Throughout the 2024 NASCAR season, Ken Martin, director of historical content for the sanctioning body, will offer his suggestions on which historical races fans should watch from the NASCAR Classics library in preparation for each upcoming race weekend.
Martin has worked for NASCAR exclusively since 2008 but has been involved with the sport since 1982, overseeing various projects. He worked in the broadcast booth for hundreds of races, assisting the broadcast team with different tasks. This includes calculating the “points as they run” for the historic 1992 finale – the Hooters 500 at Atlanta Motor Speedway.
Here are Ken’s suggestions to watch before this weekend’s Shriners Children’s 500 at Phoenix Raceway.
The inaugural NASCAR Cup Series race held at Phoenix Raceway turned out to be another memorable first for a future Cup Series champion.
Thirty-three-year-old rising talent Alan Kulwicki, in just his third full-time season, captured the checkered flag for the first time in his career. Kulwicki had a handful of fast runs throughout the start of his career, including second-place finishes at Pocono Raceway in 1987, Darlington Raceway in 1988 and Martinsville Speedway, just four weeks before the race at Phoenix.
Kulwicki, who always seemed to be fast in qualifying, was coming off six top-three starts over his previous eight races. It was somewhat of a surprise when Kulwicki put his No. 7 car 21st on the grid.
Another storyline was the late-season championship battle between Bill Elliott and Rusty Wallace. Phoenix was the second-to-last stop on the schedule, meaning each driver needed to gain every single point they could in hopes of capturing their first series title.
Elliott entered the event up 79 points on Wallace, with Dale Earnhardt sitting in third, 198 points behind the two drivers. Earnhardt still had a shot at the title, although it was a long shot with just those two races remaining. The two championship drivers each put their cars near the front of the field, with Wallace starting second and Elliott sixth.
Once the green flag waved, it didn’t take long for Wallace to show that he had a fast ride, taking the lead on Lap 3.
The strongest car in the field that day proved to be Ricky Rudd, but late-race engine troubles allowed Kulwicki to strike.
He led the final 16 laps en route to his first career victory, as he celebrated with a “Polish Victory Lap” for the first time in the Cup Series.
Elliott finished fourth, with Wallace one spot behind him in fifth. This gave Elliott a 79-point advantage over him in the standings.
The eighth stop of the 2007 campaign was the third time that the new “Car of Tomorrow” was used in a points-paying event.
Jeff Gordon put his No. 24 car on the pole for the race, after he left Texas with an eight-point advantage over Jeff Burton in the point standings.
As Gordon had his sights set on trying to capture his fifth championship, he had another milestone in his grasp. He entered the weekend with 75 career victories, one shy of tying Dale Earnhardt for sixth all-time.
Gordon’s chance at history almost disappeared late, as he was caught on pit road during the last set of green-flag pit stops. He recovered to hold off Tony Stewart, who led a race-high 132 laps, for the victory.
He honored Earnhardt after the race by driving around the track displaying a No. 3 flag.
The 2009 season marked the first full-time season that Mark Martin competed in since 2006. It didn’t take long for the 50-year-old driver to show everyone that he was still one of the fastest drivers in the series.
Martin qualified second for the Daytona 500. He backed that up with back-to-back poles at Atlanta and Bristol. He entered the race at Phoenix coming off three straight top-10 finishes, so it was no surprise when Martin put his No. 5 Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet on the pole at Phoenix.
He dominated the race, leading a race-high 157 laps but a late-race caution put him in second for the final restart. He re-took the lead, took the checkered flag and became just the third driver in NASCAR history to win a Cup Series race after turning 50 years old.
He honored his late friend Alan Kulwicki, winner of the first race at Phoenix, by celebrating with a post-race “Polish Victory Lap.”
The victory was the first of five in 2009 for Martin, who went on to finish second in the final season standings.
The media tour Rajah Caruth took on Monday was exhausting. Some of it included travel. Most of it included hours of teleconferences staring at a webcam.
All of it celebrated one thing: Caruth’s first NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series win, which came Friday night at Las Vegas Motor Speedway.
Such a heavy media tour after winning the third Truck Series race of 2024 would have been unusual had it not been for the context of Caruth’s victory. He became the third Black driver to win a race in a NASCAR national series. Between the NASCAR Cup Series, Xfinity Series and Truck Series, only 10 times has a Black driver gone to Victory Lane: once for Wendell Scott, eight times for Bubba Wallace and now once for Caruth.
Showcasing history is critical. But so is highlighting opportunity. Therein lies the importance of representation in NASCAR across all platforms.
Caruth — known within the garage area as one of the sport’s hardest-working drivers — captured a convincing win on a standard 1.5-mile oval after executing a flawless green-flag pit cycle and led 38 laps in the process. He then climbed out of the truck and was interviewed by FOX Sports’ Josh Sims, a reporter ingrained in NASCAR since 2015 and who became the first Black pit reporter to cover the sport on a nationally televised broadcast when he joined FOX Sports in 2021.
That visual of two Black men in prominent NASCAR positions on a national broadcast — one a winning driver, the other a reporter — was one that simply had not been seen before.
“First of all, it’s funny to hear it because I have goosebumps after you put it that way,” Sims said in a teleconference with NASCAR.com. “And it’s not like I wasn’t aware of it — because I very, very much was after it happened. I mean, you look no further than Twitter right away. The amount of people that said that image was powerful, that’s what my timeline was filled with, you know? I knew the magnitude of the moment for Rajah, and in the back of my mind, I thought about the fact that I’m going to be the one out there, and this is going to be a big moment visually.
“At the same time, I want to make sure that, to a certain degree, you stick the landing. You ask the important questions, and you make sure you give Rajah his moment to let everybody know what it means to him. But I’d be lying if I didn’t admit I was excited that it was me that got to be out there with him. Because it really is a cool moment.”
With less representation, particularly in such a public setting, there is less chance a young person of color can envision themselves in either Caruth’s or Sims’ shoes. That door is opening now.
“I think it’s a really big deal,” Caruth told NASCAR.com of the interview with Sims. “Being involved, I can’t really see from a bird’s eye view how it makes waves, but I certainly hope that it helps because representation is so important. I think it’ll be cool when (Xfinity Series driver) Hailie (Deegan) wins her first race, if it’s Kim (Coon), if it’s Heather DeBeaux or someone like that. I feel like equally, that’ll be cool as well.”
Ultimately, Caruth sees the bigger picture in the aftermath of his moment. The stars of NASCAR are changing, thanks in part to the aforementioned Drive for Diversity program. In the program’s 20th anniversary, four of nine national series races this year have been won by program alumni: Nick Sanchez in the Daytona Truck race; Daniel Suárez in the Atlanta Cup race; Caruth at Vegas; and Kyle Larson in the Vegas Cup race.
“Hopefully to the point where the headlines aren’t that it was another Black driver or Hispanic driver, right?” Caruth said. “It’s just, ‘This person won.’ That’s the goal, to have it be as representative of the country as any other sport. That’s the way I see it. We’re doing the right things and just gotta keep it up.”
Indeed, in many respects, the sport has looked this way for some time now. Caruth described being a young NASCAR fan in Washington, D.C., as “isolation” being the only kid at school that knew anything about the sport. Growing up in East Brunswick, New Jersey, Sims never had NASCAR on his radar as a kid. But going to the track as an adult changed Sims’ perspective.
Alejandro Alvarez | NASCAR.com
“I started really covering the sport in 2015 when I moved to Charlotte,” Sims said. “The one thing I noticed is there already was a lot of diversity at the track. I just wasn’t aware of it because I wasn’t at the track on a week-in and week-out basis. But from the pit crew to a lot of people that work behind the scenes, there are a lot of faces of color, there are a lot more women that work in the sport that you wouldn’t really know about unless you were there.”
That point further emphasizes the importance of storytelling through coverage, Sims said, and the need to highlight those diverse characters in a more public light so people understand their stories, their backgrounds and how hard they’ve worked to achieve success in such competitive fields regardless of skin color.
“That’s why when Rajah is leading towards the end of the race, it’s important to highlight how he got there,” Sims said. “That this is a young man that came from iRacing, similar to a William Byron. So then you draw that comparison with someone else that’s made it to the top of the sport. None of this has anything to do with what he looks like or where he came from or anything like that. It has to do with his journey.”
His journey through eSports and gaming further proves representation isn’t just about how Caruth looks either. Being a significant member of the flourishing and substantial iRacing community connects Caruth to racing enthusiasts who first got their speed fix virtually.
Perhaps no sport can provide a better pathway from virtual to real-world than NASCAR, which now has seen Caruth and Byron, the Hendrick Motorsports superstar, claim early-season wins.
Before he was a Daytona 500 champion and Cup Series prodigy, Byron was an all-world iRacing driver. Similarly, Caruth’s first opportunity with a steering wheel in his hand came in the iRacing community. While these two are among the first eSports racers to break through, they won’t be the last.
“It’s not easy, right?” Caruth said. “If you think you’re just going to wake up and it’s going to be in front of you, it’s not. You’ve got to put in the work and listen — emphasis on ‘listen’ because I think about my first years racing on iRacing, learning how to be fast on there, making a lot of mistakes. Honestly, it was kind of the same when I started in real life. I just listened to people that wanted to help me. I put in the work, late nights, early mornings, showing up. I caught some breaks, for sure.
“I tell those kids — because I know there’s a lot out there that are in similar spots than me — y’all can do it. You just got to put in the work, pay attention, just do the right thing, and it will work out.”
As he continues to pursue a career in NASCAR, race will always be a part of Caruth’s story — but perhaps never more than racing itself.
“It’s a part of me, and I honor it and I cherish it and it’s a part of my personality. It’s how I grew up,” Caruth said on this week’s episode of “Stacking Pennies” with Corey LaJoie. “At the same time, it’s not a character trait. It is a little — I don’t want to say pressure because the ultimate pressure is to perform and do the best that you can and do the things during the week to be the best race car driver on Fridays and Saturdays. But honestly, I think about that all the time because I know the amount of people that are watching me.
“And honestly I take that as a feather in my cap sometimes. Because if I do good, I can really help the sport. … I know if I do good in NASCAR, I can help the sport so much because the people that I grew up with and a lot of my friends in that world, this is a completely different industry for them, so I know I can just help a lot.”
Todd Gilliland had no way of knowing at the time, but his victory on March 28, 2015 would kickstart one of the most successful short track divisions in the country today.
That night was the inaugural race for the zMAX CARS Tour. Built from the remnants of the USAR Pro Cup Series, more than 65 Late Model Stock Car and Super Late Model teams converged on Southern National Motorsports Park for two separate 150-lap CARS Tour features.
Gilliland is one of several competitors from the CARS Tour’s debut weekend who have advanced into NASCAR’s top ranks. A lot has changed for Gilliland in the nine years since his momentous win, but he still vividly remembers how vibrant and energetic the atmosphere was leading up to the green flag.
“It was only my second full-time year in Late Models, but there was a lot of excitement around the new CARS Tour,” Gilliland said. “Now it’s funny to see how much its grown with the new ownership and everything else that’s happened. There were so many good guys [at the first race], so winning was such a huge confidence booster and helped me get into the groove of things.”
Prior to the inception of the CARS Tour, opportunities were limited for Gilliland to showcase his talent in a Late Model Stock Car.
Gilliland had heard stories about previous touring divisions such as the NASCAR Southeast Series and the UARA-STARS Late Model Series that allowed Late Model Stock Car competitors to battle each on a semi-regular basis. With both tours dissolved by the mid-2010s, drivers like Gilliland were primarily confined to weekly events in the Southeast.
When the CARS Tour was initially announced, Gilliland immediately jumped at the chance to prove himself against many of the best in the Late Model Stock Car discipline. The first entry list for Southern National featured a copious number of competitive drivers, including four-time Southern National Motorsports Park track champion Deac McCaskill.
After starting third in the 30-car field, Gilliland stayed within reach of the lead as McCaskill proceeded to put together one of his trademark Southern National runs. A late-race caution gave Gilliland the opening he needed to move McCaskill up the track in Turn 4 and make the race-winning pass with three laps remaining.
Following his CARS Tour victory, Todd Gilliland would claim two ARCA Menards Series West titles and victories across ARCA and the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series before moving up to the NASCAR Cup Series in 2022. (Photo: NASCAR)
The gravity of what Gilliland managed to do at McCaskill’s home track did not hit him until sometime after the Victory Lane celebrations concluded.
“It was a crazy one,” Gilliland said. “I honestly didn’t think too much about who I was racing against, but afterwards, people were telling me about all the races [McCaskill] had won there. You learn as you go, but you always want to beat the best when you’re coming up. [Beating McCaskill] made that win so much cooler.”
Gilliland’s triumph set the tone for both CARS Tour divisions, which have sense become a proving ground for young competitors to race against seasoned veterans.
In the Super Late Model Tour alone, which existed from 2015-2021, drivers like 2024 Daytona 500 champion William Byron, Christopher Bell, Bubba Wallace, Harrison Burton and Zane Smith earned at least one victory before progressing into the NASCAR Cup Series.
The same trend has been prevalent in the Late Model Stock Car division. Among the notable winners are Sam Mayer and Corey Heim, 2023 Championship 4 contenders in the NASCAR Xfinity Series and NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series, respectively, as well as Anthony Alfredo, Taylor Gray and Layne Riggs.
Following in his father Scott’s Late Model Stock Car footsteps, Riggs burst onto the scene by obtaining his first CARS Late Model Stock Tour victory at Dominion Raceway in 2017 with his family-owned car. He earned five additional victories in the next five years, with Riggs using that knowledge to claim the NASCAR Advance Auto Parts Weekly Series title in 2022.
Layne Riggs utilized his experience in the CARS Tour to help win the 2022 NASCAR Advance Auto Parts Weekly Series title, which was crucial in helping him earn a NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series ride for 2024. (Photo: Joe Chandler/South Boston Speedway)
“The CARS Tour is where I learned to race,” Riggs said. “I raced against some of the best of the best. I duked it out with Deac McCaskill in my first CARS Tour race and we battled for the win in my [most recent] CARS Tour race. Racing against such good competition all those years is what taught me to be such a good driver.”
Of the people Riggs had to constantly battle on CARS Tour race weekends, none were tougher than Josh Berry.
From the moment Berry entered his first CARS Tour event in 2015, he set a high standard for the rest of his competitors to follow. After winning in three of his four appearances during the inaugural year, Berry would go on to claim the series championship in 2017 while also topping the all-time wins list in the Late Model Stock Car division with 22 victories.
“Winning the first one out was pretty cool because [Pulaski County Motorsports Park] is where I started,” Berry said. “I never had a huge amount of success there, so winning that race helped build some confidence and momentum. As the years followed, we kept getting better at those longer races and it made everything a lot of fun.”
Berry added the CARS Tour has always separated itself from other similar short track divisions since its inception, particularly when it came to reaching a wider motorsports audience.
The sanctioning body has always placed heavy emphasis on broadcasting races live, a philosophy that has carried over into their current partnership with FloRacing. This in turn created a larger platform that showcased how competitive the CARS Tour was with its even mix of young and experienced competitors.
With the CARS Tour growing in popularity courtesy of drivers like Josh Berry, the series has garnered interest from drivers like Kyle Larson, who made a one-off appearance at Caraway Speedway in 2023. (Photo: Susan Wong/NASCAR)
With several prominent figures across motorsports tuning in, drivers like Berry gained more exposure as the CARS Tour continued to flourish. Now the day-to-day operations of the series are overseen by an ownership group that consists of Berry’s old boss Dale Earnhardt Jr. and his current boss Kevin Harvick, as well as Justin Marks and Jeff Burton.
Berry is looking forward to watching Sunday’s season-opener at Southern National and seeing many of his old competitors go up against the next generation of young prospects. Although his time with the series is over, Berry said he will always appreciate everything the CARS Tour did to help him and many others find their way to the top levels of NASCAR.
“The CARS Tour has been a great home for me over the years,” Berry said. “I’m really thankful for [general manager] Jack [McNelly] and everybody there that gave us the platform to go race. As a race car driver, the CARS Tour helped legitimize what we were doing by putting us in front of more eyes.
“It’s something I’ll look back on and enjoy for my whole life.”
Instead of being a spectator Sunday, Riggs will pursue another CARS Tour victory behind the wheel of Harvick’s Late Model Stock Car, a race that he believes will be one of the toughest to win based on the number of competitive cars entered.
The influx of drivers and resources into the CARS Tour is something Riggs considers to be a natural evolution of the series because of its growing popularity. To sustain that growth, Riggs hopes the ownership group keeps finding methods to reach more people from a marketing and broadcasting standpoint.
“One thing I’d like to see is for [the CARS Tour] to be nationally televised,” Riggs said. “They have the capacity to do it and the viewership would be there. It would be awesome for the average person who doesn’t know how to work a computer to see the racing that goes on. Being on a cable network would be big for the series.”
No matter what direction the owners takes the CARS Tour, Riggs plans to keep racing in the series for as long as his NASCAR schedule will allow, adding that he believes its best days have yet to come.
For Gilliland, he would love to have an opportunity to revisit his Late Model Stock Car roots and chase another CARS Tour win one day. He owes a lot of his success to the atmosphere cultivated by the CARS Tour and is thrilled to see that same mindset carry on with the current group of drivers.
“The CARS Tour has helped in so many ways,” Gilliland said. “It’s nice to have one touring series where you can race against Dale Jr.’s team and a lot of great short track racers who have been doing this for a long time. A lot of younger guys come through the CARS Tour now, but the veterans can point you in the right direction along the way.
“Everything there really sets you up to grow for the future.”
Nearly nine years and 110 races after Gilliland took that first checkered flag at Southern National, the CARS Tour has maintained a proud tradition of success that continues to positively shape the present and future of NASCAR.
1. Kyle Larson is in a tier of his own — but is Cliff Daniels right? Is the field tighter?
When the 2021 champ is on, he looks untouchable. His No. 5 crew chief, however, claimed after Sunday’s win at Las Vegas that the field has tightened up quite a bit.
“The gap is tighter than it was in the fall, across the field.”
A lot of ears perked up after race-winning crew chief Cliff Daniels assessed the competition in his post-race press conference, noting the increased parity throughout the series after stomping it with a sweep of Las Vegas stages for Kyle Larson’s first win in 2024.
A quick glance at the year’s three winners — two of whom are returning Championship 4 drivers — and nothing seems too amiss, or at least much different than things stood the last time the series raced at Phoenix Raceway just a handful of months ago in the 2023 finale. A closer look, however, shows that the studious Daniels, unsurprisingly, knows what he’s talking about.
While Kyle Larson has won 16% of his starts with Hendrick Motorsports and will likely continue to hover around that number (which remarkably, for context, is a great deal better than Jimmie Johnson’s 12% career win rate), it appears parity continues to be the name of the game in the Next Gen era.
For instance:
• No driver has finished in the top 10 in all three races this season.
• Five of the top-10 finishers at Las Vegas collected their first top 10s of the season.
• Noteworthy names like Chase Elliott, Brad Keselowski, Ryan Preece, Austin Dillon, Josh Berry and Todd Gilliand have yet to finish in the top 10 — despite Gilliland leading the second-most laps in the series.
• Five different teams have led 50-plus laps through three races — and this doesn’t even include Trackhouse Racing (42 laps led), which won at Atlanta.
With two superspeedway-style races behind us and only one more between now and the end of August we’ll likely start to see some of the cream rise to the top over the coming months. Given how even things look across the board right now, though, we almost have no idea who that might wind up being beyond Larson and his Daytona 500-winning teammate William Byron.
It’s early yet, but 2024 has the blueprint of an all-timer.
2. Is Phoenix Raceway going to produce another surprise winner?
Byron, Larson will likely see the front of the field at some point, but the desert 1-miler has become more unpredictable than you might imagine.
For fairly obvious reasons, the spring race at Phoenix each year holds a certain weight to it that title-hopeful teams always have in the back of their minds — considering 245 days after Sunday’s race, the championship will be decided on the very same race track.
We saw this bear out last March, with all four eventual Championship 4 drivers landing in the top six on the results sheet and Byron landing in Victory Lane. It seems obvious in retrospect, but looking at the six top finishers — Byron, Ryan Blaney, Tyler Reddick, Larson, Kevin Harvick and Christopher Bell, respectively — at the time you probably could’ve made the correct assumption that they were going to be playoff drivers, but the entire Championship 4 coming from that group? Not the biggest leap, but quite far from any sort of foregone conclusion or slam dunk.
Strange and mysterious things can happen in the desert, and believe it or not — and especially now that the “Cactus King” Harvick has hung it up — Phoenix is turning into somewhat of a wild-card track, all things considered.
Don’t get it twisted, though — by “wild card” we don’t mean flukey in any way; the list of recent winners there is full of the sport’s stars and biggest names with several recent Cup Series champs among them. At Phoenix — a track notoriously hard to pass at — wins don’t come easy (for most, anyway; see, again, Harvick’s resumé), with the eventual race winner starting in the top 10 in 12 of the last 13 races at the Avondale, Arizona, facility.
Where it gets interesting, however, is that each of the last seven Phoenix races was won by seven different drivers — and six of those seven had never won at the track previously.
Something about this track and how much emphasis teams put on it seems to really open up the field for the taking, and perhaps especially now, given what Daniels alluded to earlier about the level of competition being tighter.
Look no further than someone like Chase Briscoe, whose lone career win came in this race two seasons ago. While Briscoe’s overall career results are still not quite where he wants them to be, the way over-simplified formula — bring a fast car, qualify it well, keep it in the top 10 all day and you have a shot — has worked for him the past couple of years. Not only has he finished in the top 10 in three of his last four races there, he’s run the fourth-most laps in the top five there among active drivers in the Next Gen era.
This begs the question, though — is this year’s Chase Briscoe lurking out there somewhere on the entry list?
3. NASCAR Inside the Race: The art of making the Vegas-winning move
It looked like Tyler Reddick might catch Kyle Larson in the closing laps at Vegas — but, well, it’s Kyle Larson. MRN’s Todd Gordon and NBC Sports’ Steve Letarte explain, corner-by-corner, how the 2021 champ held off his hard-charging rival.
4. Brad Keselowski, welcome back to Victory Lane?
The No. 6 RFK Racing driver and 2012 champ has topped the century mark in starts since his last win — but Phoenix has often seen dry spells snapped in the desert. Is this the perfect time for his first Phoenix win?
Date of Phoenix win
Driver
Car
Races since last win
April 18, 2009
Mark Martin
No. 5 Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet
97
April 10, 2010
Ryan Newman
No. 39 Stewart-Haas Racing Chevrolet
77
Nov. 14, 2010
Carl Edwards
No. 99 Roush Fenway Racing Ford
70
Feb. 27, 2011
Jeff Gordon
No. 24 Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet
66
Nov. 13, 2011
Kasey Kahne
No. 5 Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet
81
Nov. 11, 2012
Kevin Harvick
No. 29 Richard Childress Racing Chevrolet
44
March 3, 2013
Carl Edwards
No. 99 Roush Fenway Racing Ford
70
March 19, 2017
Ryan Newman
No. 31 Richard Childress Racing Chevrolet
127
Nov. 12, 2017
Matt Kenseth
No. 20 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota
51
5. Catch the pack — news and notes from around the garage
For Ryan Vargas, the 2024 season is going to be unconventional, to say the least.
Vargas, a veteran of more than 70 starts in the NASCAR Xfinity Series and NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series, will race full-time in the NASCAR Whelen Euro Series PRO division this year aboard the No. 30 Chevrolet for 3F Racing.
The deal, which was struck thanks to sponsorship from Critical Path Security, comes after Vargas competed in four Euro Series races in 2023.
“We ran with Critical Path Security last year for those races (in the Euro Series), and they just had a blast,” Vargas said. “They were over the moon with the media coverage, with how well we ran and all that. They came back to me and said, ‘Ryan, we want to do Europe. We want to go back to Europe.’
“This is in large part to them wanting to do this more. Obviously, I really wanted to do it, but getting them to get on board in such a big way was exactly what we needed.”
The NASCAR Whelen Euro Series features a 14-race schedule with events taking place across Europe. The season opens with two races at Spain’s Circuit Ricardo Tormo and is followed by events in Italy, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, the Czech Republic, Germany and Belgium.
“It’s going to be a lot of traveling and a lot of flight miles,” Vargas said. “The biggest thing is just making sure we put enough time into our travel plans so that I can have a day or two to get my bearings in order before I hit the race track.
“It’s such a unique opportunity, right? Getting to go overseas and driving race cars. You always dream of racing race cars professionally, but getting to do it on a worldwide scale is really, really cool.”
Ryan Vargas (30) competed in four NASCAR Whelen Euro Series races in 2023 with a best finish of 10th.
Vargas is one of less than a dozen American drivers to ever compete in a NASCAR Whelen Euro Series event.
No American has ever won a NASCAR Whelen Euro Series points-paying event, though NASCAR Senior Vice President of Racing Development Ben Kennedy did win a non-point event at France’s Tours Speedway in 2012.
Last year, Vargas competed in the events at Germany’s Motorsport Arena Oschersleben and Belgium’s Circuit Zolder. He scored two 10th-place finishes in the events at Oschersleben and is hoping for even better results during his first full season with the series.
“I want to leave the season hopefully with a win, hopefully with a bunch of podiums,” Vargas said. “I’m not going out there to parade around and post cool pictures on social media. I’m actually going into this because I want to compete and compete for wins.
“The overall Euro Series platform is probably some of the most fun I’ve experienced other than Xfinity. Being able to go out there and do it on a regular basis and really build on what we started; I think that’s going to be a key thing moving forward.”
Every year for more than three decades, Mark Hubbard has raced something.
When he was 16, he helped work on his dad’s race car. On the days his dad took the car out for practice, Hubbard asked if he could turn a few laps, too. In a short period of time, Hubbard said, he was “actually practicing the car faster” than his father.
Eventually, his dad’s partner suggested letting Hubbard race the enduro car. In 1990, he won his track’s rookie of the year award. The next year, he won his first championship. His second title came in 1994.
Hubbard eventually got into go-kart racing with his son Cullen until the younger Hubbard turned 16. A few years later, Hubbard’s dad suggested they buy a pro late model.
But the success didn’t come as easy the second time around.
“I typically don’t load up expecting to go to the track and not win,” Hubbard said. “Well, we went to the track, and we ran dead last nine consecutive races in a row. And I went, ‘OK, this isn’t good for sobriety. Let’s sell this car and buy a street stock.'”
In 2020, Hubbard raced in the street stocks division at Evergreen Speedway, a NASCAR Home Track in Monroe, Washington. He was on the verge of his first division title when he was black flagged on the last lap of the championship race. He lost by one point.
The missed title motivated Hubbard, and he came back in 2021 and won the track championship, the state championship and the West Coast championship. He finished 12th in the national NASCAR Advance Auto Parts Weekly Series points standings.
After Hubbard won a second Evergreen street stocks title in 2022, he contemplated retirement with the idea of going out on top.
His crew didn’t like the idea.
“There are three people on my pit crew that are all in their upper 70s, low 80s, and I’m like, ‘Guys, I’m tired,'” Hubbard said. “And the guy who used to be my dad’s partner in racing said, ‘Come on, Mark, can we run just one more year?’ And I went, ‘OK, but we’re going to miss the first race so that we don’t run for points.”
Unfortunately for Hubbard — and fortunately for his team — a rain storm hit the area on opening day of Evergreen’s 2023 season.
“We run rain or shine,” he said of the track’s weather policy. “And I usually do really well in the rain … So I was like, ‘We’ll go to the first race.’
“I set fast time, won the heat race and won the main event. So we’re leading the points, and my wife was like, ‘You’re leading the points now. We are running every race of the year.'”
Hubbard won his first three races of the season. He finished the year with five victories, eight second-place finishes and three thirds on the way to his third straight track championship.
To actually retire as a three-time reigning champion was the best way for Hubbard to end his career; better than his previous idea of going out on top after consecutive titles.
“It was always fulfilling,” Hubbard said. “I’ve got an office full of trophies and banners and stuff like that at my auto repair shop that I’ve run for 26 years. A lot of people didn’t even know that I raced, and they’re like, ‘Oh my gosh, I didn’t know you raced,’ and, ‘Oh my gosh, look, you win and win and win.'”
Hubbard recently sold his car and vowed last season was officially his last. For health reasons, his dad wasn’t able to make every race in 2023; Hubbard said “it’s just not the same without him being there.”
“It’s been a lot of hard work and dedication, and it’s something that I never could have done if my parents didn’t have a love of racing and backed me a hundred percent,” he added. “They’re the reason that I was as successful as I was.”
Getting closer to the season and not preparing a car is different for Hubbard, but he won’t be too far from the track. He’ll help others on race days because he enjoys walking around the pits and offering advice to other drivers.
Hubbard said the realization that he’s done racing will probably set in when Evergreen opens the season on March 30. But he’s ready to spend time taking vacations with his parents and family.
He leaves the sport knowing he did everything he could on the track.
“With go-karts, it’s probably like 20 championships I’ve won,” he said. “I’ve had really good sponsors and really, really good people helping me. I’ve just always loved racing, and I’m just finally to the point where I’m tired, and I want to do other things. So that’s what we’re going to do.
“To have been able to race with my son and with my dad and with my brother and have all the different successes we’ve had, I feel like I’ve had a great career, and I’m happy with my decision.”
Editor’s note: This story was updated on March 7 to reflect RFK Racing’s appeal.
RFK Racing appealed NASCAR’s penalty to the No. 17 team for a detached wheel during last Sunday’s Cup Series race at Las Vegas Motor Speedway. The team asked for a deferral of the suspensions of two crew members while the penalty was under appeal, which NASCAR granted on Thursday.
Chris Buescher finished last in Sunday’s Pennzoil 400 after his right-front wheel became unfastened, and his crash into the outside retaining wall forced a caution period in the 28th of 267 laps.
As a result of the safety violation of Sections 8.8.10.4 A&C (Tires and Wheels; Loss or separation of an improperly installed tire/wheel from the vehicle during the event) in the NASCAR Rule Book, No. 17 crew members Nicholas Patterson (jack) and Jakob Prall (front tire changer) were suspended for two Cup Series events, which is now pending the appeal.
Three other teams — two in the Xfinity Series and one in the Craftsman Truck Series — were each fined for having single lug nuts unsecured in safety checks after their races last weekend in Las Vegas.
In the Xfinity Series, the crew chiefs for two teams were docked $5,000:
No. 9 JR Motorsports Chevrolet (crew chief Phillip Bell)
No. 42 Young’s Motorsports Chevrolet (crew chief Andrew Abbott)
A single Craftsman Truck Series team was penalized with a $2,500 fine:
No. 98 ThorSport Racing Ford (crew chief Joe Shear Jr.)
Rajah Caruth celebrated his first career NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series victory Friday night at Las Vegas Motor Speedway, becoming the third Black driver to win a NASCAR national touring series event, joining Wendell Scott and Bubba Wallace.
The motorsports community and beyond rallied around social media to congratulate Caruth, whose respect around the garage area and beyond shined brightest in his first crowning moment.
But one of the people who reached out to congratulate Caruth might catch people by surprise: Kelly Rowland.
“Yeah, bro! Yeah, man!” Caruth smiled when reminded Monday by NASCAR.com.
The famed singer, actress and television personality — perhaps best known for her time spent as a member of Destiny’s Child — posted a celebratory Instagram story and wrote “I’m so happy for you!!” after tagging Caruth, with whom she connected last year at the Busch Light Clash at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum.
“Yeah, Auntie Kelly, man, she’s very cool,” Caruth said. “We got connected over a year ago at the Clash. And now we have a more personal connection. So it’s been great to have her support in a lot of different ways.”
Rowland was far from the only big name to offer Caruth kudos. Longtime New Orleans Saints running back Alvin Kamara called his win “legendary” while actor Mekai Curtis from TV show “Power Book III: Raising Kanan” connected with Caruth.
“I’ve had so much support and so I really appreciate it,” Caruth said.
See a sampling of the flurry of congrats that came Caruth’s way:
Drivers, athletes, musicians and so many others agree …
Several drivers and crew members congratulated Rajah Caruth as he drove down pit road to get to victory lane Friday night at Las Vegas. pic.twitter.com/Uq31EvWWNV
Hard to find someone as universally liked/loved in the garage area. The phrase “first of many” can be overused, but definitely isn’t with @rajahcaruth_. Kid is a champ.
LAS VEGAS — The sound that pierced Sunday’s usual Victory Lane patter — the “woos” from the winning crew, the camera shutters and the fan buzz — was a ringing bell. It was persistent, cutting through the confetti that blew all over the Las Vegas Motor Speedway grounds in a gale-force wind. It also seemed early.
Hendrick Motorsports custom holds that a victory bell cart rolls through the organization’s sprawling campus after each NASCAR Cup Series win, with the celebration of a Sunday triumph stretching into midweek commemoration. Now Hendrick’s No. 5 team has a new tradition — a travel-sized version.
Kyle Larson made it two Las Vegas victories in a row Sunday, mimicking the stage-sweeping triumph he posted here last fall in the Cup Series Playoffs. In leading 181 of the 267 laps, he handed Hendrick Motorsports its second win in three races to start the organization’s 40th-anniversary campaign with some oomph to match the preseason sizzle and serving notice with an early season statement to the rest of the field.
The new victory ritual has its fledgling roots stemming from this year’s preseason kickoff event that brought the No. 5 crew together with the Hendrick Automotive Group. In true, old-school car-dealer fashion, big sales achievements mean ringing the bell to mark the occasion. Leave it to Darryl Jackson, the automotive division’s charismatic vice president of financial services, to lend that tradition to the race team that HendrickCars.com sponsors.
“Anybody who knows Darryl Jackson, he is the hype man of all hype men,” No. 5 crew chief Cliff Daniels told NASCAR.com. “He’s hilarious and wide open, and he made us these bells because he wanted us to ring it in Victory Lane any time we won. Hate that he couldn’t be here today. I’m sure he was back in Charlotte, but we already took a video of us ringing the bell, sent it back to Darryl. He’s super happy, super proud. So I honestly think it’s just an evolution of what’s already a lot of fun for a Hendrick tradition.”
Larson’s performance vaulted him into the early lead in the Cup Series standings, a 10-spot jump aided by Sunday’s maximum-points day. His teammates are right there with him — William Byron fourth and Chase Elliott seventh, with Alex Bowman in 13th — as the only four-car team with all its drivers currently in the way-too-early playoff positioning.
Early on, it seemed Byron — who won this race in similarly dominating fashion last year — might be Larson’s closest competition. He looked every bit the part until his No. 24 Chevy caught a massive piece of debris on the grille that sent his engine’s temperatures skyrocketing into the red. Byron made an unscheduled pit stop to remove a trash bag that would need an entire sanitation crew to fill, rallied from a lap down and then recovered again after he slid through his pit box on a final-stage stop.
“I think I passed the whole field twice,” Byron told his crew on the radio.
“I think three. Let’s make it four,” said No. 24 crew chief Rudy Fugle, who coaxed his driver to an eventual 10th-place result.
That left Tyler Reddick as Larson’s top challenger, and his dogged pursuit in the closing laps also made a statement. While it wasn’t the three-wide photo finish of the week before at Atlanta Motor Speedway, the closer Reddick’s No. 45 23XI Racing Toyota got to Larson’s bumper, the more the suspense built. But Larson answered every charge Reddick made.
“Today, we did everything great from start to finish — pit crew, pit calls, restarts, the car itself, myself in the seat, blocking the right way and making speed while doing it was good,” Larson said. “If we can carry that on, I think there is definitely potential to have a great season like we did in 2021.”
Larson’s 2021 reference was a nod to his 10-win breakout season that ended in his first Cup Series championship. Measuring potential just three races into a 36-race season is often a dangerous proposition, but so far, the indicators are all pointing toward positives.
Chevrolet is 3-for-3 to start the Cup Series season, with no let-up in the venerable Camaro ZL1 as rivals Ford and Toyota begin the process of sorting their new bodies for this season. Ford’s signs of strength so far have been in qualifying with its own 3-for-3 mark in winning pole positions. Sunday, Toyota made its own proclamation of in-race speed with Reddick’s runner-up finish but also with admirable showings from the Joe Gibbs Racing camp, with Ty Gibbs, Martin Truex Jr. and Denny Hamlin all scoring top-10 finishes.
“We’re going to have to keep evolving pretty quick because the more they start to get their stuff figured out, the gap is going to get closed,” Daniels said. “To be honest, I know that win both stages and win the race, you would say we had the dominant day, but there were some cars that were pretty tough right there with us, and at the end of long runs, the 45 was there every time. I think the gap is actually tighter than what it may look on paper.”
On paper, the records show four Hendrick Motorsports victories in the last five Vegas races, at least providing the impression that the road to Victory Lane in Sin City and at other intermediate-sized tracks may have to go through its four-car fleet.
Larson said he came away from the No. 5 team’s preseason gathering with his own bell and that another went to Daniels. A third one, Larson said, is safely kept in the team’s hauler for occasions such as Sunday’s.
As Larson said in Victory Lane, “Hopefully, we’re going to be ringing that thing a lot this year.”
LAS VEGAS – In the waning laps of Sunday’s Pennzoil 400 at Las Vegas Motor Speedway, Tyler Reddick was in the shadow of Kyle Larson. It was a position he was familiar with throughout the duration of 267 laps.
Reddick had a mediocre qualifying effort on Saturday, putting him middle of the pack in 18th for the start of the race. The No. 45 Toyota soared through a chaotic opening stage immediately, however, to finish runner-up to Larson and earn nine stage points.
That track position was short-lived, as Reddick slid through his pit stall at the end of the first stage. He lost nearly 15 positions along with all the progress he gained during the first stage.
“Our biggest challenge was our track position,” said Billy Scott, crew chief of the No. 45 car. “We had an early draw in qualifying that added to it, but we didn’t have our best effort yesterday, so we had a lot to overcome from our starting position and pit stall. That’s what got us at the end of Stage 1 — we worked up there to get second and got boxed in, had to back up — had a mess.
“Just having to overcome that all day. I felt like we were one of the best cars and had a shot at it.”
Throughout the second stage, Reddick powered through the field and finished second to Larson. He ran second for the majority of the final stage and began hunting down Larson in a 27-lap sprint to the finish. Reddick maneuvered his car where he was most comfortable, rim-riding the wall and making a run for the win.
With two laps remaining, Reddick was within a quarter of a second of Larson. But the 2021 Cup Series champion blocked Reddick’s air and was able to hold off Reddick for the victory after leading a race-high 181 laps.
“We were pretty evenly matched, so I don’t know if there is anything that I could have done to get around him,” Reddick said of his battle with Larson. “He would have had to make a big mistake or had some traffic knock his momentum down.
“It’s a solid effort for our team and that’s how we need to run. I don’t like running second.”
Reddick mentioned that with Larson blocking, he couldn’t get out of the wake of his dirty air to get a good enough run on the leader.
“The wake isn’t wide, but you don’t ever want to follow someone into the corner,” Reddick added. “The air is so turbulent underneath the car after it exits the diffusor that drivers can use the block to their advantage.”
Larson dominated the race running the bottom lane, but when Reddick was closing in he began playing a cat-and-mouse game.
Larson said: “With two to go, he expected, I think, me to run the middle or top or something, and I was able to do kind of a nice lazy arc to the bottom and take his air away in the center of (Turns) 3 and 4 and got him tight.That killed his run down the front stretch, and thankfully that was the white flag. I knew as long as I hit my marks I was going to be safe to the checkered.”
This is the third time the two northern California drivers and longtime competitors swept the first two spots of a Cup Series race. Larson has come out with the upper hand on all three occasions. Sunday’s race at Las Vegas played out similarly to last year’s Southern 500 at Darlington Raceway, where Larson won by 0.447 seconds. In Sin City on Sunday, the margin of victory was 0.464 seconds. The first time they finished first and second was in the 2021 playoff race at the Charlotte Motor Speedway road course, advancing the No. 5 team to the Round of 8.
It was a much-needed finish for the No. 45 team, which had a best effort of 29th in the first two weeks of the season. The 53 points scored by Reddick vaulted him 12 positions higher in the regular season championship standings to 12th. That only slighted the disappointment of finishing runner-up.
“It’s good, surely,” Reddick said of getting his first top-five finish of the season. “Regular season points matter, but we’re capable of winning races and we need to do that.”
With Toyota debuting its new Camry body on a downforce track, Scott considers Las Vegas a success. The team sees it has speed and knows it can be competitive as it gets more comfortable with the inner workings of the car.
“With a new body for this year, you don’t really know what you have until you get out here and get your first intermediate race under you,” Scott added. “We’ve got a lot to build on. We had Tyler a year earlier than we were expecting last year. This was supposed to be our first year with him and we’ve got a lot of stuff that we’ve built on and a lot that we are optimistic about.”
Next on the schedule is Phoenix Raceway on March 10 (3;30 p.m. ET, FOX, MRN Radio, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio), which will allow Toyota to see how it ranks out of the gate on a shorter track with the new body. Reddick has finished third in the previous two spring races at Phoenix.
