Brad Sweet collided with Joey Gase in a near T-bone hit that also involved Harvick and Brad Teague.

Austin Dillon took the first session but finished 16th with a best speed of 122.123. Alex Bowman, who finished second in the morning practice, was seventh in the later session.

Defending race winner Elliot Sadler ran his 62nd lap of the session in 15.716, good for 17th overall. 

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Practice one recap

Having won three of his last six starts at Bristol Motor Speedway, reigning Sprint Cup champion Brad Keselowski pulled into the garage with the lead in Friday’s early practice for the Nationwide Series Jeff Foxworthy’s Grit Chips 300 race in Bristol, Tenn., but Austin Dillon had other plans.

Dillon’s No. 3 Chevrolet snuck by Keselowski late in the morning session to take the top overall time, spinning its 29th lap in 15.451 seconds with a best speed of 124.186 mph. Keselowski ran his 20th lap in a best time of 15.598 seconds, averaging a best speed of 123.016. Placing third in last spring’s Nationwide race, Keselowski ran a total of 23 laps on Friday.

Alex Bowman also found himself near the top of the leaderboard late, placing second on his 54th lap with a time of 15.495 and speed of 123.833.  Regan Smith (123.166) and Kyle Busch (122.584) rounded out the top five.

Elliott Sadler, who won this race in 2012, was 12th overall with a best time 15.780 and best speed of 121.597. Current points leader Sam Hornish Jr., last week’s winner, finished just ahead of Sadler with a time of 15.779. Justin Allgaier, second in points, finished in eighth, achieving a top speed of 122.318.

Travis Pastrana had a disappointing opening session, placing 27th with a top speed of 119.701.

Chris Buescher ran the most laps — 81 — and finished 25th.

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Posted on by Zack Albert

Top lane still might be best route; big impact shortens Nationwide practice

BRISTOL, Tenn. — With plenty of laps still to be turned this weekend at Bristol Motor Speedway, including 500 of them in Sunday’s main event, NASCAR Sprint Cup Series drivers set about trying to find a groove in Friday’s practice. The only issue is that Friday’s groove might not be Sunday’s preferred line.

The short track will host its second race on its newly ground concrete this weekend, and the early indications are that Sunday’s Food City 500 could share the complexion of last August’s slam-bang affair. Hours of Friday practice for Sprint Cup and Nationwide cars put plenty of Goodyear rubber into the racing surface; by day’s end, the groove had already moved three-quarters of the way up the steep banking.

"As far as the race goes, I think we’ll definitely see the top lane come in, for sure," said Kyle Busch, who blasted to his first Coors Light Pole at Bristol with a track-record lap Friday of 129.535 mph. "When or how fast, I’m not sure about that exactly."

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Bristol executives opted to overhaul the .533-mile layout between the track’s two annual events last season after hearing a fan outcry — and ensuing internet vote — in favor of altering the track to improve the racing. As a result, the progressive banking was modified and a layer of concrete in the outside line around the track was ground down.

The racing it produced made the high groove the fastest way around, especially after the field wore its tires into the pavement. To gain positions, drivers used the dirt-track tactic of the "slide job," which requires a certain amount of gusto to dive low before sliding up in the turns in front of a rival.

"It does take you back to the dirt track days, even though you aren’t completely sliding it sideways, you are still very committed to that move," said Jeff Gordon, who cut his teeth on dirt speedways. "You are carrying so much momentum to make it work to get ahead of that car; you have no choice but to take it all the way to the wall."

While the opinion in the garage seems to be that the slide-job strategy will return, Dale Earnhardt Jr. said there was no way of knowing last season that removing some portions of the top banking would actually boost its popularity.

"They were trying to eliminate the top groove and ended up making it even stronger," he said. "And so it didn’t really have the intended result, but it was a good result nonetheless. Everybody seemed to enjoy the race. I did.

"So, I think everybody needs to put away the pick-axes and hammers because we really don’t know what makes a good race track. We really don’t need everybody hammering away at the surface of the race track trying to fix it, because nobody really knows what the result is going to be."

Heavy hit
A savage-looking four-car crash red-flagged the second Nationwide Series practice of the day, with Joey Gase and Brad Sweet taking the brunt of the damage.

As Gase slowed to avoid Tony Raines’ spin on the backstretch, his almost-stationary car was slammed from behind by a fast-closing Sweet, lifting Gase’s rear wheels off the concrete. Both drivers were evaluated and released from the infield care center.

"I wasn’t really expecting to see a wreck halfway down the backstretch and it just caught me off guard," Sweet said. "I think I overreacted with my brakes, just locked ’em up and I was kind of along for the ride." 

The impact brought a premature halt to Gase’s weekend. The 20-year-old driver for Jimmy Means Racing said his team did not have a backup car for Saturday’s Jeff Foxworthy’s Grit Chips 300.

Gordon goes viral
Jeff Gordon has had plenty of victories through his 20-plus years of NASCAR racing, but one of his biggest might be the viral video that won the internet this week. The web video of a disguised Gordon terrifying an unsuspecting used car salesman in a test drive topped the 18-million views mark Friday, becoming a hot topic at Bristol, where stunt-driving skills might be considered an asset.

"When you are at Bristol, you’re just scaring yourself every other corner," Gordon said. "That’s why this place is so much fun."

The debate quickly ensued over whether the video was real, partly staged or an outright fake. Gordon didn’t do his own driving, though he said he thought he could "pull off 90 percent of it," but no matter how contrived the short film was or wasn’t, the court of YouTube opinion has judged it an online hit.

"I know how much fun I had doing it, but after watching, I thought they did an awesome job editing it, making the whole thing really come together and be a lot of fun," Gordon said. "I laughed my butt off, to be honest. I’ve watched it probably six or eight times, and every time I’ve just cracked up."

Pit notes
Ricky Stenhouse Jr.‘s car went up in smoke during the first Sprint Cup practice, the victim of an engine failure. "A lot better to have it happen during practice than when we get in the race and it really matters," said Stenhouse, who qualified 28th but will drop to the rear of the field Sunday because of the engine change. … Scott Riggs was the only driver who failed to qualify for the 43-car field.

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Posted on by Zack Albert

Last year’s incident has Patrick primed to be aggressive

BRISTOL, Tenn. — It wasn’t quite the helmet throw heard ’round the world, but Danica Patrick made her own dramatic impression last fall in her first NASCAR Sprint Cup Series race at Bristol Motor Speedway. This time around, she’s expecting more rough-and-tumble racing, but hopes to see the Food City 500 through to its full 500-lap distance.

Patrick enters the first short-track race of the season by embracing it with anticipation, hoping to erase the sour taste of lackluster finishes the previous two weeks at Phoenix and Las Vegas. She isn’t expecting her No. 10 Stewart-Haas Racing Chevrolet to have a pristine appearance by the end of Sunday’s race, the fourth this season in the Sprint Cup tour, but she also expects to respond in kind to any bumper tag that her 42 on-track rivals might dole out.

It’s only fair, she reasons.

"If you get taken out, you get taken out. Hopefully that doesn’t happen."

— Danica Patrick

"I don’t mind some beating and banging out there, I don’t mind pushing your way around a little bit. It just happens," Patrick said before Friday’s first practice on the .533-mile concrete bullring. " … I enjoy it. I’ve always said from the beginning that NASCAR is a lot of fun for me because if somebody lays on you, you can lay right back. You aren’t risking your life, like the old days in IndyCar when somebody would do something that was not intelligent to you, I understood that it was a physical risk to try and get them back, because when the wheels are exposed, bad things happen. Not here, though. Not in NASCAR. You can bump and bang all you like."

Patrick found herself on the wrong end of Bristol’s bumps last August. A run-in with Regan Smith sent Patrick’s car hurtling into the inside wall less than 75 laps from the end, destroying a realistic shot at a respectable lead-lap finish in her Bristol debut.

Perhaps taking a cue from her boss, Tony Stewart, whose famous two-hand helmet throw at Matt Kenseth‘s car ignited the crowd into a frenzy earlier in the night, Patrick wasn’t about to let Smith’s actions go without response. She dismounted in a huff, shed her helmet and once Smith’s ominous matte black car passed, Patrick issued the most noteworthy finger wag by a professional athlete since Rafael Palmeiro stared down a Congressional panel at a 2005 steroids hearing.

Theatrics aside, the 434 laps Patrick logged taught her a thing or two about navigating Bristol’s pitfalls. Still, she won’t overcorrect this weekend with a more cautious approach.

"When we are racing nose to tail really close, it’s always more of a risk, of course," Patrick said, "but there is nothing I can do to prepare myself better for the race that would fix the problem from last time of getting taken out. If you get taken out, you get taken out. Hopefully that doesn’t happen. The best thing I can do for that is try and get further up the field so that (I am) around some smarter drivers. Hopefully that happens."

Being further up in the field would be a welcome salve after last week’s showing at Las Vegas Motor Speedway, where Patrick was lapped early and often, limping to a 33rd-place finish — six laps down — with an ill-handling car. The outing made for an all-encompassing debrief session once the team returned to its North Carolina base.

"I went into the shop on Tuesday and there was definitely some thoughts and concepts that they were like, ‘Look, we did this wrong. We need to fix that. Your comments made sense from practice. It didn’t even make sense to me that we needed to do them necessarily for the race,’ " Patrick said. "I think that this car works a little differently in traffic as well. Aerodynamically we have lost a lot of side-force, and I think that plays a role. I think that we have to get all four tires on the ground the way they need to be. We have to get the rear tied down. There’s nothing you can do if you can’t put the power down."

Patrick’s 10-event foray into Sprint Cup racing last season was intended to throw NASCAR’s most treacherous tracks and some of the longest races her way in hopes of accelerating her learning curve ahead of this, her first full Sprint Cup season. Three races in, Patrick’s grade is too early to etch on a report card, but Sunday’s race — all 500 laps of it, she hopes — may provide a better answer of just how far she’s come.

"It makes me appreciate all the races I did last year, and how almost all of them were 500 miles," Patrick said. "It is a different mindset. I feel like no matter what happens — whether it’s a 200-lap race, or a 500-lap race, you find your rhythm. Time goes by fast sometimes, and sometimes it’s slow. All I can hope is the car has a decent balance because when it doesn’t, that’s when the laps seem wrong. If we can just get a decent car, and get into a rhythm, and find ourselves in a good spot, have a consistent car throughout the race, time does go pretty quickly usually."

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Posted on by Nascar

Driver met with NASCAR CEO Brian France before deciding not to appeal

BRISTOL, Tenn. — Denny Hamlin contends he was not angry that NASCAR fined him $25,000 for comments he made earlier this month.

Hamlin was angry, he said, because he felt he had been treated as less than equal to many of those he competes against on a weekly basis in the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series.

“That was the biggest complaint I had was that if I was Jeff Gordon, Tony (Stewart), Dale (Earnhardt) Jr. or any Hendrick (Motorsports) driver — let’s just say that — they would have had a conversation with me before (taking any action),” Hamlin said March 15 at Bristol Motor Speedway. “Just to slap the fine on me and not tell me anything is what really, really bugged me a lot.”

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Hamlin, 32, was fined for remarks he made following the March 3 Subway Fresh Fit 500 at Phoenix International Raceway. While officials didn’t identify the specific comments when announcing the fine, Hamlin’s assessment of the new Generation-6 car was thought to be the issue. The Phoenix race was the second of the season in the new car, and it has been hoped that the new vehicle would lead to increased competition for the 36-race series.

“I’ve grinded it out here for eight years and I really feel like I’ve done what it takes to earn the respect of both my peers and NASCAR,” the Joe Gibbs Racing driver said, “and I felt like if I had been somebody else the outcome may have been different.”

Hamlin initially said he would not pay the fine, but later noted that the fine could be appealed. However, on March 14 he announced via his personal Twitter account that he would not file an appeal.

NASCAR subsequently issued a statement which explained that the fine would “be settled per Section 12-3 of the … rule book,” indicating the $25,000 would be taken from Hamlin’s winnings.

Hamlin, who said he met with NASCAR CEO Brian France to discuss the matter, said he dropped his plans for the appeal because he felt there was nothing left to prove.

“I think we won in the (judgment) of the people and their opinion,” he said. “Some of the peers of mine, at least the ones that have a backbone (and) have the nerve to stick up for that they know is right and wrong, agreed.

“But what was the point in going another week or so?”

Public perception of the Car of Tomorrow, which debuted in 2007, got off to a rocky start when Kyle Busch, the first driver to win in the car, bashed the new piece in Victory Lane.

“They were just very, very sensitive about this car,” Hamlin said. “This is their baby.”

Hamlin, a winner of 22 Sprint Cup races, contends that he likes the new car and that it is an improvement over the previous model.

“I was more frustrated with the tire that we were on than anything,” he said. “That’s the part that frustrated me, that it put me on an island feeling like I was bashing the race car which was definitely not how I felt.”

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Posted on by Nascar

Driver address two-race suspension, reinstatement

BRISTOL, Tenn. — The first weekend, he sat at home. The second, he and his girlfriend “got away.”

He did not watch races. He had no desire to, he said.

Jeremy Clements, suspended two races for violating NASCAR’s Code of Conduct policy, is back behind the wheel of his family-owned NASCAR Nationwide Series entry for this weekend’s race at Bristol Motor Speedway. He’s hoping to leave the past behind.

“Unfortunately, it’s the way of the world,” Clements, 29, said moments after wrapping up a press conference with a dozen or so media members at the rear of his team’s transporter. “We had a lot of good runs last year; we run on such a very small budget. I wish we could get a little more attention for how good we do a lot of the time instead of something like this happening.”

"It doesn’t represent who I am at all."

— Jeremy Clements

NASCAR officials announced Feb. 27 that Clements had been suspended indefinitely for the use of a racial slur while speaking with an MTV blogger at Daytona International Speedway. Upon his completion of an individualized program, developed and overseen by Dr. Richard Lapchick and the National Consortium for Academics and Sports, NASCAR officials cleared Clements to return to competition.

“Like I said, it doesn’t represent who I am at all,” Clements said of the comment. “It’s just a bad deal. I didn’t want to be known for any of this. That’s why I keep saying I want to right the wrong and show people I’m not about that at all.”

He enters Saturday’s Nationwide Series race 37th in driver points.

Clements, who comes from a racing family that sprouted up in Spartanburg, S.C., two generations ago, finished 33rd in the season-opening event at Daytona. Ryan Sieg competed for the team at Phoenix and Las Vegas in Clements’ absence.

Reading from a prepared statement earlier, Clements apologized to officials, his team, family and fans of the sport. His use of the term, he said, “doesn’t represent who I am or how I was raised.”

“My grandpa, Crawford Clements, who I looked up to and respected and got me started racing when I was 7, was a crew chief for Wendell Scott in 1965,” Clements said. “I was raised to respect everybody.”

Scott, who competed in NASCAR from 1961-73, is the only black driver to win in NASCAR’s Cup series.

No longer on the sidelines, a contrite Clements says he just wants to move forward.

“I have never been in trouble with NASCAR,” he said. “I always just try to do the right thing and just stay here and be able to race. I always try to get new fans coming (to races) and do anything NASCAR wants. I hope it doesn’t hurt (my career). I don’t know.”

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Posted on by Nascar

Country legend spoke with NASCAR.com for a question-and-answer session

Country music legend Charlie Daniels and the Charlie Daniels Band will perform a pre-race concert prior to this weekend’s Food City 500 at Bristol Motor Speedway. Daniels, 76, recently took a break from his latest tour to speak with NASCAR.com.

Are you excited about playing before a race crowd at Bristol?

Daniels: “I’m really looking forward to that. I don’t get to go to races. People say ‘are you going to such-and-such (race)?’ Naw, because I’m working the same time those guys are. But this particular one, we’re going to play, I’m going to get to stay around and watch, hang out in the pits awhile and just have a really big time. I’m a big NASCAR fan.


I’ve not been to Bristol and it’s one of the races I really want to (attend). I’ve got that one and Martinsville. I’ve got to make Martinsville one of these days.”

 

Still following the Tennessee Vols?

Daniels: Oh yeah. I’m still alive ain’t I? I’ve got a lot of money in that place. My son went to school over there, which I always thought was a four-year proposition until he started. Come to find out he stretched it quite a bit longer than that.”

 

I love UT, that’s my football team, that’s my No. 1 team. I’m a big SEC fan. … Whoever is playing somebody outside the SEC, I’m all for them.

"I’ve not been to Bristol and it’s one of the races I really want to (attend)."

— Charlie Daniels

You recently hosted this year’s annual Yellow Ribbon event at Lipscomb University. What’s behind that program?

 

Daniels: It’s to help young men and women who have been wounded in service to this country, to kind of jumpstart their lives. The way I explain it usually, I don’t think anybody plans to be in the military for the rest of their lives. They go in when they’re 19 or 20 years old, put 20 years in and when they come out they’re still young people. I think everybody has a plan for something they’re going to do afterwards. So you figure you go in and you’re serving and all of a sudden you lose a limb or you have a head wound … something that just precludes you doing what you had intended to do when you come out. So what do you do? Do you just sit the rest of your life? These people are not natured like that. They don’t do that. They are natured to be doing something. … When you see someone come into this program who has had a … head wound, and learn to walk, even to talk all over again … you see the light come back in their eyes. You see the confidence come back, their dream comes back alive again. That’s what we do it for. We can never, ever repay these young men and women for what they’ve lost, there’s no way. At least we can say thank you.”

 

How much longer do you see yourself continuing to tour?

 

Daniels: As long as it’s the good Lord’s will and people want to see me. I can’t imagine spending my life in anyway that would suit me better. I can still do it; I’m still a viable entertainer, I’m still creative; I have the best band I’ve ever had. And we put on a good show. I would not go out and have to hobble on stage, not be able to sing, not be able to play and feel like I was doing an injustice to people by taking their money for tickets. I could not do that. … It’s like the bible says, you’ll be fresh and green in old age and you’ll still be fruitful. I’m 76 years old, but we’re still rocking. I’ve got a good bunch of guys, a good bunch of pickers. We still rock it out. It’s not a visit to the old folks’ home. … This is not the Septuagenarian Six or nothing like that; the CDB is still cooking, we’re still rocking. As long as it’s that way and it’s fun and people want to hear it, I’ll be out here doing it.

 

You’re really big into social media. How did that come about?

 

Daniels: My son got me into that. He’s dragged me kicking and screaming into every technological thing I ever got involved in. … Once he set something up for me and got to the point where I could understand how it was done, it’s been beneficial to me. This Twitter thing is incredible because you can get in touch with planet Earth in a few keystrokes. I’ve talked to people all over the place. … You get a different view of things. It’s really neat. It ties the world together. And I’m all for communicating with people, that’s what my life has been about. So it works real well for me.

 

And you aren’t shy when it comes to expressing your views?

 

Daniels: No. I don’t think anybody should be. I think everybody should express their views and not just take somebody else’s opinion just because they like them or something. They should figure out for themselves what the best thing is going on and go that way.

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Posted on by Staff Report

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Posted on by Staff Report

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Posted on by Staff Report

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Posted on by Staff Report

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