Posted on by Nascar

Reunited with crew chief, veteran takes aim at Truck Series title

Nearly a decade ago, Brendan Gaughan and Shane Wilson were key players for the most competitive young team in the NASCAR Camping World Truck Series. For the 2013 season, they are together again.

Can success be far behind?

“You can’t deny the chemistry and the communication we had back in the day,” Gaughan, 37, said recently of his former crew chief.

Gaughan, then driving for the family-owned Orleans Racing, won the series’ rookie of the year honors in 2002 with Wilson as crew chief, and the tandem nearly won the championship the following year. Their eight-race win total during the two-year stretch was a series best.

Eventually, Gaughan’s and Wilson’s careers veered down paths. Now, they will intersect once more as the two reunite at Richard Childress Racing.

"We go a long way back. Anytime you have that, there are ups and downs."

— Brendan Gaughan

The team will field the No. 62 truck (a nod to Gaughan’s Orleans Racing days) and will start the season with owner points from RCR’s No. 22 entry, which finished third in points with Joey Coulter behind the wheel in 2012.

Gaughan ran partial schedules in three series (Sprint Cup, Nationwide and Truck) for RCR last year, scoring top-five finishes in half of his eight Truck Series starts and top-10s in half of his Nationwide runs.

Wilson, in the meantime, served as crew chief for Kevin Harvick at 24 Sprint Cup races and RCR teammates Paul Menard and Jeff Burton for a handful of others. This season, Gaughan is certainly happy to have Wilson back on his team.

“We go a long way back,” Gaughan said. “Anytime you have that, there are ups and downs. We’ve had ours. … It’s nice for us to get back together. We’ve both said, ‘You know what? We should have been doing this all along.’ ”

Wilson has been a winning crew chief in all three series, enjoying success with Gaughan (eight wins in the Truck Series), Harvick and Burton (14 in Nationwide) and Clint Bowyer (two in Cup). Given the success he and Gaughan shared, Wilson said expectations for 2013 are high.

“With our resources from (RCR), Brendan being a veteran Truck Series driver and our … history, I think it’s safe to say that we will be a very competitive team,” Wilson said in a release announcing the pairing.

Ty Dillon, last season’s rookie of the year in the series, returns in the No. 3 truck for the organization. A third entry is expected to be fielded for a limited number of events.

The series’ 22-race schedule kicks off Feb. 22 with the running of the NextEra Energy Resources 250 at Daytona International Speedway.

“This sport all starts at the shop,” said Gaughan, who will also compete in at least two Nationwide Series events this year. “It all starts with the work the people do behind the scenes — the body hangers, the engineers, those folks. You’ve got to take it seriously … make it start on the shop side and the performance will come from there. I’m really pumped about it.”

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From brand identity to where to see driver names, here’s the lowdown

Five things every race fan should know about the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series Generation-6 car:

• Brand Identity: Nearly two years in the making, today’s Sprint Cup cars more closely resemble those found on the showroom floor, with eye-catching bodylines and stylish features giving each model its distinctive appearance.

• Safety Enhancements: Additions of forward roof bar and center roof support bar to the roll cage reinforce integrity and increase the crush structure of the roof. Larger roof flaps improve liftoff numbers and decrease the likelihood of the car becoming airborne.

• Slim and Trim: Total weight of the car has been reduced by 160 pounds (100 less on right side; 60 pounds on left). Minimum weight of driver has also decreased from 200 to 180 pounds.

• Stamp of Approval: With exception of carbon fiber rear deck lid, all body panels are now produced by the manufacturer and individually stamped for verification.

• Your Name Here: Driver names will be featured on the upper portion of the windshield; sponsor decals and car numbers have been removed from headlight and taillight areas and now appear on front and rear bumpers; also, a single sponsor logo will be permitted on the roof of the cars.

Posted on by Nascar

Change represents biggest overhaul in NASCAR since 2007

After more than two years of development, numerous trips to the wind tunnel and countless hours spent testing at various facilities, NASCAR’s Generation-6 car will officially hit the track for competition next month, bringing with it a healthy dose of optimism from officials and competitors alike.

The Gen-6 program is the most comprehensive overhaul in the sport since the 2007 debut of the “Car of Tomorrow,” and its goal is twofold: to re-establish brand identity among the automotive manufacturers and provide competitive upgrades in an effort to improve competition in NASCAR’s Sprint Cup Series.

“Dress rehearsals” aren’t complete — teams are scheduled to participate in Preseason Thunder Jan. 10-12 at Daytona International Speedway before a final preseason stop Jan. 17-18 at Charlotte Motor Speedway.

The 2013 racing season gets under way with the 55th annual Daytona 500 scheduled for Feb. 24.

Reactions from drivers and officials have been largely encouraging with regard to the new piece.

“The bulk of the work is done, spoiler sizes, the splitter, things of that nature.” Robin Pemberton, NASCAR’s vice president of competition, said. “That’s taken a lot of hard work.

“We’ve added some mechanical grip with the rear camber and we put some large margins in there to give teams opportunity to work on their rear end housings and get that grip. It will not be the same at every track you go to just like the tires won’t be the same at every race track that you go to.

“We’re listening to some of that input, we’re listening to the input about the aerodynamics, but for the most part we’re keeping an open mind. At this point things seem to be fairly positive about everything we’ve been able to do.”

QUICK LOOK: Five things to know about new car

Steve Letarte, crew chief for Hendrick Motorsports driver Dale Earnhardt Jr., calls the new car "the perfect example" of technology helping out the sport.

“I think we now have three makes out here that my little boy at 9 years old can tell the difference between,” Letarte said. “And I think that’s the goal. That anybody can walk through the parking lot and see a Chevy, Ford and Toyota and know they’re different.”

Likewise, he said, technology can “prove that the best Chevy, the best Ford, the best Toyota are very close in the wind tunnel. That … allows NASCAR to (give) the challenge back to the teams and to the manufacturers that ‘you need to go to work on other areas of your car — it’s not in the body.’”

The 2013 entries include the Chevrolet SS, Ford Fusion and Toyota Camry. In spite of dramatic changes in the body styles of each, the cars produce comparable aerodynamic numbers because of similarities in the greenhouse areas.

“When you look across the board, they all look so much different; the performance of the cars and the target numbers they all lay right on top of each other,” Andy Graves, Toyota Sprint Cup Series program manager, said. “We have that parity, you don’t feel like you’ve been outfoxed by one of your competitors but yet you get to put all of the character that keeps the car guys, all the manufacturers, happy, (knowing) that what is out on the race track is close to what’s on the showroom floor.”

A Lesson Learned

NASCAR Chairman Brian France said the sanctioning body discovered a great deal when it rolled out the Car of Tomorrow in 2007. Built with a focus on safety, the car lost much of its brand recognition in the transition and initially proved to be problematic on the race track.

“We learned a lot and I learned a lot personally on that particular debut of that car, and the collaboration — I thought it was fairly high at the time — it wasn’t as high as it needed to be,” France said. “The testing, the way we’re doing it, manufacturer support, I thought it was pretty high. It wasn’t high enough; it wasn’t even close to high enough.”

That shouldn’t be a problem this time around, he said, in part because of how close the manufacturers have worked with one another and with officials, and because “I expect the drivers to have a lot more time under their belt” with this car.

Kyle Busch, perhaps the biggest critic of the COT when it was introduced, said he believes this move is a huge step in the right direction.

“This new car, I love it,” the Joe Gibbs Racing driver said. “I think it looks awesome. It looks like a street car, which is great.”

The COT “looked like nothing that was on any showroom floor,” he said. “It had this stupid splitter on it with splitter braces; it had this dumb wing on it. I mean it was just horrible looking.

“It drove horrendously. You couldn’t race it; you couldn’t get within 100 yards of one another.”

That dislike, however, didn’t translate into poor performances for Busch, who earned 21 of his 24 career Cup victories in the COT, including the debut race for the entry at Bristol Motor Speedway.

Speedway Focus

Other changes may be far less evident to race fans, but that doesn’t mean they are any less important.

Camber rules that will impact rear grip, a taller spoiler aimed at keeping downforce numbers across the three brands within close proximity of one another, and a lower minimum weight (from 3,450 to 3,300 pounds) for the car will impact how the car handles, especially in traffic.

Officials believe the result will be improved racing, particularly on the series’ 1.5- and 2-mile tracks.

“We’ve strictly concentrated on that,” Pemberton said. “We feel we’ve made tremendous gains in that area. So we’re hoping that the teams can build the proper cars and get up to speed and that way they can put on a good race.”

Information gathered from continued testing could result in further adjustments before the start of the season, he said.

“There is still work we are doing, things we have discovered through our lab testing … that we may implement,” Pemberton said. “And those are the things that help the cars run in traffic, not be at as much of a deficit when they are in the back of the pack.

"We are continuing to work on that and we won’t quit.”

Posted on by Staff Report

FORT WORTH, Texas — A year ago, it would have been difficult to spot Carl Edwards among the hoard of cameras and reporters in the garage area while walking to the qualifying line. He was right in the thick of the championship battle — and everyone clamored to hear every word he uttered.

On Friday at Texas Motor Speedway, Edwards was just another guy in a driver’s suit, signing a few autographs, waving to a few fans who yelled his name and walking to his car without much notice at all. When you’re 14th in the points, the spotlight doesn’t shine in your direction very often.

"Last year was the most exciting year of racing I’ve ever had."

— Carl Edwards

"Last year was the most exciting year of racing I’ve ever had," Edwards said. "Those last few races were really, really, really fun. I’d like to have that shot every year. It’s really neat to have a goal, to have it right there within reach to where you wake up every morning thinking about it and going to bed every night thinking about it."

Edwards came up a single point short of winning the Cup in 2011, and even though he didn’t win a race, there was no reason not to expect him to be in contention again this year.

But with three races remaining, 2012 has to be one of the most disappointing — and head-shaking — seasons in Edwards’ career. After top-10 finishes at Daytona and Las Vegas to open the year, Edwards finished 39th at Bristol after getting caught up in a multi-car accident early in the race.

The year has been nothing but an uphill slog for Edwards, who has only led 254 laps this season — 206 of those at Richmond. His winless streak is now at 66 races — No. 99 upside down — and he’s had just two top-10 finishes in his last 10 races.

It may have been surprising to see Edwards struggle earlier in the season. But as the season has gone along, and things haven’t gotten any better, driver, team owner Jack Roush and crew chief Chad Norris began to look for answers.

"There are a number of reasons," Edwards said. "We did a spreadsheet on the way the first 26 races have gone, and 54 percent of the races we had some sort of wreck or failure or some trouble. That’s about twice we’ve ever had every year before that. That’s part of it. But we need to run better, too."

Edwards also mentioned Bob Osborne’s departure from the team at the end of July for health reasons as another reason why the No. 99 Ford didn’t live up to preseason expectations.

But give up? That’s not in Edwards’ vocabulary.

"I’m the eternal optimist, so all year, I’ve been thinking, ‘We’re going to turn it around, we’re going to turn it around,’ " Edwards said. "Finally, I and Jack [Roush] and Chad [Norris] and everybody all kind of accepted that we have to take this time to build the best team we can for next year.

"The greatest thing we could do would be to win this race right here, win at Phoenix, win at Homestead — finish like we did in 2010 — so we can get that excitement for next year. That’s what we’re working on right now."

Edwards realizes getting back on track — or at least back in a position to run up front — will take time and patience. With that in mind, he has a series of stepladder goals he’d like to accomplish.

Qualifying ninth for Sunday’s AAA Texas 500 is a start.

"The short-term thing is win a race or two," Edwards said. "Mid-term is to build the best team, so that long-term, we can be competitive."

While the attention is focused on Jimmie Johnson, Brad Keselowski and other drivers this Chase, Edwards is going about his business in relative obscurity. That’s fine, for now.

But after experiencing the thrill of being on the cusp of a championship, Edwards wouldn’t mind hogging some of the spotlight again.

"We’ve just got to get it together," Edwards said. "This is a performance business and we’ve got to perform."

Posted on by Staff Report

Bass Pro Shops increases mark in sport, adorning Stewart’s car for 18 races in ’13

TALLADEGA, Ala. — Tony Stewart enjoyed one of his best days fishing with Johnny Morris. On a lake in Texas, the three-time champion of NASCAR’s top series hooked dozens of bass, including a 12-pound largemouth that remains the biggest the driver has ever caught. Morris needed four attempts before was finally able to corral the thrashing creature in a net and drag it aboard the boat.

Friday at Talladega Superspeedway, though, Stewart showed off an even bigger catch — Morris’ company, Bass Pro Shops. The NASCAR sponsorship staple will become the primary sponsor on Stewart’s No. 14 race car beginning next season. Currently the backer of Jamie McMurray’s No. 1 car at Earnhardt-Ganassi Racing, the famous big green bass fish will switch teams for next season and adorn Stewart’s vehicle for 18 races, including the Daytona 500.

"They’re partners to us, not sponsors. The whole idea is to make it good for both sides."

— Tony Stewart

The announcement comes three days after Stewart-Haas Racing unveiled another primary sponsor for next season, Quicken Loans, which will move up from associate status and back 18 races on Ryan Newman’s car. After losing both its current primaries — Office Depot and U.S. Army — effective the end of this season, Stewart’s organization has rapidly restocked its sponsorship inventory. Now, Newman’s car is in the best shape it’s ever been from a sponsor perspective, Stewart said, while the reigning champ is down to filling just nine open races on his car.

"They’re partners to us, not sponsors," Stewart said. "The whole idea is to make it good for both sides. … I think that’s something we’ve been able to convey to potential sponsors, to existing sponsors, and I think that’s why it works. We had misfortune with … losing U.S. Army and Office Depot, but I think our reputation as a company has helped us be able to acquire the inventory back this quick."

The Bass Pro Shops sponsorship was first announced Thursday night at an event in Springfield, Mo., where the company is headquartered. The connection was a natural for Stewart, who has had a personal services agreement with Bass Pro Shops since 2001. The company has also backed Stewart’s sprint and dirt late model cars, and over time Stewart and Morris have become good friends. An avid outdoorsman, Stewart was honorary chairman of this year’s National Hunting and Fishing Day.

After the U.S. Army announced it will be departing Newman’s car, and when he first got word that Office Depot was thinking about stepping down, Stewart approached Morris to gauge his interest.

"The one thing about Johnny is, he’s very loyal," Stewart said. "We weren’t trying to steal him away from anybody, but we just threw it out there — if you ever decide to make a change, we had opportunities now that we really hadn’t had in the past to do something," Stewart said. "When Office Depot made their announcement, it was very clear we had an opportunity on our car as well."

Morris, whose deal with EGR ends after this season, was sold. "It didn’t take us too long to shake hands," he said. Bass Pro Shops has a history in NASCAR dating back to its days with Dale Earnhardt and Richard Childress Racing, and Morris said the company would likely continue its association with Ty and Austin Dillon. Bass Pro Shops is primary sponsor on Ty’s Camping World Truck Series entry, and an associate on Austin’s Nationwide car. Morris also didn’t rule out a continued presence on McMurray’s car, given how much his company has benefitted from its presence in NASCAR.

"A lot of NASCAR fans like to hunt and fish," Morris said. "We came to realize that the first time we sponsored Dale Earnhardt Sr.’s car in the all-star race. It was amazing. In a 30-day period, they sold over $10 million worth of caps, T-shirts and die-cast cars. That spoke obviously to the popularity of Dale Sr., to the popularity of NASCAR and how many of those fans wanted to buy a souvenir that had Bass Pro on it. That said, ‘We like to hunt and finish, and the outdoors, too.’"

Bass Pro Shops has been primary sponsor on McMurray’s car the past two years, and while Morris praised the EGR organization, he said he couldn’t resist the "once-in-a-lifetime chance" to work with Stewart. Now Stewart has nine races left to fill on his car for 2013, and while he could rely on co-owner Gene Haas’ company to plug that deficit, he’d rather find another sponsor to go along with Bass Pro Shops and Mobil 1 — the latter of which will back 11 races on his vehicle next season.

"Haas Automation could fill in if we needed to, but we hope to find someone to fill in those final nine races for us," Stewart said. "… My goal as his business partner is to not have to fall back on him and utilize his resources that way."

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Despite brief slump, Johnson never doubted path to a championship

This is the 13th and final installment of a series on 2013 Sprint Cup Series driver recaps that will be featured on NASCAR.com

It was the worst month-long stretch of his NASCAR Cup career, but Jimmie Johnson was undaunted. 

His 40th-place finish at Richmond, the final "regular-season race" of the 2013 NASCAR Sprint Cup Series season, was the fourth consecutive finish of 28th or worse for the Hendrick Motorsports driver. Since joining the Cup series full-time in 2002, the California native had never endured a similar run of mediocrity. 

But rather than dwell on what had gone wrong, Johnson chose to focus on other more encouraging areas. 

Call it the power of positive thinking, the belief in himself and those around him.

FULL SERIES COVERAGE

SEASON IN REVIEW

"I’m going to reserve any major concern or overwhelming confidence until after Chicago," Johnson said in the aftermath of Richmond. "I’m going to go in there with confidence I can go out and win because I know that I can. We’re going to enter nice and smooth and see how Chicago goes."

"Tough," is how crew chief Chad Knaus described the four-week run, "but the thing is our cars have actually been very fast," he said.

The Chase officially kicked off at Chicago, where Johnson and his No. 48 team overcame a pair of pit-road issues to finish fifth.

Nine weeks later he, Knaus, team owner Rick Hendrick and the rest of the team were basking in the spotlight of a sixth NASCAR Sprint Cup title. 

In what has become something of a calling card once NASCAR’s Chase for the Sprint Cup gets underway, Johnson reeled off victories — at Dover and Texas — and nine top-10 finishes in the 10-race stretch to claim his sixth championship in eight years. 

Of course, it wasn’t as simple, or as easy, as that — thanks in large part to the efforts of rival Matt Kenseth, winner of the year’s first two Chase races. 

Johnson didn’t take the points lead in the Chase until Talladega, then surprisingly lost it the following week at his go-to track, Martinsville Speedway.

But the Texas victory a week later put Johnson back on top, and finishes of third and ninth in the season’s final two races left him 19 points ahead of Kenseth at year’s end. 

Others have come to expect his team’s surge once the Chase gets underway, but Knaus said it’s wrong to think the team simply cranks up the effort once the title is on the line. 

"People think we come into the Chase and ratchet it up," Knaus said. " ‘OK, we’re going to go; we’re going to make stuff happen.’

"I think that’s a mistake. That’s now how we operate. We try to operate at ten-tenths all year long. When we get into the Chase, it’s kind of the norm."

The two Chase wins gave Johnson 66 for his career, eighth on the series’ all-time list.

He also won at Daytona (twice), Martinsville and Pocono this past season.

"When I look back on the year, I think about the Gen-6 car, the race to figure out what the car wanted for speed, the hard work from everybody at Hendrick," Johnson said. "The way we’ve been able to connect … find speed in the car, develop the car, innovate in the garage area with the setups. 

"I give Chad all the credit in the world for honing in on those things, finding speed and building me fast race cars."

As impressive as his season was, Johnson said he felt there were opportunities that slipped past the team. 

"We were in position to win a lot throughout the course of the year," he said. "Unfortunately, we gave a bunch away. I think we could be sitting here with a higher win total. At the end of the day we won the big prize. 

"That helped us through some of those races that got away, focusing on the big (prize), knowing we had speed, making sure we were organized, had our inventory of cars, (and a) test setup ready to roll."

It was, he said, "just a well-executed year top to bottom, especially in these final 10 races. 

"We didn’t leave many points on the table (in the Chase). I can look back on a few tracks and think we could have had a few more points, but it really was a strong 10 weeks. 

"Last year we had eight great weeks," but finished third in points.

"Matt had nine (this year)," he said. "You have to have 10 great weeks to be the champion and we got it done this year."

MORE:

READ: Year in Review
driver profiles

READ: A season defined
by a night in Richmond

READ: Top 10 on-track
moves of 2013

WATCH: Handing out the
2013 Loopie Awards