HOMESTEAD, Fla. — Corey Heim made Saturday’s strongest bid to be the next locked-in championship contender in the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series Playoffs, doing nearly everything short of posting his series-best seventh victory of the year.
Instead, the 22-year-old Tricon Garage driver settled for an outcome that put him that much closer to his season-long aspirations.
Heim finished fourth in Saturday’s Baptist Health 200, leading a race-high 68 of the 134 laps until a late shift in strategies flipped the event’s complexion. Heim rallied after his last pit stop split the final stage, but Grant Enfinger conserved his fuel for the final 55-lap run to the checkered flag, notching his second consecutive Truck Series win.
Heim’s yield was the day’s second-best points tally — 52 to Enfinger’s 55 — and a better sense of comfort heading to the Round of 8’s final race next weekend at Martinsville Speedway.
“It was pretty drama-free on my side, just kind of internal battles as far as the truck handling on late-race runs,” Heim said, “But you can’t be mad about a top-three truck all day, and we had a great points day, and that’s what we came here to do. Would have been great to win and make Martinsville easy and just focus on Phoenix, but we’re in a great points position going into next week, so nothing to hang our heads about.”
Heim set the tone by winning the pole position in Friday’s qualifying session, and he kept his No. 11 Toyota out front for 54 of the first 60 laps in the opening two stages. Heim won the first stage and was runner-up to Enfinger in the second, adding 19 points to his running tally.
When a caution flag flew for Matt Mills’ hard crash on Lap 76, Enfinger and a group of others stopped for fuel and tires. No. 11 crew chief Scott Zipadelli opted against it, keeping Heim out until Lap 101 for his final trip to pit road.
“I feel like we had a winning truck, a top-two truck,” Zipadelli told NASCAR.com. “When they pitted early, for me, I felt like it was definitely too early to take that risk. But for them, those guys that pitted then, they didn’t really have a truck that could win, so that was a pretty good option for them. If it did go green like it did, it’d work out, right, but statistically, we usually have a caution here.”
No more yellow flags came out, and Enfinger — who stopped one lap later than the rest of the opportunistic early group — was able to nurse his No. 9 Chevrolet to the end. Heim picked up a handful of spots on the final lap as the fuel tanks for Nick Sanchez and others sputtered dry, just short of the finish.
Thanks to his stage-points bonanza and his 13th top-five finish of the year, Heim enters the Round of 8 finale at Martinsville next Friday (6 p.m. ET, FS1, MRN Radio, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio) with a sizable 49-point advantage over the elimination line. Enfinger is the only driver officially clinched for the Championship 4 battle in the Nov. 8 finale at Phoenix Raceway; his Oct. 4 victory at Talladega Superspeedway sealed that title shot, and his triumph Saturday actually provided Heim with a backhanded benefit — blocking other playoff contenders from clinching.
“With the 9 winning, for sure it certainly makes it easier that there’s only one winner. If there was another one, it would have been a lot tighter to the cutline,” Heim said. “So, we can still point our way out of it if we have a bad day, so you can’t just take a deep breath and cruise through that race by any means. But the goal still remains the same to win every race, and that’s what we’re gonna do next week.”
With only a few weeks until Election Day, veterans and military family members attending this past weekend’s NASCAR playoff races at Las Vegas Motor Speedway were encouraged to once again serve their country — this time as election poll workers.
In August, NASCAR partnered with Vet the Vote to support the non-partisan coalition’s national campaign, established to address the critical shortage of election workers in the U.S.
NASCAR fans from Nevada and beyond joined the cause and registered in the fan zone at Las Vegas Motor Speedway, where NASCAR Xfinity Series drivers Garrett Smithley and Brennan Poole interacted with fans before Saturday’s race in support of Vet the Vote.
“NASCAR has a long history of supporting our military community and is proud of the incredible service that so many of our fans have given to our nation,” said Eric Nyquist, Chief Impact Officer, NASCAR. “The need for veteran assistance at the polls is clear, and as part of the Vet the Vote coalition, we’re encouraging our veteran and military family fans to help fill that gap.”
America will need approximately 1,000,000 poll workers to effectively run elections in all states during this presidential election. In recent years, declining election volunteer rates have led to reduced number of polling stations, longer lines at the polls, increased stress on volunteers, and ultimately, more difficulty voting.
Through all its outreach efforts to date, including partnerships with NASCAR and Alpha Prime Racing, Vet the Vote has registered more than 162,000 veterans and military family members across the country — roughly 16% of the number needed to run election sites.
Smithley and his Alpha Prime Racing No. 45 Chevrolet Camaro were in full support of Vet the Vote on Saturday, running a special Vet the Vote paint scheme during the Ambetter Health 302. Smithley, the grandson of two veterans, had previously represented Vet the Vote at the Focused Health 250 at Atlanta Motor Speedway.
Courtesy of Alpha Prime Racing
On Saturday, Nevada Secretary of State Francisco Aguilar joined Vet the Vote at the Xfinity Series race, cheering Smithley and his pit crew on from pit road.
In the coming weeks, the Vet the Vote initiative hopes to raise the number of registered veterans and military family members even higher.
“Throughout the season, NASCAR has been a terrific partner in helping us address this critical need,” said Ben Keiser, Co-Founder of Vet the Vote. “As a true nonpartisan organization, our goal is to call on these patriotic Americans who have already served our nation to help support this critical mission at a time when we need them most.”
Over the summer, NASCAR through its NASCAR IMPACT platform joined a cohort of 38 national businesses and organizations, including the NFL, NBA, and Microsoft, in support of Vet the Vote.
To learn more about Vet the Vote and its efforts to recruit veterans and military family members as poll workers, visit Vet the Vote.
Joey Logano is no stranger to being at the center of the action.
The two-time NASCAR Cup Series champion has made a whole career out of driving hard, pushing the limits, refusing to back down and, most importantly, winning. In turn, those qualities have seen Logano be cast as the main character of multiple NASCAR seasons — with this year serving as just the latest example. It would not be an understatement to say that Logano’s win at Las Vegas last Sunday changed the entire complexionof the 2024 season, and that victory came in the face of long odds and even a bit of luck to get this far.
So let’s unpack Logano’s improbable climb to the precipice of yet another championship, and the ripple effects his Championship 4-clinching victory will have this weekend at Homestead-Miami and beyond.
Logano himself would tell you that the 2024 campaign hasn’t been the easiest of his career. While the No. 22 car had its moments of speed early in the year, starting on pole three times in the first 16 races of the season, he was also running with an average finish of 17.9 — his worst mark since 2011 — and a near-career-low Adjusted Points+ index of just 104 (or 4% better than average, which is always set to 100) before winning his way into the playoffs at Nashville on June 30.
From there, things didn’t exactly get a lot better. Logano had five finishes of 19th or worse (and three outside the top 30) in his final seven tune-ups heading into the playoffs. Little in the data suggested that he was poised to make a ton of noise in the postseason — or even advance more than a round or so before being eliminated.
But as has often been the case in his career, Logano saved his clutch driving for the races that mattered the most. He immediately punched his ticket out of the Round of 16 with a win at his quasi-home track of Atlanta in the opening race of the playoffs. Then he closed out the Round of 12 with a solid eighth-place run at the Charlotte Roval, in a race where he knew everyone on the track was gunning for him.
Alejandro Alvarez | NASCAR.com
Still, that didn’t appear to be quite enough to advance as the checkered flag waved and he was below the elimination line. But a shocking post-race inspection failure by the No. 48 team dropped Alex Bowman below Logano in the standings and gave the No. 22 new life. His odds to make the Championship 4 remained low, however — our forecast model set them at just 18 percent — because of his deficit in the playoff points, and diminished performance during the season relative to his Round of 8 rivals.
But you can never count Logano out at Las Vegas. He had already won at the track three times going into this past weekend, and he added a fourth trophy on Sunday to clinch his sixth career berth in the Championship 4.
And now, the rest of the playoff field needs to be very afraid of his championship potential.
Just like he did down the stretch of his title-winning 2022 season, Logano is coming on strong at the perfect point in the schedule. The rolling average of his Adjusted Points+ index from the past eight races, a span that encompasses the whole playoffs to date, plus his top 10 at Darlington to close the regular season, is 171. Not only is that number far better than his 123 mark from the 2024 season as a whole, but it represents the best eight-race stretch of his entire season. It’s also verging on the rate Logano hit (186) in the final races of the 2022 campaign as he drove his way to the championship:
Neil Paine | For NASCAR.com
The forecast model still considers him an underdog to win the championship, as compared with favorites Kyle Larson, Christopher Bell and William Byron. But Logano’s career record at Phoenix (with three wins, eight top 5s, 16 top 10s and an average finish of 13.5) can stand up next to anybody in the sport today, and that makes him a very real championship threat.
The other way in which Logano has become the main character of the 2024 season is in how his Vegas win shook up everyone else’s odds. Here are the biggest changes in the forecast model’s probabilities to make the Championship 4 — and to win the title — from before the South Point 400 to afterward:
Neil Paine | For NASCAR.com
By leapfrogging seven drivers who’d been below him in the odds and taking away a guaranteed spot in the Championship 4, Logano did some big damage to most of the other title contenders. While Bell and Byron gained ground with top-four finishes of their own, and Larson remains in decent shape because of his cushion in the playoff points (and strong performance projections), everyone else took a beating in the odds last Sunday.
Some of that was due to circumstances aside from Logano’s victory — the mid-race accident that took out Ryan Blaney, Chase Elliott and Tyler Reddick immediately put all three star drivers in must-win mode to advance. But Denny Hamlin is a prime example of how much Logano’s surprise win threw a wrench into the playoffs. He ran fairly well at Vegas, leading laps and ultimately finishing eighth in a race where he was under a great deal of pressure to perform. And yet, Hamlin’s odds to advance dropped by more than 20 percentage points, dragging his probability of winning his first career title down by five points as well. When Logano seemed like a longshot to advance, Hamlin was in coin-flip territory to make the Championship 4. Now, with only three slots remaining open, he trails the talented trio of Bell, Larson and Byron by 27 points, and his odds of advancing are just 25%.
In other words, for Hamlin and everyone else below the elimination line, Logano’s win helped make their margins for error practically nonexistent going forward. That’s why, whether he wins the championship or not, Logano will end up being one of the central figures of the 2024 season when we look back on it. He was never “supposed” to make it this far — literally so, before Bowman’s car failed inspection at Charlotte — but here he is, creating chaos for his fellow drivers as he looks to add yet another title to his collection.
Sunday’s Straight Talk Wireless 400 at Homestead-Miami Speedway (2:30 p.m. ET, NBC, MRN Radio, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio, NBC Sports App) will be the second of three Round of 8 races in the NASCAR Cup Series Playoffs, and for seven title hopefuls, a chance to clinch one of three remaining Championship 4 bids at Phoenix Raceway. After Joey Logano’s Championship 4-clinching victory at Las Vegas Motor Speedway last weekend, Homestead-Miami will be the next battleground for those vying to lock in a berth.
The following driver has clinched a spot in the four-driver field of the next round: Joey Logano.
Can Clinch Via Points
If there is a repeat winner or a win by a driver who cannot advance to the next round, the following drivers could clinch by being 56 points above the 3rd winless driver in the standings. The same point requirements listed below would hold true if a new win comes from among Christopher Bell or Kyle Larson.
Christopher Bell: Could only clinch with help.
Kyle Larson: Could only clinch with help.
If there is a new winner from William Byron or another winless driver lower in the standings but still eligible to advance to the next round, the following drivers could clinch by being 56 points above the 2nd winless driver in the standings.
Christopher Bell: Could only clinch with help.
Can Clinch Via Win
The following drivers would clinch on their win alone: Christopher Bell, Kyle Larson, William Byron, Denny Hamlin, Tyler Reddick, Ryan Blaney, Chase Elliott.
Kaulig Racing’s AJ Allmendinger proved to be a man of fine timing, scoring his first win of the season in last week’s playoff race at Las Vegas Motor Speedway to earn an automatic bid into the championship finale on Nov. 9 at Phoenix Raceway.
The last two seasons, playoff drivers have similarly celebrated their ticket to the Championship 4 at Homestead-Miami Speedway, where the NASCAR Xfinity Series Credit One NASCAR Amex Credit Card 300 is the second half of a Saturday doubleheader (4 p.m. ET on The CW, MRN Radio, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio, NBC Sports App).
Two of the eight playoff drivers have victories at Homestead, including defending race winner Sam Mayer and 2017 race winner Cole Custer. A win for either would be well-timed with only two races — Homestead and Martinsville next week — to decide which four drivers are championship-eligible for the Phoenix race.
JR Motorsports veteran Justin Allgaier currently leads the points standings with a healthy 32-point advantage atop the four-driver elimination line. The defending series champion Custer is next, 16 points to the good and Joe Gibbs Racing’s Chandler Smith holds that final transfer position by a slim eight points over Richard Childress Racing’s Austin Hill.
Hill’s RCR rookie teammate Jesse Love is 13 points below Chandler Smith. JR Motorsports’ teammates Mayer and Sammy Smith are 23 and 53 points back, respectively.
Of note, Allgaier’s points position now may prove especially helpful for the perennial championship contender considering he has only three top-10 finishes in 15 starts at the 1.5-mile Homestead-Miami oval. His best career finish is sixth back in 2016. His only top 10 since then was a 10th place in 2022.
On the flip side, Hill has a perfect two-for-two top-10 showing at Homestead-Miami, including fourth place last year. Mayer is the defending winner and Sammy Smith started fifth and finished 10th last year in his only previous start at the track. This will be the 19-year-old rookie Love’s first Homestead race.
Practice for the race is at 4:35 p.m. ET on Friday with qualifying following at 5:10 p.m. ET — both sessions available to watch on the NBC Sports App.
After two weeks off, the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series returns to playoff competition this weekend as the opening race of a Saturday doubleheader in South Florida with the Baptist Health 200 at Homestead-Miami Speedway (Noon ET, FS1, MRN Radio, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio).
Veteran Grant Enfinger became the first driver to earn a position in the Nov. 8 Championship Race at Phoenix Raceway — capturing the win at Talladega Superspeedway on Oct. 4.
This weekend’s race on the 1.5-mile Homestead-Miami track will go a long way to deciding who will join the driver of the No. 9 CR7 Motorsports Chevrolet to race for the big trophy. The season’s winningest driver, Tricon Garage’s Corey Heim, holds a healthy 30-point advantage over the Championship 4 elimination line heading into the green flag, with McAnally-Hilgemann Racing’s Christian Eckes 29 points to the good and ThorSport Racing’s Ty Majeski five points up in that final transfer position over Spire Motorsports’ Rajah Caruth.
Tricon Garage’s Taylor Gray is 13 points out of the top four, followed by Rev Racing’s Nick Sanchez (minus-20) and McAnally-Hilgemann’s Tyler Ankrum in eighth place, 23 points down.
It’s actually the tightest playoff battle among NASCAR’s three premier series — both how close — a five-point margin — it is from that pivotal fourth-place position to be out of the title chase in fifth and also the relatively tight gap (23 points) from eighth place to fourth.
Last year was a “Playoff Day” in the Craftsman Truck Series race at Homestead-Miami with Carson Hocevar leading a quartet of championship-eligible drivers that swept the top four finishing positions. The only former winner in the field this weekend is Majeski, who claimed the trophy in 2022.
The Wisconsin native and two-time winner this season is three-for-three in top 10s at Homestead-Miami and led a race-best 67 laps en route to his win there two years ago.
Heim is another driver to watch, scoring top-five finishes in both his Homestead-Miami starts, including a best of third last year and fifth place in 2022. Enfinger has the most starts (seven) at the track among the playoff eight with a best showing of runner-up in 2018.
Practice for the race is Friday afternoon at 2:35 p.m. ET, followed by qualifying at 3:05 p.m.
Just like last year, a season-long NASCAR Whelen Modified Tour points battle between Justin Bonsignore and Ron Silk comes down to the season finale at Martinsville Speedway.
What is different this time around is that Bonsignore holds the advantage going into the final race rather than Silk. A dominant day from Bonsignore at North Wilkesboro Speedway on Sunday allowed him to usurp Silk in the point standings and build a 10-point advantage with one event remaining.
Momentum is on Bonsignore’s side after winning the last two Modified Tour races. Despite this, the veteran racer has been in this position enough times to know nothing is guaranteed when the points are so close.
(Photo: Veasey Conway/NASCAR)
“Obviously, we feel really confident,” Bonsignore said. “Our cars have been really, really good the last two weeks. We’ve run well at Martinsville in the past, [but] we’ve never been fortunate enough to win. To put together a whole race without any trouble, have good pit stops and keep ourselves in contention will be important.
“It’s anything but a gimme.”
History is on the line for Bonsignore in many aspects Saturday during the Virginia is for Racing Lovers 200.
A victory would be Bonsignore’s first at Martinsville and put him in sole possession of second on the all-time Modified Tour wins list. If he cannot achieve victory, then a finish of fourth or better, no matter what Silk does, gives Bonsignore his fourth series championship.
Although he has not won a title since the 2021 season, Bonsignore has been in the middle of the hunt each of the past two seasons. On both occasions, Silk has been one of, if not Bonsignore’s primary adversary.
Silk, the defending Modified Tour champion, had narrow control over the points lead until he finished 11th to Bonsignore’s first at North Wilkesboro. The deficit Silk now faces to Bonsignore is small, but close to insurmountable, which is why he is explicitly focusing on winning at Martinsville instead of points racing.
“We really laid an egg at North Wilkesboro,” Silk said. “Really our only goal is to go win the race. The championship, it’s certainly not over, but I think something would have to go wrong for [Bonsignore] for us to win. Even if we win the race, I can’t see them running as poorly as we did last week.”
Justin Bonsginore and Ron Silk have been evenly-matched all year, as they both have four victories and 14 top 10s. (Photo: Rob Branning/NASCAR)
Even if circumstances do not fall his way at Martinsville to come away with a championship, there is still plenty for Silk to be proud of in 2024. Since joining Haydt-Yannone Racing, Silk has experienced a career resurgence on the Modified Tour with nine victories, four of which have come this year.
Silk believes he can break the tie he has in 2024 victories with Bonsignore on Saturday given how strong he and Haydt-Yannone have been all year. Prevailing over his rival in that regard would provide Silk some catharsis as he prepares to regroup for next season.
“It’s a season-long effort to win the championship, and it’s disheartening how we ran last week,” Silk said. “It does take some pressure off, because we’re not really worried about the points anymore. We’re just going to try and win the race.
“I’ve always wanted one of those grandfather clocks. That’s going to be our goal.”
Silk mathematically can still win the championship on Saturday, but Bonsignore historically has been better at Martinsville. Bonsignore only has one finish outside the top five in four career Martinsville events, while Silk’s last top five at the facility occurred in 2009.
The odds may be in his favor, but Bonsignore is not showing complacency before the season finale. Bonsignore expects the grueling, year-long duel between him and Silk to persist up until the last lap, but he is ready to match his rival’s intensity and add to his stellar record on the Modified Tour.
“Obviously [Silk] is one of the best, and I’m sure they’re going to go there loaded for the kill,” Bonsignore said. “So we have to go [to Martinsville] assuming that’s what they’re going to do and try to match that type of speed, keep ourselves in contention and have a really solid night. If we do things correctly, we should be in good shape to contend.”
The final chapter between Bonsignore and Silk for 2024 commences at 8 p.m. ET on Saturday at Martinsville. FloRacing will provide live coverage of every lap of the Virginia is for Racing Lovers 200.
A stellar year for Patrick Emerling has him third in NASCAR Whelen Modified Tour points with three victories and 11 top fives. (Photo: Jaiden Tripi/NASCAR)
Patrick Emerling’s great year culminates at Martinsville
The debut season for Rich Gautreau on the NASCAR Whelen Modified Tour could not have gone any better.
With Patrick Emerling as the driver, Gautreau’s operation has amassed three victories, 11 top fives, one pole and 291 laps led. The consistency Emerling displayed in Gautreau’s No. 1 Modified has him third in the NASCAR Whelen Modified Tour standings with one race to go — still with a mathematical shot at the title.
Prior to joining Gautreau, Emerling primarily competed on the Modified Tour with his family-owned No. 07. Despite lacking the resources of other operations, Emerling still found plenty of success in the series with four victories, three of which came during the 2022 season.
Emerling joined Gautreau knowing the program had the potential to be competitive from the opening green flag at Florida’s New Smyrna Speedway. The duo’s only major blemish of the 2024 season occurred during the second race of the year at Richmond Raceway, where a crash on Lap 69 knocked Emerling out of the race.
Regardless of whether a championship is feasible for Emerling and Gautreau, Saturday’s Virginia is for Racing Lovers 200 at Martinsville presents a perfect opportunity for the two to add one last victory to cap off a stellar 2024.
Since taking over the famous Ole Blue Modified, Tyler Rypkema has earned two top fives, including a fifth last weekend at North Wilkesboro Speedway. (Photo: Kostas Lymperopoulos/NASCAR)
Tyler Rypkema looks to deliver Ole Blue one last top five in 2024
When Jake Johnson surprisingly parted ways with Boehler Racing Enterprises after the second race at Thompson Speedway Motorsports Park, Tyler Rypkema got the call to close out 2024 in Ole Blue.
Rypkema has proved himself to be more than worthy of continuing the iconic legacy of one of the NASCAR Whelen Modified Tour’s most famous rides. His first race in Ole Blue at New York’s Riverhead Raceway resulted in a third-place finish, which he backed up with another top five at North Wilkesboro Speedway last weekend.
Although Rypkema has yet to win a Modified Tour event, he has shown improvement through every year with the series. Rypkema has recorded nine top-five finishes across 69 career starts, with his best performance being a second at Jennerstown Speedway after he led a race-high 107 laps from the pole.
The site of Rypkema’s other Modified Tour pole was Martinsville Speedway, which occurred last year with his family-owned team. Rypkema brought home a solid fifth-place finish that day, but he is looking to improve upon that showing behind the wheel of Ole Blue on Saturday night.
Rypkema’s 2025 plans remain to be determined, but joining an elite list of drivers who have won in Ole Blue like Ryan Preece, Tony Hirschman and Bugs Stevens would go a long way toward his finding sustainability for the upcoming year.
NOTES:
Just like at North Wilkesboro Speedway, the Virginia is for Racing Lovers 200 will feature NASCAR Cup Series legends Bobby Labonte and Ryan Newman in the field. Labonte is back in the same No. 38 he drove to eighth at North Wilkesboro Speedway, while Newman is piloting John-Michael Shanette’s No. 8.
The first race for Luke Baldwin in his family’s iconic No. 7NY at North Wilkesboro Speedway was a mixed bag, as he finished seventh despite hitting the wall in qualifying. Baldwin is back in the No. 7NY for Martinsville Speedway with the goal of bringing home a grandfather clock.
All three members of the Catalano family are back at Martinsville Speedway after they skipped North Wilkesboro Speedway to attend Tommy’s wedding. Tommy is the highest of the three brothers in the point standings, but Trevor achieved a pivotal milestone by giving the family their first victory at Monadnock Speedway in July.
Jacob Lutz has made a strong impression in his first NASCAR Whelen Modified Tour season with three top 10s in four appearances. Back in Joe Stearns’ No. 14 for the season-ending Virginia is for Racing Lovers 200 at Martinsville Speedway, Lutz seeks to end 2024 on a high note with his first career top five.
A NASCAR Advance Auto Parts Weekly Series national championship was not something Zach Bristol foresaw in his future before 2024.
An elevator mechanic from Snohomish, Washington, the 35-year-old is a third-generation racer who competes mainly at Washington’s Evergreen Speedway. He grew up watching his grandfather Paul Townsend, his father Tim Bristol and sisters Nikki and Breanna race at Evergreen hoping one day he, too, would be able to compete at the NASCAR Home Track.
“I grew up living in the grandstands at Evergreen watching all the racing,” Bristol said. “It was my whole childhood.”
For the last 16 years, he’s lived that dream, competing mainly in Evergreen’s Hornet division, where he just captured his second straight track championship.
“It feels like a dream almost, because getting state championship and regional championships, I see it all the time at my track,” Bristol said. “A national one just seems way out of the realm.
“Just the thought of somehow pulling that off this year, I’m still kind of pinching myself. I’m still kind of shocked I managed to pull it off this year.”
The plan was never to try and win a national championship. In fact, the plan wasn’t even to race in the Hornet division this year at Evergreen.
After winning the Hornet championship one season ago, Bristol had planned to move up to the Mini Stock class at Evergreen for the 2024 season. A mix of issues ultimately prevented that, so Bristol changed his plans.
Instead of racing in the Mini Stock class, he returned to the Hornet division to try and become just the second driver in track history to win back-to-back titles.
Zach Bristol won five races on his way to the NASCAR Advance Auto Parts Weekly Series Division V national championship. (Photo: Evergreen Speedway)
“I’d been battling engine issues in (the Mini Stock) the last two or three years. It was a mix of that and being very busy with work took time away from me getting the car ready,” Bristol said. “I still had my Hornet car because I was the 2023 Hornet champion at Evergreen.
“There has been only one other driver in our division to go back-to-back. So, I said, ‘OK, that’s the only goal I have. To go back-to-back.’”
The pursuit of a second Hornet championship was not easy. Because his job required him to be on call many Saturdays during the season, he was never sure if he would be able to race until the green flag waved for his feature.
Work kept him busy during the week, too, so he requested the help of Tommy Hibbs, the man who sold him the car. Bristol needed Hibbs’ assistance preparing the ride each week.
“We came to the agreement to where if he could just keep the upkeep on the car, I would show up and race Saturday,” Bristol said. “No promises that I might get a phone call, and I’d have to leave right there, and you might have to jump in for me. We came to that agreement, went out for the first race and had a clean sweep.”
That night set the tone for what became incredible season, but it wasn’t until the halfway point of the year when Bristol realized he was in contention for the Division V national title. The news was delivered by the staff at Evergreen.
“I think it was mid-July, the track came to me,” Bristol said. “They keep tabs on the regional points since last year I won the Division V West region championship. They were like, ‘Hey, you’re leading the West region.’
“OK, cool. That’s the cherry on top. Then they also said, “Also, we want to let you know you’re leading the national points right now.’”
Bristol remained in the thick of the national championship fight for the rest of the year, but a bad night on Sept. 1 nearly derailed everything.
“We had a bunch of car trouble and had to borrow a car for a race and didn’t really get the finish I wanted,” Bristol said. “The other race, we thankfully got a podium to kind of make up for it. But that dropped us down to like third or fourth. I was like, ‘Well, it’s kind out of the realm.’”
He clinched the Hornet track championship on Sept. 14, so he accomplished his primary goal for the year by going back-to-back. However, he was two points shy of the Division V national title.
“I was like, ‘Oh, OK, we’re a little short,’” Bristol said. “Then come to find out that the next weekend we were running a money race (at Evergreen) and it was going to be for national points.
“I had no plans on running it. Usually, the postseason races that Evergreen runs, I’ll put my buddy or my car owner in the car to have some fun. I called my car owner and was like, ‘We need to run, and I need to be in the car, and we need to run somewhere good.'”
Bristol did exactly what he needed the next weekend at Evergreen. He started 16th, got spun, raced his way to the front and watched as the leaders crashed to hand him the lead and, ultimately, the championship-clinching win.
Zach Bristol celebrates with his family, friends and crew after capturing the 2024 Hornet division championship at Evergreen Speedway. (Photo: Evergreen Speedway)
“I was making my way forward and got spun out,” Bristol said. “Then I slowly but surely made my way back up there and was running third and the leaders took each other out. I was like, ‘OK, thank God.’
“I wasn’t sure exactly where we needed to finish (to win the national championship), but I knew winning would be the easiest way to win it all.”
In all, Bristol won five times during the NASCAR Advance Auto Parts Weekly Series season. He also scored 12 top-five and 13 top-10 finishes in 15 races, which gave him a 34-point edge on Adams County Speedway regular John Berg in the final Division V standings. He also claimed the West Region Division V championship.
It’s the first national championship for Bristol and by far the biggest racing accomplishment he’s secured. It’s also the first Weekly Series national championship for a driver from Evergreen.
“It means the world,” Bristol said. “(My family) has raced all these decades, and over these 35 or 40 years that my family has been racing, before I came along, we had maybe two or three main event wins. We were never really the fastest, just there enjoying the racing life.
“We can’t believe we pulled this off. Everybody was just so overjoyed.”
After winning the national title, Bristol wasn’t sure he and his family would be able to make the trip to Charlotte, North Carolina, for the annual championship celebration.
A fundraiser was organized to raise the money to make it happen, and within three days, their goal was met. According to Bristol, that just shows the strength of the racing family at Evergreen.
“My sister Morgan, she’s my biggest supporter. She started a GoFundMe,” Bristol said. “Within three or four days, a lot of people donated from the race track to where it covered airfare, staying at an Airbnb in Charlotte and getting enough money to go check out some sights.
“One of the things I love about the class I run, it’s low budget, and it’s a bunch of guys and gals who can’t really move up. They don’t have the funds for it. So, we’re all living the dream together. Just the fact that they’re all donating anything to all this, it makes me love the class but my whole track as a whole for the kind of family they are.”
1. With Homestead-Miami on deck, will postseason chaos continue to reign supreme?
The Round of 8 opener at Las Vegas continued an anything-but-straightforward 2024 postseason, and Homestead-Miami could extend that trend.
It’s off to the races (no pun intended) at Homestead-Miami Speedway, and while the palm trees and sandy beaches might mean a different geographic setting compared to the deserts and valleys out west at Las Vegas Motor Speedway, the racing could very well be similar. Not solely in the sense that both tracks are 1.5-milers, mind you, but also in the lens that it’s the playoffs, and postseason racing is its own beast.
To this point, this year’s playoff racing has been anything but smooth sailing. Instead, it has been tumultuous, and the postseason landscape has been shaken in more ways than one as a result.
Perfect fuel strategy from Joey Logano and the Team Penske camp saw the No. 22 Ford find Victory Lane at Las Vegas and clinch a Championship 4 berth, but sound racing on the two-time champ’s part didn’t dissuade the bumpy playoff picture for the remainder of the playoff field. Title hopefuls Chase Elliott and Ryan Blaney, Logano’s teammate, tangled with Tyler Reddick, who eventually went airborne during a Stage 2 restart. The aftermath? All three drivers, viewed in numerous pundit circles as potential Championship 4 layups, finished 32nd or worse. As such, all three drivers find themselves well under the elimination line and essentially in must-win mode well before the green flag waves to begin the second Round of 8 race.
The point? These playoffs have been unruly, for starters. But more specifically, the 2024 postseason has been trouble-laden. Look no further than in-race incidents. Of the seven playoff races to date, five contests have seen at least half of the playoff field be involved in something, spanning from brushes and bumps on pit road to full-fledged wrecks, such as what was seen at Las Vegas or at Talladega Superspeedway fewer than three weeks prior.
Breaking it down even more paints the picture. Two of the three Round of 16 races (13 at Atlanta, 11 at Watkins Glen) saw more than half of the playoff field be involved in an incident, leaving Bristol Motor Speedway’s Round of 16 finale as the “calmest” among the venues, with only five of the 16 playoff drivers caught up in trouble. The Round of 12 saw a similar theme. The round’s opening race at Kansas Speedway saw 10 of 12 playoff drivers involved in trouble, while Talladega Superspeedway saw a whopping 11 of the 12 drivers not escape cleanly. Only five of the 12 postseason drivers were involved at the Charlotte Motor Speedway Roval to close out the Round of 12. This takes us back to Las Vegas’ Round of 8 opener, where five of eight playoff drivers were involved in incidents.
If you haven’t kept score, that’s OK. Racing Insights has, and together, 65% of playoff drivers have had in-race trouble during the playoffs. Staggering indeed.
Even more staggering can be the effects of excellent points days for some, combined with duds for others. Although he didn’t cash in with the victory despite starting on the pole and leading the most laps (155), Christopher Bell received compensation through his field-leading 54 points, netting him a 29-point gain (tops among all playoff drivers) and perching him second in the playoff standings, plus-42 to the good. Combined with Logano’s victory (and 49 points from the race), the likes of Reddick, Blaney and Elliott are in a precarious position more than they would otherwise be. Reddick (minus-30), Blaney (minus-47) and Elliott (minus-53) all sit sixth through eighth, respectively, in the playoff standings. In postseason history, only one driver — Martin Truex Jr. (minus-22) in 2021 — has pointed their way in from 20-plus points below the good after the first Round of 8 contest. Wins are always at a premium, and as mentioned already, these pilots will essentially need to capture a victory to advance to Phoenix and have a chance at hoisting the Bill France Cup.
“We can still have a good day at Homestead and be in the mix in Martinsville,” Reddick said after Las Vegas. “Ideally, yeah, it would have been nice to win today. It would be nice to win next week, and that is what we will focus on, but thankfully, we got 10 stage points in Stage 1, and it’s not like we are absolutely out of it on points yet. We are going to have to be perfect here on out, probably.”
Sometimes, one incident can derail a championship run. But if the 2024 postseason has taught us anything, multiple incidents have been the theme, and now, the high lines at Homestead-Miami — the only track remaining on the schedule where the field hasn’t raced this season — will be the battleground for drivers fighting for their title-contending lives.
In other words, buckle up. This show isn’t close to being over.
Sean Gardner | Getty Images
2. Will Homestead-Miami see one team rise above the rest of the crop?
There has been plenty of success to go around for a multitude of playoff drivers, and a team-wide effort at Homestead-Miami could see another triumph in victory.
Las Vegas was the gold standard for Team Penske. Sure, Blaney’s day didn’t end the way he would’ve liked, given his 32nd-place finish, but there was still an overarching mentality the team possessed, from fixing a backup car for Blaney after his initial No. 12 Ford wrecked out during practice to Logano’s eventual victory at the track.
“We’re just a big team effort, right? We want to do well for Roger (Penske, team owner),” Blaney said after Las Vegas. “We want to do well for everyone who works for us and all of our partners, and we all try to work hand in hand and do the best we can to help. You want to help yourself, but you also want to help the group, right? So, yeah, it’s nice that they were able to pull one out today. Hopefully, we can join them in a couple of weeks.”
Team effort could very well be the name of the game once again at Homestead-Miami, and while it might not play out exactly the way it did for Team Penske at Las Vegas, anything can go in the postseason — and perhaps there can be a correlation.
So, which teams could be the leading candidates to have that team-wide success down Miami way?
The conversation starts with Hendrick Motorsports. The team’s 22-race streak of top 10s at Homestead-Miami — the longest streak all-time at the track — speaks for itself, not to mention winning two of the last three races (William Byron in 2021, Kyle Larson in 2022) and leading 463 of the 801 laps raced there in that span, good enough for a 58% mark. Despite not winning there in eight career Cup attempts, Elliott’s 10.4 average finish is second only to Bell (more on him below). Then, there’s Kyle Larson, who is among the sport’s elite, possessing five career top-five finishes in 10 Homestead-Miami races (including his win) and a series-leading 625 laps led. And while William Byron’s Cup Homestead-Miami race sample is the smallest of the Hendrick playoff trio (six races), he’s shown out regardless, finishing 12th or better in the last four races there. Add to the fact that the 26-year-old has finished inside the top four in the last four 2024 races, and there’s reason to believe momentum could remain on his side.
Not so fast, though. Joe Gibbs Racing might have something to say about this. Of course, Bell won last season’s Homestead-Miami race, and a pristine 10.0 average finish — albeit in only four Cup races — sets the tone in terms of his track speed there, even when disregarding his pace at Las Vegas. Denny Hamlin — who sits 27 points underneath the elimination line — has 19 career Homestead-Miami races to his Cup resume, the most among all remaining playoff drivers. With those 19 races comes three wins and 12 top-10 finishes, tied with JGR teammate Martin Truex Jr. for the most among all active drivers.
“I feel like we’re going to have to go to both of these races and run top three all day to get points in the stages and good points in the race,” Hamlin said when speaking of Homestead-Miami and Martinsville Speedway, the final Round of 8 races. “That’s going to be a tall task, but Homestead is pretty straightforward from a strategy perspective. You’re going to take four tires anytime you pit, so that will allow guys that are up front to stay up front. We need to be in that group and hope for a little luck from someone having a bad day or whatnot to make up that gap.”
Who knows, though — 23XI Racing’s Reddick and his three career top fives (in four Cup attempts) could also make noise in a huge way, especially given his track record of riding the high Miami line at a paint-scraping clip. And you cannot assume Team Penske won’t have an extra ace saved following their Las Vegas clinic, even if Ford has only found Victory Lane twice in the last 14 Homestead-Miami contests.
The racing lines will be crystal clear. Speed will be necessary. Teamwork, whether from drafting off a racing mate or allowing an opening to the optimal driving lane, could be all the difference for any of these teams. So the question will be a simple one: Which team will do it best?
Crew chiefs Travis Peterson and Luke Lambert take a look at the big wreck at Las Vegas Motor Speedway and how it impacted many playoff hopefuls.
4. The importance of winning the opening Round of 8 race is significant
The driver to prevail in the first Round of 8 race has historically fared well in the title bout. How well will Joey Logano do? (Credit: Racing Insights)
SEASON:
TRACK:
RACE WINNER:
CHAMPIONSHIP FINISH:
2017
Martinsville
Kyle Busch
2nd
2018
Martinsville
Joey Logano
1st
2019
Martinsville
Martin Truex Jr.
2nd
2020
Kansas
Joey Logano
3rd
2021
Texas
Kyle Larson
1st
2022
Las Vegas
Joey Logano
1st
2023
Las Vegas
Kyle Larson
2nd
5. Catch the pack — news and notes from around the garage
