Automotive

By Rick Minter

For the past several seasons, Martin Truex Jr. appeared to have a jinx on him when it came to the spring race at Kansas Speedway.

But on Saturday night in the Go Bowling 400, Truex made all the right moves and came away with his first-ever win at Kansas, his second victory of the season and the ninth of his career.

Truex led 104 laps, including the final 19, to get the win over Brad Keselowski, Kevin Harvick, Ryan Blaney and Kyle Busch.

That reversal of fortune came after last season, when he started on the pole and led 172 laps before a broken bolt hung between the wheel and hub during a pit stop and dropped him out of contention.

The year before that, he was poised to win until a late caution flag foiled his run. When he stayed on the track, his challengers, including eventual winner Jimmie Johnson, stopped for fresh rubber and drove away from him on the restart. In 2012, he led 173 laps before finishing second to Denny Hamlin.

This year, he motored away from Blaney on a restart with 19 laps to go, then prevailed on four more restarts to take the victory.

Truex said in his winner’s interview that the earlier failures made this win seem much sweeter.

“It does, I’m not going to lie to you,” he said. “As a racer, you don’t forget. You don’t forget those days that one got away or you screwed up and gave one away or anything like that. You never forget those things.

“Definitely last year was probably the biggest heartbreaker to have the craziest thing happen that you could ever imagine — an eight-second lead just gone.”

This time it was young Blaney — in position to claim his first Cup victory on the same weekend he won his first pole — who didn’t have enough speed at the end to take the win.

“[Saturday night] we did everything right,” Truex said. “When the pressure was on, when the money was on the line, we made the right moves, and everything worked out.”

Keselowski came back from two laps down to take the runner-up spot. He had to pit under the green flag to have a loose wheel replaced and was also penalized on that stop for driving through too many pit stalls.

He said he never really got a chance to show the speed of his No. 2 Ford.

“Every time we started to pass cars and cycle up to the front, we had some kind of issue, which was a real bummer to not be able to showcase the strength that we had,” he said. “Toward the end, we were able to get some runs and make the most of it. …

“If it would have just played out normal, I think we might have had a shot at [Truex].”

Third-finishing Harvick also had to overcome a mid-race setback. He made a pit stop at Lap 135 under green due to a vibration and lost a lap.

“We came back through the field,” he said. “It just didn’t line up for us there at the end.”

By Rick Minter

Whenever the subject of future NASCAR stars comes up, Erik Jones’ name is one that is frequently mentioned, along with Chase Elliott and Ryan Blaney.

Jones, who will turn 21 on May 30, first came to the attention of the NASCAR world thanks to Kyle Busch, who lost the 2012 Snowball Derby to a then-16-year-old Jones. Busch then helped Jones get hooked up with Joe Gibbs Racing and Toyota. (The Derby, run at Five Flags Speedway in Pensacola, Florida, each December, is considered the most prestigious asphalt short-track race in America.)

Jones responded by winning seven races and the 2015 title in the Camping World Truck Series — and seven more races in the Xfinity Series, including one at Texas Motor Speedway two weeks ago. This fast start to his career earned him a ride in the Cup Series in a second car fielded by Furniture Row Racing, the Denver-based Toyota team that has an alliance with Gibbs.

Seven races into his rookie Cup team, Jones, who drives the No. 77 Toyota Camry, has one top-10 finish and is 14th in the standings. His teammate, Martin Truex Jr., has a win at Las Vegas Motor Speedway, three other top-10s and sits third in the standings.

So far, the Furniture Row team appears to be sailing along, even as the four drivers from the parent team, Joe Gibbs Racing, are winless for the season. Kyle Busch, in seventh place, is the only Gibbs driver in the top 10 in the points standings. The other three drivers are all behind Jones in the standings, with Denny Hamlin in 15th, Matt Kenseth at 22nd and Daniel Suarez at 23rd.

While most Cup Series drivers enjoyed the week off prior to Easter, Jones and four others — Ryan Newman, Danica Patrick, Alex Bowman and Joey Logano — were testing at Daytona International Speedway.

While in Daytona, Jones spoke with reporters about his season to date, saying he’s learning a lot and is pretty pleased with the speed his team has shown.

“I would say, performance-wise, other than last week at Texas [he finished 22nd], I’ve been really happy with where we’ve run,” Jones said. “We’ve run consistently in the top 10 at Phoenix, Fontana, Atlanta, but we just didn’t get the finishes we deserved.

“I think at Fontana and Phoenix we really had top-five cars, but things just didn’t play out at the end. Either way I look at it, we’ve done as good a job as we can, and we brought fast race cars to the track. We’re just learning more about how to execute, how to close these races out, and how to get the finishes we feel like we are capable of.”

Jones said being fast hasn’t been a problem for him and rookie crew chief, Chris Gayle. The challenge, he said, is in putting together a complete race without making rookie mistakes along the way.

“Driving the cars and getting the speed out of the cars hasn’t been too big of a deal,” he said. “It’s been more of a matter of everything else: the execution of getting on and off pit road, pit stops, strategy, everything that plays into these races.

“We’re learning more about that as a team. … We have a lot of guys on the team that are first-year Cup guys, so we’re all learning together and trying to figure it out more and more as we go.”

Jones said he’s looking forward to several of the upcoming races on the schedule, including this weekend’s Food City 500 at Bristol Motor Speedway in Bristol, Tennessee.

“Bristol is a track I feel pretty good about, as well as when we get to Charlotte next month,” he said. “There are a lot of tracks I really enjoy. Dover is one I really enjoy going to, and it’s coming up here next month, as well.

“There are a few tracks I have marked off that we’ve always been fast in the Xfinity Series, and tracks I’ve always felt pretty comfortable on.”

Jones said that despite the fact that he, Elliott and Blaney are often mentioned together as young guns of the sport, he really hasn’t communicated much with either of them, both of whom are now in their sophomore years in NASCAR’s elite divisions.

“I have to be honest with you, I don’t hang out with the other drivers too much,” he said. “I kind of do my own thing. I show up at the race track to do my job, and that’s kind of always how it’s been.

“I’ve always lived by the mentality that you bring your friends to the race track with you.”

By Rick Minter

The finish of Sunday’s Kobalt 400 at Las Vegas Motor Speedway showed that racing luck seems to have a way of finding balance.
Martin Truex Jr., who has a history of leading lots of laps only to have something happen late in a race to keep him out of Victory Lane, got lucky and won the race.
Brad Keselowski, who’d been lucky at Atlanta Motor Speedway the week before and won a race that Kevin Harvick had dominated, saw luck work against him when a part broke on his No. 2 Ford just as he was pulling away from Truex with just two laps left to run.
“It was a gift,” Truex said as he climbed from his No. 78 Toyota in Victory Lane.
Keselowski, in his post-race comments, was philosophical about his change in fortune from the week before.
“It’s frustrating, but you put yourself in position to win, and good things will happen,” said Keselowski, who started from the pole at Las Vegas, led 89 laps and had the fastest car at the end before a part in his suspension gave out. “That happened to us last week [at Atlanta] and didn’t happen this week [at Vegas], so you just pick up the pieces and move on.
“Luckily, they’re really big pieces. We’ve got a lot to be proud of.”
Truex, who led 150 of 267 laps and won both of the first two stages of the race, was glad to see his fortunes change, at least for one Sunday. In recent seasons, Truex has been known for having fast cars but often little to show for it. Despite a career-best four wins in 2016, there were six other Cup races in which he led more than 100 laps but failed to win.
That, Truex said, made Sunday’s lucky break at Las Vegas even sweeter.
“We finally got some [good luck],” he said. “We definitely had our share of races where we’ve dominated and gave one away, and it looked like today was going to be another one of those.
“The runs just didn’t work out the way we needed them. We were struggling on the really long runs. We had to run that last set of tires on that last caution longer than we did all race long. I was out of control and Brad [Keselowski] was really good on the long run.
“I hate that he had problems. He was strong, and we weren’t going to do anything with him, but then he lost the brakes or something. A little bit of a gift, but we have given some away, so it feels good to come out on the good end for once.”
Truex’s win, the eighth of his career, was the first of 2017 for manufacturer Toyota.
The Cup circuit’s younger drivers had another good outing. Kyle Larson finished second ahead of Chase Elliott, who also had another good finish. Sophomore driver Ryan Blaney, runner-up in the Daytona 500, was seventh at Las Vegas.
Larson has been on the cusp of victory in all three races this season. He was leading with a lap to go in the Daytona 500 but ran out of fuel, and was again leading at Atlanta before losing the top spot to Brad Keselowski with seven laps to go and finishing second.
Elliott was leading at Daytona with three laps remaining and fell back. He then finished fifth at Atlanta and third at Vegas.
Heading into this weekend’s race at Phoenix Raceway, Keselowski leads the Cup standings by one point over Larson, while Elliott is in third place, three points out of the lead.

By Rick Minter/Universal Uclick

In a NASCAR world where rookies often get great rides in top cars, Daniel Suarez is getting one of the rarest of opportunities. The 25-year-old Monterrey, Mexico, native and NASCAR’s reigning Xfinity Series champion, is moving to the Monster Energy Cup Series as a raw rookie, but will be driving for one of the best teams in the business.
He’ll take over the No. 19 Toyota team at Joe Gibbs Racing, the team that Carl Edwards left at the end of last season. Edwards was in position to win the 2016 championship with 10 laps remaining in the season finale at Homestead-Miami Speedway, but lost his chance at the title when he collided with Joey Logano on a late restart.
Now that team, led by veteran crew chief Dave Rogers, will prepare the No. 19 for Suarez.
Despite never having run a Cup race, Suarez has tallied 68 Xfinity races and 27 more in the Camping World Truck Series over the past three seasons, with three Xfinity wins and one in trucks. He joins a team headed by Rogers, who has led his drivers to 18 Cup wins, 85 top-five and 132 top-10 finishes and 20 poles.
Suarez said that while there is pressure in moving to a proven team like the No. 19, it also takes a lot of pressure off of him.
“It does give me a lot of confidence to know that I’m with a team that is capable of winning races and championships,” Suarez said. “Hopefully we can improve throughout the year and get to a point where we can be competitive to win races.”
Suarez has three veteran teammates — Matt Kenseth, Kyle Busch and Denny Hamlin — to help him as well as Edwards.
“I think we have the potential to work together more once the season starts,” Suarez said of his Gibbs teammates. “They have been very helpful. Carl, even though he’s not going to be racing, I will be talking with him pretty often.”
In his move from racing in the NASCAR Mexico Series, where he had 10 wins in 58 starts, to racing in the U.S., Suarez has been backed by ARRIS, a company based in Suwanee, Georgia, that manufacturers the equipment used by cable operators to provide services to homes and businesses.
Last week, ARRIS, which also sponsored Edwards, announced that it was increasing its primary sponsorship of the No. 19 team from 17 to 22 races this year.
“Daniel represents the future of racing, and we’re looking forward to joining him on the podium in his first Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series season,” Ron Coppock, executive vice president of global marketing and customer operations at ARRIS, said in a team release.

By Rick Minter

Joey Logano, knocked out of a chance to compete for the 2015 Sprint Cup championship because of a crash with Matt Kenseth at Martinsville, will race for the title this year after winning a race at Phoenix on Sunday that, ironically, saw Kenseth eliminated due to a crash.

Kenseth had taken the lead late in the Can-Am 500 after taking just two tires on his final pit stop. He was well ahead of second-running Alex Bowman when a crash by Michael McDowell set up an overtime finish.

On the first restart, Kenseth took the initial lead, while Bowman, driving the No. 88 in place of Dale Earnhardt Jr., didn’t get up to speed immediately.

Then, as Kenseth entered Turn One in the lead, he pulled to the bottom of the track and made contact with Bowman, who had recovered and was coming fast on the inside groove. Kenseth spun out of contention for a Chase berth, and Logano inherited the lead.

Logano then motored away from fellow Chase driver Kyle Busch to get the win, while Busch held on for second place to secure the fourth and final spot on points in next Sunday’s Championship Round at Homestead-Miami Speedway. The highest finisher among the Championship 4 drivers — Logano, Busch, Jimmie Johnson and Carl Edwards — will be the 2016 Sprint Cup champion.

Johnson, Edwards and Logano advanced because of their wins in the Round of 8, and Logano said his victory on Sunday was as big or bigger than any of his 16 previous Cup victories.

“This isn’t just a race,” he said. “This is a championship.

“We raced [Phoenix] like it was Homestead because we had to, and what an amazing feeling to be able to succeed under that amount of pressure and to have a race team that is truly better under pressure.

“I couldn’t be more proud of that, and to have the opportunity to have the pressure on us.”

He said his Phoenix win puts him in a good frame of mind heading into Homestead, unlike in 2014, when he left Phoenix feeling nervous about the finale.

“This is not that feeling,” he said. “This is that feeling that ‘Hey, we’ve got confidence. I know we can do it.’ … I don’t feel like it’s a long shot like it was last time. It was my first time there, I’m racing for a championship. ‘Oh my God, what’s going to happen?’ This time I feel like we’ve been here before.”

Among those who won’t be there for the championship round are Kevin Harvick, Kurt Busch and Denny Hamlin, all of whom failed to advance despite finishing in the top seven at Phoenix.

Sunday’s race also was a showcase of the talents of the 23-year-old Bowman, who started on the pole and led a race-high 194 laps before fading to sixth at the finish after the contact with Kenseth.

Bowman, who has spent most of his time in the Cup series driving back-marker cars, said there’s a big difference in what he’s been driving and a top-flight car like the No. 88.

“I think I’ve had four Cup races [at Phoenix], and I don’t even know if I’ve finished inside the top 30 in any of them,” Bowman said. “Then I came here with Hendrick Motorsports and led almost 200 laps.

“There are a lot of guys in the garage that can get the job done and run up front; they just don’t get the opportunity to show it.

“I’m just thankful that I was given the opportunity to show it [Sunday]. Our race car was really good all day. Best car on long runs by far. It was just a lot of fun.”

So far, Bowman has no firm plans for 2017.

“I’m still waiting for the right opportunity to come along,” he said in a media session prior to Sunday’s race. “There’s nothing that has really fit that has come along. I’ll still probably have my day job at Hendrick Motorsports driving the simulator.

“We’ll go from there.”

By Rick Minter/ Universal Uclick

Carl Edwards and his No. 19 team at Joe Gibbs Racing pulled off a dramatic win in the AAA Texas 500 at Texas Motor Speedway, and with it earned a chance to race for the Sprint Cup championship in two weeks at Homestead-Miami Speedway.

Edwards and his team arrived at Texas at the bottom of the Chase standings, 32 points out of the lead and needing a win to advance to the Championship Round at Homestead.

Although there’s one more race in the Round of 8 — this Sunday at Phoenix International Raceway — Texas represented Edwards’ best chance to get the victory he needed to advance to the title round. Edwards now has four wins on the 1.5-mile oval near Fort Worth.

As the laps wound down in a race pushed from afternoon to evening because of rain, Edwards found himself running second to Martin Truex Jr. with more rain on the radar.

During a caution period at Lap 258 of the race’s scheduled 334, Edwards’ crew serviced his car in just 11 seconds, sending him back onto the track with a race lead that he would not relinquish.

The expected rains arrived 35 laps later, and Edwards was declared the winner, securing his advancement to the Championship Round under rules that give a winner in the current Chase round an automatic berth in the following round.

“It doesn’t get bigger than this,” Edwards said. “My goal is to win the championship, and what this 19 team wanted was an opportunity to do that, and now we have it.

“This was a great little gauntlet to run and we made it through, and now we go do it at Homestead.”

Ironically, last year at Phoenix, a late-race rain kept Edwards from being able to advance to the championship.

“That was bad, and this is good,” Edwards said. “Just like anything, you have to take what happens in racing and in life and take it and have fun with it, and we did that [Sunday].

“Whatever happened was going to have to be OK, but this is great.”

Behind Edwards and Jimmie Johnson, who also is set to compete for the title at Homestead due to his win at Martinsville Speedway last weekend, the standings are extremely close.

Joey Logano’s runner-up finish puts him third in the standings, but he’s just two points ahead of Denny Hamlin, who is now fifth in the standings and needs to move up one spot to be among the final four who will compete for the title.

Harvick, the 2014 champion, can advance to the final round at Homestead with a win at Phoenix, where he leads all drivers with eight Cup victories, including six in the past eight races. But Cup races are hard to win, and he will have to contend with Austin Dillon, who was angry at Texas after wrecking his No. 3 Chevrolet following slight contact with Harvick.

Dillon’s crew chief, Slugger Labbe, told Dillon over the team’s radio: “Write down that number. We are going to Phoenix and [Harvick] is going to need a win and we don’t.”

Dillon later said in response: “I don’t know. I am just here to win races, and that is all that matters to me.”

Harvick said Labbe was off-base with his comment.

“Slugger says a lot of things that he shouldn’t,” Harvick said. “All in all, there was no intent there, and I like racing with Austin.”

BY RICK MINTER

It’s a fact that the fastest car doesn’t always win the race. That was the case in Sunday night’s Southern 500 at Darlington Raceway, where Kevin Harvick led a whopping 214 of 367 laps in the Southern 500, but wound up a runner-up to Martin Truex Jr., who led just 28 laps, but whose total included the final 16.
The race also proved once again that it takes a total team effort to win, as Truex’s pit crew was nearly flawless all night, while Harvick’s team had three slow stops, which cost him numerous positions each time.
Afterward, Truex thanked his crew for their efforts, which came a week after a tough day on pit road at Michigan International Speedway kept him from contending for the win there.
“Really proud of my team, obviously, for all they do for me, and just can’t believe we won here at Darlington,” he said. “It’s awesome.”
Harvick was sharply critical of his pit crew, and expressed his fear that unless the performance improves, he won’t be a championship contender when the Chase for the Sprint Cup kicks off after next Saturday’s race at Richmond International Raceway.
“The guys in the garage and at the shop continue to do a great job, and we continue to give it away on pit road,” Harvick said in a brief post-race media session at Darlington. “Pretty much summed up the night. Just the dominant car and just three bad pit stops on pit road.”
Harvick, whose team swapped crews with teammate Tony Stewart for the 2014 Chase after some mistake-plagued regular-season races, said his No. 4 team appears to have chronic problems.
“We have championship cars, and we’re just mediocre on pit road,” he said. “It’s kind of been that way for a few years, and they’ve moved some things around, but it just seems like it’s just week after week after week.”
He said offering encouragement on his part is not the answer to the team’s problems.
“Those guys get paid a lot of money to perform on pit road, and cheerleading hasn’t really been working,” he said. “You’ve got to get after it on pit road and do your job.”
Truex, who, like Harvick, has had fast cars at many races this season, only to lose for one reason or another, was relishing a win in the sport’s oldest superspeedway race. His latest victory comes after he won the Coca-Cola 600 earlier this year, which, with the Southern 500, is one of the original Triple Crown races. He came within inches of winning the third, the Daytona 500, back in February.
Back in the day, only David Pearson and the late LeeRoy Yarbrough were able to win the Triple Crown races in a single season.
“Just to be mentioned with those two names is unbelievable enough,” Truex said. “I can’t believe that I was about a foot from doing it is incredible. There are just so many things about this year that have been special, and that’s one of them.”
Kyle Larson, who got his first Cup win at Michigan the week before Darlington, seemed to be riding a wave of momentum.
He was in position to win the Xfinity Series race, but spun as he entered pit road. In Sunday’s 500, he led 45 laps before finishing a solid third, ahead of Denny Hamlin and Joey Logano.
Larson said afterward that he’s looking forward to the Chase and feels he will be a contender for the championship.
“It was good to be a contender two weeks in a row,” he said.
The finishing order at Darlington also tightened the battle for the three remaining berths in the Chase, as 13 drivers have claimed a spot due to their race wins. Only Pocono Raceway winner Chris Buescher isn’t locked into a berth, as he must still finish Saturday’s race at Richmond among the top 30 in the driver standings.
The three winless drivers now holding points positions that would get them a Chase berth are Chase Elliott, Austin Dillon and Jamie McMurray.
Ryan Newman, the first driver on the outside looking in, finished eighth at Darlington and closed the gap on his closest rival, Jamie McMurray, to 7 points. McMurray came back from a late, unscheduled pit stop to tighten loose lug nuts to score a 15th-place finish. Dillon, who is 16 points ahead of McMurray, was 12th at Darlington, while Elliott, who is 24 points ahead of Newman, was 10th at Darlington.
Newman’s status could change, as his car failed post-race inspection at Darlington, which could cost him points.

By Rick Minter

Bryan Clauson, one of the most versatile — and successful — drivers in all forms of motorsports, died Sunday from injuries suffered in a crash at the Belleville Midget Nationals on the Belleville High Banks in Belleville, Kansas.

Video of the crash shows that Clauson was leading the race Saturday night when he encountered lapped traffic. Contact with a lapped car sent Clauson’s car into a series of flips, and just as he came to a stop, he was struck by an oncoming car.

He was transported to a local hospital, and died the next day. He was 27 years old.

Clauson, who primarily drove open-wheeled dirt cars, also raced in NASCAR. In 2007 and 2008, he ran a total of 26 Xfinity Series races, with a best finish of fifth at Kentucky Speedway. He also won an ARCA race at Gateway International in 2007. Clauson also drove in three Indianapolis 500s, and led three laps of this year’s 100th running of the race.

The Noblesville, Indiana, resident had won 27 races this season, the most recent coming last week in a midget race in Beloit, Kansas.

He was a two-time national champion of USAC’s Midget and Sprint Car divisions and was the 2014 Chili Bowl winner.

NASCAR issued the following statement on Clauson’s passing: “NASCAR extends its sincere condolences to the family and friends of Bryan Clauson, a passionate competitor whose love for racing fueled his unmatched, positive spirit. He was a dear friend to many in the racing community, and he was loved and respected by all who knew him. He touched the lives of so many in our motorsports family, and his warm presence and relentless enthusiasm will be missed.”

By Rick Minter

For much of the latter stages of Sunday’s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 400 at Chicagoland Speedway, it looked as if Chase Elliott would get his first Sprint Cup win in the first race of the 2016 Chase.

But a late caution for a blown tire by Michael McDowell wiped out Elliott’s lead and gave Martin Truex Jr. the break he needed to seize the lead and capture the win.

When the caution flew with seven laps remaining and set up an overtime finish, Elliott, Truex and most of the leaders headed to pit road for fresh rubber, with Ryan Blaney, Kasey Kahne and Carl Edwards remaining on the track and assuming the top three positions. Truex beat Elliott out of the pits and lined up fourth, with Elliott fifth.

When the green flag was displayed, Truex took off in the outside lane and quickly passed Blaney to take the lead. Joey Logano came from sixth place to take second, over Elliott, Blaney and Brad Keselowski.

Under the Chase rules, Truex’s win assures that he will advance to the second round, which begins after two more races, at New Hampshire and Dover.

Truex, who also won earlier this year at Charlotte and Darlington, said in his winner’s interview that he believes he can add a championship to his resume this year.

“Without a doubt, it’s the best team I’ve ever had,” he said. “It’s the best position I’ve ever been in. I really feel like we have what it takes to win this championship.”

He said his Furniture Row team’s alliance with Joe Gibbs Racing, which provides the team with cars and technology, is one of the keys to his success.

“I felt like we had the same thing last year, but we didn’t have the race cars,” he said. “We didn’t have the speed we have now. That’s really taken us to another level.”

It took more than a fast car to get in position to win last Sunday. Truex had to recover from an early flat tire that put him a lap down. But he rejoined the lead pack during a caution flag at Lap 121 for a spin by Brian Scott.

“On one hand, the bad luck was going to bite us, and on the other, we had a lot of time to battle back,” Truex said. “We’re lucky it happened early, and we were able to have an awesome race car all day.”

Many of his fellow Chase drivers weren’t as fortunate, among them Elliott, who didn’t have time to recover from losing a critical spot to Truex on the final pit stop.

“That’s just part of it,” Elliott said of the turn of events that took away what appeared to be a likely victory. “You’ve got to expect it and be able to embrace it and move forward. I feel like we did a good job controlling the things that we could control today. We played the cards we were dealt, and came up short.”

Elliott wasn’t the only Chase contender who left Chicago disappointed. Kevin Harvick fell a lap down during an early pit stop and never got it back. Jimmie Johnson led a race-high 118 laps, but sped on pit road late in the race and took himself out of contention for the win.

A flat tire relegated Kyle Larson to an 18th-place finish, while Chris Buescher finished 28th to drop to 16th — the lowest position in the Chase standings.

After the race, NASCAR officials announced that the cars driven by Truex and Johnson did not pass post-race inspection, but series officials told reporters that the infractions were not deemed serious enough to warrant a penalty that would keep Truex from using his win to advance to the Chase’s second round. Both could lose points, which could affect Johnson’s bid to advance to the next round.

By Rick Minter

Saturday’s Coke Zero 400 marked Tony Stewart’s final Sprint Cup race at Daytona International Speedway, and likely his final race there in any kind of vehicle.
He left the track with a record that is topped only by the late Dale Earnhardt.
Including Sprint Cup points-paying races, non-points races, Xfinity Series and IROC events, Stewart has 19 Daytona victories — second on the all-time list to Earnhardt’s 34.
Stewart has been the most successful in the Coke Zero 400, winning that race in 2005, 2006, 2009 and 2012. It seemed for a time last Saturday night like he might add a fifth 400 win.
After riding at the back of the pack for most of it, Stewart drove his way into the top 10 late in the race, only to spin in Turn One with 10 laps to go.
That left him with a 26th place finish, which, while disappointing, allows him to move into 30th place in the points standings. If he can stay above that threshold for the next nine races, he will participate in the Chase for the Sprint Cup in his final season.
Stewart was at ease throughout the race, even singing — albeit off-key — into his two-way radio. He was calm even after the wreck, shouldering the blame for his late spin.
“I just overcorrected for it and drove it into the fence,” said Stewart, who became eligible for a Chase berth via his win at Sonoma Raceway two weeks ago. “So, definitely my fault. I don’t know why I got loose, but I got loose going into (Turn) One.”

By Rick Minter

There were times in his career when Kyle Busch considered Kansas Speedway to be one of his worst tracks. From 2004 to 2013, he had a best finish of seventh, and only one other top 10, with eight finishes outside the top 20.
With his win last Saturday in the GoBowling 400, Busch has completed a turnaround at the speedway.
His fortunes began to improve back in the fall of 2014. He finished third then, followed by a fifth last fall. (He missed last year’s spring race at Kansas due to a broken leg.)
Last Saturday night, Busch and the rest of the field spent the first two thirds of the race chasing Martin Truex Jr., who started from the pole and led 172 laps before a problem on a green-flag pit stop at Lap 212 of 267 forced another stop and put him out of contention.
When that round of green-flag pit stops was over, Busch had inherited the lead, then led the final 37 laps to get the victory, his series-leading third of the season and the 37th of his Cup career.
He ran the last 56 laps on the same set of tires, even as his challengers stopped for fresh rubber. Kevin Harvick and Matt Kenseth, with 22 fewer laps on their tires, gave Busch his toughest competition in the closing laps. But Busch pulled away from Kenseth on the next-to-last restart and then beat Harvick on the final restart. Harvick settled for second over Kurt Busch, Kenseth and Ryan Blaney.
Busch said in his winner’s interview that having never won before at Kansas, he was wondering whether he was making the right moves as he tried to hold on with older tires in the latter stages of the race.
“I was trying to take care of my tires and make sure I wasn’t slipping ’em and overheating ’em,” he said. “But Kenseth was catching me. I was like: OK, I got to go. I got to find some speed.’
“I wasn’t able to find any. At that moment, I’m wondering: What am I doing wrong? What am I doing different from the previous run? And why am I in this position?’
“Fortunately, those couple of restarts that I got, I just had a chance to regroup, resettle in and get my car back underneath me. That was the key for us.”
With the win at Kansas, there now are just two tracks on the circuit, Charlotte and Pocono, where Busch has not won a Cup race. He said he’s eager to address that.
“Every single week, every single year, everything’s a challenge,” he said. “We do this for many reasons. But for me, it’s just the challenge of being able to go out there and to continue to try to thrive and be good at what we do, to win championships, win races.
“It’s certainly been some tough roads along the way here at Kansas, but it’s certainly nice to win this one. I look forward to hopefully knock off some more this year at Charlotte and Pocono to complete the list.”
On the other hand, Truex must be wondering what he has to do to win at Kansas. Last year in the spring race he had the fastest car, but on the final pit stop, his crew elected to go with only fuel while his challengers took fresh tires. That saw him drop to ninth. This year, it was a broken bolt in the braking system that did him in.
“I couldn’t believe it,” Truex said of the moment he realized he had a problem with his No. 78 Toyota. “Went around (Turns) One and Two and I was like, ‘Wheel loose.’
“I kept telling myself that maybe it’s not me, maybe it’s just shaking because it has tape on it or something stupid. It was loose and I knew it right away. Frustrating, but that’s how it goes.”
But he still tried to focus on the positives of a weekend that saw him run the fastest from the opening of practice until the final pit stop of the race.
“We’re going to win races for sure,” he said. “If we keep bringing cars like that, we’re going to win some. It’s frustrating when you’ve had it happen so many times in your career.”

By Rick Minter

After five straight weekends of racing, NASCAR’s Sprint Cup drivers and teams got a weekend off for Easter before getting back to work this week at Martinsville Speedway.

The season so far has seen generally more competitive racing, due in large part to a lower-downforce aerodynamic package being used at most tracks this year. There’s a great contest underway for Rookie of the Year. Jimmie Johnson has won two races and moved into seventh place on the circuit’s all-time win list. And there are other compelling stories as well.

The new aero package features among other things a shorter rear spoiler (3.5 inches versus the earlier 6) and a shorter splitter edge on the front (one-quarter inch instead of 2 inches).

Drivers one after another have had nothing but praise for the new rules, with their only other comments being that NASCAR needs to lower the downforce even more, so that more of a car’s performance will depend on the driver’s input instead of an engineer’s tweaks to the car.

“I’m really happy that NASCAR has made the steps they have,” Carl Edwards said in a media session at Auto Club Speedway. “You’re seeing the results on the race track. It is more fun to drive. This package is just simply more fun. The driver has more of an influence. The tires fall off a little more. There’s more passing. I watched guys last week really driving the race cars.”

Edwards, who grew up racing sideways on dirt tracks around his native Missouri, said others with little dirt background are adapting well, too.

“Dale (Earnhardt) Jr. was, I mean, just loose steering and it looked like he was running on dirt out there the whole time,” Edwards said of Earnhardt’s driving at Phoenix. “That’s fun. Me, personally, I like that type of racing. So, yeah, that’s good.”

Edwards said, in somewhat of a surprise, that he of all people still hasn’t gotten a good grip on the new package, despite finishing second by inches to Kevin Harvick at Phoenix.

“I just don’t have a feel for it yet,” he said. “I thought we actually surprised ourselves a little bit, how well we ran at Phoenix.”

The Rookie of the Year contest so far is living up to the pre-season hype, as the top two rookies, Chase Elliott and Ryan Blaney, are engaged in a seesaw battle for the lead. Blaney led heading into the most recent race, at Auto Club Speedway, but had a flat tire and hit the wall late in the race and lost the top spot to Elliott, who finished a season-best sixth. Blaney also has a best finish of sixth, at Las Vegas, and the two are tied for 16th in Cup points heading into Martinsville, with Elliott holding the edge in rookie standings, as his second-best finish of eighth trumps Blaney’s second best of 10th.

The rookie battle is especially interesting to veterans of the Sprint Cup garage who have known the two drivers all their lives. Elliott’s father, Bill, drove for the Wood Brothers, who now field cars for Blaney, whose father, Dave, was a Cup driver as well.

“I’ve known Ryan and Chase since they were little boys,” said Eddie Wood, co-owner of the No. 21 Ford that Blaney drives. “Seeing them race for Rookie of the Year is a lot of fun. It looks like it’s going to be a great battle between them from week to week.”

Also in the running for the rookie title are Brian Scott, who is 14 points out of the rookie lead, and Chris Buescher, who is 16 back.

Jimmie Johnson already has two wins this season, at Atlanta and Auto Club Speedway. The first, at Atlanta, tied him with the late Dale Earnhardt for seventh on the all-time win list at 76. The Auto Club victory put him ahead of Earnhardt.

The Auto Club victory also continued a recent trend in which Kevin Harvick finished second to Johnson.

Since Harvick moved from Richard Childress Racing to the No. 4 Chevrolet at Stewart-Haas Racing at the start of 2014, he’s finished second 20 times — six times in 2014, 13 last year and once so far this year. Eight of those runner-up finishes have come in races won by Johnson.

As the circuit heads back to Martinsville Speedway this weekend, there likely will be much discussion of the race there last fall and the crash that saw Matt Kenseth intentionally wreck Joey Logano in retaliation for an earlier incident at Kansas Speedway.

Kenseth, who won six races in 2015, was suspended for two races as a result. Logano did not receive a penalty, but the incident cost him a chance to compete for the championship after having won five races.

Both Logano and Kenseth say they’ve put those troubles behind them, but neither has returned to his form of 2015.

Logano has fared better so far this season. He’s currently sixth in the standings with a best finish of second, at Las Vegas, and an average finish of 8.4. Kenseth is 15th in the standings, with a best finish of seventh at Phoenix and an average finish of 19.2.

By Rick Minter

David Ragan is one of just 24 active Sprint Cup drivers who have ever won a Cup race, and one of just 19 with multiple wins.

But when it came to the 2016 season, he was one of the last — if not the last — to secure a full-time ride.

Last week, just days before drivers begin arriving in Daytona for the season-opening Speedweeks, Ragan was announced as the driver of the No. 23 Toyota at BK Racing.

Ragan, who has wins at Daytona and Talladega, started his career at Roush Fenway Racing, but lost his sponsor, UPS, and his ride in the No. 6 Ford before he won in July 2011, at Daytona — an accomplishment that might have saved his job had it come earlier in the year.

He moved to the underfunded Front Row Motorsports and won at Talladega in 2013, but again, sponsor issues kept him from being assured of a full-time ride for 2015. That turned out to be a blessing of sorts, as it put him in position to fill in for the injured Kyle Busch at Joe Gibbs Racing, where he ran nine races in 2015. From there, he moved to the No. 55 at Michael Waltrip Racing, taking the seat vacated by Brian Vickers, who was forced to step aside because of health issues.

But MWR was not the place to be at the end of 2015, as the team shuttered its doors. Then, throughout the winter, Ragan’s name was mentioned when various rides were up for grabs, but until last week, he was without concrete plans for the season.

Still, he said he never lost confidence that he would wind up back in the Cup series this year.

“Things seem to develop a lot slower this year,” Ragan said, adding that he attributes that to the effort to create a franchise system for NASCAR team owners, a process that has dragged on longer than most would have expected.

NASCAR chairman Brian France said during the sport’s media tour that the charter system is coming, even if it has taken longer than NASCAR officials and the team owners expected.

Ragan said he spent his time during the off-season talking to team owners and potential sponsors. “I tried to stay in the loop,” he said. “I didn’t know how it would all shake out, but I was confident I would be in the Cup series.”

The BK Racing team is not among the sport’s elite, but Ragan said the team is putting the pieces in place to improve its performance. The team has purchased cars from MWR and hired some of its displaced personnel. BK Racing also fields the No. 83 for Matt DiBenedetto.

“BK Racing has lots of potential,” Ragan said. “It’s obviously one of the smaller teams, but it has a good agreement with Toyota, and it has put a lot of pieces to the puzzle in place.”

Ragan said that he expected to be a top-15 to top-20 finisher most weeks this season, but there are six to 10 races he looks upon as winnable for his team — such as the races at Daytona International Speedway and Talladega Superspeedway, where the use of restrictor plates to slow speeds also make nearly every driver in the field a potential winner. And he figures the short tracks, where aerodynamics and horsepower aren’t as important, also provide him with opportunities to shine.

“We had some good runs at those tracks last year in the same MWR cars that we will be running this year,” he said.

Off the track, Ragan and his wife, Jacqueline, are expecting their second child, which they’ve learned will be another girl. She’s due in March.