Outstanding in his field: Ryan Blaney celebrates Iowa breakthrough with heartfelt family gathering

Posted on June 17, 2024June 17, 2024 by Zack Albert

NEWTON, Iowa – Ryan Blaney remembered how family reunions used to play out, with long car rides during offseason holidays to a frigid Iowa, where his grandparents lived and his mother, Lisa, grew up. This weekend’s NASCAR Cup Series debut at Iowa Speedway prompted another gathering, this time against the backdrop of the sweltering last few days of spring but with all the same feeling of being close to home.

That’s how a crowd of 85 family members and friends wound up as a familiar cheering section perched atop Turn 4 for Sunday’s Iowa Corn 350, all wearing matching gray shirts reading “Ryan Blaney Iowa Crew.” The homecoming had a touching end, with a dominating first victory of the season by the driver of the No. 12 Team Penske Ford.

“Move to different states, you don’t go to family events like you did as a kid every year,” Blaney said. “Nice to see them come together and we could celebrate something.”

That something was a heartland romp, one where Blaney led 201 of the 350 laps and officially solidified his spot in the Cup Series Playoffs. The night marked an opportune clinch scenario after a series of close brushes with the win column and the next clear step in Blaney’s title defense.

The triumph brought back a flood of memories — some fond, some ominous — and it also coincided with Father’s Day, with his dad, Dave, embracing his son at the flagstand alongside his wife in the family celebration.

“I don’t care what day it is, it’s pretty rewarding,” the elder Blaney said with a laugh. “Glad he got that done for this year, so he could get that first one in and getting in the (playoffs) and all that. They’ve been deserving here for a few races, so glad to see it happen.”

The cluster of gray-shirt faithful found their way to the outskirts of Victory Lane, shimmying through a gap in the fence and ending up on the painted logos in the trioval grass. Blaney said a similar contingent of related rooters gave him a home-court advantage in his previous Iowa triumphs — 12 years ago in the Craftsman Truck Series and some nine years earlier in Xfinity Series competition.

That 2012 victory holds a special place for the Blaneys, with Iowa marking the site of his first NASCAR national-series win and a slice of racing history. Blaney became the youngest driver to win a Truck Series event (a record later broken by 17-year-old Erik Jones and then 16-year-old Cole Custer in successive seasons), and the night elevated him from a promising prospect to a can’t-miss prodigy.

“We were blown away,” Dave Blaney says. “I think it was his third truck race, maybe, and he did a really good job and won it — didn’t luck into it, by any means. And yeah, it confirmed what we thought he could do, and he’s just taken advantage of opportunities his whole time coming up, and that’s what’s got him where he’s at.”

Ryan Blaney celebrates at Iowa Speedway in 2012. Sean Gardner | Getty Images

The not-so-fond flashbacks stemmed from Blaney’s near-misses earlier this season. In the second race of the year, Blaney was just 0.003 seconds and mere inches short in Daniel Suárez’s nail-biting victory at Atlanta Motor Speedway. Just two weeks ago, Blaney was poised to celebrate a virtually guaranteed win at Gateway, where the gas tank on his No. 12 Mustang sputtered dry with one lap left.

The sense of foreboding seemed to linger as the laps clicked off Sunday, even as Blaney held the lead over eventual runner-up William Byron and even as crew chief Jonathan Hassler offered his late-race assurance that his fuel level was more than adequate.

“Yes, yes. Déjà vu, for sure,” Blaney said with a grin. “Yeah, I mean, that did kind of go through my head, right? Normally, in my mind, it’s get to the white (flag). Now it’s like, I don’t care about getting to the white, let’s just get to the checkered — kind of normal thoughts. The pain of two weeks ago, it always pops up in your head. I try to forget about it and just focus on the gap we had, try to keep it, all that. But, yeah, I had some thoughts of that. Luckily, tonight, it went smoothly.”

Hassler had his own uncomfortable flashbacks. As this year’s winless drought stretched toward summertime, the No. 12 crew chief felt shades of 2022, his first full year atop a Cup Series pit box. Blaney went without a win in that campaign, and his march toward a playoff berth went down to the wire in a nerve-rattling contest with Martin Truex Jr.

The thoughts of reliving that suspenseful stretch were daunting.

“Yeah, it’s definitely not what we wanted,” Hassler said. “Obviously you want to win every week, but we just continue to focus, regardless of what happens, try to learn from it, be better the next week. I think with that mentality, we continue to put ourselves in position.”

MORE: Cup Series standings | All of Ryan Blaney’s Cup wins

One vested observer who wasn’t particularly worried was the elder Blaney, who says he’s noticed an unflappable nature about his son in the time since he clinched his first Cup Series championship last November.

“He’s fine. After last year, his whole demeanor has changed, and he’s more patient and calm,” Dave Blaney said. “Yeah, he’s not going to let it get him. Even the Gateway thing you know, I think they took out of it that they had a car to win, so that was that was a good thing, which they haven’t had a lot this year. But it looks like things are turning around a little bit. So nah, he’s good, the team’s good. They’ll just get rolling here.”

The younger Blaney added an uncharacteristic flourish to his celebration, smoking up the Iowa frontstretch with a powerful burnout. He also broke with his usual post-race routine last fall, egged on by a raucous crowd at Talladega, where he explained the backstory to his burnout aversion — a lesson inspired by a talking-to from NASCAR Hall of Famer Dale Inman earlier in his career.

Sunday night, after making a clean career sweep of all three NASCAR national series at Iowa in front of a partisan crowd, Blaney couldn’t resist.

“Home track. I got to. Means a lot,” Blaney said. “I mean, it’s cool to win in Truck here, Xfinity, now Cup. Gosh, I’m worn out. Driving hard. I figured I deserved a burnout. Hopefully, Dale Inman isn’t too mad at me.”

No one in Blaney’s community of gray-shirt-wearing supporters seemed to mind, savoring a reunion that’s sure to make the family’s all-time photo album.

“We’ve got a lot of people here tonight cheering us on,” Blaney said. “They willed us to that one.”

Posted on June 17, 2024June 17, 2024 by Zach Sturniolo

NEWTON, Iowa — Josh Berry tried his damndest not to let his mind wonder about what could happen Sunday night at Iowa Speedway. But the more he led, the less he could help himself.

The Stewart-Haas Racing rookie led 32 laps in the No. 4 Ford and started to think about how sweet a win in the inaugural NASCAR Cup Series race at Iowa would be … and with plenty of undertones for his future. He left instead with a seventh-place finish, an impressive day for the first-year full-timer but just enough to leave him disappointed.

MORE: Race results | At-track photos

“I hate we missed out on an opportunity there maybe to win,” Berry told NASCAR.com. “I try not to let myself think about that, being a rookie and everything, adapting to this new car. But that was real. And that says a lot in itself, right?”

It sure does.

Berry and the rest of this SHR cohort were informed on May 28 that the organization will be shuttering its operations upon the conclusion of the season. That leaves all four of its drivers and a significant number of employees searching for opportunities for 2025 and beyond. A run like Berry’s on Sunday night is the kind that could keep the driver’s phone ringing for future Cup opportunities.

“We’re all auditioning for our jobs and working our guts out trying to stay racing at this level,” Berry said. “My team’s pedigree speaks for itself, but for me as a driver, I really don’t know what else I can do to prove that I deserve to be in the Cup Series in a competitive race car other than just win a race, and that was looking like it might be possible (Sunday night). So we’re gonna keep digging. I feel like we have a lot of good tracks coming up, and I think that we can do good things.”

MORE: Briscoe, Gragson speak on free agency

His No. 4 team is led by crew chief Rodney Childers, who guided Berry’s predecessor, Kevin Harvick, to the 2014 Cup Series championship, in addition to 37 of Harvick’s 60 career Cup wins. The gravity of their current situation is not lost on Childers, who was pleased with the program’s performance all weekend after a third-place qualifying effort to couple with their top-10 finish — a stark contrast after consecutive DNFs at World Wide Technology Raceway and Sonoma Raceway.

“It’s interesting looking for a job all week and still coming and running like this,” Childers said. “That’s just icing on the cake, honestly. Everybody has stayed focused and keeps racing their hearts out, and everybody that we race against knows what the 4 car is capable of and the people that I have. Josh is just driving his butt off, and if he didn’t show that he doesn’t deserve (to be) in this series tonight, then something’s wrong.”

Brittney Wilbur | NASCAR Digital Media

Berry’s Tennesseean shine in Iowa wasn’t just a flash in the pan, either. The 33-year-old has led laps in six races this year and now has three top 10s in his last five races. At the 0.875-mile Iowa track, Berry posted the fourth-best average running position (5.75) behind only top-three finishers Ryan Blaney, William Byron and Chase Elliott.

“This car fits me well on the short tracks especially,” said Berry, who won the NASCAR Advance Auto Parts Weekly Series national championship in 2020 and has a storied career racing late model stocks. “It kind of reminds me of a late model or something, how it drives. And really, from the first time I took it to one of these places, it really started to click for me. So I think that we’re doing a lot of good things, right, and we just gotta keep plugging away at it.

“The reality of our situation is it’s only gonna get harder and harder the farther we get into the season. But we’re gonna keep trying to hold everything together the best we can, and runs like tonight make that a lot easier.”

Berry, of course, isn’t the only member of his No. 4 team looking for work. Childers’ most recent departure from a team came between the 2013 and ’14 seasons, leaving Michael Waltrip Racing on his own volition to join Harvick, which proved to be an incredibly fruitful decision. This job hunt is less uncertain and not of his choice, but the need to focus on the on-track portion of his current day job has remained unfazed.

“I think what makes it easier is just the group that we have,” Childers said. “Man, it just runs like a factory. It runs like a clock. Nobody misses a beat. You’re not worried about what if somebody’s getting their job done or not. My engineers are doing a great job. Cheddar (Smith, car chief) and all the road guys haven’t missed a beat. Honestly, it’s been pretty easy. You know, the racing part of it hasn’t changed. Everybody has the same mindset. We’ve been really open and honest. We have lots of meetings and talk about lots of different things, and we’re just gonna continue to race our guts out and show that we can do this.”

In the meantime, performances such as the one this group put together Sunday at Iowa will continue to serve as both resume builders and confidence boosters.

“Days like today make it realize for everybody that it’s possible that we can win a race,” Berry said. “And being a rookie in this series, I mean, that’s pretty special.”

Posted on June 17, 2024June 28, 2024 by Neil Paine

Whenever a team must replace a driver with 34 career wins and a Cup Series championship on his resume, it’s a big decision to make.

That’s exactly the situation Joe Gibbs Racing is facing after last week’s news that Martin Truex Jr. is retiring from full-time racing after the 2024 season. Truex has been a staple of the team since the dissolution of Furniture Row Racing following the 2018 season, winning 15 races and scoring 106 top-10 finishes over that span. Before that, Truex had already established himself as a champion by outdueling future teammate Kyle Busch with the title on the line at Homestead-Miami Speedway in 2017.

Anybody tabbed to follow one of the greatest drivers in NASCAR history in the seat of the No. 19 will face big expectations. But Gibbs has had to replace legends before, from when Bobby Labonte succeeded Dale Jarrett as the driver of the No. 18 in 1995 to Gibbs handing the keys of Tony Stewart’s No. 20 ride to young Joey Logano in 2009, or even when Kyle Busch left the No. 18 after the 2022 season.

So let’s rank the top candidates to replace Truex, by both their current series and their performance so far this season. We’ll be measuring the latter according to my Adjusted Points+ Index metric — which gives points to drivers for their finishes in each race and then compares their per-race performance to the average driver in their series (scaling everything such that average is 100, while a rating of 120 is 20% better than average, etc).

Cup Series

James Gilbert | Getty Images

1. Noah Gragson
Age: 25
Career Cup starts: 56
Current team: Stewart-Haas Racing
Adjusted Pts+ Index: 99.1
Index relative to teammates: +19.9

Despite difficult circumstances, with the news of SHR shutting down operations after the season, Gragson has bounced back from 2023 with Legacy Motor Club to be one of the Cup Series’ most improved drivers this year. He has five top 10s in 17 starts, scoring one of SHR’s lone podium finishes of the season with a third-place run at Talladega in April. Gragson is also just 25, and a vastly more professional showing this season (both on and off the track) has helped him reclaim the potential that made him one of the sport’s most promising up-and-coming drivers when he narrowly lost the 2019 Xfinity Series championship. (The winner there, Ty Gibbs, would be a new teammate/rival at JGR if Gragson is Truex’s successor.) Finally, Gragson has past experience with Toyota in the Gibbs pipeline, having driven three Xfinity Series races for them in 2018.

2. Chase Briscoe
Age: 29
Career Cup starts: 125
Current team: Stewart-Haas Racing
Adjusted Pts+ Index: 95.6
Index relative to teammates: +15.3

Speaking of bounce-back seasons, Briscoe has also been much better in 2024. He was one of the Cup Series’ more disappointing drivers last year — with an average finish outside the top 20 — while failing to build on a 2022 campaign that saw him record his first career Cup victory at Phoenix Raceway (to go with nine other top-10 finishes). But Briscoe has matched Gragson with five top 10s already by midseason, and the pair have practically identical performance stats on the season. The big question on Briscoe might be that he isn’t a Toyota guy; he’s a Ford lifer, having run every race of his NASCAR national series career in a Blue Oval.

3. Josh Berry
Age: 33
Career Cup starts: 29
Current team: Stewart-Haas Racing
Adjusted Pts+ Index: 81.1
Index relative to teammates: -4.1

Naturally, all of the SHR drivers are going to figure heavily into this year’s Silly Season, with the team disbanding and its charters being scattered to the four winds. Berry is part of that mix, though his performance hasn’t been on the same level as teammates Gragson and Briscoe so far. While he secured the other SHR podium of the year when he finished third at Darlington Raceway, he has mostly been uncompetitive — on Sunday at Iowa Speedway, his seventh-place finish was one of just three top 10s in 17 starts — and he’s tied with Michael McDowell for the lowest rate of finishing races (76.5%) among any Cup regular. One of the pros of adding Berry is that he would likely take crew chief Rodney Childers with him, bringing one of the best in the business to the JGR garage. However, Berry didn’t even produce an average Pts+ index — he was at 98.7 — while filling in with Chase Elliott’s Hendrick equipment (and another champion crew chief, Alan Gustafson) last season, so he may not fit in with the expectations for a Gibbs team that has had exactly two below-average Pts+ seasons from its regular drivers since dropping J.J. Yeley in 2007: Daniel Suárez in 2018 and 20-year-old Ty Gibbs in 2023.

4. Erik Jones
Age: 28
Career Cup starts: 270
Current team: Legacy Motor Club
Adjusted Pts+ Index: 62.7
Index relative to teammates: +14.1

Jones has long been a tough driver to assess. He was at Gibbs for parts of four seasons from 2015-20, and while he outdrove the Cup Series average during those years — with a 139 Pts+ index — he could never outdrive his talented teammates. More recently, he’s been in the opposite situation: Jones has easily beaten his teammates at Legacy Motor Club, but it hasn’t been worth much in terms of absolute success. (He has just eight top 10s in 51 starts over the past two seasons.) Would he be a better bet than the other names on this list if he returned to JGR? On the one hand, it’s hard to see a Gibbs reunion in the cards for Jones after he said JGR “blindsided” him when they moved on in 2020. But Jones knows the Gibbs program and has been in Toyotas nearly his entire career. Given that we’ve seen him be solid — if not great — with JGR before, Jones may have the highest floor of any driver they might pick to replace Truex.

5. Ryan Preece
Age: 33
Career Cup starts: 168
Current team: Stewart-Haas Racing
Adjusted Pts+ Index: 60.9
Index relative to teammates: -31.1

Preece is the last of the SHR drivers on our list, and it’s difficult to imagine Gibbs would tap a guy who has struggled to keep up with Gragson, Briscoe and Berry this season in comparable equipment. Preece’s 2024 stats (an average finish of 21.6 and a 61 Pts+ index) are almost exactly in line with his career averages (23.2 and 59, respectively) across multiple different teams, so this isn’t a down season — a mid-pack performance is just what you can expect from Preece, something that doesn’t fit in with what JGR’s profile as a perennial contender.

6. John Hunter Nemechek
Age: 27
Career Cup starts: 58
Current team: Legacy Motor Club
Adjusted Pts+ Index: 56.8
Index relative to teammates: +4.9

Nemechek technically ranks lowest among our regular Cup Series candidates in Pts+ index, but he would potentially be a more attractive choice than Preece or even some of the others on the list. Nemechek is relatively young; he’s just a year removed from a fourth-place finish in the Xfinity standings (done while driving for Gibbs); he’s been outdriving his teammates at Legacy Motor Club this year, and he has more than a decade of NASCAR national series experience in Toyotas. In some ways, that history makes him a natural choice to at least get a look for the Truex seat, even though he’s been a near-total non-factor (two top 10s in 17 races) in Cup this season.

Jonathan Bachman | Getty Images

The Wild Card: Kyle Busch
Age: 39
Career Cup starts: 695
Current team: Richard Childress Racing
Adjusted Pts+ Index: 100.3
Index relative to teammates: +53.7

This would be the biggest bombshell of the 2024-25 Silly Season, if it happens. And according to Pts+ index, Busch is currently having the best Cup Series season of anybody on our list of candidates — driving circles around RCR teammate Austin Dillon — despite this otherwise being the worst full season of Busch’s storied career. But a Gibbs reunion seems unlikely for many reasons, not the least of which is the fact that Busch is still under contract with Childress next season. Busch can still drive, and Gibbs would upgrade his chances to compete for a championship again, but there may be too many obstacles in the way of making this work.

Xfinity and Trucks

1. Chandler Smith
Age: 21
Career Cup starts: 3
Current team: Joe Gibbs Racing (Xfinity Series)
Xfinity Series adjusted Pts+ Index: 202.0
Index relative to teammates: +48.8

Smith — who ranks second in the Xfinity Series standings — might have the inside track for Truex’s seat if JGR bypasses the Cup drivers and dips into the lower-tier series. He’s just 21 years old, which puts him in the same young hotshot mold as Ty Gibbs when he ascended to a Cup ride, and he has spent most of his career in Toyotas, including driving for Gibbs this season. There’s precedent for Gibbs plucking a promising driver from the Xfinity Series and handing them a competitive ride — see Ty Gibbs, Tony Stewart, Daniel Suárez and Jason Leffler — though some of those stints were vastly more successful than others.

2. Austin Hill
Age: 30
Career Cup starts: 8
Current team: Richard Childress Racing (Xfinity Series)
Xfinity Series adjusted Pts+ Index: 201.8
Index relative to teammates: +54.8

Currently third in the Xfinity standings, Hill finished fifth last year and has become one of the most reliable contenders in the Xfinity Series. He also has Cup experience with Penske, Beard Motorsports and RCR over the past three seasons, finishing a career-best 14th last August in the Daytona night race. While he and Smith have almost identical performance metrics this year, Hill is the older, more experienced driver (with nearly twice as many career Xfinity starts under his belt).

3. Corey Heim
Age: 21
Career Cup starts: 2
Current team: Tricon Garage (Truck Series)
Truck Series adjusted Pts+ Index: 246.5
Index relative to teammates: +137.9

After ranking fourth in the 2023 Truck Series — a finish marred by a payback incident with Carson Hocevar in the championship race — Heim has unfinished business in 2024, and he’s been flat-out dominating this year. (While he still trails Christian Eckes in the standings, he has twice as many wins and a far superior Pts+ index.) Heim is Toyota’s top prospect as well, which will automatically land you in a prominent place on JGR’s radar. But the only precedent for a driver primarily in the Truck Series making the leap to a full-time Cup ride at Gibbs the following season might be Denny Hamlin, who ran more truck races than Xfinity ones in 2004, then made his Cup debut to replace Leffler in 2005. (And even there, Hamlin was running a full-time Xfinity schedule at the time, while Heim has started only seven of 15 possible Xfinity races this year.) The rest was history for Denny, and Heim might have that level of potential, but he probably needs more experience at a higher level before making the full-time leap to the Cup Series.

Posted on June 17, 2024June 18, 2024 by Adam Fenwick

Three-time NASCAR Whelen Modified Tour champion Justin Bonsignore will join Joe Gibbs Racing to make his NASCAR Xfinity Series debut at New Hampshire Motor Speedway on June 22.

The opportunity is a direct result of the unexpected experience the 36-year-old from Holtsville, New York gained in Florida earlier this year.

“It all stems back to the opportunity we had with the ARCA race at Daytona and the Road to Daytona program,” said Bonsignore, who will pilot the No. 19 Toyota GR Supra at the Magic Mile, where he has a pair of Modified Tour wins. “That kind of sparked some interest. I really enjoyed the experience I had at Daytona and everything that went into that.

“I had some opportunities come up with partners after that race, and we started making some phone calls and really just thought the next best step for me and what my goals are as I get older was to try and make an Xfinity race.”

PHOTOS: All of Bonsignore’s Modified Tour wins

Bonsignore’s Modified Tour resume speaks for itself. In addition to being a three-time champion, he ranks fourth on the all-time win list with 41 victories. He also ranks fourth on the all-time pole list with 31.

Among those 41 victories are two triumphs at New Hampshire, the obvious location for him to make his Xfinity Series debut.

Justin Bonsignore celebrates after winning the Mohegan Sun 100 at New Hampshire Motor Speedway on July 15, 2023. (Photo: Adam Glanzman/NASCAR)

“Steve deSouza at Joe Gibbs was really helpful in this whole process and was pushing for us to try and run New Hampshire if we can, just because of my experience there,” Bonsignore said. “He thought it would be a great fit and a cool storyline for me running both races (Xfinity and Modified Tour) that day.”

This is not the first time Joe Gibbs Racing has welcomed a Modified Tour champion to compete in an Xfinity Series race at New Hampshire. In 2017, Ryan Preece joined the team at the one-mile oval and finished second.

Bonsignore said that if he was going to compete in the Xfinity Series, he was only going to do it with a competitive team. JGR, which has more than 200 victories in the series and five already this year, stood out as his best option.

“Joe Gibbs Racing is definitely a top-notch team and one of the best in the series,” Bonsignore said. “They’re going to give us everything we need to go out and try to win the race.”

Make no mistake: Bonsignore doesn’t plan nor expects to make the full-time jump to the Xfinity Series. He’s a self-described Modified Tour lifer who plans to spend the rest of his career racing with the series.

For him, this opportunity is more about crossing an item off his personal bucket list while also reminding the NASCAR world of the talent possessed by drivers on the Modified Tour.

“I’ve always wanted to do it; I’ve just never really had the opportunities or the partners to help us out,” he said. “Things have come together this year and are working out well. I hope I can run well and make the community proud and shed some more light that there are some very, very good race-car drivers in this part of the country.”

Posted on June 17, 2024June 17, 2024 by Cameron Richardson

Iowa Speedway’s Cup Series debut did not disappoint as there were comers and goers throughout the race and changes on track that kept drivers on their toes throughout all 350 laps.

Ryan Blaney led a career-high 201 laps around the 0.875-mile oval to score his first victory of 2024 and 11th career win at NASCAR’s top level.

RELATED: Race results | At-track photos: Iowa

Before the circuit heads to the Granite State for an affair at New Hampshire Motor Speedway next Sunday (2:30 p.m. ET, USA Network, PRN Radio, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio, NBC Sports App), here’s a look at the drivers who trended up and slid down through Iowa.

THREE UP ⬆️

1. Ricky Stenhouse Jr., No. 47 JTG Daugherty Racing Chevrolet

James Gilbert | Getty Images

Started: 35th

Finished: 5th

What happened: With the help of aggressive pit strategy calls throughout the second half of Sunday’s Iowa race, Stenhouse was able to move to the front of the field, and despite only taking two tires on the final stop, the three-time Xfinity Iowa victor was able to hold his track position to come out with his second top-five finish of 2024. It’s his first non-superspeedway top-five result since finishing fourth in the now-defunct Bristol Dirt Race in 2023.

What’s next: Stenhouse heads to New Hampshire next Sunday, where a top 20 is the trend for the No. 47 team as Stenhouse hasn’t finished worst than 22nd in the last four races in the Granite State.

2. Josh Berry, No. 4 Stewart-Haas Racing Ford

Alejandro Alvarez | NASCAR Digital Media

Started: 3rd

Finished: 7th

What happened: At one point in the final stage, it looked like Berry was in prime position to break through for his first career win in his rookie campaign, but on the final restart, Berry was held back by the No. 47 and couldn’t find any long-run speed to challenge the likes of Blaney, William Byron and Chase Elliott. However, Berry led a career-high 32 laps en route to a seventh-place run to give him three consecutive top 10s when he’s taken the checkered flag (DNFs at Gateway, Sonoma).

What’s next: The tracks on the shorter end have been a playground for Berry, and New Hampshire plays right into the roots theme that the 33-year-old rookie carries with pride. While the results at the track don’t pan out too much on the Xfinity level, the No. 4 SHR Ford should have another shot at a strong points day next weekend.

3. Daniel Suárez, No. 99 Trackhouse Racing Chevrolet

Jonathan Bachman | Getty Images

Started: 13th

Finished: 9th

What happened: A grind of a race for Suárez ended up with a gutsy top-10 result and a much-needed one for the No. 99 Trackhouse team. It’s the first top 10 for the group since finishing fifth at Texas Motor Speedway in April, and they’ll need to keep finding finishes like this to begin their postseason prep, thanks to their Atlanta win.

What’s next: There’s more optimism for the No. 99 team heading to New Hampshire as Suárez scored a ninth-place finish at the track in 2022.

THREE DOWN ⬇️

1. Kyle Larson, No. 5 Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet

Brittney Wilbur | NASCAR Digital Media

Started: 1st

Finished: 34th

What happened: It’s tough to throw Larson’s performance as a downer for him, given that he showed to have the fastest car in the field 200 laps in. He won Stage 2 and led 80 laps, but fortunes went the wrong way for the No. 5 team as contact with Suárez early in the final stage resulted in Larson spinning and wrecking into Denny Hamlin on Lap 221.

The No. 5 crew worked diligently to keep the Chevy on track with a trip to the garage for repairs. Larson did return to the track but finished 36 laps down in 34th.

What’s next: With Hendrick teammate Chase Elliott taking the series points lead by eight points over Larson, Larson will need a big points day at New Hampshire, given Elliott’s continued top-20 streak in 2024. And a top-five, top-10 run is doable for the No. 5 team as Larson finished third in the Granite State in 2023.

2. Kyle Busch, No. 8 Richard Childress Racing Chevrolet

Jonathan Bachman | Getty Images

Started: 7th

Finished: 35th

What happened: Busch’s night can easily be summed up by spotter Derek Kneeland’s reaction on social media, which read: “It could rain 100 dollar bills and we would get a penny.”

Busch was in line for a much-needed top-10 run Sunday, but after hitting the wall during the final stage, the No. 8 driver deemed the car “undriveable” and took it to the garage, where the two-time Cup champ’s day ended early for the second time in three weekends.

What’s next: Now 31 points below the provisional playoff elimination line, Busch needs a lifeline at New Hampshire to stay within striking distance of the top 16, but the last four outings in the Northeast have not gone according to plan for Busch, with three DNFs in that span.

3. Denny Hamlin, No. 11 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota

Sean Gardner | Getty Images

Started: 12th

Finished: 24th

What happened: Hamlin’s day started miserably at Iowa. During the first stage, the No. 11 Toyota parachuted outside the top 30 and even fell a lap down naturally. Describing the first 70 laps as feeling “like the tires are on backwards,” Hamlin did recover to find himself in the top 10 and even collected five points in Stage 2.

But Hamlin would soon be collected in the Larson incident, having nowhere to go down the frontstretch as the No. 5 careened right in front of Hamlin. The No. 11 stayed out on track and finished two laps down in 24th.

What’s next: After five consecutive top-five results, Hamlin has now finished outside the top 20 in the last two races due to a mechanical failure and wreck, respectively. However, New Hampshire is one of Hamlin’s best venues, with an average finish of 9.4 in 30 starts at the 1.058-mile facility, and the No. 11 team should get back on track next Sunday.

Posted on June 16, 2024June 17, 2024 by Zach Sturniolo

NEWTON, Iowa — William Byron was 0.716 seconds shy of scoring the victory in the NASCAR Cup Series’ inaugural race at Iowa Speedway.

Instead, his No. 24 Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet had to settle for runner-up on the final rundown, unable to chase down Ryan Blaney for the win in Sunday’s Iowa Corn 350.

RELATED: Race results | At-track photos

Byron’s performance at the 0.875-mile oval was far more reminiscent of the three wins he’s collected already this season. But it also reflected the team’s recent spat of ups and downs throughout the past month and a half. In a seven-race span that dates back to Dover on April 28, Byron has three finishes of 23rd or worse and three finishes of sixth or better. Sunday’s second-place result marks his best since winning at Martinsville Speedway on April 7.

“Just proud of this team,” Byron told NBC Sports. “You know, we definitely need to put together some consistent runs, and this is a good start. We’d love to be winning tonight, but Ryan and those guys were really good, so congrats to them.”

Unsurprisingly, the No. 24 team — which won this year’s Daytona 500 in addition to races at the Circuit of The Americas and Martinsville — has qualified exceptionally well all season, posting time-trial efforts of 11th or better in six of the last nine weeks. Speed has not been lacking from the crew led by crew chief Rudy Fugle, but hot and cold spells have hindered their landing spot on the results sheets.

“We’ve just got to keep grinding through the weekends and trying to put consistent performances together and get our balance correct and all those things,” said Byron, who qualified fourth for Iowa. “I feel like this was a really good step. We made a lot of improvements throughout the weekend and had a good qualifying effort. Had a couple of things not go away in the race and had to claw back from that, so proud of that.

“We’ve had two bad weeks and, you know, we were really good Charlotte. So it’s just a couple rough ones in terms of results, but this is a good one to put in the numbers bank.”

Posted on June 16, 2024June 17, 2024 by Staff Report

Kyle Busch’s day at Iowa Speedway went from looking like a much-needed top-10 finish to ending prematurely and frustratingly in the garage after a tough hit into the wall on Lap 269.

Reflecting on the abrupt end to his race, the No. 8 Richard Childress Racing driver lamented, “Parts and pieces broke. Something in the left-rear suspension. I don’t know if it was a toe link or what it was, but it changed the skew of the back of the car and it was just undrivable doing that. We came in and fixed it. Rolling back out, we broke the belt. I have no idea, but frustrating, for sure.”

RELATED: Race results | At-track photos

Throughout the race, Busch battled challenges, especially in corner entry, despite showing promise while running solidly in 10th place before his incident.

“Not what we wanted for all of our No. 8 Zone Chevy guys; everybody from Kwik Star. We were having a pretty decent day,” Busch expressed. “I thought we had a top-10 run going. We had an opportunity there to score some points, but it wasn’t meant to be,”

The setback adds to Busch’s challenging 2024 campaign, where he’s struggled to find consistent runs week in and week out, with only two top fives and five top 10s across 17 races.

Busch’s winless streak now extends to 38 races — the longest in his career — and is in jeopardy of not scoring a win in the regular season for the first time since 2004.

Currently, Busch finds himself 31 points behind the playoff cutline, a daunting 25 points behind Joey Logano.

With only nine races left in the regular season, pressure is building for Busch, who now finds himself in what could be a must-win situation to make the playoffs.

Posted on June 16, 2024June 17, 2024 by Reid Spencer

NEWTON, Iowa — This time, there was no unpleasant surprise waiting for Ryan Blaney near the finish line of a NASCAR Cup Series race.

Grabbing the lead on crew chief Jonathan Hassler’s two-tire call under the final caution of Sunday night’s Iowa Corn 350, Blaney led the final 88 laps of the inaugural Cup race at 0.875-mile Iowa Speedway.

In front of a large contingent of family and friends, the reigning series champion crossed the finish line 0.716 seconds ahead of runner-up William Byron, who was racing on four new tires after a pit stop under caution for Chris Buescher’s accident on Lap 260.

RELATED: Race results | At-track photos

The victory was Blaney’s first of the season and the 11th of his career. Blaney now has won at Iowa Speedway in all three NASCAR national series, having triumphed in the Craftsman Truck Series in 2012 and the Xfinity Series in 2015.

All told, the race winner led four times for 201 of 350 laps on a track that was repaved in the bottom two lanes in the corners.

“What a cool way to win here. This place means a lot to me and means a lot to my mom (Lisa, from Chariton, Iowa),” said Blaney, who was leading June 2 at World Wide Technology Raceway at Gateway outside St. Louis before running out of fuel on the white-flag lap.

“We had a lot of people here tonight cheering us on, so they willed us to that one. Overall, I really appreciate the whole (No. 12 team). I mean, our car was really fast all night and we got a little bit better through the night, and two tires was a good call there.

“I didn’t know how well I was going to hold on. I started to struggle a little bit at the end but had enough to hang on. I’m super proud of the effort.”

SHOP: Race winner gear

Byron wasn’t surprised Blaney won the race on two fresh tires, given the quality of the Team Penske driver’s No. 12 Ford.

“No, he had a really good car, so he was up front and contending a lot, and him and the 5 (pole winner Kyle Larson) were really good,” Byron said. “So, we were just a step off of that, you know?

“I feel like I just needed to turn the center just a hair better and still kind of maintain the long run. Proud of the effort. It was a really good night, and I feel like we can learn from this and build from it to be a little bit better.”

In a race that featured eight cautions for 49 laps, Chase Elliott finished third, followed by Christopher Bell, who started from the rear of the field in a backup car after blowing a right front tire and crashing in Friday’s practice.

Ricky Stenhouse Jr. came home fifth, with Joey Logano, Josh Berry, Alex Bowman, Daniel Suárez and Brad Keselowski completing the top 10.

The restart after the second stage break changed the entire dynamic of the race. Larson had just taken the green/checkered flag to claim his eighth stage victory of the season.

But on Lap 220, one circuit after the final stage went green for the first time, contact from Suárez’s Chevrolet sent Larson’s Camaro spinning into the outside wall on the frontstretch, pinching Denny Hamlin’s Toyota into the barrier in the process.

Larson’s crew eventually repaired the wounded machine, but not until the 2021 champion had lost 31 laps in the garage. Larson finished 34th, 36 laps down and lost the series lead to Elliott, his Hendrick Motorsports teammate.

Larson, who led 80 laps on Sunday before the accident that waylaid him, trails Elliott by eight points with nine races left in the regular season. Next up for the Cup Series is the USA Today 301 at New Hampshire Motor Speedway next Sunday (2:30 p.m. ET on USA Network, NBC Sports App, PRN Radio and SiriusXM NASCAR Radio).

NOTE: There were no issues in post-race inspection, confirming Blaney’s victory. No cars back to the R&D Center, but the Nos. 9, 47, 20, 23, 6, 22 (two from each manufacturer) are going back for wind tunnel testing.

Posted on June 16, 2024June 16, 2024 by Zach Sturniolo

Editor’s note: This story was updated after the conclusion of Sunday’s race at Iowa Speedway.

NEWTON, Iowa — Chase Elliott is in the midst of a career year at the NASCAR Cup Series level.

Perhaps that’s hyperbolic considering the 28-year-old won the championship in 2020 and collected 18 wins from 2018-2022 alone. But the driver of the No. 9 Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet has been outstanding — nearly to the point of flying under the radar despite being the sport’s six-time defending Most Popular Driver.

RELATED: Cup standings

One year after the first winless season since 2017, Elliott’s average finish through 17 races in 2024 is a staggering series-best 9.1, a career-best mark for the ninth-year veteran. His April win at Texas Motor Speedway snapped a 42-race drought, and the No. 9 car has yet to finish worse than 19th all season.

He leaves Sunday’s inaugural race at Iowa Speedway as the regular-season points leader, eight points atop Hendrick Motorsports teammate Kyle Larson.

“I just think we have a really solid group top to bottom, and everybody has been just super committed to finding that 1% each week and whatever that is, it is,” Elliott said Saturday before his third-place finish. “I just think collectively, we’ve been solid. And I feel that we haven’t reached our full potential yet — and I think that’s exciting.

“And I think that’s OK too, because it’s only halfway through the year and, as we all know, the way this playoff situation is now, you want to be good in those last 10 — and really like the last five.”

MORE: Race results | At-track photos: Iowa

The Georgia native collected five wins in 2022, the debut season of the current Next Gen vehicle, but an off-track injury and a later suspension derailed much of the rhythm Elliott and crew chief Alan Gustafson sought to build while others learned the car quicker and more effectively.

That gap has closed significantly, and Elliott is seemingly in the hunt every week, evidenced by his fourth-best 11.71 average running position this season entering the Hawkeye State, behind only Larson, Denny Hamlin and Martin Truex Jr.

Including his charge to the championship four seasons ago, Elliott strung together three consecutive appearances in the Championship 4 with a chance to win the title. He and his crew know the formula it will take to get back there in November.

“The trick is being good enough to get you to like the Round of 8, and in your mind, not be spectacular yet — and then really try to be spectacular in those last three or four weeks,” Elliott said. “So it’s really just about having a solid enough base to get you through there and then really try to hit home runs in those last few if you can.”

Posted on June 16, 2024June 17, 2024 by Staff Report

Sunday’s inaugural NASCAR Cup Series race at Iowa Speedway took a massive turn early in the final stage as Kyle Larson and Daniel Suárez tangled on the frontstretch, collecting Denny Hamlin in the process.

The No. 5 Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet of Larson went three-wide in between Brad Keselowski’s No. 6 Ford and Suárez’s No. 99 Chevy just before contact off Turn 4. The 2021 series champion skidded into the outside wall and into the path of Hamlin’s approaching No. 11 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota.

RELATED: Race results | At-track photos

Both Hamlin and Larson made multiple pit stops for repairs, and Larson’s No. 5 entry spent substantial time in the Cup Series garage after meeting the minimum speed requirement. Suárez continued for a ninth-place finish; Hamlin pressed on for a 24th-place result, two laps off the pace, and Larson was 36 laps down in 34th at the checkered flag.

Before the incident, Larson had led 80 laps after winning the pole for Sunday evening’s 350-lapper, and he won Stage 2.

“If I could see a replay, I would tell you what went wrong, if it was my fault or what,” Larson said on pit road post-race. “I mean, obviously if I don’t go three-wide there, there’s probably no crash but I’m probably running sixth into Turn 1 so, but either way sixth is better than crash. Yeah, I don’t know. Like I said, I think just, I should have been more aware of who I was around. Suárez is really aggressive, and I don’t know. He was probably just pushing and got loose, I’m guessing, underneath me.”

Suárez marked his first top-10 finish since mid-April at Texas Motor Speedway, a span of eight races ago. He noted that he initiated the contact, but also that he didn’t expect the action to tighten as much as it did exiting the track’s sweeping fourth corner.

“Honestly, during the race I was so confused, I didn’t know what happened,” Suárez told FOX Sports’ Bob Pockrass. “I didn’t know if I went up or he came down. I just saw the replay for the very first time, and I noticed that the 6 (Keselowski) was the one that was on the outside, he had like a quarter of a car from the wall because he was trying to pinch down the 5 (Larson), and then the 5 had another quarter of a car to the 6, trying to pinch me down, and I was expecting those two guys to be closer to the wall like everyone else. I mean, I’m definitely … I’m the one that made contact with the 5, and I take responsibility for that, but I felt like they were lower than I was expecting.”

Fortunes were not the same for Hamlin as he dealt with handling issues from the start of the race and quickly fell off the lead lap before rallying with pit strategy to collect five points at Stage 2 checkered flag. The melee in front of him curtailed the comeback from 34th place at the end of Stage 2.

Contributing: Zack Albert | NASCAR