It’s the New Berlin, IL driver’s 71st career World of Outlaws win

SARVER, PA – JUNE 24, 2021 – Brandon Sheppard had a game plan. He implemented it. Stuck to it. And it worked. 

The three-time and defending Series champion led all 30-laps during Thursday night’s Firecracker 100 opener at Lernerville Speedway, cashing in on a $6,000 payday. 

Sheppard’s preparation for the weekend put him in a position to strike on a slick surface. 

“We had a plan to start off the night whether [the track] was wet or slick, and we just stuck with our game plan,” Sheppard said. “We’ve been working with the [slick track] program a lot, and we’ve been getting better. Hopefully, tonight is the start of a good little run.” 

Even though he led the entire race, the win didn’t come easy. Sheppard struggled to get around slower cars toward the end of the race. 

“Whenever you’re following [slower cars] in the rubber, and the track is that slow and slick, you hope you can get by to put a lap car between you and second place,” Sheppard said. “Sometimes you have to ride behind them and hope for the best.”

Sheppard’s win is his second of the 2021 season, and his 71st career World of Outlaws win. He also extended his point lead over championship rival Chris Madden, who finished second. 

Madden closed on Sheppard during the last few laps, searching for his fifth win of the season.  

“Smokey” felt he had a shot to pass Sheppard in traffic but couldn’t make it work. 

“There was only one lane when I got back to second and got to Sheppard,” Madden said. “We had one shot at him, and I knew he wouldn’t know I was on the outside of him (when he look to go around the outside of Sheppard off Turn 2). But I thought better of it and lifted and got back in line.” 

Madden thought he had a car capable of winning, but a bad decision cost him during the race’s only yellow flag.  

“[Sheppard] had a real good car tonight, and I did too,” Madden said. “I just chose the wrong line on the restart and fell back to third.” 

Scott Bloomquist, the 2004 Series champion, crossed the line third. The Mooresburg, TN driver passed Madden on the restart but lost the spot back to him in traffic. 

Despite losing the position, Thursday’s Feature gave “Black Sunshine” some optimism for the rest of the weekend. 

“The track got kind of narrow, and everyone was running on the bottom,” Bloomquist said. “We ended up getting into that lap car and it got us a little messed up and slowed us down, but we have something we can work with now to keep us moving forward.” 

Tyler Bruening, the top Rookie of the race finished fourth. The Decorah, IA driver extended his lead in the chase for Rookie of the Year over Ryan Gustin, who finished 22nd – after a rough start to the night when he spun in his Heat Race, trying to take the lead from Bruening. Gustin had also set Quick Time for the night.

Spencer Hughes crossed the line fifth.

With two more nights ahead at Lernerville, Sheppard is poised to use his opening as momentum to go after his first Firecracker 100 victory.

UP NEXT: The World of Outlaws Morton Buildings Late Models return to Lernerville Speedway on Friday June 25th, for another 30-lap Feature paying $6,000-to-win. 

Every Lap Matters during this year’s Firecracker 100, with drivers accumulating points on Thursday and Friday, to set up Saturday’s Drydene Heat Race Lineups. 

Here are the Top-6 in Firecracker points, so far, heading into Friday’s event:

• Brandon Sheppard
• Chris Madden
• Tyler Bruening
• Spencer Hughes
• Mike Norris
• Scott Bloomquist 

Morton Buildings Feature (30 Laps)-1. 1-Brandon Sheppard [1][$6,000]; 2. 44-Chris Madden [2][$3,000]; 3. 0-Scott Bloomquist [5][$2,000]; 4. 16-Tyler Bruening [7][$1,750]; 5. 11H-Spencer Hughes [3][$1,500]; 6. 25Z-Mason Zeigler [4][$1,400]; 7. 97-Cade Dillard [6][$1,300]; 8. 72-Mike Norris [8][$1,200]; 9. 119-Chub Frank [10][$1,100]; 10. 29-Darrell Lanigan [9][$1,000]; 11. 76-Brandon Overton [15][$900]; 12. 72C-Jason Covert [14][$850]; 13. 22-Gregg Satterlee [18][$800]; 14. 111V-Max Blair [11][$775]; 15. 1C-Alex Ferree [12][$750]; 16. 17M-Dale McDowell [17][$700]; 17. 7-Ricky Weiss [22][$660]; 18. 0E-Rick Eckert [20][$640]; 19. 28-Dennis Erb [23][$620]; 20. B1-Brent Larson [13][$600]; 21. 58-Mark Whitener [19][$600]; 22. 19R-Ryan Gustin [25][$600]; 23. 99B-Boom Briggs [26][$600]; 24. 10-Jared Miley [21][$600]; 25. 2-Dan Stone [24][$600]; 26. 77-Tyler Dietz [16][$600] Hard Charger:22-Gregg Satterlee[+5]

Qualifying Flight-A –1. 19R-Ryan Gustin, 15.337; 2. 1-Brandon Sheppard, 15.749; 3. 97-Cade Dillard, 15.753; 4. 16-Tyler Bruening, 15.982; 5. 76-Brandon Overton, 16.041; 6. 111V-Max Blair, 16.048; 7. 58-Mark Whitener, 16.06; 8. 29-Darrell Lanigan, 16.225; 9. 17M-Dale McDowell, 16.269; 10. 42-Chad Finley, 16.283; 11. 99B-Boom Briggs, 16.34; 12. 28-Dennis Erb, 16.391; 13. 0-Scott Bloomquist, 16.429; 14. 7-Ricky Weiss, 16.448; 15. 0E-Rick Eckert, 16.49; 16. 48-Colton Flinner, 16.544; 17. 93-Pancho Lawler, 16.565; 18. 44P-Joe Petyak, 16.634; 19. B1-Brent Larson, 16.736; 20. 42K-Cla Knight, 16.865; 21. 9-Levi Yetter, 16.999; 22. 4-Gary Stuhler, 17.038; 23. 29S-Ken Schaltenbrand, 17.073; 24. 11-Joshua Powell, 17.339; 25. 66-Todd Bachman, 17.53; 26. 1Z-Logan Zarin, 17.567; 27. 33X-Eric Hamilton, 19.17

Qualifying Flight-B-1. 72-Mike Norris, 16.123; 2. 119-Chub Frank, 16.411; 3. 10-Jared Miley, 16.467; 4. 44-Chris Madden, 16.677; 5. 11H-Spencer Hughes, 16.709; 6. 1C-Alex Ferree, 16.869; 7. 22F-Chris Ferguson, 16.91; 8. 2-Dan Stone, 16.913; 9. 22-Gregg Satterlee, 16.926; 10. 14-Dan Angellicchio, 16.946; 11. 77-Tyler Dietz, 17.002; 12. 25Z-Mason Zeigler, 17.084; 13. 72C-Jason Covert, 17.19; 14. 7R-Ross Robinson, 17.247; 15. 0S-Ryan Scott, 17.391; 16. 25-Mike Benedum, 17.406; 17. 16H-Clinton Hersh, 17.47; 18. 94-Charles Powell, 17.487; 19. 8S-Tommy Schirnhofer, 17.652; 20. 10L-Gary Lyle, 17.69; 21. 23-Ahnna Parkhurst, 17.986; 22. C02-Kyle Lukon, 18.006; 23. 26-Shawn Schaltenbrand, 18.07; 24. 2T-Rich Wicker, 18.133; 25. 0G-Deshawn Gingerich, 18.453; 26. 311-Ken Monahan, 18.688

Back in Action at NHRA Norwalk Nationals

Austin, TX (June 24, 2021) — Last year the NHRA Norwalk Nationals at Summit Motorsports Park was one of a handful of events that was not contested during the shortened NHRA Camping World Drag Racing Series season. Veteran driver Alexis DeJoria is eager to get back to the track just over an hour west of Cleveland to continue her pursuit of her first Norwalk National title at the fan-friendly and wildly popular national event. Since it began hosting NHRA national events Norwalk has quickly established itself as one of the largest and fan-friendliest events on the nation tour boasting a pound of ice cream for $1 and an amazingly quick race track.

“We love racing in Norwalk,” said DeJoria. “The Bader family is very hands-on and the fans are incredible. After the last race our team is chomping at the bit to get back on track and redeem ourselves. We’ve got the car to do it.”

For the second national event in a row DeJoria will be running a Bandero Premium Tequila branded Toyota Camry Funny Car. The veteran driver and co-owner of the Bandero brand unveiled the race car two weeks ago at the NHRA New England Nationals and powered to the No. 5 qualifying spot. This weekend DeJoria will be looking to keep and improve on a winning streak at the NHRA Norwalk Nationals.

During the past three races contested in Norwalk DeJoria has won the first round and raced to the quarterfinals. In 2015 and 2016 she took upset wins from the No. 12 qualified position and in her last appearance at the track in 2017 she took out current crew chief, then driver, Del Worsham in the first round from the No. 7 qualified position.

DeJoria, a five-time national event winner, is looking for her first win since returning to her successful racing career last season. Teaming with veteran crew chief and two-time world champion driver Del Worsham has made her reintroduction to the sport almost seamless. As last season came to a close the ROKiT Toyota Camry team began flexing its performance muscle qualifying in the top five at the final five races of the season and racing to three semifinals in the last four events. This season DeJoria came out of the off-season just as strong posting top five qualifiers at five of the first six races.

NHRA Norwalk Nationals qualifying will begin this Friday at 6:30 p.m. ET. Qualifying will continue with two sessions on Saturday with final eliminations starting at 11 a.m. ET on Sunday. Fans can tune into live coverage on FOX beginning at 2:00 p.m. ET on race day. 

TEAM CHEVY ADVANCE POCONO DOUBLE HEADER POCONO RACEWAY LONG POND, PENNSYLVANIA JUNE 26-27, 2021

RACES #18 AND 19 – POCONOThe three NASCAR national series will head to Pennsylvania to tackle the 2.5-mile track known as the ‘Tricky Triangle’: Pocono Raceway. The venue, steeped in stock car tradition, is the host to four races in two action-packed days, including the return of the must-anticipated NASCAR Cup Series (NCS) doubleheader. Chevrolet drivers will aim for the Bowtie Brand’s sixth consecutive NCS victory on Saturday, June 26, in the 130-lap Organics CBD 325. The NASCAR premier series returns to the track on Sunday, June 27, for the 140-lap Explore the Pocono Mountains 350.  Kyle Larson, driving the No. 5 Chevrolet Camaro ZL1 1LE for Hendrick Motorsports, dominated at Nashville Superspeedway to give Chevrolet its fifth regular-season victory in a row, which it last accomplished between May 10 and June 15 of the 2014 season. Chevrolet last strung together six wins in a row between October 7 and November 11 of the 2007 season, accomplished by Jeff Gordon winning the first two races and Jimmie Johnson claiming the next four on the way to winning the season’s Driver Championship. In 87 NCS races at Pocono Raceway dating to 1974, Chevrolet drivers have recorded 32 victories, including six in a row at the 2.5-mile “Tricky Triangle” between August 2012 and June 2015. Pocono has hosted two NCS races per season since 1982, and this weekend will mark the second doubleheader.  Team Chevy NASCAR Xfinity Series (NXS) drivers will compete in the 90-lap Pocono Green 225 Recycled by J.P. Mascaro & Sons on Sunday, June 27. AJ Allmendinger, who was among three Chevrolet drivers to finish in the top-five at Nashville, is second in the Driver Standings. Heading into the Pocono race weekend, Chevrolet continues to lead the Manufacturer Standings.NASCAR Camping World Truck Series (NCWTS) drivers will race in the 60-lap CRC Brakleen 150 on Saturday, June 26. Zane Smith, who led Team Chevy with a fourth place at Nashville, sits fourth in the Driver Standings.
SEEKING TO TIE JOHNSONAt Nashville Superspeedway, Kyle Larson registered his third successive points-paying victory and sixth consecutive top-two finish in regular season races. He also won the non-points NASCAR All-Star Race in middle of the streak.
In NASCAR’s modern era (dating to 1972), drivers have won three in a row 27 times. The last to win four points races in a row was career Chevrolet driver Jimmie Johnson, who accomplished the feat in 2007.
BOWTIE REMAINS TOPS IN STANDINGSChevrolet remains atop the NCS Manufacturer Standings. Team Chevy drivers have recorded a field-high eight victories and earned three of the four poles in the 17 regular-season races.
Kyle Larson remains second in the Driver Standings, but has closed to just 10 points of the lead. Hendrick Motorsports teammates William Byron moved to third, and Chase Elliott sits in fourth, to give Chevrolet three of the top-five in the Driver Standings heading into the doubleheader race weekend. Austin Dillon, Alex Bowman and Tyler Reddick remains in the top-13 with just nine races left in the NCS regular season. 
ON THE WAY TO THE GREENWith no practice or qualifying for the races, the starting lineup for the Organics CBD 325 will be determined by NASCAR’s metrics system that was introduced to the series last year and incorporates results from both individual races and season-long results. The lineup for the second race will be determined by the finishing order of the opener. The top 20 will be inverted and 21st to the rear will grid in order. Team Chevy’s Top-20 starters:1st       Kyle Larson, No. 5 HendrickCars.com Camaro ZL1 1LE2nd      William Byron, No. 24 Axalta Color of the Year Camaro ZL1 1LE6th       Ross Chastain, No. 42 McDonald’s Camaro ZL1 1LE7th       Ricky Stenhouse Jr., No. 47 Scott Brand  Camaro ZL1 1LE8th       Kurt Busch, No. 1 Monster Energy Camaro ZL1 1LE12th     Austin Dillon, No. 3 Richard Childress Racing Camaro ZL1 1LE13th     Alex Bowman, No. 48 Ally Camaro ZL1 1LE14th     Daniel Suarez, No. 99 Commscope Camaro ZL1 1LE16th     Tyler Reddick, No. 8 Richard Childress Racing Camaro ZL1 1LE BOWTIE BULLETS·       Chevrolet leads manufacturer with 803 NCS victories.·       Chevrolet leads manufacturers in laps led (2,076) of the 4,591 total and top-10 finishes with 79.·       Kyle Larson paces all drivers with 1,426 laps led. His previous career best was 1,352 in the 36 races in 2017.·       Austin Dillon is tied for most laps completed 99.91% (4,587).·       Kyle Larson’s 12 stage wins is twice as many as any other NCS driver.·       Ross Chastain posted a career-best runner-up finish at Nashville and has recorded three top-10’s in the past four races in the No. 42 Chip Ganassi Racing Camaro ZL1 1LE.·       In addition to its 32 wins at Pocono, Chevrolet has amassed 167 top-five and 358 top-10 finishes.·       William Byron is the active leader in average finish with 9.667 in six starts at Pocono Raceway.·       Kurt Busch is the active leader with 14 top-five finishes at Pocono and is tied for the lead with 20 top-10’s in 39 starts. He has three wins and five runner-up finishes.·       Career Chevrolet driver Jeff Gordon is tied for the most wins at Pocono with six.·       Kyle Larson earned his first NCS pole in August 2014 at Pocono.·       Hendrick Motorsports has 17 victories at Pocono Raceway.
TUNE INFS1 will telecast the NASCAR Camping World Truck Series CRC Brakleen 150 at noon ET Saturday, June 26, followed by NBCSN’s telecast of the NASCAR Cup Series Organics CBD 325 at 3 p.m. NBCSN will telecast the NASCAR Xfinity Series Pocono Green 225 Recycled by J.P. Mascaro & Sons at noon ET Sunday, June 27, followed by the NCS Explore the Pocono Mountains 350 at 3:30 p.m. Live coverage of the races can also be found on MRN and SiriusXM NASCAR Radio Channel 90.
QUOTABLE QUOTESKYLE LARSON, NO. 5 HENDRICKCARS.COM CAMARO ZL1 1LE – 2nd IN STANDINGSLARSON ON POCONO: “I’ve always enjoyed Pocono because of its uniqueness – every corner is different. I don’t know what to expect with this doubleheader weekend. I’ve done Xfinity and Cup races on the same weekend before, so I don’t think it will be much different. Physically, I won’t prepare differently. We’ll do a lot of preparation looking at data in advance of the first one, then I’m sure there will be a lot of discussion in the debrief Saturday of what went right and what went wrong as we prepare for Sunday’s race.”
CLIFF DANIELS, CREW CHIEF, NO. 5 HENDRICKCARS.COM CAMARO ZL1 1LE DANIELS ON THE STRATEGY WITH THREE UNIQUE CORNERS: “We’ve tried different approaches in the past, even picking a specific corner to optimize. The problem with that is it can really hurt you somewhere else. We’re really studying up on what would be the best blend in all areas. If you look at the races last year, the (No.) 4 and 11 teams certainly accomplished that. They weren’t bad in one corner and good in another – they were just overall good. That’s our target this year and hopefully we can hit it.”
WILLIAM BYRON, NO. 24 AXALTA COLOR OF THE YEAR CAMARO ZL1 1LE – 3rd IN STANDINGSBYRON ON THE DOUBLEHEADER AT POCONO: “I feel the doubleheader last year allowed us to learn a lot in that first race that we could then apply to the second one. I feel like Pocono is a track that we are good at and on track to be successful every time we show up, we just need to get a little bit better to close the gap on the top guys. It’s honestly a track that both Rudy (Fugle) and I have a lot of success at together and over our careers. I’m not too worried about it though. I feel like having two races there may be a great opportunity for us.”
BYRON ON IF YOU CAN BE GOOD IN ALL THREE CORNERS AT POCONO: “I think with modern-day NASCAR, you have to be good in all three corners now. Before, it was always you had to pick and choose which corner to be good in and give up in the others. With the engineering we have now, it kind of throws that old thought process out the window. For us, we’re trying to focus on being really good in turn three and then carry that consistency through the other two corners. The hope is to be consistently balanced throughout all three, but I know I want my drive off of turn three to really carry me down the front straightaway and set me up for turn one with momentum into turn two.”
RUDY FUGLE, CREW CHIEF, NO. 24 AXALTA COLOR OF THE YEAR CAMARO ZL1 1LEFUGLE ON THE NO. 24 TEAM’S CONTINUED SUCCESS HEADING TO POCONO: “I know the No. 24 team won early in the year and have ran well since then, but I think that the last couple weeks have shown that this team is continuing to build and become a consistent contender to win every time we get on track. The organization as whole is a threat to win every week right now, but we’re trying to make sure that the No. 24 is constantly in contention. My goal this year was to build from a top-10 team to a top-five team and ultimately to a championship-contending team. I think we’re almost to that point. We’re heading to some of our best racetracks which definitely helps as well. We’ll be starting front row for the first of two races at Pocono and that’s one of this team’s best tracks already. This could be a big weekend for the No. 24 team, I can feel it.”
CHASE ELLIOTT, NO. 9 NAPA AUTO PARTS CAMARO ZL1 1LE – 4th IN STANDINGSELLIOTT ON STRATEGY FOR DOUBLEHEADER AT POCONO: “Pocono is such a unique track and I have really enjoyed racing there in the past. It’s always a challenge to get your car balanced in all three corners and then you have to be spot on with your strategy because track position usually plays a big factor. Even though it’s a doubleheader, our approach doesn’t really change from other weekends. We always want to finish toward the front, and we will have our work cut out for us starting near the back on Saturday. I’m looking forward to this weekend and seeing what we can do.”
ALAN GUSTAFSON, CREW CHIEF, NO. 9 NAPA AUTO PARTS CAMARO ZL1 1LEGUSTAFSON ON THE CHALLENGES OF A POCONO DOUBLEHEADER: “The doubleheader at Pocono is a bit of a challenge with a lot of variables. You want to have a strong run on Saturday and perform well, while also making sure you take care of all your equipment. Even if it goes as planned, there will still have to be parts and pieces that have to be changed after the first race. It’s important that you go over everything on the car before Sunday. We learned last year that there isn’t a lot of time so you have to adapt pretty quickly and make the adjustments necessary to improve.”
AUSTIN DILLON, NO. 3 RICHARD CHILDRESS RACING CAMARO ZL1 1LE – 11th IN STANDINGSTALK ABOUT POCONO RACEWAY. IT’S AN INTERESTINGLY-SHAPED TRACK.. “Pocono is a fun, fast track and I feel like we’ve been able to build a good notebook there so I’m excited to get there this weekend for a double-header. Good finishes will be important for us and the points battle. At Pocono Raceway, speed is definitely carried through turn two and through three to the start-finish line. I think those are the most important corners. Of course, every corner is important, but turns two and three are a little bit more important because it’s the flat end of the track.”
ALEX BOWMAN, NO. 48 ALLY CAMARO ZL1 1LE – 12th IN STANDINGSBOWMAN ON HIS TWO-YEAR CONTRACT EXTENSION: “It’s really cool to know that Ally has faith in me and Mr. (Rick) Hendrick has faith in me. I think matching the length of my contract up to Ally’s was kind of the goal all around, and what was kind of expected and normal. The way the industry is today, there aren’t five-year contracts out there like there used to be. I’m not going to complain too much. I’m driving the 48 for Hendrick Motorsports – it’s not so bad.”  BOWMAN ON THE LOGISTICS OF POCONO RACEWAY: “Pocono is a fun but tricky track. All three corners are completely different, which makes the track extremely technical. The track is also tough to pass at because of how the groove is and how it doesn’t widen out as much. We are typically really fast here and everyone back at the shop is building fast cars right now.”  GREG IVES, CREW CHIEF, NO. 48 ALLY CAMARO ZL1 1LE IVES ON HIS STRATEGY FOR THE DOUBLEHEADER: “The goal is to come out of that first race with a win. The only thing we would have to do is clean up the confetti to get the car ready for race No. 2. I don’t think that you can get into a race and play it conservatively. These drivers are the best around, so they know what their limits are and who they are racing. You have the mindset of playing it safe, but it’s not on the forefront of your mind. You just do what it takes to get a win.” 
TYLER REDDICK, NO. 8 RICHARD CHILDRESS RACING CAMARO ZL1 1LE – 13th IN STANDINGSAT POCONO, WHAT’S THE BIGGEST CHALLENGE WITH A DOUBLEHEADER RACE WEEKEND?“You have to make sure you have a smooth weekend. If you have a really bad day on Saturday and don’t get any points, it’s really going to set you back going into Sunday. One, you now have no notes really compared to the field that ran the entire race on Saturday and then you’ll have to lean on your teammates. And then two, you’re going to a backup car. You’re not getting to work on the piece that you raced all day; you’re having to start from scratch and hope that you have a pretty good target or get within the target you’re searching for. We just had really bad doubleheaders at Pocono and Michigan. So, that’s going to be our goal; to race hard. We want to go get points and do this and that; but understand that Saturday is very important. You have to realize every risky decision and everything that you could do on Saturday that could be a risk potential effects what happens ultimately on Sunday, as well.”
DANIEL SUAREZ, NO. 99 COMMSCOPE CAMARO ZL1 1LE – 21st IN STANDINGSWHAT ARE YOUR THOUGHTS ON POCONO?“It was cool to get the pole there in 2018 and then we finished second in the race that weekend. At Pocono, it always helps to have a good starting spot. Pocono is a track where you can’t make mistakes on the track, and you can’t have mistakes on pit road. Everyone has to do their part to execute perfectly. “
WHAT DO YOU FEEL IS MOST IMPORTANT TO BE SUCCESSFUL AT POCONO? “Track position is extremely important every weekend, but it’s especially important at Pocono. If you make a mistake, it takes so much longer and is so much harder to recover from. It’s a tough place for sure.”
ERIK JONES, NO. 43 MEDALLION BANK CAMARO ZL1 1LE – 24th IN STANDINGSTHOUGHTS ON THE DOUBLEHEADER WEEKEND AND HOW YOU PREPARE FOR THAT AS A DRIVER?“Doubleheader races are cool. Last year was the first time we really got the chance to do that. It went really smooth as a group. It is always fun. Especially with not having any practice, a doubleheader gives you that chance to practice. The first race is a little bit of a practice race, going out there to get a feel for your car. If it is not 100 percent how you want it, you make better changes for the next day and have a shot to go out there and run a little bit better. I enjoy it. It is a chance to get out there and evaluate your Chevrolet Camaro ZL1 1LE and have the opportunity to make it better.”
COREY LAJOIE, NO. 7 NATIONSGUARD CAMARO ZL1 1LE – 29th IN STANDINGS“We’ll carry our momentum of 4 straight top 20s, which is a first in my Cup career as well as the team’s, into the doubleheader at Pocono. I’ve won there in the ARCA series and it’s one of the most unique tracks on the NASCAR schedule. Every corner takes a different style of attack. It will be important to have a good balance for all 3 corners. Having the chance to work on the car after the Saturday race to get even better for Sunday is important for our small team with limited practices. Looking forward to giving our NationsGuard Chevy a good run on both days.” 

Storms in the weather forecast throughout the day Thursday have forced DIRTcar and Spoon River Speedway officials to reschedule Thursday’s DIRTcar Summer Nationals and Summit Racing EquipmentModified Nationals events to Wednesday, July 7.

Belle-Clair Speedway will not be opening this year, and Spoon River will take its July 7 spot on the schedule.

The tours next head to Sycamore Speedway in Maple Park, IL, for the second race of Week #2 on Friday, June 25. Catch all the action live on DIRTVision presented by Drydene.

Winger finishes top-10 after flip in Qualifying, Pierce 19th-to-ninth in provisional start

LASALLE, IL – June 23, 2021 – It was only a matter of time before the reigning DIRTcar Summer Nationals champion Brian Shirley scored his first win of the season.

On Wednesday night at LaSalle Speedway, he did just that, leading all 40 laps green-to-checkered for his 34th career Hell Tour victory. With this win, Shirley has now won the last three tour visits to the quarter-mile oval.

But as dominant as the drive was, Shirley reflected on some of his recent performances and struggles in his Victory Lane interview and made it a point to show his determination for the rest of the races heading forward.

“I feel like we’ve been a little bit off, and this is definitely nothing to get excited about. We’re gonna grind this week out – it’s in our backyard and we need to get some wins,” Shirley said.

To do it, Squirrel was forced to work his way through lapped traffic and hold off a hard-charging Garrett Alberson for 40 non-stop laps. Shirley jetted out to the lead at the drop of the green and opened up a sizable advantage over second-place Billy Moyer Jr. as he worked through traffic.

Alberson had been gaining on Moyer through the first half of the race, and as he began to fade slightly just past the halfway point, Alberson cracked the whip on the bottom lane, made the pass underneath for second and set his sights on leader Shirley.

Out front, Shirley was moving through traffic well, but was having to sweat for it.

“I was a little nervous because I didn’t know how much they could catch me, as far as when I got stuck behind them guys,” Shirley said. “There were times when I had to make my own lane, and then when I got to guys running as good as me, it was a little tougher.”

The race then became a similar situation to the previous DIRTcar Late Model race contested at LaSalle earlier in the year, where Alberson passed Shirley for the $12,000 victory in the 10th annual Thaw Brawl. But this time, Shirley was not going to be denied.

Alberson closed the gap to Shirley by one second in the final laps, but it was not enough to catch the Bob Cullen Racing #3s. Shirley crossed the stripe with plenty of room to spare for his first $5,000 check of the season over Alberson, Ryan Unzicker, Moyer Jr. and Chris Simpson who rounded out the top-five.

Ashton Winger had a great rebound night after barrel rolling his car in Qualifying, crossing the stripe in eighth with a backup car. Points leader Bobby Pierce also had a rough start to his night but finished strong, being forced to take a provisional after blowing a tire in his Heat Race. The three-time champion advanced 10 spots over 40 laps to go 19th-to-ninth.

UP NEXT

The Summer Nationals Late Model action continues Thursday night, June 24, at the high banks of Spoon River Speedway for Round #8 of the 2021 Hell Tour campaign. Catch all the action live on DIRTVision presented by Drydene.

ABBREVIATED RESULTS (view full results)

Feature (40 Laps) 1. 3S-Brian Shirley[1]; 2. 59-Garrett Alberson[2]; 3. 24-Ryan Unzicker[4]; 4. 21JR-Billy Moyer Jr[3]; 5. 32S-Chris Simpson[9]; 6. 74-Mitch McGrath[7]; 7. 81E-Tanner English[12]; 8. 12-Ashton Winger[10]; 9. 32-Bobby Pierce[19]; 10. B12-Kevin Weaver[5]; 11. 25-Jason Feger[6]; 12. 97-Cade Dillard[8]; 13. 4G-Bob Gardner[17]; 14. 48-Tim Lance[11]; 15. 29-Spencer Diercks[18]; 16. 14G-Joe Godsey[21]; 17. 30-Mark Voigt[20]; 18. 21B-Rich Bell[13]; 19. 99JR-Frank Heckenast Jr[16]; 20. 1M-Mike Mataragas[15]; 21. 18-Shannon Babb[14]

RECORD BREAKER: Hoffman Wins at LaSalle for Sixth Consecutive Triumph

The three-time champ breaks his own record of five-straight from last year

Few times in the motorsports world do drivers find themselves with a chance to write a new chapter in the record books. Nick Hoffman did just that Wednesday night at LaSalle Speedway and cashed-in on it, winning his sixth-straight DIRTcar Summit Racing Equipment Modified Nationals Feature.

Once again, Hoffman had yet another perfect night. Setting fast time in Qualifying, winning his heat race and leading all 25 laps of the Feature for another $1,500 check. The win broke his own record for the longest win streak in tour history at five.

“Hot rod’s just been really good. Nothing’s really gone wrong, it’s just all going our way right now. We’re going to one of my best racetracks tomorrow… just trying to keep the streak alive,” Hoffman said in Victory Lane.

Last week, the three-time champion had some terrific competition come for his hot streak and denied them all, barring Mike Harrison, Curt Spalding and others from Victory Lane as he sailed to five-straight wins. On Wednesday night, Hoffman saw some more tough customers in Mike McKinney and Allen Weisser, but they were turned away as well.

McKinney started to Hoffman’s outside and pressured him through the first half of the race, but never could mount enough of a charge to make a move. Hoffman drove away in traffic for his 44th career tour victory over McKinney and Weisser. He’s now only eight shy of tying Harrison for most wins all-time.

From his point of view, Hoffman didn’t feel much of the pressure behind him at all. He and the Elite Chassis #2 were smooth sailing the whole way through.

“I come out here and do the same thing every single night,” Hoffman said. “Me and Shawn [crew guy] worked our butts off today, had a couple of issues earlier, but we smoothed it all out.”

UP NEXT

The Summit Modified action continues Thursday night, June 24, at the high banks of Spoon River Speedway for Round #8 of the 2021 Hell Tour campaign. Catch all the action live on DIRTVision presented by Drydene.

ABBREVIATED RESULTS (view full results)

Feature (25 Laps) 1. 2-Nick Hoffman[1]; 2. 96M-Mike McKinney[2]; 3. 25W-Allen Weisser[3]; 4. 77-Ray Bollinger[6]; 5. T6-Tommy Sheppard Jr[4]; 6. 292-Josh Allen[5]; 7. 57-Tim Hamburg[10]; 8. 7-Kelly Kovski[7]; 9. 57A-Andrew Hamburg[13]; 10. 1-Nash Hilmes[15]; 11. 0-Travis Kohler[8]; 12. 9H-John Demoss[11]; 13. 1W-Bob Pohlman[12]; 14. 61-Chris Osborne Jr[14]; 15. 45-Kyle Hammer[9]; 16. 88C-Marshall Call[16]

Batavia, OH (June 23, 2021) – The Lucas Oil Late Model Dirt Series (LOLMDS) and Lucas Oil Midwest Latemodel Racing Association (MLRA) head to Spring Valley, MN for a co-sanctioned event with nearly $110,000 in prize money on the line. The NAPA Auto Parts Gopher 50 this weekend has increased prize money and increased excitement over two days, with full shows each day at Deer Creek Speedway. Friday’s LOLMDS/MLRA portion is a complete program of Time Trials, Heat Races, B-Mains, and a $12,000-to-win main event, along with the USRA Modifieds paying $2,000-to-win. Saturday is a full program of Time Trials, Heat Races, B-Mains, and a $15,000-to-win main event for the LOLMDS/MLRA, accompanied by the USRA Modifieds paying $5,000-to-win. Each day, the pit gates will open at 2:30pm, followed by general admission at 3:00pm. A driver’s meeting will take place at 6:00pm, followed by hot laps at 6:30pm. The NAPA Auto Parts Gopher 50 is a charity race co-promoted by the Blooming Prairie Lions, with a 42 year history. The race was held at Chateau in Lansing, MN the first two years (1980, 1981). From 1982 to 2004 the event was held at the Steele County Fairgrounds in Owatonna, MN. In 2005 the event moved to its current home, Deer Creek Speedway. There have been 23 different winners in the first 40 years including the following current LOLMDS drivers: Tim McCreadie – 2010, Josh Richards – 2011 and 2016, Shane Clanton – 2012, and Mike Marlar – 2018. Event sponsors include NAPA Auto Parts, Miners Outdoor, Rochester Eagles, and Carroll’s Popcorn. Heading into the weekend at Deer Creek Speedway, Tim McCreadie continues to hold a narrow 30 point lead over Hudson O’Neal. Cutting into the deficit last weekend, Jonathan Davenport is in third by 120 points. Kyle Bronson was tied for sixth going into last weekend, but he now sits in fourth, 110 points out of third. With only 80 points separating fourth to tenth in standings, Mike Marlar holds the fifth position followed by Josh Richards, Shane Clanton, Ricky Thornton Jr, Tyler Erb, and Jimmy Owens.  Both nights will be LIVE on MAVTV Plus, the home of the greatest LIVE and On-Demand grassroots motorsports programming available today. Join today at MAVTVPlus.com and gain access to over 175+ Live Races, thousands of On-Demand television programs and exclusive behind-the-scenes coverage from your favorite events.  The entire 2021 Lucas Oil Late Model Dirt Series TV schedule can be found on the series website at: www.lucasdirt.com/schedule/tv-schedule Track Information:Deer Creek SpeedwayPhone Number: 1-877-DCS-Race or 507-754-6107Event Promoter: Cole QueenslandLocation: 25262 Highway 63, Spring Valley, MN 55975Directions: I-90 Exit 209A, south on US-63 for approx. 11 ½ miles, entrance is on the left.Website: www.deercreekspeedway.com Tire Rules:Left Rear/Fronts – Hoosier (90) LM20Right Rear – Hoosier (92) LM20 (92) LM40*Must use the same set of 4 tires for Time Trials, Heat Races, and B-Mains.*For the A-Main, competitors may use 2 new rear tires.*Flat tire must be replaced with a used tire of the same compound and construction to retain starting position. Event Purses:Friday $12,000 to win (50 laps) – 1. $12,000, 2. $6,000, 3. $3,500, 4. $2,800, 5. $2,500, 6. $2,300, 7. $2,200, 8. $2,100, 9. $2,050, 10. $2,000, 11. $1,600, 12. $1,400, 13. $1,200, 14. $1,100, 15. $1,050, 16. $1,000, 17. $1,000, 18. $1,000, 19. $1,000, 20. $1,000, 21. $1,000, 22. $1,000, 23. $1,000, 24. $1,000. = $52,800Saturday $15,000 to win (50 laps) – 1. $15,000, 2. $6,500, 3. $3,500, 4. $3,000, 5. $2,500, 6. $2,400, 7. $2,300, 8. $2,200, 9. $2,100, 10. $2,000, 11. $1,600, 12. $1,400, 13. $1,300, 14. $1,200, 15. $1,050, 16. $1,000, 17. $1,000, 18. $1,000, 19. $1,000, 20. $1,000, 21. $1,000, 22. $1,000, 23. $1,000, 24. $1,000. = $57,050

NASCAR CUP SERIES POCONO DOUBLE HEADER POCONO RACEWAY TEAM CHEVY PRESS CONF. TRANSCRIPT JUNE 23, 2021 TYLER REDDICK, NO. 8 RICHARD CHILDRESS RACING CAMARO ZL1 1LE, Teleconference Transcript:  YOU START SIXTEENTH THIS WEEKEND IN THE FIRST RACE AT POCONO RACEWAY. YOU TWEETED AFTER THE RACE AT NASHVILLE, ‘I BEAT MYSELF TODAY’. HOW DID YOU BEAT YOURSELF AND TALK ABOUT THE CHALLENGES OF POCONO RACEWAY?“The goals that you have in racing – if you don’t have realistic goals at times, it’s very easy to get pretty frustrated pretty quick. Considering the things that were kind of going our way, the goals that I had going into that weekend and the goals I had for Sunday, probably should have been shifted a little bit to be a bit more realistic. Or just set another goal in front of it – ‘Alright well, we’re two laps down, now let’s get back on the lead lap’. Ok well now, maybe we can get back to that goal of having a top-five day. I didn’t really run that through my head, so I just made a lot of bad mistakes. I could have just, overall, done a better job on Sunday; just coming in with a better approach and plan after that (spin) once we did get back on the lead lap to realistically set goals for our day and go tackle that.” “Going into Pocono (Raceway), we’re starting 16th. It’s better than starting 26th where we did at Nashville (Superspeedway), but really, we should be starting much better than what we are. But the good thing is, we can still get a really good day out of it; 16th is still a much better spot than some of the guys that we need to score more points than. We’ll see how the day unfolds; what that means for pit strategies. It’s Pocono, so I would imagine those that are trying to go for the race win or get the points on the back-end of the day in the final stage will definitely split it up differently than others. Hopefully we’ll have opportunities to make those decisions; go for stage two points or a good finish in the final stage, or go after those stage pointes.” AT POCONO, WHAT’S THE BIGGEST CHALLENGE WITH A DOUBLEHEADER RACE WEEKEND?“Unfortunately, we just had bad doubleheaders last year. It started with Pocono (Raceway). We had a pretty good car on Saturday; being really aggressive on a restart, made a mistake, drifted up into Erik Jones when he was trying to get around Kurt Busch who had slowed down – just trying to get him boxed in, if you will – and that’s how we collided. So, that was a bummer because it destroyed our day on Saturday; we were done right there on Saturday and weren’t able to run the rest of the day. And then we had to prepare a backup car and start pretty much dead last on Sunday. That’s when we had more damage to our engine than we realized. One of the pulley’s was seized up and it shot the power steering belt off when we took the green flag. We just didn’t get any points.” “Basically, you have to make sure you have a smooth weekend. If you have a really bad day on Saturday and don’t get any points, it’s really going to set you back going into Sunday. One, you now have no notes really compared to the field that ran the entire race on Saturday and then, you’ll have to lean on your teammates. And then two, you’re going to a backup car. You’re not getting to work on the piece that you raced all day; you’re having to start from scratch and hope that you have a pretty good target or get within the target you’re searching for. We just had really bad doubleheaders at Pocono and Michigan. So, that’s going to be our goal; to race hard. We want to go get points and do this and that; but understand that Saturday is very important. You have to realize every risky decision and everything that you could do on Saturday that could be a risk potential effects what happens ultimately on Sunday, as well.” I JUST WANTED TO ASK YOU ABOUT NASCAR COMING TO ROAD AMERICA NEXT WEEK. I BELIEVE YOU’VE DONE A COUPLE OF XFINITY RACES THERE. I JUST WANTED TO GET YOUR IMPRESSIONS OF ROAD AMERICA AND HOW YOU FEEL ABOUT THE CUP SERIES COMING THERE, AND THE CUP SERIES ADDING AS MANY ROAD COURSES THAT THEY HAVE?“Those that have gotten to experience Road America, other NASCAR Xfinity Series drivers that are now Cup drivers like myself or some of the others out there that ran it years prior, understand how unforgiving of a place it can be. I kind of wish we didn’t have practice for all those Cup drivers that haven’t been there before because the amount of fun it would be until they figured it out that us guys that came from the Xfinity Series would have over them. It’s a tough track – it’s narrow, it’s fast. It intimidated the daylights out of me because I was very bad a road course racing at the time. You’re hauling the mail down the front straightaway, down the back straightaway, into Turn 4 & 5 there; in Canada corner, too. It’s a wild place and when you’re going to have the Cup Series there with the aggressive drivers that just like to sail it off into there in the corner, it’s going to create some great racing. There’s going to be some action, for sure. Just like at COTA and Sonoma, we’re going to destroy these racecars. I just hope I don’t tear mine up too bad because, again, the straightaways are pretty fast. So, keeping the nose and the body straight is going to be important.” YOU MENTIONED THE FACT OF TRYING TO BE CAREFUL AT LITTLE BIT ON SATURDAY BECAUSE OF SUNDAY. KNOWING THAT YOU’RE THIRTEENTH IN THE STANDINGS AND THE PLAYOFFS ARE COMING UP, HOW MUCH IS THAT RISK VERSUS REWARD TO ENSURE THAT YOU’RE PART OF THE PLAYOFFS?“It’s a major part of it. Like I said earlier – I guess I didn’t totally go into the full bit of it, but I said that the doubleheaders were really bad for us and bad for making the Playoffs for us. You can pick apart your season; hindsight is always 20/20, but one of the biggest areas for us was looking at Pocono and even Michigan. Just the amount of points we would have gotten out of Pocono if I wouldn’t have crashed on Saturday and then had that parts failure on Sunday because of the crash – we could have had 30 or 40 more points than we did because I think we finished 37th and 36th both days and no stage points. We had the speed to get stage points and finish inside the top-15, even with mistakes. Pocono is the type of race where I feel like racing hard on restarts is important, but the way that you win that race or get a good points day out of it is picking and choosing battle and executing the race strategy perfectly. You don’t want to get caught up racing a guy for one point, one spot, and lose a 1.5-2 seconds battling someone and lose touch with the rest of the field ahead of you. It totally changes up your strategy and what options you have available to you to try and maybe get ahead of them in a pit cycle; whatever it might be. You have to race smart. That’s just the type of race that Pocono is with the package we have. You have to race a little bit smarter than hard; that’s what I meant by that.” AS YOU WORK TO TRY TO ENSURE YOUR SPOT IN THE PLAYOFFS, WHERE DO YOU FEEL YOU AND YOUR TEAM CAN BE EVEN STRONGER?“What never really stops, never ends, is the grind to find perfection, if you will. It’s not really possible, right? But just looking back to Nashville, we had a car that I thought could have qualified top-five pretty realistically. I thought I was paying attention to what line the drivers were using and kind of just missed it a little bit. I was running too high for where the grip was in qualifying and that turned a day that should have been pretty straight forward – getting stage points and all that stuff – it totally threw it out the window. That comes down to mistakes. I think the race at Pocono comes down to mistakes. Making the Playoffs comes down to that. Being able to recover from them is nice; but the more times you can go through races without having those big, critical moments and mistakes is going to help everybody’s peace of mind. You’re going to get more points because of it. It’s just a little easier if you don’t make those mistakes. Yes, it’s hard to be perfect all the time, but it’s a fun process in learning how to get better. I definitely am learning from those mistakes. You’re always going to learn from mistakes; they’re just never going to stop coming your way. New situations, new scenarios – I’ll just keep trying to adjust the best that I can to keep getting more points for my team.” SINCE RCR AND HMS ARE, ESSENTIALLY, THE SAME ENGINES, DO YOU THINK YOU HAVE THE SAME SPEED AS THEY DO RIGHT NOW? “There’s something we need to continue to work on, on our end, to get a little bit better. I don’t know – we’re doing pretty good, honestly. Looking back to last year, I think Hendrick (Motorsports) was doing OK at times, but obviously they’re much better than they were a year ago; I would think they would agree with that. They’ve been winning a lot of races here the last month. We, have an organization, have gotten a lot better. Like I said, I think Nashville could have been one of those days where we could have been up there battling with those Hendrick Chevy’s. But those mistakes that I made really kind of derailed that for us. Daniel Suarez wasn’t the happiest with his car; they felt like they kind of missed it a little bit. But he was able to drive his way to a seventh. He’s kind of like my teammate, Erik Jones – unfortunately, he ran over bits and pieces that were coming off of cars as they were breaking on the racetrack, which really hurt their chances throughout the day. So, I think all of our cars had that potential to be inside the top-10. We’re trying to figure out what more I need for my driving style to limit those mistakes and have smoother races. We’re going in to the right direction. The push and the grind to get better never will stop. We’ll keep plugging along.” HOW FAR AWAY DO YOU THINK YOU ARE FROM A WIN?“There’s definitely been some opportunities; even last year honestly. It’s just those little details. I’ve been learning that the hard way; at least I’m learning from it, right? All the little details that you can kind of overcome in the Xfinity Series – I guess I never really gave the attention to detail that I do now running in the Cup Series as when I was running the Xfinity Series. Find a way to overcome spinning out and just drive back through the field. You’re racing again 12 or 13 drivers in the Xfinity Series that are close equipment-wise; where on the Cup side, you could argue some weekends, the top-30 is pretty close. Dover, around a month or so ago, a lot of the top-20 were really, really close.” “I think it’s right there, it’s just a matter of not making those mistakes that derailed days like Nashville for us. Sonoma is another one. We didn’t have the speed to go win at Sonoma, but we could have run top-10. It’s just a matter of those little things. Even back to Homestead – it was a great run through the field on that last green flag run, but that restart was my worst restart of the day. I lost like four or five spots and that was the difference in what that outcome was. It’s just those little things. You never know when it’s going to come, right? You may have a day where you’re not that great and you just don’t make a mistake, everyone else does and you’ll find yourself winning. I don’t know if it’s going to come that way. There are a lot of opportunities where, right now, I think our cars are good enough that if I run a good race, the pit crew does their part – which they have been – I think we could surprise ourselves and it could happen at a few different types of racetracks.” YOU SAID YOU’RE PAYING A LOT MORE ATTENTION TO DETAIL IN THE CUP SERIES. WHEN YOU CAME FROM XFINITY AND MADE THE MOVE, WAS IT EYE-OPENING AT ALL?“Eye-opening is a way to put it. When you switch from running the Xfinity Series, you’re aware of all these tools that are kind of there, but you never really think to tap into. Like I said, we’d just adjust on our racecar a little bit, have a crazy restart, do something wild, bounce off the fence or whatever, and find our way to win. On the Cup side, it doesn’t quite work that way because there are more drivers that are really, really good and more teams out there that are really, really good. So, you can’t just bust through a couple of people and find your way to victory lane.” “I guess it is eye-opening. The amount of resources that are available if you really take the time to look through it all; just like pit road, restarts, you could go through a lot of things. When you run the Xfinity Series, like I said, you don’t realize how much the last tenth or two-tenths mean in the grand scheme of things throughout your day. It could mean the difference between running 10th and running fifth. All that stuff really adds up and, again, those are the things that add up to winning races. The more that I can get better at all these other things will give us more opportunities when our car is really good that one day or really good one weekend to be able to go out there and get the job done.” YOUR RELATIONSHIP WITH RANDALL (BURNETT, CREW CHIEF), YOU GUYS SEEM TO BE ON THE SAME PAGE. HOW HAS HE HELPED PREPARE YOU ON A WEEKLY BASIS, JUST SO YOU’RE MORE ACCUSTOM AND COMFORTABLE TO EVERYTHING THAT COMES ALONG WITH CUP? “He does a lot to help me, but his plate has been a whole lot more full as we’ve gone Cup racing. There are more meetings, just a lot more going on. They’re not composite bodies; they’re bodies that are hung in our shop at RCR. So, there’s a lot more people he has to manage; more things he has to stay in the loop and be a part of. Meetings, meetings, meetings is like the big trend here. He’s been a big help in helping direct me to the things that I need to do. A year-and-a-half in or more, a fairly good routine has been set in and I kind of know where to go for what information. Our team works really together. I pretty much don’t have to ask anymore on a weekly basis for information that is good to have be sent my way, brought to my attention, so I can go through it and use it to prepare or reflect on the past weekend. Like I said, his plate is pretty full, so I lean on my team’s engineers, Nate Troupe and Andrew Dickson, to gather some of that information as Randall is busy trying to handle other things.” “It’s working well. We’re finding more and more ways, that never will stop, to acquire better information that can be even more useful than what we have. Or just gather more stats and collect more data that we can look at. SMT, on paper and everything – you can go back and see how everyone’s race kind of went from their perspective; driver inputs and this and that. But it’s opened a door to collecting sector analysis, entries and exits of corners; breaking it down to the absolute detail of what driver times available, who’s really good at getting into the box and out of the box. There’s a lot of things to look at and it’s opened the door for me to kind of dive into that on my own so Randall can do what’s important. It’s allowed me to kind of work on that stuff so when I do have an idea, it’s not just like, ‘Hey, let’s look into this or talk about this’. It’s like, ‘Hey, I’ve looked at this and this is the direction we want to go’, so it’s efficient for Randall’s time and he can focus on what takes a lot of time; and that’s making sure the cars are getting built the right way, and all the right pieces and parts are coming together to make our race weekends like they are.” DO YOU THINK THE CREW CHIEFS THAT HAVE HAD EXPERIENCE WITH THE COMPOSITE BODIES, WILL HELP THEM ONCE YOU MOVE TO THE NEXT GEN CARS?“It’s not really my place to say; I’d just be kind of guessing. It is a lot different. The composite body – it’s still got to be within tolerances, but you’re not working on the bodies like you are right now where everyone is trying to get all the little details that they can. The composite bodies when you buy them and they show up, they are what they are and you piece it together on the racecar, and see how it scans if you have a hawk-eye in your shop. And if you don’t, you kind of hope that it’s right when you get to the race track.” “I don’t know if there is one or not. I think the way that it sits on the car – it’s not going to be the Xfinity composite body on the Next Gen car. It’s going to be it’s own different body, so it’s going to fit, I would imagine, differently and those guys are going to have fun figuring out how to maximize that, I’m sure.”

CHEVROLET AT NORWALK What: Summit Racing Equipment NHRA NationalsWhen: Friday, June 25-Sunday, June 27Where: Summit Racing Equipment Motorsports Park in Norwalk, OhioTV: FOX will telecast eliminations live at 2 p.m. ET June 27                                                                                                     Chevrolet drivers enter seventh race of season with the hot handJohn Force Racing Funny Car drivers have won the past three events

DETROIT (June 23, 2021) – John Force has won the 200th, 400th and most recently 900th Funny Car races in National Hot Rod Association’s (NHRA) history. The 16-time champion won’t rule out competing for the 1,000th.
Force, 72, registered his 153rd career – and second of the young NHRA Camping World Drag Racing Series season — Funny Car victory at Epping, New Hampshire, to give his namesake team three consecutive category wins. Robert Hight, who holds the distinction of winning the 600th Funny Car race, won in Houston.
The duo will seek to carry their momentum this weekend to Norwalk, Ohio, in the Summit Racing Equipment NGRA Nationals. The event was not held in 2020 because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
A John Force Racing Funny Car has reached the final round in five of the six races this season.
“It sure doesn’t look like we took a year off,” said Force, who is second in championship points in the PEAK/BlueDEF PLATINUM Chevrolet Camaro SS. “Our crew chiefs are dialed in; our teams are working well together. It’s all working for us. Now we have to stay consistent.”
It was fitting that Force held the Wally following the New England Nationals in the milestone race. Since making his first race day appearance in a Chevrolet in 1978, the 16-time NHRA Funny Car champion has won an impressive 20% of the 769 career races in which he has qualified. And he’s been runner-up 106 times. His victory total is one of the many NHRA records he holds that is unlikely to be challenged.
“I’m looking forward to my most important job, getting into my PEAK BlueDEF Chevy Funny Car and strapping in to make runs,” Force said. “We’ll be ready, we’ll be good.”
Brittany Force, the No. 1 qualifier and runner-up in the Charlotte four-wide event, looks to get untracked in the Flav-R-Pac/Monster Energy Chevrolet dragster after a pair of first-round exits.
“This Flav-R-Pac Monster Energy team has had a tough couple of races lately so we’re hoping to turn our luck around,” she said.
Pro Stock has seen five different winners in six races. Three-time Norwalk winner and points leader Greg Anderson has claimed top qualifier honors five times in the HendrickCars.com Chevrolet Camaro SS and has two of the wins.David Barton and Aaron Stanfield, who have won the Constant Aviation Factory Stock Showdown races this season in their Chevrolet COPO Camaros, highlight the field this weekend in the third race of the eight-event series.
FOX will telecast eliminations live at 2 p.m. ET Sunday, June 27.Enders among Best Driver nomineesReigning NHRA Pro Stock champion Erica Enders is a finalist for the ESPY Award in the Best Driver category. The driver of the Melling Performance/Elite Motorsports Chevrolet Camaro SS earned her second consecutive – and fourth overall – Pro Stock title in 2020. She is the only female in NHRA history with four titles. The ESPY Awards will be telecast by ABC at 8 p.m. ET Saturday, July 10.
CHEVROLET FROM THE COCKPIT
TOP FUEL:
BRITTANY FORCE, JOHN FORCE RACING, FLAV-R-PAC/MONSTER ENERGY CHEVROLET DRAGSTER (No. 1 qualifier in Las Vegas and Charlotte four-wide events; runner-up in Charlotte): “Our John Force Racing teams head to Norwalk this weekend and I’m excited to be back with my Flav-R-Pac team chasing down a win. We’re going back to old approaches, attacking every run. Playing it safe is easy, comfortable but, we’re going back to pushing the limits because that’s what David Grubnic, Mac Savage and this Flav-R-Pac / Monster Energy team are capable of. In Norwalk we will be chasing records, going after the No. 1 qualifier, and focused on going rounds on race day.”
FUNNY CAR:
JOHN FORCE, JOHN FORCE RACING, PEAK/BLUEDEF PLATINUM CHEVROLET CAMARO SS (two-time winner this season; No. 1 qualifier in Charlotte four-wide; third in points): “John Force Racing, we’re running good. The whole team, myself with PEAK BlueDEF, Robert (Hight) over there with AAA and Brittany (Force) with Flav-R-Pac and Monster Energy. “I always love coming to Norwalk. Bill Bader, well now it’s his son, Bill Bader Jr., they always put on a great show. We’re going there with a full crowd, with everything having been shut down, the fans need the excitement, they need the entertainment. That’s what we’re going to give them.”
ROBERT HIGHT, JOHN FORCE RACING, AAA OF OHIO CHEVROLET CAMARO SS (runner-up in two races, winner at Houston; No. 1 qualifier in Las Vegas four-wide): “We’re on a roll right now and I’m ready to keep it going. We’ve had some luck in Norwalk at Night Under Fire but it’s time for a national event win. I know Jimmy Prock and Chris Cunningham will be ready and my guys will put in the hard work. Right now is the time to be figuring everything out. Get us set up for later in the season. We want to run well, go rounds and win races. Hopefully we get this one done for AAA.”
PRO STOCK:
GREG ANDERSON, KB RACING, HENDRICKCARS.COM CHEVROLET CAMARO SS (two-time winner this season; No. 1 qualifier in five races; points leader; three-time winner at the track): “We go race in front of our longtime sponsor Summit Racing Equipment. It adds extra bang and I love that. It seems to help us. I expect to do well there. The bottom line is you can’t just rest on what you have in this sport or you’ll get passed by. We’ve been great all year, the car has been fantastic, and we should have won a lot of races that we didn’t close the deal on. It’s a matter of paying attention to those details and trying to make every aspect of the game better. The competition is not happy that they’re getting outrun, so they’re going home and working hard. So we’ve been using every minute we can to try to make our engines better, make our cars better and try to make our drivers better.”
TROY COUGHLIN JR., ELITE MOTORSPORTS, JEGS.COM/ELITEMOTORSPORTS CHEVROLET CAMARO SS (runner-up in season opener; transferred to final quad at Charlotte): “It’s Norwalk weekend, so if you’re from Ohio this is the one you want to win the most. It’s all about Buckeye pride and representing the best state in the country. Our family has done well at this track in the past and we really want to keep that going this weekend. I actually won the last time I raced here (in 2019) when I was in Top Alcohol Dragster.”
KYLE KORETZKY, KB RACING, LUCAS OIL CHEVROLET CAMARO SS (No. 3 qualifier and semifinalist at Houston): “I’m definitely focused on improving every race. I know we have a winning car. I just have to do my job as the driver. My confidence level in the car is huge. I feel we have a car to go to the pole and race well on Sunday on round at a time. I’ve done a lot of practice Tree (since last event) simulation at the shop and find my sweet spot. My first time at Norwalk, so I’m excited to go there.”
ROB TUCKER, AUZMET ARCHITECTURAL CHEVROLET CAMARO SS (1998 Australian Pro Stock champion; making NHRA debut): “I really don’t know if I’ll qualify or not. It’s going to be tough but just to be out there will be great fun. This is going to be a big race for Pro Stock, and I’m proud to be a part of it. My daughter, Kristen, has told me, ‘You can do this. You never really forget how to drive a race car.’”

June 23, 2021

Having a fast Mustang in Music City, Matt DiBenedetto and the Motorcraft/Quick Lane team are headed to the Tricky Triangle feeling a little optimistic. 

Pocono Raceway, the three-turn, 2.5-mile track, is hosting a double-header for the Cup Series with the Pocono Organics CBD 325 on Saturday and the Explore The Pocono Mountains 350 on Sunday.

DiBenedetto, who finished 13th and sixth in the two Pocono races last year, said he believes he and the Motorcraft/Quick Lane team are capable of backing up – or even bettering – their performances of a year ago.

“We had a fast car at Pocono last year, so hopefully that same speed carries over,” he said, adding that speed isn’t the only factor to be considered this weekend. “Track position is everything with the high-downforce package.”

Track position could be a challenge, at least initially for the Motorcraft/Quick Lane team. DiBenedetto and the No. 21 Mustang are set to start Saturday’s opener from 21st place. The line-up was set based on recent results, and DiBenedetto wound up 24th in the most recent race, at Nashville Superspeedway.

DiBenedetto also said the chemistry between him and his new crew chief is beginning to build.

“I’ve really enjoying working with Jonathan Hassler,” he said. “Although we had electrical issues last weekend, we had a good car and great communication, so we are looking forward to these upcoming races.”

Saturday’s 130-lap, 325-mile race is set to start just after 3 p.m. and will have Stage breaks at Laps 25 and 77. Sunday’s 350-mile finale will see the green flag just after 3:30 with Stage breaks at Laps 30 and 85.

NBCSN will carry the telecast of both races

Roth Motorsports #83 Eligible for $100,000 THE SHOWDOWN Bonus at Jackson

BRANDON, SD – June 22, 2021 – When the money is on the line, Aaron Reutzel shows up.

He was on the podium when Bristol Motor Speedway paid $25,000-to-win, he stood in victory lane with $15,000 in his pocket at Williams Grove Speedway, and on Tuesday night he earned the highest payday of the season thus far with a $30,000 check at the inaugural Huset’s 50.

The Roth Motorsports gasser was relentless in his pursuit of a fifth career World of Outlaws NOS Energy Drink Sprint Car Series victory. He timed in second-quick, won his Drydene Heat Race, dominated the DIRTVision Fast Pass Dash, and led all 50 laps of the NOS Energy Drink Feature at South Dakota’s Huset’s Speedway.

More importantly, the Clute, TX native will head to this weekend’s 43rd annual AGCO Jackson Nationals with the chance for a record-setting payday.

If he wins Saturday’s finale worth $50,000 at Jackson Motorplex, he’ll receive an additional $100,000 bonus thanks to Tod Quiring’s THE SHOWDOWN.

“I’m so pumped,” Reutzel remarked after his wing dance. “It’s been a trying year for us. We’d find speed, then we’d lose it, then we’d find something again, then it’d quit working. We haven’t given up, though. I felt like we were pretty good, I mean we didn’t make any real changes all night and that normally makes me nervous because I like to change a lot. A few tiny adjustments during that #OpenRed, but nothing major.”

Losing the initial start of the 50-lapper to outside pole sitter Donny Schatz, Reutzel was actually saved by the bell when contact involving himself brought out the caution and forced a complete restart. Battling for second into turn one, Reutzel’s #83 and Carson Macedo’s #41 collided and sent the Jason Johnson Racing machine for a wild flip into the fence.

A complete restart allowed Reutzel to drive by Schatz and secure command of the top spot on Lap 1, and from there he never looked back. A Lap 5 red flag for Jacob Allen and Lynton Jeffreys slowed his pace, but wasn’t enough to give Schatz a run at the Roth ride.

At the Lap 30 #OpenRed, Crew Chief Dylan Buswell made all the right calls and sent Reutzel back out with more confidence in his Speedway powered Triple-X.

“I was really looking forward to it,” Reutzel noted on the stoppage. “I got a bad vibration running the cushion early on. If it was a full 50-lapper, I think it would’ve been tough to hang on.”

Reutzel ran off into lap traffic unchallenged until Schatz was able to close on Lap 41 and almost pulled alongside. Seeing the #15’s nose was just what the Texan needed to get up in the seat, as he found another gear and ran off to win it by 1.160-seconds.

“It’s a good time to find some speed,” Reutzel said on the “Summer of Money.” There’s a lot of money on the line. When you do this for a living, this is the time to be fast. We’re gonna worry about celebrating tonight, but tomorrow we’ll start thinking about that $100,000 bonus.”

Championship leader Brad Sweet worked around Schatz on Lap 43 to bring his Kasey Kahne Racing, NAPA Auto Parts #49 home with a second-place finish worth $12,000.

“He was just really good in clean air,” Sweet said on Reutzel. “The track got top dominant there, but honestly in traffic I think we were better than those guys. It just played out in his hands where we ran out of traffic. I don’t think I could’ve done anything different. We’ll take it and move on to Jackson with the $50,000 on the line.”

Donny Schatz finished third aboard his Tony Stewart/Curb-Agajanian Racing, Ford Performance, Carquest #15. It’s his third podium finish in the last four races.

“We gotta work on this deal a little bit, but we’re still closer than where we were,” Schatz acknowledged. We’ll accept third tonight and move on to Jackson.”

Closing out the top-five on Tuesday night was Sheldon Haudenschild aboard the NOS Energy Drink #17 in fourth and Kyle Larson in fifth for the second-straight night in Paul Silva’s #57 machine.

Rounding out the top-10 in the Huset’s 50 finale was the Kasey Kahne Racing #9 of James McFadden in sixth, the Shark Racing #1S of Logan Schuchart in seventh, the Tony Stewart/Curb-Agajanian Racing #14 of Kerry Madsen in eighth, the Big Game Motorsports #2  of David Gravel in ninth, and the KCP Racing #18 of Giovanni Scelzi with a 17th-to-1oth run worthy of KSE Racing Hard Charger.

UP NEXT: The World of Outlaws NOS Energy Drink Sprint Car Series travels to Minnesota for the 43rd annual AGCO Jackson Nationals this Thursday-Saturday, June 24-26. A special format and the biggest payday of the season ($50,000) awaits The Greatest Show on Dirt at the first crown jewel event of 2021.

NOS Energy Drink Feature (50 Laps): 1. 83-Aaron Reutzel [1][$30,000]; 2. 49-Brad Sweet [6][$12,000]; 3. 15-Donny Schatz [2][$10,000]; 4. 17-Sheldon Haudenschild [7][$7,500]; 5. 57-Kyle Larson [11][$6,000]; 6. 9-James McFadden [5][$5,900]; 7. 1S-Logan Schuchart [8][$5,800]; 8. 14-Kerry Madsen [10][$5,700]; 9. 2-David Gravel [13][$5,600]; 10. 18-Giovanni Scelzi [17][$5,000]; 11. 5-Parker Price-Miller [16][$4,000]; 12. 17W-Shane Golobic [14][$3,000]; 13. 11K-Kraig Kinser [12][$2,800]; 14. 41-Carson Macedo [3][$2,600]; 15. 26-Cory Eliason [21][$2,500]; 16. 11-Spencer Bayston [4][$2,400]; 17. 7-Justin Henderson [20][$2,300]; 18. 16-Ian Madsen [18][$2,200]; 19. 27-Carson McCarl [24][$2,100]; 20. 2C-Wayne Johnson [22][$2,000]; 21. 21-Brian Brown [23][$2,000]; 22. 83X-Lynton Jeffrey [9][$2,000]; 23. 1A-Jacob Allen [19][$2,000]; 24. 17A-Austin McCarl [15][$2,000]. Lap Leaders: Aaron Reutzel  1-50. KSE Hard Charger Award: 18-Giovanni Scelzi[+7]

NEW Championship Standings (35/81 Races): 1. Brad Sweet (4,900); 2. David Gravel (-56); 3. Carson Macedo (-124); 4. Donny Schatz (-140); 5. Sheldon Haudenschild (-144); 6. Logan Schuchart (-208); 7. Aaron Reutzel (-256); 8. Kraig Kinser (-574); 9. James McFadden (-592); 10. Brock Zearfoss (-808).

LaSalle, Spoon River, Sycamore, I-55 and Jacksonville up next

LASALLE, IL – June 22, 2021 – Five races down, 30 to go. Week Two of the 2021 DIRTcar Summer Nationals and Summit Racing Equipment Modified Nationals hits five tracks in five nights, starting Wednesday night, June 23, at the quarter-mile bullring of LaSalle Speedway.

With last Sunday’s event at Plymouth Speedway lost to rain, Bobby Pierce, of Oakwood, IL, has clinched the Week #1 championship and the first $2,000 weekly points fund check of the season. The three-time Hell Tour champion is scheduled to race most of Week #2 and will carry a 15-point lead into Wednesday night.

Nick Hoffman carries a 125-point lead into Week #2 of DIRTcar Summit Racing Equipment Modified Nationals action on the back of five consecutive wins in five starts. The rest of the UMP Modified world will attempt to stop his run, going up against the three-time champion Wednesday night at LaSalle – a place where he won last year.

Week #2 Schedule

Wednesday, June 23 | LaSalle Speedway | LaSalle, IL

Thursday, June 24 | Spoon River Speedway | Canton, IL

Friday, June 25 | Sycamore Speedway | Maple Park, IL

Saturday, June 26 | Federated Auto Parts Raceway at I-55 | Pevely, MO

Sunday, June 27 | Jacksonville Speedway | Jacksonville, IL

If you can’t get in on the action at the racetrack, watch every lap of competition live from wherever you are on DIRTVision presented by Drydene. Monthly or yearly FAST PASS subscriptions are available.

Here are the storylines to follow and drivers to watch for this week…

TIRE RULE AMENDMENT – With the current shortage of Hoosier Racing Tires, a temporary tire rule has been implemented.

All Late Model teams competing in this week’s races will be required to run Hoosier LM20 tires on the left-front, right-front and left-rear corners with an LM40 on the right-rear. Each driver will be given a receipt at the registration table, which can be redeemed at the tire truck for a set number of tires each day.

The number of tires that a team is allowed to purchase may fluctuate daily, depending on the inventory of the dealer at each track.

BABB IS BACK – Fairbury Speedway witnessed a real treat last Saturday night, watching four-time champion Shannon Babb climb through the top-10 en route to his 99th career Summer Nationals victory and first since June of 2019.

It was only his second appearance with the tour this season, but he’s got more going on his plate this week. Babb, of Moweaqua, IL, has the first four races of Week #2 on his schedule and has won a Summer Nationals race at all of them.

He’s now shooting for career Hell Tour victory #100, which, if achieved, would tie him with six-time champion Billy Moyer for #1 on the all-time wins list. Armed with his Team Zero Race Car and a ton of experience on each of the tracks he faces this week, Babb and his crew have a great shot ahead of them this week to make history.

SUMMIT MOD STREAK – Five tracks. Five wins. All 130 Feature laps led. Nick Hoffman is on one of the most dominant winning streaks the Dirt Modified world has seen in the past several seasons.

This Wednesday, he looks to make it six-in-a-row at LaSalle – the site of one of his 13 DIRTcar Summit Racing Equipment Modified Nationals Feature wins last year. He escaped the clutches of his biggest competition this past week in the six-time champion Mike Harrison, who chased him down both Friday and Saturday night but was unable to catch the Elite Chassis #2.

Hoffman, of Mooresville, NC, is now only nine wins away from tying Harrison for most Summit Modified wins all-time at 52. He’s also chasing his own single-season wins record of 13, which he set in 2019, and is well on his way to breaking it with only nine more wins required over the next 30 races.

POINTS BATTLE – Through the first five races, it’s been a close points battle between Bobby Pierce and Tanner English.

Pierce has led since the start, winning the first two races at Brownstown Speedway and Peoria Speedway. But English has kept pace with five-straight top-five finishes and a win Friday night at Tri-City Speedway – the second of his Summer Nationals career.

Fifteen points is now all that separates the two young guns. Pierce, a three-time champion, has 39 Summer Nationals wins in his career, while English, of Benton, KY, looks for #3 this week.

SQUIRREL STILL SEARCHING – With four top-10 finishes in five starts last week, defending Summer Nationals champion Brian Shirley has yet to reach Victory Lane, but has been building momentum.

After being disqualified on Thursday night at Kankakee County Speedway for failing to report to the scales after the checkered, Shirley, of Chatham, IL, and the Bob Cullen Racing team regrouped the next day at Tri-City Speedway and earned one of their best finishes of the week – a third-place to Tanner English and Bobby Pierce.

Squirrel comes into Week #2 sitting 81 points back of leader Bobby Pierce in the championship standings. He’s the defending winner at LaSalle and also had some success there earlier this year – leading over half of the Thaw Brawl DIRTcar Late Model special in May.

NASCAR CUP SERIES POCONO DOUBLE HEADER POCONO RACEWAY TEAM CHEVY PRESS CONF. TRANSCRIPT JUNE 22, 2021
ROSS CHASTAIN, NO. 42 CHIP GANASSI RACING CAMARO ZL1 1LE, Teleconference Transcript: PER YOUR NASHVILLE POST-RACE COMMENTS, IS CONFIDENCE SOMETHING THAT IN GENERAL YOU STRUGGLE WITH?“Yeah, this is a performance-driven industry. And if you don’t perform, why are you here and how are you going to stay here? I think every race car driver does. If you have a bad finish, you don’t feel as good as if you finish up front. I don’t want it to be taken too much. I don’t feel like I have deeper issues by any means. I feel like I’m living a great life, great family, great livelihood, and getting to do what I truly love and have dreamed about my entire life, or definitely since I was 12 years old and raced a truck for the first time. But yes, after Las Vegas it was tough. I had a lot of calls. I stayed out West. That’s just how my schedule worked out and I wanted to spend a week out there between Vegas and Phoenix. I had a lot of phone calls and a lot of team calls talking through the set-up and talking through what I needed and how I could be better and how the car could be better. That was a tough week.”
HOW DIFFERENT IS IT TO COMPETE IN THE CUP SERIES? HOW DIFFERENT IS YOUR MINDSET BETWEEN KNOWING WHEN YOU CAN GET BETTER AND WHERE THE ORGANIZATION IS RIGHT NOW?“Oh, I think I would talk way too long if we truly got into that. It is tough to evaluate a lot of times, but we just try to be better. That’s the main thing. We haven’t changed our processes really since I got to CGR in 2018 and it obviously ramped up last Fall once we knew we were driving this car and have just stayed the course. I’m at the Chevy simulator right now. I just hopped off. It’s the same processes, even when we walk out of a place like this and feel like my brain is scrambled and we didn’t make any progress, we just come back the next week or the next day or whenever our next session is and do it again and try to be better.”
YOUR RESULTS HAVE BEEN MUCH BETTER OVER THE PAST FEW WEEKS. HAS THERE BEEN A SINGLE AH-HA MOMENT WITH THE NO. 42 TEAM?“No, not in my opinion. All our pieces to win in the Cup Series are there. We just have to pick them up in the right order and put them at the right spot at the right time and have the right people doing it. We’ve just struggled a little bit to do that. It’s been building, even before the results were that great. We’re just steady on our progress and our processes of trying to be as best as we can be. It’s just been a building over time.”
WHAT HAS IT BEEN LIKE WORKING THROUGH THIS PROCESS WITH YOUR CREW CHIEF, PHIL SURGEN?“If you throw in there our first-time Cup Series spotter with Brandon McReynolds, and we’ve got three rookies on the No. 42 team. I know a lot of people question that and we’ve had a lot of truly open conversations before the season on what to expect. And we were short of our expectations to start the year, but we didn’t change. And the results are now getting there, and we’ve put together some good weeks. Although I’ve made a lot of mistakes, we’ve had mistakes made on the team in these races where we haven’t been up there the whole race like at least this last month together to finish the race, and that’s what it’s all about. Like at Nashville I felt like we were a top-5 car all day long. But every time they were giving out Stage points, I found myself in 24th place. It’s like what am I doing here? So, it was good to put together a good last half of the race and maximize, for sure. It’s hard to pass, so to drive up there was really good. But yeah, Phil and I have been honest with each other. We don’t cheer each other up. We’re not like a big pep rally or pep talk, neither one of us. We had a conversation after Nashville about, did I want more pep talk on the radio. I was like no, I want what you’re doing. You give me the information. You give me your thoughts. You give me your opinion and I form my own opinion, and we see where the facts shake out. We’re not big motivational speech guys on the radio. I’m all about motivating off-track, but on-track, like the it’s done now. It’s just having to do our jobs.” YOU’VE HAD SUCCESS AT POCONO PREVIOUSLY IN THE XFINITY SERIES AND IN THE TRUCK SERIES. WHAT’S YOUR MINDSET HEADING INTO THIS WEEKEND IN A CUP CAR?“You’re right. We have had some incredible weekends. I truly led my first Truck Series laps there. So that was a big moment for me. To come back in 2019 and win the Truck race and then run second last year in the Xfinity Series, you’re right. We have had some good runs there. I think what’s going to help and what’s been a good feeling all this week is through our crazy NASCAR matrix for starting positions, we’re starting in the top-10. And we’ve kind of been on the wrong end of the wheel every week on starting positions. The math was always against us. I’m not good at math in general, but I knew we were always in the 20’s. So, to be in the top-10 firing off here is right next to my teammate, Kurt Busch, I think, or close, that’s going to be a big help. And then hopefully we’re in not as good of a starting position on Sunday, like 20th, is kind of my goal.”
WHAT DO YOU DO TO PREPARE FOR ROAD AMERICA, A TRACK YOU’VE NEVER RACED ON BEFORE? IS THERE ANY STRATEGY FROM COTA YOU CAN APPLY?“Some, especially what we learned there in the rain. But our road course stuff has been incredible this year. I’ve truly been blown away at the speed and the drivability, like I can hustle the cars on the road courses and make lap times and they hang on pretty good over the longer runs. It’s been good. But I actually do have some laps there in the Xfinity Series these last few years. Truly, before the year, I had Road America as probably my best road course just on the preparation side, I thought I could help prepare the best with our Chevy simulator and like what’s real. And I thought I’d have a couple of Cup races on the road courses, and I’ll have an idea of what it should feel like. And then I’ll know that track pretty well. And then we’ve come out of the gate really strong aside from the Daytona Road Course, where we were closer to a 15th place car. The other ones we’ve been closer to a top-7 or top-5 car. Yeah, a lot of things to take from the road courses so far.”
YOU DO HAVE FIVE XFINITY SERIES STARTS AT ROAD AMERICA, AND THAT MIGHT BE THE MOST OF THE FIELD. HOW DO YOU LIKE THAT TRACK? SOME SAY IT’S THE BEST PERMANENT ROAD COURSE IN THE WORLD. WHAT ARE YOUR THOUGHTS ON IT?“It is for a lot of the right reasons. The elevation changes are not crazy, but they’re subtle enough to be raceable but they’re not just like dropping off. The curving is, in my opinion, proper. I have spent some time with the Chip Ganassi Racing IMSA guys and INDYCAR guys throughout the off-season and talked with Alex Palou from time to time. I got to listen to Simon Pagenaud on the radio. Hearing a guy like Simon describe a car on a road course as a proper corner and a proper apex and proper curb strike, I’m like okay. It’s starting to make a little bit more sense about what it should be like. There’s enough forgiveness, like you get off in the grass, but there is a penalty for overstepping. So, I think that’s another good thing. It’s not just asphalt with green paint or blue stripes like it’s truly, you’re going to be off in the grass and there’s a concrete wall coming up so, it is a tough place but it’s a good challenging place.”
DOES FIVE STARTS THERE GIVE YOU AN ADVANTAGE?“I don’t think so. These Cup guys are so good. And these simulators are so good now. I only know our Chevrolet/GM one here at Pratt & Miller, but they’re good. When you get it right they feel real. So, I take a lot from them. It’s about just as good as taking a hauler and a race car up there and making laps in real life. Plus, it doesn’t hurt as bad when you wreck.”
DOES PRACTICE HELP YOU AND DID YOU HAVE ANY CONVERSATIONS WITH CHIP GANASSI AFTER THE NASHVILLE RACE?“No, we played phone tag a little bit with Chip. I agree on the practice side. But I think all race car drivers are better with practice, like you can work on your car. Now we were good from lap 1. I actually rode out and Daniel (Suarez) and I were like passing each other in practice. I don’t know why that was happening. Neither one of us really knew why we were together on track. But I knew from my get-up-to-speed lap, my car was going to be good. And then it was just about managing the build-up of rubber and the resin and the spray throughout the weekend. The track got to a lot better spot. I ran the Truck race. I had practice Friday morning, and from there until Sunday afternoon for the Cup race, the track was proper from a rubber standpoint by Sunday. It really wasn’t ready Friday. It needed more rubber in my opinion. From Truck, practice, to race and then Cup practice to race is big and it’s big for my confidence. You go out and you’re a top-10 in practice and you’re like okay. And then you mock up and you go a little bit faster but not quite and it’s like okay, I know what I can do different. I didn’t exactly execute it Sunday morning for qualifying on Sunday morning, but I at least knew what to expect going into the race.”
HOW MUCH DIFFERENT DO YOU THINK POCONO 2 THIS WEEKEND WILL BE COMPARED TO POCONO 1? HOW MUCH WILL IT DIFFER BECAUSE OF CHANGES MADE OVERNIGHT?“I think the track will continue to take rubber. We’ll have the Xfinity race Sunday morning before our Sunday race. We’ll have some rubber on the track from the Truck guys. So that’s good. But it is two different days. If we were coming back tomorrow, what would we change? We have one night of talk through and debrief and what would we change? And then we write all that down and we incorporate it into the set-up for the next season or whenever we come back to that track again. Now it truly is. You’re coming back in the Cup Series the very next day. Unfortunately, in my experience, sometimes there’s not as big of an increase in grip or speed that you would like. The guys that are good on Saturday are probably going to be good on Sunday, plus or minus a few spots. There might be those one or two guys that might be really bad on Saturday, and they fix an issue like a mechanical issue. Nobody is going to like fall off a cliff on Sunday without a true problem. It’s going to be pretty similar. You get your balance a little closer. Unfortunately, as much as I am a race car driver and I want to practice, I am not naive to the fact that our non-practice races have been pretty good. And I don’t know that practice necessarily helps the racing product. I don’t necessarily think you’re going to expect to see a better race on Sunday. The best race might be on Saturday when we don’t really know what to expect because we haven’t been on-track here in months.
“Pocono is a place with three totally different turns and different banking and entry speeds and exit speeds and different loads on the car. So yeah, you’re going to sacrifice something to try to make the best lap times. And then you’re like oh, if I can get a little more in that back corner in my worst corner, I’ll be better. And then you hurt the other two. And you’re like oh, darn it. You have enough adjustments built into the car and that’s where my engineers and crew chief and all my guys at Chip Ganassi Racing; we have an army of people for a reason, and they build the best race car they can build. Having that adjustability built in is key to have your box big enough to truly work in.”

NORWALK, Ohio (June 22) — In addition to their mutual passion for drag racing, members of the Coughlin family all share a great love for their home state of Ohio. This intense pride for all things Buckeye place a premium on this weekend’s NHRA national event at one of the most beloved racetracks in professional motorsports. “It’s Norwalk weekend, so if you’re from Ohio this is the one you want to win the most,” said Troy Coughlin Jr., driver of the JEGS.com Elite Motorsports Chevrolet Camaro. “It’s all about Buckeye pride and representing the best state in the country.” Troy Jr. will be trying his best to bag one of three Wally trophies Team JEGS can take home when Pro Stock roars to life Friday with two rounds of professional qualifying. His uncle Mike Coughlin and sister Paige Coughlin also will be in action, pursuing their own respective victories in Top Dragster and Super Comp.

“Our family has done well at this track in the past and we really want to keep that going this weekend,” Troy Jr. said. “I actually won the last time I raced here (in 2019) when I was in Top Alcohol Dragster. My dad (Troy Coughlin Sr.) won Pro Mod here in 2014 and that same race my uncle Mike won in Top Sportsman. Aunt Samantha (Coughlin) also won Super Comp here in 2009. We need to keep those wins coming. “Uncle Mike gets on a roll in that dragster and he’s just plain nasty, and Paige is so close to a win I don’t think anyone would be surprised if she got it done here. I’m definitely pulling for them both, and we have a great chance as well. The guys never stop working on this Pro Stock car, which is what it takes to be competitive in this cutthroat class.” To that end, Troy Jr. and his team are conducting a pre-race test session at Dragway 42 in West Salem, Ohio, to try out a few things with the clutch system.

Mike is returning to Top Dragster action for the first time since mid-March when he raced back-to-back events in in Florida. Like Paige, he plans to race this weekend’s national event and next weekend’s Division 3 meet at this facility. “We’ve had an interesting schedule going back into last season that’s resulted in some longer stretches away from the track but Greg Cody, Tony Collier, Justin Beaver and Ryan Micke always have this dragster so dialed in it hasn’t really been an issue,” Mike said. “I certainly don’t lose any of my drive for doing what we do when we have more time off, in fact, I’m more inspired than ever to get back to racing. “There’s not much to report as far as the car itself. It’s been perfect and we haven’t felt the need to change anything. Basically, we’re just performing general maintenance when necessary. It’s been a dream scenario.”

Although he hasn’t been racing himself for a few months, he’s remained very involved in the sport through the development of his son’s Jack and Clay, who are both diving into sportsman-level racing this year. “Jack had his first big-car race this past weekend at Kil-kare Raceway and made it to the third round in his dragster, which I thought was a heckuva deal,” Mike said. “It was a pretty cool Father’s Day present for me, and he really enjoyed racing alongside his cousins Paige and Makenna (Brown). “Clay is scheduled to earn his Super Stock license at the end of this race so we asked Jeff Taylor to make a few more passes in his hot rod this weekend to make sure it’s ready to go. I’ll tell ya, it’s just as exciting to watch your kids race as it is to race yourself. It’s a different kind of excitement but equally as cool.”

As her uncle Mike alluded to, Paige has been getting lots of seat time on the bracket racing circuit since starting her summer break from Miami University of Ohio, where she is a senior. Her crew chief Justin Beaver, along with Tony Collier, changed some things over the winter months and wanted to make sure everything was spot-on with her dragster. “Justin and Tony put in some incredible work to give me the chance to run as best as I can,” Paige said. “I wouldn’t be anywhere without them. We ran Ohio Valley a few weeks back with T.J (Troy Jr.) and Makenna and got down to the final 15 drivers in the $50,000 main event and last weekend at Kil-kare we also got down to the final 15 cars again in the $10,000 race, so everyone is really pleased with the car now. “We had some curves thrown at us last year and we really wanted to get the car back to where it was before COVID when we finished runner-up in D3. Back then the car responded to everything we asked of it and now we feel like we’re back in that same groove. I’m just so appreciative of this opportunity, especially these next two weekends here in Ohio.” With several family members enjoying birthdays around this time of the year, Paige says the Norwalk race has always been a special weekend for her extended family. Now she’s a racer herself, Paige as a unique desire to offer some special help at all the upcoming birthday celebrations — ice cream server.  “I’m just dying to get one of those ice cream scoop trophies,” Paige said of the unique prize given to winners of this specific race. “I told my dad the other day that I can’t stop thinking about winning a scoop. It’s very Ohio. I love it.”

MALTA, NY – Break out the calendar, a new date for the Horsepower 100 at Albany-Saratoga Speedway has been established. Super DIRTcar and Albany-Saratoga Speedway officials have rescheduled the event (originally scheduled for June 22) for Tuesday, July 13, to bring the Big Blocks back to the famous Malta, NY race track. 

The stars and cars of the Super DIRTcar Series will need to top the hometown heroes of Kenny Tremont Jr., Marc Johnson and more to claim the $7,500 top prize.

“In looking at the schedules, Lyle Devore, promoter of Albany-Saratoga Speedway and I were fortunate to find a rain date to bring back the Horsepower 100 in rapid time,” Super DIRTcar Series Director Dean Reynolds said. “The Eastern Part of NY has always been popular with big blocks and several series followers call Albany-Saratoga home. So we are glad we can still give them a show.”

Series star Jack Lehner won his first Hoosier Racing Tire Weekly Championship DIRTcar Big Block Feature last Friday night. He’ll look to keep that momentum going on July 13. 

Mike Mahaney was the 2020 Albany-Saratoga Speedway track champion but he’s still looking for his first Series win. Is July 13 the day?

Matt Sheppard, Billy Decker, Jimmy Phelps, and the rest of the elite Super DIRTcar Series drivers will be eager to claim a key win at the Horsepower 100. 

Follow long for news and more on SuperDIRTcarSeries.com and on social media.

NHRA^® Team Report

NHRA – Norwalk

Pre-Race Report

Cruz Pedregon is looking to continue the team’s streak of qualifying in the top half of the Funny Car eliminations ladder as he’s done in every race to date of the 2021 season. He says the team is getting better, but still has a few kinks to work out. 

“I feel like we’re on schedule to have some great runs in the near future. We’re looking forward to Norwalk and then our Western swing starting out in Denver for the Dodge^® SRT Mile High Nationals and then on to California. Norwalk is a really good racetrack, and the stands are always packed. We know we can run some good times there,” says Cruz. “We’ve been running top speed of all the cars, even Top Fuel, so it shows that the HEMI power is there. We’re putting it to the ground and looking to improve little by little and start winning the rounds that have come as close as .0003 seconds.”

Cruz says Crew Chief John Collins (JC) and the team are giving him a good car and he’s working to keep up with it. JC worked over the break to improve Cruz’s position in the car, primarily focused on head clearance, and adding a chin strap to the helmet that’s been rubbing the roof of the 

Snap-on^® Dodge^® Charger SRT Hellcat. As for the car, Cruz says, “…it’s running better and better all the time.”

Follow Cruz and Snap-on on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram

To see the latest Cruz news, like his Facebook page, where you can also check out his Vlog “Kickin’ It With The Cruzer.” Follow Cruz on Twitter and Instagram. Be sure to follow @MakersandFixers on Instagram and share your stories at makersandfixers.com.

David Gravel Opens THE SHOWDOWN in Victory Lane

Huset’s 50 Concludes on Tuesday with $30,000 Payday Available

BRANDON, SD – June 21, 2021 – Tod Quiring’s resurrection of Huset’s Speedway is nothing to be overlooked; nor is the season his driver David Gravel and team Big Game Motorsports are piecing together.

On Monday night, both of his worlds collided in the best sense possible.

Leading the final 26 laps at the Brandon, SD oval, Gravel survived a final charge from Donny Schatz to score night one of THE SHOWDOWN, a weeklong extravaganza promoted by Quiring.

It was win #6 on the season for Gravel, who parked the #2 in victory lane with Huset’s Speedway branding all over his bright bullet. The momentum building run sends the Watertown, CT native into tomorrow’s Huset’s 50 finale with his sights set on a cool $30,000 payday – the highest purse to date in 2021 for the World of Outlaws NOS Energy DrinkSprint Car Series.

More than that, they’re chasing the mammoth $100,000 bonus available if they can sweep Tuesday’s finale at Huset’s and then Saturday’s 43rd annual AGCO Jackson Nationals.

“We’ve been really strong lately,” Gravel noted. “Luckily, I got Donny back there in the beginning. I went to the top at the start knowing it was the faster lane, but he just snookered me on that first lap. I tried hard to get by him, but it turned out to be better running second with lap traffic here. That’s what won us the race.”

After winning his Drydene Heat Race and topping the DIRTVision Fast Pass Dash, Gravel was in prime position from the start of Monday’s 35-lap NOS Energy Drink Feature.

However, Lap 1 belonged to 10-time Series champion Donny Schatz. The 300-time World of Outlaws winner throttled by Gravel from the jump and ran off into lap traffic with command.

The #15 paced the opening nine laps before the decisiveness of traffic bit him when an error in judgment slowed him on the bottom and allowed Gravel to fly by on the outside. The only caution of the race flew on Lap 11 for sixth-running Aaron Reutzel’s shredded right rear tire.

Gravel ran away with the lead on the restart and was checking out before Schatz re-entered the picture in the closing stages. He got so close on Lap 31 that he snook to the inside of Gravel’s #2 in turn one, but didn’t have enough to make the move.

Schatz tried to force Gravel’s hand on the final lap, but he played it cool and survived to win his 64th career World of Outlaws Feature.

“I was watching Donny on the DIRTVision screen there and saw him right on me,” Gravel admitted. “He’s one of the best rubber racers out here, I just knew I had to run it a little harder into turn three and I’d be fine. I conserved my tire quite a bit early on.”

Coming home with a close second-place finish was Donny Schatz, who earned his 300th career World of Outlaws win last week. The 10-time Series champion was close to win #301, but his late-race charge fell short by only 0.297-seconds in the Tony Stewart/Curb-Agajanian Racing, Ford Performance, Carquest #15.

“I just didn’t go in the right spot, I really misjudged that lapper,” Schatz said. “We had something for him there at the end, so that’s a positive. I was trying to force him into making a mistake, that’s about all I could do.”

Red-hot Kerry Madsen continued his stellar stretch by finishing third aboard the Tony Stewart/Curb-Agajanian Racing, Advanced Auto Parts, Rush Truck Centers #14. The St. Mary’s, NSW, AUS native has racked up eight consecutive top-six finishes with The Greatest Show on Dirt.

“What a fun car to drive,” Madsen raved. “Everyone at TSR does such a phenomenal drive. These Ford Performance engines suit me so much.”

Rounding out the top-five on Monday night was a pair of brother-in-laws In fourth, it was championship leader Brad Sweet aboard the Kasey Kahne Racing, NAPA Auto Parts #49. In fifth, it was NASCAR superstar Kyle Larson driving Paul Silva’s #57.

Closing out the top-10 at Huset’s was NOS Energy Drink stud Sheldon Haudenschild in sixth, Shark Racing teammates Jacob Allen and Logan Schuchart in seventh and eighth, local South Dakota native Justin Henderson in tenth, and Kraig Kinser with his first top-1o since May.

UP NEXT: THE SHOWDOWN continues tomorrow Tuesday, June 22 with the finale of the Huset’s 50 offering a $30,000 payday. The winner will have a chance to cash in for a $100,000 bonus if they also win Saturday’s $50,000 finale to the AGCO Jackson Nationals.

NOS Energy Drink Feature (35 Laps): 1. 2-David Gravel [1][$10,000]; 2. 15-Donny Schatz [2][$5,500]; 3. 14-Kerry Madsen [5][$3,200]; 4. 49-Brad Sweet [4][$2,800]; 5. 57-Kyle Larson [6][$2,500]; 6. 17-Sheldon Haudenschild [8][$2,300]; 7. 1A-Jacob Allen [3][$2,200]; 8. 1S-Logan Schuchart [11][$2,100]; 9. 7-Justin Henderson [9][$2,050]; 10. 11K-Kraig Kinser [13][$2,000]; 11. 18-Giovanni Scelzi [10][$1,500]; 12. 9-James McFadden [21][$1,200]; 13. 17W-Shane Golobic [12][$1,150]; 14. 5-Parker Price-Miller [14][$1,100]; 15. 41-Carson Macedo [15][$1,050]; 16. 2C-Wayne Johnson [17][$1,000]; 17. 11-Spencer Bayston [18][$1,000]; 18. 26-Cory Eliason [16][$1,000]; 19. 21-Brian Brown [19][$1,000]; 20. 3Z-Brock Zearfoss [24][$1,000]; 21. 17A-Austin McCarl [23][$1,000]; 22. 19-Paige Polyak [20][$1,000]; 23. 83-Aaron Reutzel [7][$1,000]; 24. 27-Carson McCarl [22][$1,000]. Lap Leaders: Donny Schatz 1-9, David Gravel 10-35. KSE Hard Charger Award: 9-James McFadden[+9]

NEW Championship Standings (34/81 Races): 1. Brad Sweet (4,754); 2. David Gravel (-42); 3. Carson Macedo (-100); 4. Donny Schatz (-138); 5. Sheldon Haudenschild (-140); 6. Logan Schuchart (-198); 7. Aaron Reutzel (-260); 8. Kraig Kinser (-552); 9. James McFadden (-584); 10. Brock Zearfoss (-752).

CORVETTE RACING AT WATKINS GLEN: Garcia, Tandy TranscriptQ&A with Corvette Racing duo ahead of IMSA Watkins Glen rounds

IMSA WEATHERTECH SPORTSCAR CHAMPIONSHIPWATKINS GLEN INTERNATIONAL / SAHLEN’S SIX HOURS OF THE GLENCORVETTE RACING ANTONIO GARCIA AND NICK TANDY MEDIA AVAILABILITY TRANSCRIPTJUNE 21, 2021 Corvette Racing drivers Antonio Garcia and Nick Tandy met with members of the media during a Zoom conference call Monday ahead of the Sahlen’s Six Hours of The Glen. FULL TRANSCRIPT: ANTONIO GARCIA, NO. 3 MOBIL 1/SiriusXM CHEVROLET CORVETTE C8.RWE ARE HEADED TO WATKINS GLEN – A BIG EVENT WITH LOTS OF HISTORY. WHAT ARE YOU MOST LOOKING FORWARD TO?“First of all, I am really looking forward to getting back there. That is one of the races we missed last year and I really like it – not just the race track but the whole event as well. As you said, it has been quite a long time since I last won over there. We came quite close in my last appearance there (in 2019). So I’m looking forward to one of my favorite races of the year, for sure.” HOW DIFFICULT IS IT TO MISS SUCH AN IMPORTANT RACE FOR A YEAR WHEN YOU HAVE BEEN SUCCESSFUL THERE? IS THERE ACTUALLY SOMETHING TO BE SAID ABOUT THE DIFFICULTIES OF SKIPPING A YEAR?“I have really missed that race track. Both the event and the racetrack itself are really, really nice to drive. So to have as many competitors as possible would be even better or even a better race for sure. But as you saw at Detroit, we only need two cars to have a good race. So, I’m sure it is going to be good fun.” YOU HAVE WON HISTORIC ENDURANCE RACES FROM LE MANS, DAYTONA, SEBRING. WHAT WOULD ANOTHER GLEN WIN MEAN TO YOU IN THE SIX-HOUR RACE?“The Glen is one of my favorite events since I discovered it back in 2006, I think. I really liked it and really wanted to win that race. I think I have only won it once or twice, I can’t remember. But every time I am there, I really like the event. The whole atmosphere with all the race fans around the area is really, really good. So hopefully we have a really good crowd over there. And it is going to be nice during the races this year just to have more and more crowds and get more involvement between us drivers and the fans. I think we are going in the right direction so looking forward to this weekend for sure.” YOU’VE BEEN IN SPRINT RACES AT WATKINS GLEN AS PART OF GRAND-AM, RIGHT? WITH THE SPRINT RACE NEXT WEEKEND, DO SETUP CHANGES OR ANY ADJUSTMENTS HAPPEN BETWEEN THE SIX HOURS AND THE SPRINT RACE?“There are a few differences. We will run into the night (during the July 2 sprint race). From what I remember, the racetrack seems to change quite a lot during the cool-down of the day and going into dusk. There are a few things we will need to learn because it’s the first time we will have run there at that time. The experience of Corvette Racing will be good enough to help us analyze and anticipate what the car will do. It will be new for us, though, and we need to see how the track develops. It won’t be the same as it will be in the Six Hours. You just need to react to what the track conditions are. Strategies probably will change a tiny bit. But even in the Six Hours, when it comes to the final two hours it’s basically like a sprint race so nothing much will change.” REFLECTIONS OF RACING AT DETROIT.“I had been waiting to do that for a long time. I have been to Detroit several times, and I always watched the IndyCar race from Belle Isle. I never had a chance to race there – I think only Jordan had raced there (on that layout) – so it was fun to get to know the track. Who knows if we might be racing there again soon or in the future. It’s always good to get to know this track. I was impressed with how different it is than Long Beach, for example. The speeds at Detroit are a little bit higher, and it’s very fun to drive. We only had to fight the other Corvette, but it was still a good fight. It was a good event and good preparation for the summer for Corvette Racing. We needed that to prepare for the normal IMSA season and Le Mans.” NICK TANDY, NO. 4 MOBIL 1/SiriusXM CHEVROLET CORVETTE C8.RWHAT IS IT LIKE TO RACE AT WATKINS GLEN, AND WHAT YOU EXPECT THIS WEEK?“I’m really looking forward to going back to Watkins Glen actually. It is one of these iconic race tracks. The place is so fast, especially in the latest GTLM machinery. It is a real pleasure to drive and is something that I think a lot of us missed last year not going there. Of course, this time we get to race twice there in pretty much a week. The last time I was there we were victorious. It was always a place, and especially in the six-hour, and a race that I had wanted to be successful in for a long time. It was kind of the last of the endurance races that I got to tick off my list. I managed to do that the last time in 2019. So really looking forward to going back to a track that is good fun to drive and good fun to get success at as well.” HOW DIFFICULT IS IT TO MISS SUCH AN IMPORTANT RACE FOR A YEAR WHEN YOU HAVE BEEN SUCCESSFUL THERE? IS THERE ACTUALLY SOMETHING TO BE SAID ABOUT THE DIFFICULTIES OF SKIPPING A YEAR?“From a competition point of view, it isn’t really an issue. I see it more from the sporting point of it that we missed. It is the fact that we did miss out on racing against other great cars on this great circuit. Of course there are people we see at Watkins Glen that we don’t see anywhere else on the IMSA circuit. I think from a purely competitive point of view, missing a year doesn’t affect anything from a sporting side. It just makes us more eager to go back.” YOU ARE THE DEFENDING GTLM WINNER AT THE GLEN AND THE WINNER IN DETROIT, SO DOES THE CONFIDENCE INCREASE THIS WEEKEND?“Yes (laughing), I guess so. My confidence level is growing all the time with each day I spend with the team and each race I do in the car. We had a great Detroit event for the team with both cars. The cars were competitive. The cars were reliable. The team did a good job and we had a good fight with speed in the race and also strategy. This got us kind of back going into the swing of things going racing. It’s good to know we’ve had that kind of week of practice if you like. As for Watkins Glen…I remember the last time we were there. It basically came down to a fight with my car and this other chap that is next to me in the video in a yellow Corvette! I’m kind of hoping it will come down to that again in the next race, but this time it is the two Corvettes out front fighting it out for the last couple of hours. Yes, it’s just great to think about the fact of going back. Driving a fast car around Watkins Glen, it’s always a pleasure. So we’re looking forward to going back to compete and hopefully bag another win for the No. 4, and if not then for our buddies in the No. 3.” TALK ABOUT THE TRANSITION INTO CORVETTE RACING SO FAR.“Talking purely technically about the machinery, both cars (the Corvette C8.R and Porsche 911 RSR) are quite similar for a reason. They are made to set of regulations to run with similar power, similar grip and similar aerodynamic ability. This is the whole idea of the class. Past that, there is a different way that I’ve found the cars achieve lap time, and this is something I kind of had to get used to quite a bit. I won’t tell you where the cars are strong and where they’re not (laughing). But yeah, the cars are very similar. There are differences in how you operate functions within the car from a systems point of view. This is all pretty basic stuff that you learn from a manual or a sim session. Finding the last one percent (of performance) is different. One type of car is maybe better in straight-line braking and one type of car is maybe better in the trail-brake phase. Once you kind of get your head around it, it only takes a day or so (to get up to speed). Luckily, we have some great people at Corvette Racing and I have some great teammates to help me out with the best driving style to do this. Past this, the hardest thing for me was to find out my place, how I could integrate into the team, find out what my role as a driver should be, and how I can best make my role as a driver to help the team go forward – and that’s of course not just driving the car. It’s been great, and every time we go to the racetrack it’s been better and better. I feel like when we go racing now, it’s my new family. I look forward to seeing them all.”  WITH THE SPRINT RACE NEXT WEEKEND, DO SETUP CHANGES OR ANY ADJUSTMENTS HAPPEN BETWEEN THE SIX HOURS AND THE SPRINT RACE?“Like Antonio says, the endurance races typically come down to the last two or three hours anyway – your typical sprint-race length. From a car setup point of view, everything would be pretty similar. From a hardware point of view, the only thing we tend to do is run different brakes if we are in a 12-hour race or longer, but probably in the Six Hours we will run a sprint brake package. So other than the track conditions changing and adapting to that, the cars will be pretty similar.” WHAT ARE YOU LOOKING TO IN THE FUTURE FOR YOURSELF AND OTHER CATEGORIES OF RACING?“I don’t know where GT classes are going at the moment, honestly… whether there will be global GT unification as has been talked before. I don’t think the decision is going to be made any time soon. I don’t know… perhaps other people know more about it than we do. At the end of the day, I’ve always said I wanted to drive the fastest cars possible in the greatest championships with the greatest racing. That changes from year to year, let alone from generation of sports car racing to generation of sports car racing. As to what the cars and classes will be in the future, I don’t know. Given the evolution of the sport, the cars won’t be any slower or any less fun to drive. We all like driving the fastest cars possible with the greatest teams against the greatest competition. For me, that whole ethos has surrounded GTLM and IMSA for the last three or four years. That’s why I’m so happy to still be in this environment.” REFLECTIONS OF RACING AT DETROIT.“I was pretty shocked, actually. I had seen the racetrack and event on TV, and I had driven the track on simulation software. But I didn’t realize how much fun it would be and how fast the track at Belle Isle actually is. I must admit I really enjoyed the whole event. I got into the whole euphoria around bringing the Corvettes back to Chevrolet’s home base and the release of the new production car that we got to drive across the bridge. I wasn’t sure how we would approach the race weekend before we got there, but when the team said we were treating this like a normal race weekend and it would be good practice for future events, it was good competition and good fun. I enjoyed driving the circuit and I enjoyed the event.”

NASCAR CUP SERIES NASHVILLE SUPER SPEEDWAY ALLY 400 TEAM CHEVY PRESS CONF. TRANSCRIPT JUNE 20, 2021

KYLE LARSON TAKES THE WIN AT NASHVILLE SUPERSPEEDWAYTeam Chevy Scores Fifth-Consecutive NCS VictoryNASHVILLE, TN – (June 20, 2021)– Kyle Larson’s remarkable win streak continues by driving his No. 5 Valvoline Camaro ZL1 1LE to victory lane in the NASCAR Cup Series (NCS) inaugural visit to Nashville Superspeedway in the Ally 400. In dominating fashion, Larson led 264 of the 300-lap race on the 1.33 concrete oval to capture his third-consecutive points-paying in NASCAR’s premier series. The feat was the Chevrolet driver’s 10th NCS career-victory and fourth of the regular season. In addition, Larson won the annual invitational NASCAR All-Star race in Texas last weekend.
Larson’s victory marks the eighth win for the Camaro ZL1 1LE on the 2021 NCS season and 803rd all-time victory for Chevrolet in NASCAR’s premier division. The Bowtie Brand has now made its way to NCS victory lane for the fifth-consecutive points-paying event, which Chevrolet last accomplished in the 2014 season. The 28-year old’s feat gave Rick Hendrick and the Hendrick Motorsports organization its 271^st all-time victory in the sport. Ross Chastain, driver of the No. 42 Clover Camaro ZL1 1LE for Chip Ganassi Racing, posted his career-best finish in his NASCAR Cup Series career with a runner-up finish. Chastain has recorded two top-five’s and three top-10’s in the last four races. Larson’s Hendrick Motorsports teammate, William Byron, took the checkered flag in third to give Chevrolet a 1-2-3 finish.  Additionally, Ricky Stenhouse, Jr., aboard the No. 47 Kroger/Nature Valley Camaro ZL1 1LE, Daniel Suarez, No. 99 Tootsies Orchid Lounge Camaro ZL1 1LE, and Kurt Busch, No. 1 Monster Energy Camaro ZL1 1LE finished sixth, seventh, and eighth, respectively, giving Team Chevy six of the top-8 in the final order. Aric Almirola (Ford) finished fourth and Kevin Harvick (Ford) rounded out the top-five in the 300-lap event at Nashville Superspeedway. 
KYLE LARSON, NO. 5 VALVOLINE CAMARO ZL1 1LE, PRESS CONFERENCE TRANSCRIPT: THE MODERATOR: We’re now joined by our winner today, Kyle Larson.Introductory sentence: how bad of a machine was that that you had today? KYLE LARSON: It was another good one. We’ve had probably the best race car on the racetrack for at least a month and a half. Good to take advantage of it, get another win. Able to jump out to a lead right from the get-go, basically lead the rest of the race. If it wasn’t for the cautions at the ends of the stages, we had a near perfect day.Just happy with it, happy to get another win. The crowd was awesome, too. Kind of I think the atmosphere felt really high before the race. It was just cool to be here, cool to be in Nashville all week. Always great to get a win. THE MODERATOR: Questions.Q.This is your 10th career win, third straight points paying victory. What do both of these stats mean to you?KYLE LARSON: Yeah, I mean, it’s awesome to get multiple wins in a row now in the Cup Series. I mean, really it’s four wins in a row. Just cool to do that. Didn’t think that was possible ever for me in the Cup Series anyways. I’ve gone on streaks in dirt racing and stuff before, but never been close to doing anything like that in Cup.It’s been awesome. To get to now double-digit point paying wins is great. I’d like to keep winning and keep inching my name up the winner’s list not only at NASCAR but at Hendrick Motorsports, too. I think that’s important to me. Q.The guitar trophy has taken extra meaning as a memorial to Sam Bass. Did you have a relationship with him?KYLE LARSON: Not really. I talked to him a handful of times. He was always an extremely happy person whenever I was around him. He did a lot for the sport of NASCAR, especially this race I think when it was going on here in the past.Cool to win a trophy, a cool trophy. Cool to win that guitar. I think that’s what we all were striving for this weekend, was to get a guitar. Q.You win a lot whether it’s at this level or sprints. It feels like sometimes when one guy starts to win all the races, fans get restless, this guy wins too much. The reception for you has been glowing. What do you attribute the receptiveness among fans to? Fans celebrate. Why do you think that is?KYLE LARSON: Well, it’s still just early on, so it could change.I think fans can appreciate me because I do it in all different types of forms of racing, not just NASCAR. You don’t know what car I’m going to be in on what day of the week. I could be in a sprint car like I will be tomorrow, in a late model middle of the week some other day, then a Cup car on Sunday.I think fans, because I’m a little bit different than your normal race car driver, I think that’s why fans so far seem to still cheer me on and like to see me winning.Too, I think they can appreciate my story and how hard I’ve had to work to come and get to where I’m at today, too. I think there’s a lot that goes into it. I appreciate the fan support and I like being a fan favorite. It definitely means a lot to me. Q.Do you look at this season as four wins or it could have been eight wins? It’s pretty conceivable you could have won four other races this year.KYLE LARSON: I don’t know. Right now I’m guess I’m not thinking about that. At times, yeah, I can catch myself thinking about it.There’s definitely been a few that have slipped away. At the same point we do have the most wins now in the series, which is great.I really am just looking forward now. You can’t change the past. I’d like to just continue to win, continue to win stages, keep racking up the Playoff points to try to distance myself from the competition and make our final 10 weeks a little easier or give us a little bit of wiggle room in case we slip up, make a mistake or have some bad luck.That’s my goal, just to keep winning, win races, but to rack up those Playoff points. Q.Some of those cases have been circumstantial. You’ve been able to do it the last couple races here. Is there something you were able to do a little bit more these last couple races as opposed to what didn’t work out before?KYLE LARSON: I don’t know. I mean, I think you learn from all of those times that you didn’t win. Yeah, I mean, there was a lot that I learned from at Atlanta that I’m sure without even really knowing that I’m doing it that I put into my driving that has made me better to win races here lately.Kansas was another one I could have won. I feel like there’s been a couple times now where I’ve been in the second row of being the guy pushing, restarting. I’ve done a better job of not screwing that up. You learn from every time that you don’t win.Yeah, I mean, I think it kind of adds up and stacks up to now you can race and make less mistakes, get wins. Q.With all the talk of corded tires we saw during the tire test a few months back, what kind of wear did you see with your car today?KYLE LARSON: Well, I didn’t get to see any of the wear from my seat. From what my crew chief was telling me after the cautions, every time they said my tires looked great. Obviously I burned them down there after the checkered, so we don’t really get to see that last run, it was really long. I felt like I was getting tighter towards the end of that long run there.But, yeah, they put that resin down. I wasn’t here at the test. I know at the test, I heard at the test, they were only able to go 25, 20 laps before they’d cord a tire. They put this resin down and it obviously got us a long ways through a run.I felt like that was a really good thing for this concrete-style surface. I’ve never raced here before. Like when we race at Dover, Martinsville, there’s concrete in the corners – trying to think if there are any other tracks – when we get a caution, we pick that rubber up. Seemed like today that resin was just sticky enough or something that it didn’t allow us to pick up the rubber up under yellow. I think that helped our tires live throughout a run.Yeah, I don’t know if that will work on a pavement track like it does on a concrete track. I feel like it’s a good move that NASCAR did. Q.Talking to Cliff earlier, he says he’s a pavement, late model stock guy, you’re dirt car. He said in y’all’s relationship, he tried to learn your lingo to better forge that relationship. Do you remember a moment in the season where maybe you saw him bridge that gap, or were you immediately clicking?KYLE LARSON: Well, I think I’m really easy to work with I feel like. My lingo is pretty easy because I don’t really talk a whole lot. I just say I’m loose or I’m tight.I think he did come to a handful of my dirt races throughout the end of last. He came to the world finals at Charlotte for the late model. I think he was there when I ran the sprint car. He came to a midget race at Millbridge.I think kind of him putting himself around me, I guess listening to me from a distance, maybe that helped. I haven’t really felt like there’s been a bridge to overcome or anything like that. I feel like we’ve worked really well together this whole year. We continue to probably get even more comfortable and work even better together.He’s also a really easy guy to I feel like communicate with because he is so good at communicating. So, yeah, I feel like I’m easy to work with, and so far he and my whole team have been really easy to work with. Q.Rick has pretty much taken the restrictions off; you can go race anywhere as long as he feels like this is your priority. Was that a conversation you needed to have when you were doing the contract? Are you glad you’ve been allowed to do whatever you want to do?KYLE LARSON: Well, I’m definitely glad, for sure. It’s not something they typically let their drivers do in the past. I’m friends with Kasey, when he was racing at Hendrick. Yeah, I had known about them and kind of how they didn’t like Kasey when he’d go race other stuff. He didn’t get to do it a whole lot.Yeah, when I was getting ready to start talking with Mr. H and Jeff about racing their Cup cars, I was a little bit nervous and bummed that I probably wouldn’t be able to race as much dirt. I didn’t think that they would cut me fully. I also didn’t expect them to kind of let me do whatever I wanted either.It’s worked out really great for me. Cliff I think understands that when I race, I get better. I just kind of go through with him on what races I want to run. He’s been cool to let me race as long as, yeah, it’s not interfering with anything I’ve got going on with the NASCAR team because that’s always been my number one priority, even in the past.I know a lot of people don’t think that. NASCAR has always been my number one priority. I don’t miss anything. I don’t go race a dirt race when I could be doing something else with the NASCAR team, whether it be sponsor appearance or sim day or whatever. I’m there for the NASCAR team. I’ve kept it that way, I’ve been able to race a lot throughout the week. Summer is really busy, but I love it. Q.Is winning here any more special considering the rich history that racing has in Nashville, the first NASCAR Cup Series race in 30 years, Hendrick Motorsports has a rich history here and at the fairgrounds?KYLE LARSON: I think it definitely adds some enjoyment because, yeah, I mean, this is the first time the Cup Series has been to this racetrack. I stayed in the city this week. I got to see how pumped up all the race fans were for the race this weekend. There’s a lot of fans that recognized me throughout the last couple days walking around, wishing me good luck, saying how excited they were to go to the race.That’s what kind of made me feel extra special about this race, is just seeing how excited the fans were to go to a new venue, sort of get to watch some Cup racing in Nashville. Q.That quarter-mile burnout you did in front of the grandstands, just a salute to the fans? Your thoughts on seeing all the people that came out here today.KYLE LARSON: Yeah, it pretty much was a salute to the crowd. I didn’t get to make it the whole length of the grandstands before my tires started shredding. I was going to try.I was getting ready to do a burnout at the flag stand. I noticed the fans stretched out a long ways down, and people were still standing up cheering. I was going to go down there, do a burnout as long as I could. It was cool. Q.Rick said he might have to evaluate during the Playoffs about extracurricular racing. Does that bother you at all?KYLE LARSON: No. I have my schedule pretty much set up where it slows down a lot once the Playoffs come around. That’s kind of what I always used to do, too. Like I said, I’m not doing anything different than I did before. There’s just a few kind of midweek races local that I’d like to do.Yeah, like I said, NASCAR is my priority. Q.Rick said he worries about you getting tired. He said but your stamina is like nothing he’s ever seen before. How do you do it? You’ve won four races in seven days and run five.KYLE LARSON: I don’t know. I mean, this is what I’m used to doing. My body’s built to be busy, I guess, be racing all the time.I don’t know. I get sleep. I mean, the dirt races start at like 6:00. I get more sleep on those nights than I do for a normal day when I’m getting up early to take Owen to school, go work out, stuff like that. Summer months I probably get more sleep now than I do throughout the normal parts of the year.Like I said, it’s what I’ve always done. Last year I raced 96 times or something. I’m used to it. Q.Valvoline was a sponsor this week. How important do you think it is to win when you have a company that has chosen to come aboard with you?KYLE LARSON: Yeah, definitely. It’s definitely important to me to do a good job on the track, but also try to give them as much exposure as we can throughout the night. We were able to do that today.Just really cool that they’re willing to back me and get on our race car. I’m glad we could bring them to Victory Lane today. There was a lot of people from Valvoline here. Cliff and I got to hang out, talk to them for a while before the race.Yeah, nice to have them here. I look forward to the other couple races we have Valvoline. Hopefully we can get some more partners throughout the rest of the season. Q.The last Cup race was won 37 years ago in a No. 5 Hendrick car. Comment on the coincidence or oddity, linking the past and the future?KYLE LARSON: Yeah, I didn’t realize that until he mentioned that in Victory Lane. Definitely a really cool stat. I think more than anything, it just shows how well Rick Hendrick has been able to maintain this success throughout so long. It’s unbelievable how he’s done so much for this sport. We’re all very fortunate to be racing for him. Mechanics, everybody at the shop, I don’t know if there’s a single same person part of the race team that was there 30 something years ago when they won here last time. But we’re celebrating with another win.Like I said, it just shows how he is so good at bringing people that he believes in to keep his organization as strong as it is. Q.Are there any weaknesses on the 5 team right now? How do you look forward to Pocono next weekend?KYLE LARSON: I don’t know. I mean, there’s definitely probably areas we can always get better. I think you can always get every area of your game better. Even when we’ve been winning, we still look at things that we could have done better, whether it be on the racetrack, on pit road, just little things to maximize our day.I guess I can’t pinpoint like one thing that’s a weakness, but if we can continue to get every area better, I mean, we’ll be really hard to beat. We’re winning and we’re happy, but we’re never content. We’ll have a meeting again tomorrow and talk about how to be better. Q.How do you feel about Pocono next weekend?KYLE LARSON: I’m obviously excited to go to any racetrack right now. I do enjoy Pocono a lot. I think that will be a style of track we’re really fast at hopefully. It’s three different corners. I mean, there’s that that will make you a little bit nervous.Yeah, I’ve always felt like I’ve gotten around there pretty well, even at Ganassi. I’m excited to get there. THE MODERATOR: The win was 1984, Geoff Bodine.Q.Rick said you came in at midnight. Was that Friday morning?KYLE LARSON: Yeah. I got here at 4:30 in the morning. I raced Wednesday at Waynesfield and won, yeah, drove all night, pulled in here at 4:30. Q.You weren’t tired?KYLE LARSON: I got an energy drink from Sunshine, it helped me get there. I actually wasn’t that tired. I got caught up on my sleep, for sure. I was tired, yeah. You’d be tired. Q.Your three points wins have been on three different types of tracks, three different aero packages really with Charlotte, Sonoma, here. Does that add anything to the significance of it?KYLE LARSON: I don’t know. I guess I don’t really think that way. But I think it just shows the strength in our race team right now, in our organization, for Hendrick Motorsports. I’ve won, but really all four of us have been really good at all those styles, too.I think it says a lot for the Playoffs and stuff like that. But, like I’ve said every week now in here, it’s still a lot of racing left to go, a lot of opportunity for other teams to get better, and even for us to get better. Just got to keep working hard. Q.Today’s win tied you on NASCAR’s all time wins list with Sterling Marlin. There’s such a great history of great racers in middle Tennessee, the Nashville area. Anybody in particular that you admired up through the ranks?KYLE LARSON: I don’t know. When I got to race at Ganassi, I heard a lot of Sterling Marlin stories, funny ones, from McMurray, probably that I can’t really talk about (smiling).I guess I did get to think of Sterling. I heard he always would stay at the hotels. He’d bring a motorhome, but stay in a hotel in town. I stayed in a hotel this week. Maybe we channeled some inner Sterling Marlin and got a win this week.I think with him being at Ganassi, me being there, he would be the one I admired a little bit. Q.The moment where the final restart happens, Cliff is saying you have to save three laps of fuel, you get the debris on the front grille, how did you manage that part of the race there?KYLE LARSON: Yeah, I knew we needed to save fuel even before he ever kind of told me to. I was kind of starting to back my entry up, be easy on the throttle on exit. He was able to realize what I was doing, kind of coached me on doing a little bit more of it.Yeah, there was paper and plastic flying all over the track all day long. There was a few times throughout the race where I got trash in the grille, would have to tuck up, get it off. Thankfully it never landed in a spot where my temps rose quickly. They just slowly rose.That last time it got to where it was starting to get too hot, was able to get it off quick. Was a little bit stressed out then. But I was saving, could pay attention through my mirror, still realize I was still pulling away. Q.Seems like you and Cliff never lost your composure. Does that speak to your working relationship?KYLE LARSON: Yeah, definitely. Cliff’s a great leader. He’s really good at I feel like communicating and keeping everybody informed, keeping you calm that way.So, yeah, when you are saving fuel, it feels like you’re going way slow. It’s easy to calm yourself down that way, at least for me. I was calm and just trying to count the laps down, hoping that a caution wouldn’t come out because I knew strategy would get crazy like it did at the ends of the stages. I didn’t know what the call was going to be if a caution came out, but also trying to plan ahead, stuff like that.Yeah, thankfully it played out like we needed and we got the win. Q.Does all the racing help you at a place like here?KYLE LARSON: Yeah, I think all the racing helps for everything. I win a Cup race, it helps me for dirt racing.I think, too, even though it’s different race cars, looking at the driver telemetry data and stuff helps when I go race a sprint car, as well, even though they’re different cars. I can kind of imagine a line in my head of what I’m doing in the sprint car. I think that helps me.Then, too, I think just racing a lot. I’m in racing situations more than anybody else in the world really, but especially in Cup. I think that helps me stay sharp, it helps me be aggressive, it helps me understand what things are doing, tracks changing, stuff like that.Too, I think you’re just getting into a rhythm and staying in a rhythm, where none of these guys are going to get back in a car until Saturday. I think it’s a big advantage for me to be in a car multiple times throughout the week. THE MODERATOR: Kyle, congratulations. Thank you for the time with the media. Good luck for the rest of the season. KYLE LARSON: Thanks a lot.
CLIFF DANIELS (CREW CHIEF, NO. 5 VALVOLINE CAMARO ZL1 1LE) AND RICK HENDRICK (OWNER, HENDRICK MOTORSPORTS) PRESS CONFERENCE TRANSCRIPTTHE MODERATOR: We’ll get started with our post-race press conference here today. Winner of today’s Ally 400, NASCAR Cup Series race at Nashville Superspeedway. The winning car owner is none other than Mr. Rick Hendrick.Interesting stat we saw on the board that now six of the last 13 venues that have opened, a Hendrick Motorsports car has won. Goes back to Indianapolis, Auto Club Speedway, Kansas with Jeff Gordon, and of course the Daytona road course and COTA with Chase Elliott, here today with Kyle Larson.Talk about today’s race, Kyle, unbelievable job by the entire 5 team. RICK HENDRICK: I thought he was good in practice. I thought all our cars were pretty good in practice. He did an awesome job. Cliff called an exceptional race. Pit crew did their job. It was pretty flawless all day long.They’ve been in full stride here for the last seven, eight weeks. Really all year. But it’s good to finish it off. I wish William had had a little bit of gas that we could have went 1-2 again.We’re happy to be here. I love this place. I love the crowd. It felt like old times. Fans excited. I got trapped trying to get in. But it just felt good. It felt like we were back years ago with the fans excited, shoulder to shoulder.Really proud of this guy. He’s worked hard. They’ve all brought good cars. Glad to get this win. THE MODERATOR: We’re also joined by Cliff Daniels, the crew chief for the No. 5 machine.Cliff, how worried were you at the end of the race, could you make it on gas, could you not? How much was ate worry for you? CLIFF DANIELS: Yeah, definitely a concern. Kyle knew going into the race, he and I talked about so many different strategies, even the caution coming out late, if we had to take rights or stay out.Actually one of the last questions he asked me before he walked out of the truck was what a fuel run was, what would be a scenario to save fuel. I kind of walked him through potential scenarios.We didn’t know how the race was going to play out like here in Nashville. Hats off to the folks at Nashville Superspeedway. What a great crowd, what a great race. Really cool atmosphere being here.Definitely concerned at the end of the race, but Kyle kind of owned what he needed to do to save fuel, got us to the end. He did a great job on track. Pit crew did a great job. Thanks to Valvoline, hendrickcars.com, everybody at Hendrick Motorsports, Chevrolet. What a cool day. THE MODERATOR: We’ll take questions. Q.Rick, to see the 5 car have so much success, we all know what that number means, what does that mean personally for you for Kyle to come out here and show everybody that he is one of the greatest drivers out here?RICK HENDRICK: Well, you know, when I thought about it this year, the 5 was our first number. I was super excited to bring it back. Then to run Ricky’s paint scheme on it, that was kind of like icing on the cake. Then to see the car run like it does, and Kyle do the job, Cliff do the job he’s doing, yeah, it’s super exciting for me to see all of the cars go.But the 5 was the first number. Almost didn’t get through the year. Now to be here and have this many victories, to see that car back on track, it never gets old.I mean, I get nervous toward the end we’re going to run out of fuel, there’s going to be a caution, all those things that I go through. What is it, 270 times now? CLIFF DANIELS: I think 271. RICK HENDRICK: Well, I’m old. I can’t keep up with it.Every time that the car’s on the track, I think back to Geoff Bodine, I think Harry Hyde. I think about the little shop on the hill. I think about how I was renting transmissions, rear-end, all those things. I don’t think I had 200, 300 thousand dollars to start.I think back to those days, kind of reminisce how hard it was, then how lucky I’ve been to have the talent that I’ve had, the drivers I’ve had. It’s just been unreal.I was talking to Richard Petty. I said, I remember getting an autograph from you. I never thought I’d get to go in the pits, let alone have a team. Then we talked about the fact that he backed out on me (smiling). Maybe he had enough championships.No, it means a lot. I think about all the people along the way. I still kept Harry’s shop just like it is with equipment in it. I can go up there and walk through there. It’s like going back in time. Q.Cliff, this is the closest thing to a plug-and-play situation in racing. You take a good driver, put him in a new team, it takes a year or so for everyone to gel. You hit the ground running. You tell Kyle on the radio, I like what you’re doing, keep doing that. Is there ever a moment when you don’t like what you see out of Kyle? We haven’t heard a lot of it.CLIFF DANIELS: The first answer is no, not at all. The second answer would be, I’m so thankful to the group that we have back at the shop. We do a lot of prep work every week, all teams do, right? But Kyle really owns his time to come to the shop, just to dig into the notes with us. Obviously there’s not a whole lot of notes for Nashville, other than testing notes years ago. But Kyle has a great routine of how he preps for a race.Something I’ve tried to do this year is to really understand the dirt world a lot more than I ever used to. I grew up in asphalt, late model guy. I’ve exposed myself a lot more to the dirt this year because of Kyle. Just to learn how to speak his language so that when we get in these situations, I can understand his feedback better, what he sees for a track, what he sees for a car. There’s no denying his talent is 10 out of 10 right now.Our job and my job is to make sure that he sees all the notes and all the perspective of a race just for how to manage a race, if you get behind, how do you get ahead, what different strategies can play out, things like that.Not only is he an amazing talent, he’s also very, very smart behind the wheel of understanding what is going on with other racers around him, if somebody is off sequence, if we’re off sequence, what does that look like. He does such a good job.We’re kind of in sync going into a race because the prep time we put in during the week. I think if we weren’t able to do that, then it would just be a tougher learning curve.Sounds crazy to say, but we’re still learning each other every week. Couldn’t be more thankful for what we have now. Q.Mr. H, in the past you’ve had reluctance to let your drivers go out of and do other disciplines. Kyle has done way more than I thought he would ever do with you. What was that initial conversation like? Does him having success allow him to say, We’re going to keep this rolling?RICK HENDRICK: Well, I’ve let Chase do races, and Alex. I basically told them, If you get hurt, I got to put somebody in the car.I think as we get closer in the Playoffs, I think we’ll slow some of it down. But Cliff and I have talked about it. It makes him better to drive all these different cars, especially those high-horsepower cars on dirt.The one thing that Cliff has talked to me about is he spends as much time or more time than any other driver in the shop. If he wants to race, he’s got this as a priority. I mean, he digs and digs and digs. It’s all he thinks about.I think he’s happier. I want him happy. I don’t want him hurt. I’ve kind of given up on these guys wanting to drive. The crew chiefs and I have talked about it. They think it’s good. The safety deals are better. I’ve told them all they can drive what they want to. Q.Mr. H, last Cup race in Nashville was won by the No. 5 with Geoff Bodine. What do you remember from that victory?RICK HENDRICK: I got the coolest guitar. I got a Chet Atkins limited edition. It’s the prettiest guitar in my collection. I just remember how unbelievable that was. I still can’t believe we won three races that year. It just blows my mind from the start.Yeah, Nashville’s a great place to race. It’s a great city. If I didn’t live in Charlotte, I’d want to live here, so… I’m a country music fan. I was hanging out with Brad today. We’ve been buddies for a long time.It’s special to come back and compare these two. I don’t get the guitar this time. Do we get a duplicate guitar? THE MODERATOR: You can get anything you want, Mr. H. RICK HENDRICK: I’ll put that beside my other guitar. Q.You had Valvoline on the race car. Third race this season that a non Hendrick company has been on the car. How is the interest in Kyle going from companies?RICK HENDRICK: It’s a lot of interest. But my guys don’t want to take ‘Hendrick’ off the car. All the dealerships, they’ve got all kinds of promotions. Valvoline has been a great sponsor for us for a long time. We’ve had a lot of interest. It’s growing every day.We want to wait for the right deal. We don’t want to take a piecemeal deal because I think it’s worth more to me than to do that. But it’s tremendous interest in Kyle. A lot of companies are telling me they appreciate me giving him the chance. Some of them are ready to spend some money, just not enough. Q.If he keeps winning this way, why doesn’t hendrickcars.com sponsor him?RICK HENDRICK: I think we’re getting real close to that (smiling). I keep jacking the price up to the automotive group and they haven’t said no yet, so… Q.Rick, a couple weeks ago you were asked if you could compare Kyle Larson to any driver you’ve had in the past. You said Tim Richmond. Now we’re looking at Kyle’s third win in a row, because the All-Star Race. We don’t know where the ceiling is yet. How much do you start to think about that summer of ’86, with Tim winning six times, Pocono through the Southern 500?RICK HENDRICK: I just remember how talented Tim was. He enjoyed it. He was fearless. He did things with the car. Like qualifying at Charlotte, he would tell me when I run four laps, I’m going to graze the bumper on the wall every lap. He’d sit on the pole, but he’d take the paint off the right rear bumper qualifying four times.I mean, he was fun. I think he would have been an awesome champion. I don’t know when you look at Jimmie Johnson, Jeff Gordon, all of the guys that love to race, just excited to get in the car, he just reminds me a lot of Tim. Q.Cliff, after all the talk of cording tires during the tire test a few months ago, what kind of tire wear did you see with your car today?CLIFF DANIELS: I thought Goodyear brought a great tire. Our tires never had cords, never had any edges worn out or anything like that. A tire, when you can race hard, has two seconds of falloff or more over a run, the drivers get to slip and slide around. It looked to me like guys that pushed their stuff really hard, you could kind of back off, cool it down, make another run.I thought the track, the way the resin application went down, was great because we had multiple lanes you could race at any point of the race. You had guys that were fast on the bottom, guys that were fast on the middle, or even up top. That’s what we want to see from a racing standpoint when we come to any track really, especially a new track.Hats off to the track. Hats off to Goodyear. I thought it was great. Q.Cliff, fair or not, maybe a knock against Kyle at times is not being able to finish off races where he’s been dominant. Are there certain things that are starting to come in place that’s allowing that to happen? He was calm when you were telling him about fuel mileage, the grille issue.CLIFF DANIELS: Yeah, I mean, I don’t remember every scenario over the past for races that maybe he didn’t finish out after he led a lot of laps.Speaking to our year, there’s been races where we led laps, we haven’t gotten the job done. We took that very personal, right? We took it on the chin, went back to work at the shop. Really looked at the way the whole race played out from changes or communication that we had earlier in the race to what did we need to improve to really execute at the end.Fortunately things are going well right now. I cannot say enough about our pit crew and the road crew, the guys back at the shop. They’re building fast race cars. The guys are doing a great job on pit road. Having such strength of a team behind us almost makes that easier so then we can hone in on those fine details to make sure I make the right call, to make sure he gives the right feedback, makes the right moves on a restart. A lot of it is circumstantial. That’s when you need to make the right decision and move. Q.Rick, with this run, the wins, the top twos, the last six weeks, this is something that is Jimmie Johnson-esque, Jeff Gordon-esque. How do you view that? Do you see it in those terms with what he’s doing? I think last time Jimmie won four in a row was in ’07.RICK HENDRICK: We’ve had a streak, but today wasn’t a very good day for the 48. They’ve been battling up there among themselves. I think this year is the best year for all four cars. We said we have one team with four cars, and they work together. Chad is in the shop. The cars are identical as we can make them. The feedback and exchange is the best I’ve ever seen between the drivers. My job is to keep it that way, not to have any feuding and fighting.I think on par I look at William and how far he’s come, and Chase. I think that we’ve got four cars on any given race weekend we got a shot to win with them. But Kyle, he’s just ripping it up right now.Jimmie was a lot like that. Jeff had a streak. So it’s fun when it happens. It’s a lot better than trying to go back and figure out how to get in the top 10 and the top 5.I think they’re feeding off each other. This guy right here, he’s not taking enough credit for the hours and the videos and the work that he does. I think when I look at all the crew chiefs, I think about Ron, Chad in the shop. I think we’ve got more talent, more depth than we’ve ever had. Q.Rick, I wanted to ask you, what are you seeing in Kyle that is allowing him to win four races in a row?RICK HENDRICK: He’s one of the hungriest drivers that I’ve ever seen. Other than his family, he doesn’t care. I mean, that’s all he wants to do. That’s all he thinks about.He drove some track here, drove his motorhome here, got in 12:00 at night, wasn’t it? CLIFF DANIELS: True story. RICK HENDRICK: He just eats, sleeps and drinks racing. He wants to win every race.I think about him getting tired. But if you run 600 miles, go win another race that night, win two more races, his stamina is unbelievable. But I’ve never seen anybody more intense that wants to race every minute of every day, and he wants to win. Q.Cliff, a lot of teams have brake issues. Some were choosing between short track and intermediate brakes. Did you pick short track brakes? Were there any concerns?CLIFF DANIELS: We were short track brakes. Very, very, very conservative on everything braking, from brake tape open, our whole strategy. Unfortunately you see some of the issues out there.We had a decision to make coming here. Our kind of process this year has led us down a conservative road in these categories. We were conservative at Darlington, we were conservative at Dover, places like that that we ran okay.It’s tough when you go to these races, new track here, so we don’t have a data point of what the race is going to be like. Then you go to Darlington, unload, race, Dover, unload, race. I’m conservative by nature. Our nature was to try to be conservative with that. Everything held up well. Q.Mr. H, could you talk about how much Alba Colon has been instrumental and part of the Hendrick Motorsports success.RICK HENDRICK: She’s done an awesome job. She’s super smart. She runs a tight ship. She’s all business, too. CLIFF DANIELS: She is, yeah. RICK HENDRICK: She attacks things. So we’re very fortunate to have her. She’s also been of course on the GM side, so that helps us a lot when we’re talking to GM and their engineers about things we want to do. She’s special. She really works hard. Q.Cliff, is there a weakness on the No. 5 team at this point?CLIFF DANIELS: We’re still searching every week. We identify things on a Monday. I know Kyle’s nature, he’s going to come in and meet with us. We may do it over video conference tomorrow or Tuesday. He’s going to identify things that he can do better, I’m going to identify things I can do better. That’s the mentality of our whole team. We search a lot every week.Guys call me sad or grumpy at the shop trying to make sure we uncover every detail that we can, just to make sure we don’t miss something. We missed a little something in qualifying today. I was sad about that. Kyle and I talked about it. We made sure we had good stuff under him for the race.But, look, all teams are working really hard right now to make sure they can bring their best stuff to the racetrack. Our team is certainly doing that. We just have a really heightened sense of awareness. We know any point we get comfortable, that’s when the competition is really going to catch up. They’re going to do more than just catch up.It’s amazing to have the wave that we’re riding. I can promise you we’re going to keep our foot on the gas and keep it going. THE MODERATOR: Cliff, Mr. Hendrick, thank you so much for being here today. Congratulations on a great win. 

NASCAR CUP SERIES NASHVILLE SUPER SPEEDWAY ALLY 400 TEAM CHEVY POST-RACE NOTES & QUOTES JUNE 20, 2021 TOP TEAM CHEVY UNOFFICIAL RACE RESULTS:POS.   DRIVER1st      KYLE LARSON, NO. 5 VALVOLINE CAMARO ZL1 1LE 2nd     ROSS CHASTAIN, NO. 42 CLOVER CAMARO ZL1 1LE3rd     WILLIAM BYRON, NO. 24 LIBERTY UNIVERSITY CAMARO ZL1 1LE6th      RICKY STENHOUSE JR., NO. 47 KROGER/NATURE VALLEY CAMARO ZL1 1LE7th      DANIEL SUAREZ, NO. 99 TOOTSIES ORCHID LOUNGE CAMARO ZL1 1LE8th      KURT BUSCH, NO. 1 MONSTER ENERGY CAMARO ZL1 1LE TOP FIVE UNOFFICIAL RACE RESULTS: POS.  DRIVER1st      Kyle Larson (Chevrolet)2nd     Ross Chastain (Chevrolet)3rd     William Byron (Chevrolet)4th      Aric Almirola (Ford)5th      Kevin Harvick (Ford) The NASCAR Cup Series season continues next weekend at Pocono Raceway for a doubleheader race weekend, kicking off with the NASCAR Cup Series at Pocono-1 on Saturday, June 26, at 3 p.m. ET, followed by the Explore the Pocono Mountains 350 on Sunday, June 27, at 3:30 p.m. ET. Live coverage can be found on NBCSN, MRN and SiriusXM NASCAR Radio Channel 90.  TEAM CHEVY POST-RACE NOTES AND QUOTES: KYLE LARSON, NO. 5 VALVOLINE CAMARO ZL1 1LE – Race WinnerDID IT FEEL THE MOST DOMINANT BEHIND THE WHEEL?“It was a great day. We never really had to run behind people, so I don’t know. If one of my teammates got out front again it probably would have been hard to pass them. This Valvoline Chevrolet was really good. It cut the middle of the corner really well and our pit crew did an awesome job again. That number one pit stall helps a bunch, too. This crowd is awesome!” YOU DID A BURNOUT FOR THE ENTIRE CROWD, FROM ONE END OF THE GRANDSTAND TO THE OTHER“Yeah, I was going to do something here and then I looked down there and thought, yeah, there’s a lot of fans down there, too. I need to go to the end. But we had enough rubber and fuel leftover to do a good burnout there at the end. I can’t say enough about everybody at Hendrick Motorsports, HendrickCars.com, Valvoline, and thanks to everybody who has been a part of this team this year. I just hope we can keep it going.” ROSS CHASTAIN, NO. 42 CLOVER CAMARO ZL1 1LE – Finished 2ndFIRST CAREER CUP TOP-FIVE, HOW ARE YOU FEELING?“Really good. To come to a 750 hp track – lifting, sliding and moving all over the race track trying to get forward drive, it was really good.”  WHAT DOES THIS BATCH OF TOP-10’S SAY ABOUT YOU AS A DRIVER AND THIS TEAM RIGHT NOW? SONOMA, A ROAD COURSE IN THE RAIN AND NOW HERE. “It’s finally on a circle track, that’s all I’m happy about. I’m happy about the road courses, I just don’t really know what it’s happening. Here, I know why. I know what we did. I know what I’m doing to drive the car. Road courses, it’s not really pre-planned. This is pre-planned. It’s what we all grew up doing.” YOU’RE IN THE PLAYOFF MIX NOW. ARE YOU IN MUST-WIN MODE OR DO YOU FEEL PRETTY GOOD ABOUT DOING IT ON POINTS?“I just want to compete, that’s the biggest thing. I’m racing with my heroes. I want to compete with them and I want to beat them.” I GET THE IMPRESSION THAT YOU DRIVE THE SAME NO MATTER WHAT, IT’S JUST A MATTER OF THE PROGRAM COMING TO YOU. HAVE YOU HAD TO, WHETHER IT’S LEARNING THE CARS OR LEARNING THE PROGRAM, CHANGE THE WAY YOU GO ABOUT DOING EVERY WEEKEND?“I’m just trying to keep my confidence up. I got down pretty early in the west coast swing. I’ve realized I just need to keep doing what I’m doing.” WILLIAM BYRON, NO. 24 LIBERTY UNIVERSITY CAMARO ZL1 1LE – Finished 3rdHOW DID IT GO OUT THERE FOR YOU TODAY? IS THERE ANYTHING YOU CAN COMPARE FROM FRIDAY?“We had a little bit of right-front damage, so honestly we weren’t as good as we probably could have been. We were OK, we just couldn’t finish the corner and just struggled with the right-front all day. Overall, that’s just part of it. It’s hard to start in the back and we learned a lesson there on adjustments for qualifying. Nothing major, just something to learn from.” DID YOU LEARN ANYTHING FROM THE TRUCK RACE REGARDING THE BRAKE ISSUES BEFORE YOUR ENGINE LET GO? DID YOU KNOW THIS WAS GOING TO BE AN ISSUE?“Just low downforce, high horsepower. I think a lot of guys showed up with less brake than they needed. So, for us, we showed up with a good amount of brake, especially being back in traffic.” RICKY STENHOUSE JR., NO. 47 KROGER/NATURE VALLEY CAMARO ZL1 1LE – Finished 6th“It was a challenging day. The cars were not easy to drive and even when we were running second there, we were trying to make adjustments to get better and see if we could catch him. I felt like I was a little better than the No. 5 (Kyle Larson) in one of those stages on the long run and then we kind of lost our track position and struggled to get it back. I’m glad we were able to make it up into the top-10 there. Really solid day for our Kroger team.”  “It was a great day for our Kroger team. I was really happy with the racecar that we brought and hopefully we can carry this onto Pocono (Raceway).” WAS THE TRACK A LOT DIFFERENT THAN YESTERDAY? “I felt like it was pretty close to the same for us. We were pretty happy with our car yesterday and was really happy with it today, as far as the speed goes. I don’t think anybody’s was handling great. That’s just a product of concrete, rubber on the track and obviously the sun being out. The only thing I would have liked a little more was an AC unit today (laughs).”“It was a good race. I had a lot of fun. I’m glad that we battled back close to the top-five.”  DANIEL SUAREZ, NO. 99 TOOTSIES ORCHID LOUNGE CAMARO ZL1 1LE – Finished 7thTHIRD TOP-10 OF THE YEAR. WHAT WAS TODAY LIKE FOR YOU? “It was good. The car was good enough to finish right there in the top-10. I don’t know what it was, but in the last couple of runs, we lost some grip in the front. I don’t know if it was the race track, or what; but the guys did a very good job of making adjustments. The car was fast; we showed that a couple of times. We’ve just got to continue.” KURT BUSCH, NO. 1 MONSTER ENERGY CAMARO ZL1 1LE – Finished 8th“We ended up eighth. We were trying to save some fuel at the end and lost the race for a top-five. Awesome day for (Ross) Chastain. He pitted and got to run hard at the end. I was hoping he would catch (Kyle) Larson; that would have been incredible. We ran out of gas coming out of turn four, but had to do what we could with the Monster Energy Chevy. All-in-all, it was fun track to drive. It was a lot of fun just slip-sliding around with all that horsepower at a new track”  AUSTIN DILLON, NO. 3 GET BIOETHANOL CAMARO ZL1 1LE – Finished 12th“What a race! We knew we would have our work cut out for us today in the No. 3 Get Bioethanol Chevy after qualifying didn’t go as well as we planned. This Richard Childress Racing team never gave up, though, and I am so proud of them for that. Early in Stage 1 we earned some track position, fell back a bit with an ill-timed caution after a green-flag stop, then we rallied to race our way to sixth to end Stage 1. We finished Stage 2 second to earn additional points, which is really good for our NASCAR Playoffs battle. Overall, I’m really proud of this team and we will take this 12th-place finish and move on to Pocono for a double-header next weekend.” TYLER REDDICK, NO. 8 JOE NICHOLS / QUARTZ HILL RECORDS CAMARO ZL1 1LE – Finished 19th“Today was all about survival at Nashville Superspeedway. Our No. 8 Joe Nichols / Quartz Hill Records Chevrolet Camaro ZL1 1LE had a lot of speed in it, but we had to overcome a lot of obstacles today. After our first pit stop of the day, there was no grip on the pit axis road while exiting, and I clipped the grass and spun around. Luckily, I didn’t hit anything and other than some dirt on the windshield, we was able to keep going after pitting for fresh tires. Shortly after that, someone on the track dropped some debris that went through the nose of my car but didn’t hit anything bad enough to end our day. From then on, we had to just race really smart to get our laps back, which we were able to do quickly after a couple cautions came up. Our car was a bit on the tight side today and needed to be looser, but our adjustments really didn’t seem to help a lot on the short runs like we needed them too. Our long run balance wasn’t bad, but I had a really bad vibration in the final 12 laps or so and had to slow my pace to make sure a tire or brake rotor didn’t blow. We were able to pick up a few extra spots since other guys ran out of fuel at the end, but we’ll definitely have to study this race and figure out how to be better next time.” ERIK JONES, NO. 43 BLACK ENTREPRENEUR INITIATIVE CAMARO ZL1 1LE – Finished 20th“It was a tough day for the No. 43 Black Entrepreneur Initiative Camaro ZL1 1LE. We had an OK qualifying effort in the top-10. We had to start in the back and we fought our way back into the top-10 early in the race, and then just kind of lost the balance from there. Tough day – it wasn’t the day we were looking for, for sure, but we stuck with it all day and got a top-20 out of it. We’ll go to Pocono (Raceway) next week. It’s a place I really like and we hope to have a couple good races.”

Austin Dillon and the No. 3 Get Bioethanol Chevrolet Team Survive Long, Hot Day at Nashville Superspeedway with Stage Points and Top-15 Finish

12th

28th

11th

“What a race! We knew we would have our work cut out for us today in the No. 3 Get Bioethanol Chevrolet Camaro ZL1 1LE after qualifying didn’t go as well as we planned. This Richard Childress Racing team never gave up though, and I am so proud of them for that. Early in Stage 1 we earned some track position but fell back a bit with an ill-timed caution after a green-flag stop. We then rallied to race our way to sixth position at the end of Stage 1. We finished Stage 2 second to earn additional points, which is really good for our NASCAR Playoffs battle. Overall, I’m really proud of this team and we will take this 12th-place finish and move on to Pocono Raceway for a double-header next weekend.”  -Austin Dillon

Tyler Reddick and the No. 8 Joe Nichols / Quartz Hill Records Team Power Through Chaotic Race at Nashville Superspeedway

19th

26th

13th

“Today was all about survival at Nashville Superspeedway. Our No. 8 Joe Nichols / Quartz Hill Records Chevrolet Camaro ZL1 1LE had a lot of speed in it, but we had to overcome a lot of obstacles today. After our first pit stop of the day, there was no grip on the pit access road while exiting, and I clipped the grass and spun around. Luckily, I didn’t hit anything and other than some dirt on the windshield, we were able to keep going after pitting for fresh tires. Shortly after that, someone on the track dropped some debris that went through the nose of my car but didn’t hit anything bad enough to end our day. From then on, we just raced really smart to get our laps back, which we were able to do after a couple of quick cautions. Our car was a bit on the tight side today and needed to be looser, but our adjustments really didn’t seem to help on the short runs like we needed them too. Our long run balance wasn’t bad, but I had a really bad vibration in the final 12 laps and had to slow my pace to make sure a tire or brake rotor didn’t blow. We were able to pick up a few extra spots since other guys ran out of fuel at the end, but we’ll definitely have to study this race and figure out how to be better next time.” -Tyler Reddick