Category Archives: Uncategorized
“I’m new to Flexjet Factory Stock Showdown for sure,” said Clark. “I’ve been doing the Hemi Shootout stuff for years. I bought this Flexjet Factory Stock Showdown car about three weeks ago and put it together. I had (2023 Flexjet Factory Stock Showdown world champion) Aaron Stanfield go through the motor and change the blower. I’ve got Jody Hadley tuning with me which has been great.”
chevy racing–indycar–st. petersburg–pole award
| CHEVROLET IN NTT INDYCAR SERIES FIRESTONE GRAND PRIX OF ST. PETERSBURG ST. PETERSBURG, FLORIDA TEAM CHEVY QUALIFYING REPORT MARCH 9, 2024 JOSEF NEWGARDEN AND TEAM PENSKE CAPTURE CHEVROLET’S 128TH NTT P1 POLE AWARD OF THE V6 ERA, TEAM CHEVY’S NINTH AT ST. PETERSBURG Josef Newgarden, driver of the No. 2 PPG Team Penske Chevrolet, captured the season-opening NTT P1 Pole Award, the 17th of his NTT INDYCAR SERIES career, with his fastest lap of 59.5714 seconds on the Streets of St. Petersburg.Newgarden’s NTT P1 Pole Award is Chevrolet’s 128th in the 2.2-liter twin turbo direct-injected V6 era since 2012, the ninth at St. Petersburg, and Newgarden’s first at this track.Showcasing how tight the NTT INDYCAR SERIES field is, Newgarden’s NTT P1 Pole Award is the closest front row in the V6 era since 2012.Chevrolet was represented by three drivers in the Firestone Fast Six, with Newgarden, Arrow McLaren’s Pato O’Ward, and Juncos Hollinger Racing’s Romain Grosjean.Four of the six Chevrolets in Group 1 finished in the top-six, with Arrow McLaren’s Pato O’Ward, Team Penske’s Newgarden, Ed Carpenter Racing’s Rinus VeeKay, and Team Penske’s Scott McLaughlin transferring to the second round of qualifying.Grosjean and Team Penske’s Will Power transferred to Round 2 from Group 2, representing Chevrolet.Newgarden led Team Chevy in a strong second practice session on the Streets of St. Petersburg this morning that saw six Chevrolet drivers finish in the top-10, including Power (third), O’Ward (fourth), Romain Grosjean (fifth), VeeKay (sixth), and McLaughlin (eighth).Sunday’s Firestone Grand Prix of St. Petersburg race day starts with final warm up on the Streets of St. Petersburg at 9:10 a.m. ET, with the green flag dropping live on NBC at noon ET. TEAM CHEVY TOP-10 QUALIFYING RESULTS:1st Josef Newgarden3rd Pato O’Ward5th Romain Grosjean7th Rinus VeeKay8th Will Power9th Scott McLaughlin |
| WHAT THEY’RE SAYING (Quotes):Josef Newgarden, No. 2 Chevrolet at Team Penske:“Man. I get jacked up every time I show up for an INDYCAR race. It’s an elevated level when you start out the year, because you just don’t know. You have no idea if you’re going to keep coming back in and producing results. It’s very difficult. You saw how tight it was, and I didn’t know this would come today. I just thought ‘Look, let’s get through Round 1, let’s get through Round 2, and then see what we can make happen in the Fast Six. Just really proud of this team. This is a rockstar team. I love everybody on it. I’m happy to be back. 2024, we’re starting right with Team Chevy and PPG. We’re here to go after it every weekend.” “You have to give hats off to Team Chevy. They listen to every bit of feedback we had. They took a lot of meetings, and they delivered today. Everything we were asking for they made better all around, and it’s not easy to do that. We asked for a menu of items, and they were like ‘Okay, we’ll give you everything.’ You don’t always get that every year, and I just feel like they knew they had to do even more this offseason just like us. Chevrolet did their part, and us at Team Penske, what we needed to do with our chassis, we did the exact same thing. So us together, I think we can have a really strong year.” Scott McLaughlin, No. 3 Chevrolet at Team Penske:“Not a bad day for the DEX Imagine Chevy. We left a little bit out there. I think we could’ve easily made the Fast Six. We had a couple of little issues that were out of our control and held us back there. Overall, really solid start. We start P9, which it’s better than P19. We have a lot of cars to pass tomorrow. We’ll have fun. Good job to my teammate Josef (Newgarden) getting the pole. He made sure Chevy got a first pole of the year, which is really important for them, and hopefully we can add to the win tally in St. Pete tomorrow.” Will Power, No. 12 Chevrolet at Team Penske:“He had to back up and so I had to finish that second lap just to be eighth and then started my third lap kind of hurting, so I aborted it. Still, top-12 and P8. We can definitely race from there. The car has been really good all weekend and man you have to dig deep in these qualifying sessions. We will see what we can do tomorrow. I am very, very determined to have a good year and a good race, so it’s a good start. Anytime you are top-10 in this series, it’s pretty good, or top-12. We would have loved to get in the top six, but it’s so tight.” How is it physically behind the wheel?“Ah, brutal. Brutal honestly. It’s like a bloody sauna or a steam room. You are struggling in the car, but it is always like that in the first race. In the last race you are so race fit. That is the first time in the weekend when you have been digging deep for hundredths and you feel it coming in and I am like, ‘get the air on me’. Great series man. So, so tight. I really, really enjoy it.” Pato O’Ward, No. 5 Chevrolet at Arrow McLaren:“We’re rolling off P3 tomorrow. Inside Row 2 was exactly where we were last year, so it is a great spot to have many options in the race. I’m pretty stoked about that. I think we will be in good shape to do some good things tomorrow. I’m looking forward to it.” Callum Ilott, No. 6 Chevrolet at Arrow McLaren:Walk us around that first round of qualifying…“Yeah, obviously not easy because its super tight here in INDYCAR. Arrow McLaren did a great job with this car and it’s a shame we didn’t transfer. We were very close, but looking up there early in the session, we just didn’t quite get there on the greens. It is what it is and we got to work it out for the race.” When did the decision come to go with the greens? What is the difference in the hard primaries and the greens?“They have more grip, and they are softer, and I think that is kind of the plan for everyone. A couple of the guys in the first group went with the greens to start with and did two sets. Obviously, the difference in the blacks and greens is you get more grip and a little more speed out of it.” Alexander Rossi, No. 7 Chevrolet at Arrow McLaren:“That was very disappointing, because we had a pretty strong car. I was happy with the changes that we’ve made from yesterday and through the day today. We didn’t get a clear run on the Firestone Alternates, and it is so close that you can’t afford that. So, it is very unfortunate that we are so far back, but I do think the car is pretty strong. We’ll see what we can make of it tomorrow.” Christian Rasmussen, No. 20 Chevrolet at Ed Carpenter Racing:“I’m happy with the progress we’re making over the weekend. There are a lot of firsts and it’s no easy task to step up into the NTT INDYCAR SERIES! First time with the green Firestone tires, it just takes some learning. Rinus (VeeKay) did an amazing job in qualifying, into the Fast 12 and almost the Fast 6! We have a good car and should be able to move forward in the race tomorrow. I’m just excited for my first NTT INDYCAR SERIES race! It’s something I’ve been working towards for many years now and it’s going to be very cool!” Rinus VeeKay, No. 21 Chevrolet at Ed Carpenter Racing:Was that a product of offseason work?“It definitely was. The team put in a lot of effort, we’ve got new people on the team, and the group has become stronger. I know Team Chevy put a lot of effort in giving us more power and I feel like that definitely helped. I also looked in the mirror and looked at myself and tried to find weak spots and things to get better at. I think all those boxes have been checked of course. We felt like we made it into the Fast Six, but we did not again. Pretty close, but I feel like I was happy with my lap and have the whole weekend so far. The only race I won was from P7, so that is a good omen.” You have been strong all weekend long. Where does this put your confidence going into tomorrow?“It makes me very confident. I think I am a better racer than a qualifier, so as long as we can understand the tires and keep the tires underneath us, then I think we are going to have a great race. At least I have a lot less cars to pass and it’s nice to be ahead of the mess once in a while.” Santino Ferrucci, No. 14 Chevrolet at AJ Foyt Racing:“Honestly, our Sexton Chevrolet was on rails. We had more in it, but not being able to be in Practice 2, it’s no one’s fault. That’s the thing. It’s just some things that are unfortunate, but honestly, my boss Larry (Foyt) said go out and put it seventh, so we have all the tires in the world for strategy for the race tomorrow. Ask and you shall receive. We’re sitting pretty. Our car has a ton of pace. I’m looking forward to getting after it tomorrow.” “From when we rolled out to now, we haven’t changed anything. I mean this is the exact same car that came out of the trailer. That is what we did at Indianapolis, and we fought to win. That is the goal this year and to start out this year like this, I am very, very confident.” Sting Ray Robb, No. 41 Chevrolet at AJ Foyt Racing:“Qualifying was okay. I’m disappointed in myself. I think there was a lot of time left in my driving. We kind of got kind of hurt by some other cars backing up into us on our second push. Unfortunately, we are not starting where I think we are capable of going. The car was really good. I’m really happy with the team, but we’re still going to bulid. I think there is a lot to learn. Everyone’s new on the team including myself. That communication and relationship is going to get better as the year goes on.” Romain Grosjean, No. 77 Chevrolet at Juncos Hollinger Racing:“It is very satisfying. Last year, one (pole) was very special, and this year, I was hoping we could get into the Fast Six after P1, but I wasn’t quite sure about it. We made it in the Fast Six. We didn’t have the speed for the guys in the front, but anyway, I’m very proud of everything that’s been done. Chevy has been helping us a lot with data and on-track. Our team has worked a long way since Sebring where I wasn’t sure we’d be top-10 in qualifying, and here we are. I’m very happy with that. We have a good baseline.” “It’s a very, very good qualifying. I still think we have some work to be done, but I think the guys have a very clear idea of where I think I want the improvement to be made, and that’s where we’re going to try.” Agustin Canapino, No. 78 Chevrolet at Juncos Hollinger Racing:“We had a good qualifying session. P20 isn’t really the reality of the car. I’m really happy with the time; only one-tenth off from the Fast 12, and three-and-a-half tenths with the leaders, so I’m really happy with the performance of the car with the team. Thank you to Team Chevy and to our team. I’m really confident we will have a good race tomorrow.” Ricardo Juncos, Team Owner and Lead Strategist at Juncos Hollinger Racing:“I think now he is in P2 (in regards to Romain Grosjean in Group 2 of qualifying). Amazing job. We are all really happy to have someone like Romain Grosjean with us. I think he brings to the teams a lot of experience, and he’s been great for us, for the whole team. I think we have also Agustin (Canapino) in the top-six (of Round 1), but he missed a little bit of the last two corners. Until then, we were also in the top-six, so I think big improvement for the whole team.” |
| JOSEF NEWGARDEN, NO. 2 PPG TEAM PENSKE CHEVROLET – NTT P1 Pole Award Winner Press Conference Transcript:THE MODERATOR: Wrapping up NTT P1 qualifying for tomorrow’s Firestone Grand Prix of St. Petersburg presented by RP Funding. Joined now by Josef Newgarden, two-time champion here on the Streets of St. Pete. Today driving the No. 2 PPG Team Penske Chevrolet with the 17th career NTT P1 award. First here at St. Pete. Pretty tight. 58/10000th of a second between first and second. You talked on the broadcast about how one of the goals this year to get back to some NTT P1 awards and did it right out of the gate. How proud are you of this team right now for you? JOSEF NEWGARDEN: Crazy proud. I’m always proud of my team and even more so today. They deserve it. They’ve done a great job all off season. They’ve done a great job in 2023, and I feel like we fell short in a lot of areas that we didn’t need to. I don’t want to get too excited about this. We should enjoy it. It felt very good. I can’t tell you how good it felt, but it’s only day one. We have to get through tomorrow. Tomorrow is what pays the bills and gets us up the road in the championship. So let’s see how we continue the weekend, but just to start out I couldn’t have asked for something better. The team is just on it. Team Chevy absolutely crushed it in this offseason, so I couldn’t feel more positive. THE MODERATOR: You have engineering meetings and what not after this. We’ll get right to the questions. Q. Just a short question. From practice to qualifying, did your team or your crew do any significant technical changes of the car?JOSEF NEWGARDEN: No, nothing big. Really tiny stuff, which is always fun when it’s that way. Q. Josef, the first practice kind of seemed a little out of sorts. Maybe tough to gauge seeing where you guys were until second practice. What clicked? What did you all find to fall like this in qualifying?JOSEF NEWGARDEN: I think some was just timing. Obviously we had that experimental first session, which I think is great. We all agreed that we wanted to try something. I’m not going to say it’s going to stick, but we were trying something. We were in the earlier part of the group. I think what I took from that it was undeniable how quick Felix was. He was like a stand-out. Everybody else was maybe a little bit jumbled up just because of timing and traffic and reds. So I think you got more of a true indicator where the majority of the field was in session two. Obviously there was carry-over from session one. We didn’t do a lot. I’m telling you all this because we didn’t make a lot of changes from practice one to practice two. We were sort of same car. Just really putting it together better, and I think P2 was representative more so for where we were as a team. Q. Josef, some new faces up there in the Fast Six, including the guy sitting right next to you on new teams, teams we’re not used to seeing up there like that. I know you talk about the competitive nature of INDYCAR, but is this something that we can expect to see all season like this?JOSEF NEWGARDEN: Absolutely. I mean, we get the question every offseason. Who is your main threat? You can’t answer that clearly ever in INDYCAR. You just don’t know who is going to sort of rise to the occasion and improve. I think Felix is a great example of this. I’ve always thought the world of Felix. He’s a top-level driver. He’s one of the best drivers in the world. You get a little different environment. 12 months makes a big difference. Just things change all the time. This is the most difficult series in the world I think to put it all together, so you get people coming up and down the grid all the time. I just don’t think you can bank on any one individual being the class of the field. You have to beat everybody, and it’s moving all the time. The challenge always is changing. I applaud everybody that’s in this championship and is continuing to find pace. Q. Josef, when you talk about coming up short last year, obviously that wasn’t on ovals. Four wins on ovals. How much of your enthusiasm today is sort of rooted in the fact that it seems like street and road courses were your weakness last year. Now you start on the pole here.JOSEF NEWGARDEN: I mean, it’s what we need. We haven’t gotten an oval yet, so I hope we still have that form, but I think that comes back to what I just said about the quality of the field. Just because we were strong on ovals last year doesn’t guarantee that we will be strong on ovals again this year. I’ve made that mistake many times where you think you can just go with the same recipe that worked the year before, and it doesn’t always transfer. I think we’ve made the necessary steps to be better on a street course. I think we can get there in a road course too. We just have to make sure we preserve that excellent oval package that we’ve had, but if we can get all of them, then that’s what we were lacking last year. We just did not have the consistency across the board. I think today is very encouraging. It definitely makes me feel more positive about what we can bring for the entire championship. Q. I asked Will about this yesterday. I’ll get your take on it. The mood at Team Penske, obviously you won the Indy 500 last year, but Will went winless. Scotty won once. You were obviously frustrated. Coming into this season and coming off the NASCAR Championship for Penske, coming off Rolex 24, WEC win, I know the benchmark is always high for you guys, but is there more motivation with everything that’s going on within the organization and the way you guys ended last year to come up stronger this season?JOSEF NEWGARDEN: I’m not trying to avoid the question, but it never really changes. What I mean by that is Penske, we definitely have an operating standard where excellence is what we aim for all the time. Whether we had a bad year or we had an excellent year, we’re still going for excellence the next season. That never drops. Certainly we lose form. The challenge changes like I was talking about, and we have to find a new way of doing things. That happens often. I don’t feel any different as far as pressure internally. We are the same all the time. We are expected to show up and do a great job, and we feel that internally. That’s not an external pressure. It’s not like Roger is over us demanding that. Others may tell you differently, but I just feel there’s a very internal drive of every individual within Penske just to be the best version of themselves. I don’t notice anything different. The only thing I would say is it’s been a great start to the year, as you said. We started out right, and now we just have to figure out how we can hopefully hold onto that throughout the entire season. I didn’t change last year’s glove, so… Q. Josef, I know the past couple of years you’ve come into the season opener. You’ve had some personnel moving around on the team, and things have been happening quite close to the start of the season. Have you felt any benefit from having things a little bit more solid and having an easier lead into the season, if you like, this weekend?JOSEF NEWGARDEN: I don’t think it hurts. I mean, I don’t want to lean too aggressively into the consistency side. I think we’ve had, in general, a lot of consistency in our team.So even when I have new personnel on the 2 car, these are individuals that I know very well. The way we operate at Team Penske is I think a little bit unique. In a lot of ways you’re working with everybody on all cars. Yeah, I don’t think there’s a huge change from that standpoint, but we do have more consistency than last year. It’s Luke’s second year with me. We’re together. We’re not changing that role. We didn’t change much on the car. Yeah, there’s some positivity too it. I don’t know that I want to read too much into it. Q. You praised Team Chevy at the start of the call. Is there anything specific that they’ve given to you to start the season that you’ve been particularly impressed with? You sounded really kind of buoyant about what they’ve done in the offseason there.JOSEF NEWGARDEN: Oh, absolutely. I mean, I think it was a huge difference-maker today was just Chevrolet. I’m not going to put everything on them because it’s always a package. We always have to work together in conjunction. I think there was things we fell short on last year from a chassis standpoint. You know where we weren’t strong just as a team and what we needed to do, road and street course-wise. I think we’ve elevated our game, and Chevrolet has absolutely elevated their side. They took a lot of meetings with us in the offseason. They work hard every offseason, but I think they just went that from a extra mile this go-around. It’s still early days, but I’ll really encouraged by what they brought here and what we can see for the rest of the year. Q. Just quickly, Josef, this is something that got mentioned with Will yesterday, and you touched on it before, how good the oval package was for Team Penske last year. Considering the last few races this season are all predominantly on ovals, does that give the team a bit of confidence knowing you have a good package going into what could be a championship decider?JOSEF NEWGARDEN: Not to me. I’ll repeat from earlier, but just because we had a strong year on ovals last year doesn’t guarantee we’re going to have an identical result this year. It very well could be that we show up and we’ve fixed a lot of our street and road course performance and then all of a sudden we take a step back on the ovals. I just think you have to be vigilant. I’m not going to rest on anything from prior seasons. I think the balance is still pretty mixed, as it should be. We’ve got a nice split between road, street, and oval.I don’t think you can hide behind the fact that you have to be good across the board. You can’t be weak anywhere. I’m not going to lean on a couple of new oval additions. I don’t think any of us can do that. Q. Can you talk about the durability of those softer green tires, please?JOSEF NEWGARDEN: I was curious what Felix thought. Yeah, it is going to be interesting. I don’t know that anyone has a great read yet. It’s impossible to know right now. We’re sort of getting an idea through qualifying. You’re starting to guess. I think they are more durable than last year, no doubt. Just to what level. I don’t know how much more durable they are. That’s everybody’s guessing game right now, but I do think they will come into play more so than what they did last year. Last year no one wanted to be on them very long, and I think this year it’s opened back up again where there could be some split strategies. Q. Josef, you have Luke Mason with you for the second year in a row. You shouted his name out right after you were told you had pole. Can you talk to the relationship the two of you developed because in year one Indy 500, four wins. Tell me about the chemistry of two of you have developed to make you even stronger.JOSEF NEWGARDEN: Well, he’s great. I’ve been fortunate in my career. I’ve got to work with just tremendous talent every single year. I’ve really had no weak points. Luke just has been an addition to that. He’s another person that to me is an absolute rock star race engineer. Anybody that knows what a race engineer really is would understand the significance of that. You can be a technically savvy individual. You can be a good engineer, but a race engineer requires something just a little different. I think Luke excels at it. I just think of world of him. He’s in a great spot. He’s certainly bringing a great dynamic to our team in a lot more ways than just one. Yeah, it’s good. I want the best for him. I want to see him win a bunch of races, and I want to do that together with him. THE MODERATOR: 58/10000th of a second was the difference. Crazy, crazy close. Front row for tomorrow’s Firestone Grand Prix of St. Petersburg presented by RP Funding. |
Burton Qualifies 24th at Phoenix
March 9, 2024
Harrison Burton and the No. 21 Draiver Mustang Dark Horse are set to start 24th in Sunday’s Shriners Children’s Hospital 500 at Phoenix Raceway.
Burton took that spot with a lap at 131.670 miles per hour in qualifying Saturday afternoon.
His qualifying speed was faster than his best lap in Friday’s practice session, where he was 23rd on the speed chart at 129.529 mph. He posted that speed on the fourth of 60 laps run in the session.
Sunday’s 312-lap race is expected to get the green flag just after 12:30 p.m. local time (3:30 p.m. Eastern) with TV coverage on FOX.
Stage breaks are planned for Laps 60 and 185.
chevy racing–nascar–phoenix–ross chastain
| NASCAR CUP SERIES PHOENIX RACEWAY SHRINERS CHILDREN’S 500 TEAM CHEVY PRESS CONF. TRANSCRIPT MARCH 9, 2024 |
| ROSS CHASTAIN, NO. 1 KUBOTA CAMARO ZL1, met with the media in advance of the NASCAR Cup Series’ qualifying session at Phoenix Raceway. Media Availability Quotes: YESTERDAY, YOU WERE REALLY STRONG ON THE LONG RUN IN PRACTICE. WITH IT BEING A LITTLE WARMER AND A LITTLE WINDY, ARE YOU CONCERNED ABOUT YOUR SHORT RUN SPEED IN QUALIFYING, OR ARE YOU GUYS FOCUSED ON THE LONG RUN TOMORROW? “Just focused on getting grip. We really struggled yesterday just finding balance. I couldn’t believe that we were 15th on fast lap averages. We were 12th early on and my crew chief, Phil Surgen, said ‘you’re 12th’.. and I was like, ‘wow.. I feel like I’m 35th’. I just did not feel like I had the grip in the car. It’s a little bit tough though because we’re coming off the win here last year, so I feel like a lot of my memories are of the really good laps; the laps we were driving away from the field and when we were passing people. And as I really dug back into it last night, there were a lot of times where I saw a lot of erratic steering and heavy braking from my driving traces from last fall. So it wasn’t as good as I remembered. I had the whole offseason to think back through and dream about all the good that happened, but there were some bad. There were some moments where I wasn’t happy with the car last fall. We didn’t fall-off as much as some people, but we were just too tight. We were way too tight coming here. We were sliding the front tires a lot. We made a lot of changes in practice and after, which has not been the norm for the No. 1 car. You see it.. we’re normally pretty spot-on. We went to work. We made a lot of changes before we had to get into the tech line.” LAST WEEK AFTER THE RACE, YOU TALKED ABOUT THE SPEEDING PENALTIES. BUT I WONDERED.. IS IT ESPECIALLY FRUSTRATING BECAUSE OF HOW WELL, IN GENERAL, YOU GUYS SEEM TO HAVE STARTED THE SEASON, AS FAR AS SPEED, AND THERE’S A LOT OF POTENTIAL TO HAVE BEEN EVEN BETTER IN THE FIRST THREE RACES? “Yes, sir. If I was back in my days of Premium Motorsports and going to run 27th on a good day, and I sped and it made us finish 29th… it was like, well OK. Or even if we would get back there, but I knew it took us out of it by just not doing my job, it was hard then.. but looking back, easier. Now, when we have cars capable of winning.. I watched the race back post-Las Vegas and I’m like, it doesn’t look like a race-winning car. But in the car, I felt like it was a race-winning capable car to fight with the No. 5 (Kyle Larson) and the No. 45 (Tyler Reddick). That’s why my human emotion takes over and I can’t get out of my own way of saying anything, but I was just so sad that I took us out of a shot. We got back up there, but if we would have been up there with the No. 45.. when I sped, I was five car lengths in front of the No. 45 on pit road. We were racing with him and I felt equal to him. I just wanted a shot to continue to make adjustments on my car up front. Continue to have four tires on it.. the two tire call was great and it was a great Band-Aid. When we look back, I might not even remember the speeding penalty. Most people won’t, but I know I will. But yeah, just the speed of the car and the feel.. like it goes fast and it was driving so good that I could hustle it. That’s what makes it tough. And then I get out and I’m human – I look back at my interviews and I should be more positive. I should be thinking about a lot more things than just that one moment that I sped by .6 mph or something, and I just can’t get past it because it’s such an unforced error that, at this level and doing it three weeks in a row, it just builds up and I just kind of lost my mind there when I realized I had done it again.” WITH WHAT YOU TALKED ABOUT IN TERMS OF SPEEDING – IN ONE SENSE, THERE’S A LOT OF ELEMENTS THAT CAN GO INTO IT, BUT AT THE END OF THE DAY, WHAT HAS TO BE DONE OR HOW DO YOU GET TO THE POINT WHERE YOU’RE YOU ARE REACHING 10-TENTHS BUT NOT OVER THAT LINE? I KNOW YOU CAN ‘DON’T SPEED’, BUT WHAT GOES INTO THAT PROCESS OF WHAT YOU HAVE TO DO, WHAT YOU HAVE TO WORK WITH THE TEAM OR WHAT YOU HAVE TO THINK ABOUT? “Yeah, each one of our speeding issues have been a little bit different..” HOW SO? “Well, like Atlanta (Motor Speedway), it was going from the transition from the 90 mph zone to the frontstretch. I sped, locked the left-front up and slid into that first section. And then I also sped leaving because I stalled it and I freaked out, and when I got it fired up, I went way past my lights. I was just realizing how much time I had lost and I was going to lose the draft, so I sped like 3 mph.. that’s like unheard of. So that stemmed from hitting the No. 6 (Brad Keselowski) on-track. We had slammed side-to-side, so I had pitted without telling my crew. It just spiraled out of control. There were like 90 seconds where my mind and the car just kind of went haywire. I felt like I couldn’t function because we hit and I thought I was going to blow a left-front tire. Then you go to Las Vegas (Motor Speedway) – you slow down in the banking and then turn down into the apron. Well I went really slow.. I went six-tenths, like you’re talking about. I wasn’t trying to be 10-tenths, and then I turn on the apron; I’m slow and I just released the brake to just roll up to the line. I thought I was too slow, and then when I went back to the pedal to slow down, I realized I was too close to the yellow line. So it really came from a fact of laziness, in my mind, at Las Vegas.. where I wasn’t trying to be aggressive. I was trying to be the opposite. And in the laziness, I just let off the pedals and I let off too long. Yeah, when the intention is to go slow and I still speed, that’s where my frustration came from; in the car and in the moment. And then there’s dejection after of just – OK, I know what my intention was.. it was very clear. I know what my mind was trying to do, and then in the moment, I don’t execute on what I’m intending to do. So it’s one thing to push to the lights and know that they’re right on the limit; it just rolls a little faster and it’s .01 faster. It’s another thing to intentionally be slow and still get popped because I was lazy with the pedals. That’s what honestly got me so upset. But what’s so cool is that – yeah, I took the flight home and thought about it.. Monday morning, for sure. I watched the race back first thing Monday and walked away from it. And honestly my team got me and my guys were just like – Look, we’re not slowing down.. we don’t need you to be slow like you were at Vegas on the approach to pit road. We need you to go back to the Ross that wins the award. Like there are metrics that the whole garage measures pit road entry, from turn three to the yellow line. I’ve won that a lot. It doesn’t pay anything, but I’ve won it in Premium Motorsports cars. I’ve won it with different teams I’ve worked with. It’s something I’ve really focused on because it’s something I could win and I’m a competitor. And then now, I tried to back it down and I still got caught. It was cool to hear the guys and to truly change my mindset mid-way through Monday like – no, we’re not backing down from a yellow line.. that’s not going to scare us.” WHEN YOU REFERENCE LAST FALL’S RACE – I THINK IT WAS THE FIRST SEGMENT, YOU WENT FROM EIGHTH TO THIRD. OBVIOUSLY YOU WERE UP THERE AND ABLE TO MAKE PASSES AND GET TO THE LEAD LATER ON. YOU WERE ABLE TO DO WHAT, IN ESSENCE, THIS PACKAGE THIS WEEKEND IS SUPPOSED TO ALLOW YOU GUYS TO HAVE A GREAT SENSE OF. CAN YOU GIVE ME A SENSE OF WHAT YOU WERE ABLE TO DO SO WELL LAST FALL HERE BECAUSE YOU SEEMED TO MOVE UP BETTER THAN ANYBODY ELSE. IT SOUNDS LIKE THE CHANGES ARE GOING TO BE VERY MINOR AND IT’S GOING TO BE ABOUT THE SAME TYPE OF RACE. “Yeah, I felt like early on in that first run, I was able to maintain around eighth. I think I had to fight off maybe the No. 43 (Erik Jones) first lap, and then we kind of settled in and I just maintained. As we all gapped ourselves just naturally, the leader is going to pull away the first five laps, and second through 40th is going to just have gaps. My gap just stayed the same. And then I saw the guy in seventh – he slipped his right-rear and then he got tight off of (turn) four and all these little moments. I’m like – oh mines not doing that, so I was able to just maintain early. And then we just had a very nice, balanced car, so we were wearing the tires evenly. We weren’t over-heating one corner versus the others. Mine definitely handled worse on lap 50 than it did on lap five, but I was able to as simple as maintain early, and then I made most of my passes at the ends of the runs. That’s just a sign of good balance and good mechanical grip. Air aside, as you wear these tires.. if you can wear them evenly and your balance was OK to start, I was able to go as old school as old school can get; pass them on the long run.” NO MIC. “I have no idea. I’ve only got a little bit of practice on it, so I just don’t know. I’ll go react in the race. I don’t go in with any preconceived ideas. A lot of drivers do and more power to them that they believe they know what’s going to happen before the race starts. I’m like, I’m going to drive it into turn one and find out. I’m going to find out with everybody else, and then it’s up to me and where I feel like I’m strong, which is reacting instantly and catching the car when it reacts different than what I thought. Of course if it handled perfect, I would be wide-open in fifth gear all the way around here, but that’s not the case.” WHAT IN YEAR’S PAST HAVE YOU BEEN ABLE TO TAKE FROM THE SPRING RACE AND APPLY IT TO THE CHAMPIONSHIP RACE? WITH THE DEBUT OF THIS RULES PACKAGE, WHAT CAN YOU TAKE FROM THE SPRING AND APPLY IT TO THE FALL? “Previously, by the time we’d get to the fall, I knew where I was at in points. So when I was driving the No. 4 car that’s on the screen right now, we knew if we needed to buy tires or not. We knew if we needed to finish a couple spots ahead, or if we could finish worse and it didn’t matter because we were going to get paid the same. We lost a little purse money, but it wasn’t enough to off-set the cost of four sets of tires. It’s pretty wild to think back to that and with Dawson (Cram) here, that’s cool to think that’s where I was at one point. Now, that’s up to Chevrolet and Trackhouse Racing to think about.. what’s the difference between spring and fall. Like I was talking about in the last question, like I just react.. I react to the simulator. I react to the at-track. Yeah, we have some ideas of what we think and we want to learn from our past.. we’re not blind to it. But I don’t think – oh, it’s going to be tighter in the fall, looser or it’s going to be this – when we’re changing the packages. We’re changing the cars. This car is evolving, so I don’t believe it’s going to be something because I’ve done that in the past and it didn’t really work out for me. I just react and I let my smart people around me – I’ve surrounded myself with the smartest people in the garage, both at Trackhouse and Chevrolet, and let them think about that. I’ll react in the car when I drive into turn three.” IN SEVEN STARTS AT BRISTOL MOTOR SPEEDWAY, YOU HAVE JUST ONE TOP-10 FINISH. WHAT IS IT ABOUT THAT PLACE THAT YOU FIND SO CHALLENGING? “Driving across a mountain and going into Bristol, Tennessee (laughs). Just when I get there, I have struggled a lot. I had one truck and one Xfinity car that I thought I could win at in all my starts there. Bristol (Motor Speedway) was my second-ever race in the sport in 2011 – I crashed in practice; I was the slowest in qualifying in a backup car and I ran into everything during the race. It was terrible. Yeah, if I knew, I would fix it. I just haven’t been able to make speed. My teammates are generally faster than me there, and I know that. I’ve studied Daniel (Suarez) a lot, just looking through his stuff. We’ve had completely equally-built, same setup cars at Bristol and he outran me. As a teammate, I’m happy for him, but I want to beat him. And neither one of us ran great. Obviously I have a lot of laps around there. I remember when I went there for the first time, I was supposed to have just ran the one race in 2011 in a truck, and that was going to be it.. a bucket-list race. But it went good and we finished 10th, so we found a way to fund a few more. We went to Bristol for the second race. I remember being on top of the world – this NASCAR stuff is not as hard as I thought, but boy, Bristol kicked my butt that Wednesday night. That’s back when we raced Wednesday night. Yeah, I have those memories of the bad and the good. Why I can’t make as much speed, I don’t know.” |
Robinson Overcomes Halbert to Claim Fourth Daytona Triumph
DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. (March 8, 2024) – Brandon Robinson (No. 44 Mission Roof Systems Indian FTR750) successfully defended his adopted home turf to reign in Friday’s Mission SuperTwins Main Event to conclude a hugely entertaining Royal Enfield Short Track at DAYTONA II at the Daytona International Speedway Short Track. Robinson had to overcome potential Progressive American Flat Track, sanctioned by AMA Pro Racing, history in order to do so, forced to chase down an in-form Sammy Halbert (No. 69 Dodge Bros. Racing/Castrol Harley-Davidson XR750) to get the win. Halbert actually led the opening six-and-a-half minutes of the Main Event after earlier winning his heat race and the Mission #2Fast2Tasty Challenge a full 53 years, 10 months, and five days after Mert Lawwill took the iconic Harley-Davidson XR750 to its maiden win at the Cumberland Half-Mile. Following an extended pursuit, the Mission Roof Systems pilot finally dove up the inside of Dodge Bros.-backed Halbert, who then was thrown out of his saddle after encountering a bump while off his usual line. Undeterred, Halbert nearly clawed his way back within striking distance before at last conceding the race to Robinson in its final minute. The victory was the fourth of Robinson’s career at the DAYTONA Short Track, moving him equal with Friday adversary Halbert for most all-time at the event. Afterward, Robinson, who originally hails from Pennsylvania but now resides just fifteen minutes from the World Center of Racing, unsurprisingly professed his affection for the track. He said, “This feels amazing. It feels like forever since I’ve won a race. Going winless last year really (made me angry) to be honest. I came to the Main with a chip on my shoulder. I love this place. I love Daytona. Something about this dirt – it’s the greatest dirt in the world as far as I’m concerned… This is a dream ending to the week.” Dallas Daniels (No. 32 Estenson Racing Yamaha MT-07 DT), himself the winner of the three prior premier-class showdowns at the venue, battled with Robinson and hunted Halbert over the Main’s opening half before falling into the clutches of the resurgent Briar Bauman (No. 3 Rick Ware Racing/KTM/Parts Plus KTM 790 Duke). The two then traded third multiple times – a melee complete with crisscrossing lines and squared-up counters – before Daniels laid claim on the spot for good. He finished a little more than a second ahead of Bauman with reigning Grand National Champion Jared Mees (No. 1 Rogers Racing/SDI Racing/Indian Motorcycle FTR750) not far behind in fifth. Sixth went to Davis Fisher (No. 67 Rackley Racing/Bob Lanphere’s BMC Racing Indian FTR750) a short distance ahead of Jarod Vanderkooi (No. 20 JMC Motorsports/Fairway Ford Ohio Indian FTR750) in seventh. Premier-class rookies Trevor Brunner (No. 21 Mission Foods/Zanotti Racing KTM 790 Duke) and Max Whale (No. 18 Latus Motors Racing/Liqui Moly Harley-Davidson XG750R) finished eighth and tenth, respectively, with Thursday runner-up Brandon Price (No. 92 Memphis Shades/Corbin/OTBR Yamaha MT-07) sandwiched in between.Parts Unlimited AFT Singles presented by KICKER Tom Drane (No. 59 Estenson Racing Yamaha YZ450F) rebounded from his Thursday disappointment to claim a dominating win in Friday’s Parts Unlimited AFT Singles presented by KICKER rematch. The young Australian ripped out to the holeshot in the restart that followed an early red flag and immediately stretched out a second-plus advantage at the front. Meanwhile, triple Daytona ST winner and double defending class champion Kody Kopp (No. 1 Rick Ware Racing/Parts Plus KTM 450 SX-F) moved up from third into second after working past impressive sophomore Logan Eisenhard (No. 66 Hannum’s Harley-Davidson KTM 450 SX-F) with five of the race’s scheduled six minutes still on the clock. With clear air in front of him and plenty of time to work with, Kopp’s attempts to close the gap saw him make minor inroads on Drane’s advantage for a spell. But despite the determined effort, the Yamaha ace’s speed and consistency ultimately won out to the tune of a 1.951-second margin of victory at the checkered flag. The victory was Drane’s first in the Short Track discipline, after previously winning three Miles and a Half-Mile. He said, “This means so much to finally get a Short Track win. I’d struggled a lot with these, but I just kept working and chipping away. I put all that effort in to try to become good (at them) so I can fight for the title this year.” Eisenhard kept his head down in search of a maiden Progressive AFT podium and very nearly pulled it off. However, he was swallowed up and then pushed aside in rapid succession by a pair of the category’s established stars, Dalton Gauthier (No. 79 D&D Racing/Certified KTM 450 SX-F) and Chase Saathoff (No. 88 JPG Motorsports Honda CRF450R) with just 30 seconds still on the clock. Gauthier then fended off Saathoff to secure his second podium of the young ’24 season. Despite losing out on his podium bid, Eisenhard did hold on to finish inside the top five even with Justin Jones (No. 91 J&H Racing Husqvarna FC 450), Aiden RoosEvans (No. 26 FRA Trust/ATV’s and More Yamaha YZ450F), and James Ott (No. 19 1st Impressions Race Team Husqvarna FC450) running just behind in close formation. Heralded rookie Evan Renshaw (No. 265 American Honda/Mission Foods CRF450R) finished ninth, one spot in front of his charging Turner Honda teammate, Trent Lowe (No. 48 American Honda/Mission Foods CRF450R), whose early-race crash prompted the aforementioned red flag. In the Royal Enfield Build. Train. Race Main, Kenzie Luker (No. 17 Royal Enfield/Parts Unlimited) edged Thursday winner Taia Little (No. 11 Royal Enfield/Parts Unlimited) by 0.275 seconds for the Friday victory. Next Up: The 2024 Progressive American Flat Track season will resume on Saturday, March 23, with the Yamaha Senoia Short Track at Senoia Raceway in Senoia, Georgia. To secure your tickets today, please visit https://www.americanflattrack.com/events/2024/view/senoia-short-track-2024. For those that can’t catch the live action from the circuit, FloRacing is the live streaming home of Progressive AFT. Sign up now and catch every second of on-track action starting with Practice & Qualifying and ending with the Victory Podium at the end of the night at http://flosports.link/aft. FOX Sports coverage of the Royal Enfield Short Track at DAYTONA I will premiere on FS1 on Saturday, March 16, at 9:30 a.m. ET (6:30 a.m. PT), while the Royal Enfield Short Track at DAYTONA II will air the following day, Sunday, March 17, at 12:00 p.m. ET (9:00 a.m. PT).For more information on Progressive AFT visit https://www.americanflattrack.com. |
Austin PROCK TAKES PROVISIONAL NO. 1 IN FIRST DAY OF GATORNATIONALS QUALIFYING
| Austin PROCK TAKES PROVISIONAL NO. 1 IN FIRST DAY OF GATORNATIONALS QUALIFYINGThird-generation racer makes the most of his NHRA Funny Car debut. |
| GAINESVILLE, FL. (MARCH 8, 2024) – Making his NHRA Funny Car debut, Austin Prock paced John Force Racing earning the provisional No. 1 qualifier after the first day of qualifying for the NHRA season-opening 55th Amalie Oil Gatornationals at Gainesville, Raceway. Driving the Cornwell Tools Chevrolet Camaro SS Funny Car in place of the medically sidelined Robert Hight. Team patriarch John Force, piloted the PEAK Antifreeze & Coolant Chevrolet Camaro SS Funny Car to the No. 9 qualifying position. And Brittany Force, driver of the Monster Energy Chevrolet Top Fuel Dragster, ended the day 12th in the qualifying ladder.Prock qualified No. 1 in Friday’s first qualifying session with an elapsed time of 3.869 seconds at 329.34 mph. In the second qualifying session, Bob Tasca III (3.829 seconds, 337.75 mph) briefly knocked Prock off the top spot, but Prock roared back with a 3.820-second run at 334.65 mph to regain the No. 1 position. “I saw him run at 2.9 and I said we’re going to nick him again,” Prock said of Tasca. “I made sure I flickered the bulb and got as much real estate out of the racetrack as I possibly could. “This class is so tough right now and has been in the last few years. We got low E.T. of the first session by 0.001 seconds and No. 1 qualifier by nine-thousandths of a second.”Prock’s second qualifying run set a track E.T. record and was the 10th-quickest run in Funny Car history. “It’s been obviously an honor to drive this car,” Prock said. “They are big shoes to fill and I’m just trying to do my best for the company and Robert Hight and all of our sponsors.”Prock, who will remain Hight’s replacement for the time being, previously competed three seasons for John Force Racing in the Top Fuel ranks. Filling in for Hight, Prock is also reunited with his father, Jimmy, who is Hight’s longtime crew chief, and brother Thomas, who works under his father. “It’s really exciting to get to race with my family, my father and brother,” Austin Prock said. “I’m just having a really good time with this Cornwell Tools team. They’re doing an outstanding job, man. And they definitely made me push; my learning curve really accelerated.” As for John Force, he’s an eight-time winner at Gainesville who is seeking a record 17th NHRA Funny Car championship. In the first qualifying session, Force laid down a time of 3.966 seconds at 323.12 mph to take the No. 7 spot. Force improved his time to 3.920 seconds at 324.67 mph in Q2.In Top Fuel, Brittany Force was fifth-quickest in the opening qualifying session, with an elapsed time of 3.787 seconds at 327.51 mph. But in the second qualifying session, Force lost traction shortly after leaving the starting line, ending with a 7.456-second, 78.52 mph effort to end the day in the 12th position.She will also be one of eight drivers taking part in Saturday’s Pep Boys NHRA Top Fuel All-Star Callout. Drivers will make choices to set the first sessions pairings at 9:30 a.m. ET, followed by the first session of racing at Noon ET, semifinals at 1:45 p.m. ET and the finals at 3:25 p.m. ET. *****************************The weather forecast has prompted NHRA to change Saturday’s schedule. Rain is forecast for later in the afternoon, so in addition to moving up the times for the Pep Boys Callout by an hour, NHRA has also moved up the start times for the final two sessions of Funny Car qualifying to 12:20 p.m. ET and 3:30 p.m. ET. The Gatornationals will be televised this weekend on FS1, including a special feature on the Pep Boys NHRA Top Fuel All- Star Callout at 7 p.m. ET on Saturday. On Sunday, there will be live coverage of the Gatornationals final eliminations from 10:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. ET, with continuing finals coverage at 9 p.m. ET. |
chevy racing–nascar–phoenix–william byron and daniel suarez
| NASCAR CUP SERIES PHOENIX RACEWAY SHRINERS CHILDREN’S 500 TEAM CHEVY POST-PRACTICE QUOTES MARCH 8, 2024 |
| TEAM CHEVY’S CHASE ELLIOTT, WILLIAM BYRON AND DANIEL SUAREZ MET WITH THE MEDIA FOLLOWING THE NASCAR CUP SERIES’ PRACTICE SESSION AT PHOENIX RACEWAY. POST-PRACTICE QUOTES: CHASE ELLIOTT, NO. 9 KELLEY BLUE BOOK CAMARO ZL1COULD YOU TELL A DIFFERENCE, OR WAS IT CLOSE TO WHAT YOU FELT BACK IN DECEMBER? “Honestly, no I really didn’t. I forgot they did anything until they started talking about it afterwards. I don’t see it really changing a whole lot. I could be totally wrong, but I don’t think it’s going to change much.” WHAT DID YOU FEEL WITH YOUR CAR SPECIFICALLY DURING THE COURSE OF PRACTICE, AND IS THERE ANYTHING YOU CAN TAKE AWAY FROM IT AND APPLY TO SUNDAY? “Yeah, I definitely thought we made it better from our first run, for sure. That was encouraging. We were all out of sorts there on our first run. I thought we landed in a decent spot. We certainly have room to improve, but yeah I thought we made it better. I like some of the characteristics that we were able to adjust on, which is always encouraging anytime you start practice and you start changing things.” WILLIAM BYRON, NO. 24 RAPTORTOUGH.COM CAMARO ZL1BYRON ON HOW HE FELT FOLLOWING THE PRACTICE SESSION: “I was pretty tight, but when I got within a few car links, I would slow down. I couldn’t get within two or three car lengths of anyone, but I was pretty slow.” HOW DID THE NEW TIRES FEEL TODAY ON TRACK? “They felt fine. You could slide the car around a little bit more, I felt like. The fall-off seemed pretty quick. But yeah, unless I was on a two or three-lap tire advantage or disadvantage, there were comers and goers with that. But with equal tires, I didn’t pass anyone.” I DON’T KNOW IF YOU PERSONALLY HAD HIGH HOPES, BUT IT FELT LIKE THERE WAS SOME SORT OF HOPE THAT THIS WAS GOING TO MAKE THINGS BETTER, AND EVERYONE THAT’S COME IN SO FAR HAS SAID IT’S EITHER THE SAME OR WORSE IN TRAFFIC. IS THAT DISAPPOINTING? “It’s disappointing when your car is slow. That’s all I care about. I think when you’re fast, you can pass. When you’re slow, you don’t pass. That’s all I really care about.. that’s what my job is to do. But yeah, if the package races better, that’s great. I just focus on what I have to do, which is try and pass people.” I don’t feel like I could pass. I passed one car, but there was a six or seven-lap tire difference. So yeah, once I got close to anyone, it was really hard to pass.” FORD AND TOYOTA WERE AT THE TOP OF THE SPEEDCHARTS. IS THAT IN RELATION TO THAT, OR ARE THE ISSUES THAT YOU’RE BATTLING SPECIFIC TO THE NO. 24 TEAM? “I don’t know.. I think it’s really just who guessed the best coming here. The aero-balance is totally different and your setup has to coincide with that. We didn’t guess correctly, but we still have time to get it right for Sunday. I think there’s a lot of changes going into it, but yeah it just has more to do with everyone’s sims said.” DANIEL SUAREZ, NO. 99 FREEWAY INSURANCE CAMARO ZL1SUAREZ ON HOW HE FELT FOLLOWING THE PRACTICE SESSION: “Honestly, I feel like the biggest difference is that we have a little bit more speed in the front-end because the tire is softer. And it fell off a little bit more, which is good.. I think it will produce good racing. I was in traffic quite a bit the first run of tires, and the car is very wild in traffic.. probably more than before. But we’ll see.. we’ll see exactly where we stack-up. I felt like the car was extremely, extremely tight in traffic. But we’ll see. I think the tire is the biggest deal. I think having a softer tire on the right-side and having a tire that is going to wear out more, I think it’s going to produce good racing. But when it comes to the aero stuff, I don’t know.. I don’t know exactly. We’ll have to see in the race.” OTHER DRIVERS HAVE ALSO SAID THAT IT WAS ACTUALLY WORSE IN TRAFFIC..“That’s what I thought, too. But again, I think Goodyear is the one that can really move the needle there big time with the softer tire, and I feel like that was a move in the right direction. We’ll see how it matches with the aero package.” DOES IT PICKUP A LOT OF PUSH BEHIND ANOTHER CAR? “Yeah, it does. I was in traffic pretty much my entire first run, the first time out with tires, and the car actually felt great. And as soon as I got into traffic, I was like – what the heck, what happened to my car. But I saw cars coming to me, as well, with little newer tires, and they were doing exactly the same thing. It’s going to be a challenge, but I like the fact that we’ll have to manage our tires a little bit more.” I’M ASSUMING YOU DID SOME SIMULATOR WORK. DID IT CORRELATE? “It did.. it did quite a bit. The only thing that I was actually surprised about in the simulator is that we were fighting a lot of moments with the back of the car on entry. The first hour I spent in the simulator, I was wrecking because I was so loose on entry. My car here is pretty solid on entry, so that’s a positive. I don’t know if that’s a simulation thing or a car thing that we improved, but whatever that may be, it felt better here than in the simulator, which is good.” |
Cody Overton Ready to Prove he Belongs on National Tour in Rookie Year With Tri Star Promotions
The Peach State native leads early in the MD3 Rookie of the Year points run
SUMMERTOWN, TN (March 8, 2024) –
Eager to prove he belongs on the national tour with the World of Outlaws CASE Construction Equipment Late Models, Cody Overton is already off to a good start in his rookie year.
The MD3 Rookie of the Year contender left DIRTcar Nationals with the early lead in the rookie race, currently sitting eight-points ahead of Ethan Dotson.
Piloting the #97C Tri Star Promotions Rocket Chassis, the Evans, GA driver earned a best finish of 12th on the final night of DIRTcar Nationals and finished 11th in event points.
“I always started the night super tight,” Overton said. “By the time we got to the Heat races, we’d finally get the car where we wanted it to be. I really don’t understand how it goes like that, but it’s always been like that for me, I’ll get turning towards the end. It’s gonna be good (with Tri Star). It’s a new team, new crew, new driver, and everyone was trying to just get to know each other.”
Overton’s racing career didn’t start until 2018 – previously working as a crew member for brother Brandon Overton’s team. Cody endorses the idea of learning and working on a Late Model before going racing to better understand what you need to do to improve.
“I think everybody should at least be able to work on these cars for at least six months to a year to get an idea of how these cars handle,” Overton said. “If you know what you got, you know what you can and can’t do. It makes you better as a racer and better overall. I don’t claim to be no wheelman, but I can promise you if there’s damage, I know how to fix it and put it back the right way.”
Though Overton has visited Thunderhill Raceway previously in a Crate Late Model, the World of Outlaws visit on March 22-23 will be a new test.
“I wish I could say [my past experience] helps,” Overton said. “It will still be an uphill battle for us. I know of what to expect there, but not like a lot of these guys. The (Crate) is so different from a Super Late Model that what I get from the race will be new notes for me.”
The good start to the season is one that Overton doesn’t want to spend too much time thinking about as he prepares for future events – circling his hom estate race, the Alabama Gang 100 at the Talladega Short Track, on his calendar.
“It’s something I don’t think about since the season has just begun,” Overton said. “Then, you get all stressed out and worried. It’s cool, though, just gotta keep doing it, paying my dues, and we’ll be there.
“Some of these places we’re about to go to, like Talladega, I’ve been there a lot in a Crate Late Models and Limited Late Models among others. I think that will help me, along with my brother winning the Alabama Gang 100 last year, so I feel I got some of a notebook to go off of with him being there many times in a Super Late Model. I think it will be a good deal and really cool to race in.”
The Peach State driver continues his journey with the World of Outlaws CASE Late Models at Thunderhill Raceway on Friday and Saturday, March 22-23. Tickets for the event will be available at the track on race day. For more info, visit https://worldofoutlaws.com/schedule.
chevy racing–indycar–st. petersburg–practice report
| CHEVROLET IN NTT INDYCAR SERIES FIRESTONE GRAND PRIX OF ST. PETERSBURG ST. PETERSBURG, FLORIDA TEAM CHEVY PRACTICE REPORT MARCH 8, 2024 CHEVROLET FINISHES FIRST PRACTICE OF THE NEW NTT INDYCAR SERIES SEASON STRONG WITH SIX IN THE TOP-10 AT ST. PETERSBURG Chevrolet opened the 2024 NTT INDYCAR SERIES season with six drivers finishing in the top-10 of the first on-track session for this weekend’s Firestone Grand Prix of St. Petersburg.Pato O’Ward, driver of the No. 5 Arrow McLaren Chevrolet, led the session for Team Chevy, finishing second with a fastest lap of 1:00:8112. O’Ward was followed by Will Power, driver of the No. 2 Verizon Business Team Penske Chevrolet in second, Rinus VeeKay, driver of the No. 21 askROI Ed Carpenter Racing Chevrolet in fifth to round out the top-five.Saturday sees Team Chevy take to the track for second practice at 9:35 a.m. ET, as well as qualifying and the Firestone Fast Six at 2 p.m. ET for Sunday’s race on the Streets of St. Petersburg. TEAM CHEVY TOP-10 FIRST PRACTICE RESULTS:2nd Pato O’Ward4th Will Power5th Rinus VeeKay6th Scott McLaughlin7th Romain Grosjean10th Callum Ilott |
| WHAT THEY’RE SAYING (Quotes):Scott McLaughlin, No. 3 Chevrolet at Team Penske:“Feeling good about today. The DEX Imaging Chevy fells very good. Between Team Penske, Chevy, and everyone in between we have worked really hard on some things, and we have come out with some pretty strong things, but a lot of hard work is going to have to continue to happen to keep us in the front. INDYCAR is even harder and tougher this year, but I am excited for the challenge. Good first day for us back in 2024 and hopefully we have more coming Saturday and Sunday. “ Will Power, No. 12 Chevrolet at Team Penske:“Yeah, it was tough man, but the car is pretty good, felt good. We made some major improvements where we needed to. We are way more prepared this year and obviously last year coming in, I hadn’t really been able to do anything because my wife was in the hospital, so this year, very determined to be better because I was very disappointed last year.” Pato O’Ward, No. 5 Chevrolet at Arrow McLaren:“I’m happy with the first practice of the year. It was quite a messy session, but I’m glad we got somewhat of a read on both of the Firestone tires. So it gives us some information to look at and prepare for tomorrow.” Callum Ilott, No. 6 Chevrolet at Arrow McLaren:“The day was really good. Honestly, I’m very impressed with the team, as with the car. I think it was a good start, and obviously there are things to work on. For me, not having driven (an NTT INDYCAR SERIES car) for a couple of months, it was refreshing. But this team has a good program, and we got through everything that we wanted to. The session was a bit different to what we are used to, but I think we made the most of it. Big thanks to everyone who got me in the car.” Alexander Rossi, No. 7 Chevrolet at Arrow McLaren:“I’m not sure that the split practice really helped anything, but it was a valiant effort to try it. It was hard to get a lap. Our best lap came on the Firestone Primary tire, so we don’t know right now how we are on the alternate. I think, in general, the car feels good and we are starting in a good spot. We will see what tomorrow brings.” Gavin Ward, Team Principal at Arrow McLaren:“In my experience, Practice 1 at St. Pete is a tricky one to judge performance off of. Today was no exception. Pato had a pretty good run there at the end. Everyone is feeling pretty reasonable, and it’s always tough in traffic to complete your lap. I applaud the NTT INDYCAR SERIES for trying something new with the split practice sessions, but I don’t think it made it easier to digest today.” Rinus VeeKay, No. 21 Chevrolet at Ed Carpenter Racing:“It’s nice to be back after such a long offseason, I think also for all the fans, everyone. It’s great to finally to finally be here. Finished P2 in my group session, and now P5. I’m really happy. The car felt good. I still think we have some time left on the table, but it’s a good start. It’ll make me sleep well tonight and good rest for tomorrow, that’s for sure. It felt good. I really feel like Team Chevy upped their game, and of course Ed Carpenter Racing did a great job giving me a car that’s comfortably fast.” On Christian Rasmussen and rapport so far…“I think he’s a great guy. It’s great to have him with me and joining this team. This is my fifth year in the series, so I’m really trying to help him as much as possible, make him get familiar with as much as possible as soon as possible. He’s had a clean session so far, so good for him.” Romain Grosjean, No. 77 Chevrolet at Juncos Hollinger Racing:“First day back at school and it went really well. This first practice session I think the team did a really good job from Sebring (test session) getting the car in a better window. Chevy has been helping a lot as well with good drivability and then a good car from the engine, so excited for the weekend. I think there’s more work to be done but a good start.” Agustin Canapino, No. 78 Chevrolet at Juncos Hollinger Racing:“We started the session with a really good performance. We were P8 with the green tires. Unfortunately, we had a flag when we put on the greens, but I’m really happy with this car. Thanks for Team Chevy and our whole team for a great start to the season.” |
| WILL POWER, NO. 2 VERIZON BUSINESS TEAM PENSKE CHEVROLET – First Practice Press Conference Transcript:Right now joined by nine-time pole winner here on the Streets of St. Pete. Finished fourth in that practice session at 1:00.8. Driving the No. 12 Verizon Business Team Penske Chevrolet. Two-time winner here at St. Pete. Will power, got it out of the way. What happens the rest of the weekend? WILL POWER: Just small improvements. Felix is on another planet out there, but everyone else is extremely close. We’ll go back and look at it.I felt like overall the session was pretty good. I don’t mind that. There’s more room on track and less backing up. But, good, car feels good. Everything feels calm. When you are fast and things are calm, it’s good. You’ve got a little bit in reserve. THE MODERATOR: Questions. Q. Will, the trade-off is there’s less congestion with the groups, but do you get a chance to really get in a rhythm and try things? WILL POWER: Honestly it’s a very similar flow to qualifying. You get the ten minutes, so you have to get a run done. Yeah, I didn’t mind it. It’s been very difficult in the past just to get a lap, and each time you went out, you got clear runs. For me I liked the format. Q. I don’t want to devalue the guy sitting next to you, but I mean, the team didn’t really perform that well without him. Are you surprised how quickly he’s put him up on top of the board?WILL POWER: Not really. I actually thought he would do really well in that environment. I think, yeah, he’s quick. He’s quick. Doesn’t surprise me he’s been very quick. At the end of last year he’s been coming on very strong, so no surprise. Q. One for Will and one for Felix. Will, we all know what you had to go through last year in January and February and even December, and you didn’t really have a chance to properly get prepared for the season. Thank God Liz is doing fine and doing better, but how much better prepared, even though you’ve got an allergy right now, do you feel entering the season?WILL POWER: Oh, yeah, way more prepared. Way, way more than I was last year. I’m fitter, have more miles, and just, yeah, ahead of the game in many ways. Mentally better because you’re not thinking of your family. It’s tough when your mind is somewhere else. My mind is right in the game, right in the game. Q. One for both. I’ll start with Will. Can you give me a sense of the mood at Team Penske coming into this year? I know you guys won the Indy 500 last year, but you went winless. Josef seemed really frustrated at the end of the year. Scotty won once. Then you have Penske doing so well with NASCAR Championship and the IMSA Team, the WEC Team, the Rolex win. Is there more motivation I guess is what I’m asking? What’s the mood like coming in this year for you and your teammates?WILL POWER: It’s personal. I think everyone is personally a little different. I’m certainly very motivated to have a strong year after going winless. I was really pissed off about that, so putting a lot of emphasis on that. Yeah, Team Penske, man, they’ve been right on it the last couple of years. Two NASCAR titles, INDYCAR title, Indy 500, 24-hour of Daytona. So, yeah, it’s expected of that team. It’s expected. You must perform. They’ve got the resources, and you are given the car each week. I’ve had my head down. I haven’t really been thinking about anything else but competing at a very high level this year. I’ve worked hard, and I’m sure the other boys are in similar situations, and there’s a lot of people in the field that are in contract years and trying to prove points. It will be a very tough INDYCAR season, which is just great. Q. Will, a couple for you. The first one being, have you noticed any differences in the track in terms of how they’ve eased a few of the corners and then the repitching that’s taken place, has that affected anything?WILL POWER: Yeah, the track at turn three is a lot smoother. A lot nicer there. They haven’t really changed anything else. It’s all pretty similar apart from that. Yeah, but that was a big problem last year, turn three. Q. Then just one other thing. Sort of crystal-balling towards the end of the season, this year is quite different to previous years where we’re going to have a bunch of oval races at the end with St. Louis, a return to Milwaukee, return to Nashville. Does that change a team’s outlook on how they prepare cars knowing that you’re going into a stretch of ovals rather than the traditional road courses to round out a championship?WILL POWER: As far as car preparation, those short ovals street you pretty much run your street and road course cars anyway. Super speedways are slightly different. Indy is where you build a special car. Everywhere else these days are pretty similar. Yeah, the cars, that won’t be a big deal. |
chevy racing–nascar–phoenix–kyle busch
| NASCAR CUP SERIES PHOENIX RACEWAY SHRINERS CHILDREN’S 500 TEAM CHEVY PRESS CONF. TRANSCRIPT MARCH 8, 2024 |
| KYLE BUSCH, NO. 8 ZONE CAMARO ZL1, met with the media in advance of the NASCAR Cup Series’ practice session at Phoenix Raceway. Media Availability Quotes: SPEAKING OF PIT CREWS, YOU’VE GOT THREE NEW GUYS THIS WEEK.. I THINK A COUPLE OF THEM COME FROM THE XFINITY SERIES. IS THAT A CONCERN AT ALL THAT THEY’RE DEALING WITH DIFFERENT LUGNUT SITUATIONS, AND HAVE THEY HAD TIME TO PRACTICE TOGETHER? “I have no clue. I don’t have any idea of where guys are coming from, what their background is or what their experience is. But you led into that and gave me some of that, so thank you. I always just kind of assume that the Cup guys were the Xfinity guys, so news to me. We’ll find out how good they are come around 1:30 p.m. on Sunday.” ANDY PETREE SAID HE TALKED TO YOU THIS WEEK. I WAS WONDERING TOO FROM AN ATHLETE’S POINT-OF-VIEW.. FOR HOW GOOD AS YOU ARE ON PIT ROAD, HOW MUCH DO YOU HAVE TO BE CAREFUL ABOUT NOT TRYING TO DO TOO MUCH TO CARRY A PIT CREW WHEN THERE’S A CONCERN THAT YOU MIGHT LOSE A COUPLE OF SECONDS, SO HOW DO I MAKE IT UP? I’M GUESSING MAYBE WAS THAT A FACTOR IN SLIDING THROUGH, OR MAYBE NOT? “Yeah, it was. Anytime I’m on pit road, I’m always thinking of the sheet; the statistics and the pieces of information that we have of what we try to gauge ourselves to the rest of the competition with. There’s probably five or six different sectors of pit road of things that you worry about to make sure you’re the best at all of those, and one of those is getting onto pit road; how you roll your pit road speed with your lights; how you get into the box and how you get out of the box; and how you exit pit road and how you get back up on the race track and blend. All of those things, you want to be perfect every time. For me, I had come in the previous two pit stops before the one I slid through, where I came in way too light, and I was like – ‘OK, I’m coming in way too light’. If I’m giving up.. if it’s a half of a second, I don’t even know what it is, but I’m like – ‘OK, I’m going to make sure I hit it this time’. I hit the sign the way I needed to hit the sign and everything else. And so, that’s what happened on the next one – I came in as hot as I thought I needed to come in, and when it locked the rear tires with the brakes, it just slid and it slid two inches too far. One week, you’re two inches too short, and the next, you’re two inches too far. It’s kind of crazy. All-in-all, just a frustrating day to have the disaster that we did on pit road of just being really slow. And then for me to slide through to kind of add insult to injury on my behalf, we otherwise would have been a top-10 finisher. That was the day we needed and we certainly lost a lot of points.” WHEN YOU SAY ‘TOO LIGHT’, WHAT DOES THAT MEAN? DOES THAT MEAN THAT YOU’RE NOT HITTING THE SIGN, OR NOT HITTING IT AS FORCEFULLY? “Yeah, so you’re rolling your pit road speed, and then as you decelerate to come into your box, you want to go to the brake pedal once and just kind of slow down and get down to speed one constant down. The two times before that, I was coming in.. I was slowing down and I was having to get off the brake because I was too slow, and then reapply brake in order to stop at the spot that I needed to stop on. So I tried to hit that one trajectory of just straight down of deceleration, and I missed it.” ON THE STOP THAT YOU WERE CALLED FOR PITTING OUTSIDE OF THE BOX, YOU CAN’T SEE WHERE YOUR SPLITTER IS, CORRECT? SO YOU HAVE TO RELY ON ONE OF THE PIT CREW GUYS? RANDALL (BURNETT) SAID HE COULDN’T SEE IT EITHER.“Yeah, so typically in years past at JGR, we’d always have a system of – it’s the changer’s responsibility or a guy behind the wall.. like one of the pit crew support guys behind the wall just needs to start jumping up-and-down and waving.. like pushing back, pushing back. That’s what I did.. like when I’d stop, I came to a stop and I’m like – man, I feel a little long, but I don’t know. So I looked at the behind-the-wall guys, and the behind-the-wall guys were like moving the hose and ready to catch a tire, like that wasn’t even something that they were supposed to do. So we’ve talked about some of those things to put more responsibility on more players so we cannot have the penalty exist. But to further Dustin’s point – like the ten-tenths on pit road.. like I’m really good at getting all ten. And when I feel like I’m in a downward position, where I’m behind and I’m going to try and get extra or more, yeah that’s led to my speeding penalties. That’s led to my sliding through the box because I know I have to makeup time on pit road myself to kind of compensate for what we’re losing when we’re stopped in the box. I know everyone at RCR is busting their tails and working hard. I know that Ray and everybody in the pit crew department is, we just have what we have. We’ve got to work through it, and if that’s changing players around, then we have to change players around. We’ve got to find something that’s going to strengthen our front line, our defense, whatever it is or whatever you want to call those guys.. special teams. We’ve got to find the players that are going to make it roll.” IS THERE A TIME OF THE YEAR WHERE YOU’RE LIKE – OK, LET’S SET A GROUP AND JUST LIVE OR DIE WITH THEM, OR NO MATTER WHAT TIME OF YEAR IT IS, WE JUST HAVE TO KEEP CHANGING AND PUTTING THE BEST GUYS WE FEEL WE HAVE IN THERE? “Well I feel like you have to keep getting the best guys that you can get in there, and change positions as you need to change them. Honestly, when you get down to the nitty-gritty, you’re going to run out of players, you know what I mean? The depth chart is not very deep for guys on pit road that are the ‘excel’ group. I feel like there’s an ‘A’ group of people, there’s a ‘B’ group and there’s a ‘C’ group.. just like drivers. There’s an ‘A’ group, a ‘B’ group and a ‘C’ group. And so it’s hard to get any of those available guys from that ‘A’ group to come over to you because they’re under contract. You’re basically playing.. what is it in football.. the practice squad, you know what I mean? You’re pulling guys off the practice squad to see what you can find, and hopefully you hit one.” LAST YEAR, YOUR TWO RACES HERE IN PHOENIX WERE PRETTY MUCH POLAR OPPOSITES. YOU PERFORMED PRETTY WELL IN THE SPRING, AND THEN IN THE FALL, YOU WEREN’T ONE OF THE CHAMPIONSHIP FOUR CONTENDERS. IS THERE ANYTHING FROM EITHER OF THOSE TWO RACES THAT YOU’RE REALLY LOOKING AT WHEN COMING INTO THIS WEEKEND WITH THE NEW SHORT-TRACK PACKAGE? “So the first race, we struggled a little bit.. we weren’t that great. I think we did get an eighth-place finish out of it. So we got a finish out of it, but we weren’t very good. The second race though, I felt like we were really good.. we were passing cars, we were fast, we had speed, but pit road happens. I don’t know how many positions we lost on pit road here last fall, but it was bad. So I just kept trying to makeup the positions that we lost. I think we came down under a green-flag pit cycle.. we were in eighth, seventh or something like that, and we came out 12th. So now I’m trying to makeup for lost time, and then I end up spinning myself out in that long run. That again, everything kind of compounds itself and puts on top of on top of on top of your issues that you have and makes your day entirely worse. But back to your question.. the fall race, I felt like we were competitive. I felt like we were fast. I felt like we had a shot. If we had maintained every time on pit road, I think we could actually move forward throughout the day and get positions. We just need to be able to do that. If you’re not going backwards, then that’s a hell of a day for us.” OBVIOUSLY PIT CREWS HAVE ALWAYS BEEN A ‘HOT TOPIC’ WHEN PEOPLE SWITCH STUFF. IS EVERYONE SO CLOSE NOW, THAT’S WHY THERE’S SUCH AN EMPHASIS ON PIT CREWS? LIKE THEY’VE NEVER MATTERED MORE THAN THEY HAVE NOW, IN TERMS OF PIT STOPS? OR IS THAT TOO MUCH OF A LEAP COMPARED TO THE PAST? “I guess I feel like the difference between first and 20th is much closer than it used to be. When I had my heyday of pit crews at JGR, we were running.. let’s just say we were running 12-second stops, where the rest of JGR were running 12.5-second stops, and the rest of the competition were 13-second stops. Now, the whole field is.. if you’re not under 10-seconds, you’re nobody. You might as well not even play. You have to get to that threshold. There’s now guys that are flying.. like 8.8, 8.9-second stops is a good stop, a fast stop. 9.4-seconds is probably about average. Yeah, we’re all just looking for what we can because on-track, at times, the cars are so equal that it’s hard to pass on the track. The easiest place to pass somebody else is when they’re sitting still, on pit road. So we have to be better on pit road.. we can’t be going backwards, at least.” AIR BLOCKING BECAME A BIG TOPIC LAST WEEKEND AFTER KYLE LARSON WAS DESCRIBING. CAN YOU TAKE US THROUGH THE NUANCES OF THAT, AND IF YOU’RE THE LEAD GUY, YOU HAVE TO HAVE A HUGE ADVANTAGE WITH THAT TECHNIQUE. IS THAT ACCURATE? “Yeah, it’s way bigger with this car than it was with the old car. This car is 30 percent worse. They were supposed to make it 30 percent better, and that didn’t happen. Who was it.. look back to the race, was it Kansas where (Joey) Logano and (Kevin) Harvick, when Harvick ran up to Logano and then Logano just air blocked him and couldn’t pass him. So there was that race, which that was the old car, wasn’t it? So it happens always, in anything. Trucks are that way. Those guys are doing it somewhat. But these Cup cars are really bad for that. You literally just go off in the corner and if you can watch your mirror and drive out front well enough, then you can just kind of let your car go where it needs to go in order to air block that guy behind you. I was doing that a little bit with (Kyle) Larson at the end of the first stage, just to try to hold him back some. I wasn’t necessarily air blocking him.. I was more so trying to confuse him of where I was running. I wouldn’t run the same line every time going back to the next end of the race track. Like I would run high one lap, I’d run middle lap. I’d run high.. I’d run low. I would say Kyle is really good at it. Joey is really good at it. Joey is really good at it running 12th, not for the lead (laughs). (Chase) Briscoe last week was an absolute disaster with guys trying to do it; pulling slide jobs and everything else. But yeah, you try to do it as much as you can when you know you have somebody to try and hold off.” |
chevy racing–nascar–phoenix–kyle larson
| NASCAR CUP SERIES PHOENIX RACEWAY SHRINERS CHILDREN’S 500 TEAM CHEVY PRESS CONF. TRANSCRIPT MARCH 8, 2024 |
| KYLE LARSON, NO. 5 VALVOLINE CAMARO ZL1, met with the media in advance of the NASCAR Cup Series’ practice session at Phoenix Raceway. Media Availability Quotes: With the INDYCAR season starting this weekend, will you be paying attention to St. Pete and what’s going on there? “It’s hard to.. like it’s really hard to pay attention when a lot of our on-track stuff, typically on a normal weekend, is the same as them. So yeah, when I look at results and stuff, I don’t know how well it translates to if I could look and watch every lap of the race live. But yeah, I’ll for sure try and pay more attention to what’s going on this year, obviously with the Indianapolis 500 coming up. Again, it’s difficult to follow along as closely as even a race fan probably can.” You did an INDYCAR test here, so when you come back in here, are you thinking NASCAR? Does any of your mind go to that INDYCAR test? What was that test like for you? “No.. honestly driving here today, I almost forget that test even happened, just because I’m not coming here to run an INDYCAR right now. My mind has just been about the fall weekend and what I felt then. And even the NASCAR test that we had here and what I felt then. But yeah, obviously it was really cool to run an INDYCAR around this track. It was really fast. It didn’t feel way different than the Next Gen car here either, so that was good, but you’re just going faster. We’ll see.. I mean I haven’t been on-track since then, so maybe it’ll be weird at first, but I doubt it because I race so many different types of cars all the time.” You touched on this a little bit last week about how although the Chevy’s have dominated in terms of winning the races, the gap between Chevy, Toyota and Ford isn’t as big as it might seem. What will it take for the Chevy’s to continue to hold that dominance over Ford and Toyota? “Yeah, I’m not sure. I think just continuing to evolve, and get your setups and stuff better. I’m not a car guy, so I don’t really know how much room there is to make the cars and stuff itself better. But there’s always stuff to be learned from every event; every wind tunnel test and anything like that. Just trying to do a good job with the data that you receive, and try to tweak and make things better, just like every team does.” How do you plan on keeping your momentum going following last week’s win in Las Vegas? “Yeah, I don’t know. Phoenix (Raceway) has been a pretty decent track for our team the last few years since I’ve been with Hendrick Motorsports. We qualify well, so hopefully that all goes good tomorrow – get a good start upfront, get good stage points and just keep executing. Our team has done a really good job this year of executing with the race cars that we bring. Our pit crew has been doing a great job. It takes everything to be upfront, and I think that’s how we can continue our momentum. Just continue to do what we’ve been doing and just keep ourselves in the hunt.” You referred to the Championship race here last year. It’s going to be pretty warm here this weekend. How similar are you expecting the track conditions to be, and what are you looking for in practice? “I’m sure the track conditions will be similar to kind of how they always are here. I think you’ll see the groove kind of move around, like it typically does. But we have a different aero package, so not sure yet how that will effect things.. if that changes the racing much or not. We’ll see. I’m excited to just get on track here in a little while and see what it’s like with more cars out there. I did the test in December and helped, I guess as a part of the group, to come to this decision for an aero package and all that. It’s tough to judge off the six cars or whatever it was then. Now we have the full field, and we’ll get a real understanding of how it is in traffic and such.” Looking back to the championship race, it was like ‘oh whoever is going to come off pit road on that last pit stop, it’s going to be over’. You had that and (Ryan) Blaney tracked you down.. your car just didn’t have the handling in that situation. From that sense, looking back, how do you get better or what do you tell your team and your crew chief to make sure that can’t happen again? “Yeah, I mean the competitor in me knew that it wasn’t going to be easy.. (Ryan) Blaney had passed me every run that race. But yeah, I don’t know – our balance wasn’t where it needed to be and all that. William (Byron) and I.. I felt like we were the third and fourth-best cars in the Final Four. (Christopher) Bell had his misfortunate and all that. But yeah, not getting too into the weeds of the balance of what my car was and what I think the balance of Blaney’s was.. I don’t know, I just felt like we needed more grip, I guess. My entry.. I remember being a little bit unstable and that didn’t allow me to kind of shape the corner how I needed to. I was just a little bit behind where I needed to be with my angle, speed and all that in the middle of the corner. I need to be better from entry to center, with balance or whatever that may be, and then that will kind of fix the exit, as well. It was nice to do that test here in December. Bell was a part of it. Blaney was a part of it. Everyone has different things going on at a test, but it was good to come here quickly after and get to work on things. We’ll see. I know we’ve changed a few things from what we had in the fall, and hopefully it will translate to grip and speed. We’ll see.. we’ll see here soon.” So if your car is better, how do you determine if it’s because you guys just did a better job at setup as opposed to the package fitting you? You talk about wanting grip.. there’s several ways to find it, so are you going to tell how well this is? And in this practice session.. typically I know you guys don’t often run up in traffic, but do you want to run in traffic or spend the whole time by yourself so you can figure out the car? “I don’t think you’re really necessarily going to see anyone searching for traffic in practice, so I don’t plan on searching for traffic. But you’ll always see it.. somebody will blend up in front of you, or you’ll catch somebody that’s struggling and they’ll pull off. So you get sniffs of dirtier air. I think the way to judge how you are compared to how you were is just off of feel. You can feel when something handles a lot better. You can shape your corner differently. And then the obvious of looking at timing and scoring – seeing if you’re up on the sheet or if you’re not where you need to be. Hopefully we’re fast and hopefully we’re up there. Again, it was kind of hard to tell at the test. We were pretty bad at the test, but I don’t think we’ll be bad in real life. We’ll see when we get out there.” When you have a performance that you had last week, do you find it difficult to maybe temper expectations going into a track like Phoenix that’s so difficult, or the expectation to replicate what you did last week? “Yeah, I mean I think for me and probably for most drivers and teams, you quickly move on from that, so I’ve really like forgotten about it. I would say come Monday afternoon, once my meetings were done, my mind is switched to Phoenix. Sure, I’d rather win than run 20th because I would probably feel better now than I would have if I ran 20th, but I’m not thinking about Vegas of like how to replicate anything.” As stout as your pit crew was last weekend, do you see any weaknesses right now with your team? “No, I mean I think based off how we’ve executed the first handful of weeks, I’m happy with where all of our team is at. The race cars have been really fast. Our pit crew has been performing. I feel like the solid race I was able to put together last week.. like all that was great. Sure, you want to get all areas better, if you can. I feel like Cliff (Daniels) does a really good job of leading our team; coaching, prepping and all that. I’m not surprised that we’re executing well right now, but I just hope that we keep it going.” |
BRITTANY FORCE READY FOR BATTLE IN PEP BOYS TOP FUEL ALL-STAR CALLOUT
| Big prize and bragging rights on the line for event’s 3rd straight year |
| GAINESVILLE, Florida (March 8, 2024) – When it comes to drag racing, Monster Energy Chevrolet dragster driver Brittany Force admits she’s a creature of habit. Be it qualifying or in eliminations, she likes to prepare for each round in a methodical fashion, not getting ahead of herself, but rather just focusing on the proverbial “one round at a time.” But this Saturday, as part of the NHRA season-opening 55th Amalie Motor Oil NHRA Gatornationals in Gainesville, Fla., Force and seven other Top Fuel drivers – including five former champions – will battle it out for $130,000 in prizes, a special trophy, cowboy-style belt and bragging rights on the line for the third annual Pep Boys NHRA All-Star Top Fuel Callout at legendary Gainesville Raceway. “It’s a unique event, two races in one at the Gatornationals,” said the two-time NHRA Top Fuel champion. “It’s just exciting to get on stage and hopefully get a chance to call somebody out. It makes it fun for the fans.” But the third of 16-time Funny Car champion John Force’s four daughters admits the Callout format does impact drivers as they attempt to have strong qualifying runs for Sunday’s final eliminations of the main event. “I don’t love it so much as a driver,” Force said of the Callout. “I’m very routine. I like to know who I’m going up against. But it’s a great show for the fans and it’s something different in our sport. We’re excited to kick off in Gainesville, it’s been a long offseason.”Force begins her 12th year in NHRA competition this weekend. Despite earning No. 1 qualifier honors four times, Force finished seventh in the final standings, failed to win a race and reached a final round just once.Force is concerned that The Callout could somewhat impact her pace as she goes through a not so usual weekend due to the extra rounds. “There’s the mental load of it’s the first race of the season, you’ve been out of the car and out of competition since November,” Force said. “We went testing a few weeks ago but that’s different than competition, lining up next to somebody where every point matters till the end of the year. “Now you’re going in with this extra race within a race. So that puts extra pressure on you. You only get two qualifying runs (on Friday) before you get thrown into it, and you have to make decisions if you get the chance to call somebody out. “So you don’t get a lot to work with. It’s kind of just taking a deep breath, focusing on doing your job like it’s any other run really, looking in your lane. You can’t worry about everything else going on. Crew chiefs are going to line you up, and you’re going to call out the car you think you could beat.” Force has most of last year’s crew back for the new season, with one significant addition in veteran tuner John Collins, joining crew chief David Grubnic. Force hopes a strong performance in both the Callout as well as the Gatornationals will help set the tone for 2024 and the goal of winning a third Top Fuel championship. “It’s definitely challenging,” Force said. “The tricky thing about the All-Star Callout is you pull up there to make a run and you have to weigh is our focus on winning this run or trying to qualify well for Sunday?’ So it’s a battle for teams and crew chiefs to be able to do that. “But again, it’s just pulling up there with all the confidence that you could do it, drivers are going to have to step up, and crew chiefs are going to have to make some really tough decisions. But at the end of the day, we all want that win.” The Callout, which began in 2022, has a field composed of eight finishers from last season. The No. 1 seed will get to pick their first round opponent. Then, whoever earns the lowest ET of the first round gets to pick their opponent for the second round. FS1 will carry a special feature highlighting the Callout Saturday at 9 p.m. ET. |
Championship Points Fund Established for ASCS National Tour
Driver tow package, membership details also set as focus turns to 2024 openerCONCORD, NC (March 8, 2024) – One week after acquiring the American Sprint Car Series (ASCS), World Racing Group has set the 2024 national series points fund and driver benefit package heading into the season-opening event March 15-16 at RPM Speedway in Crandall, Texas.
The drivers and teams will be racing for a share of a $152,000 championship point fund, with the champion earning $40,000. The top 10 finishing positions in the title race will be paid, with $25,000 going to second; $20,000 for third; $15,000 for fourth; $12,000 for fifth; $10,000 for sixth; $9,000 for seventh; $8,000 for eighth; $7,000 for ninth; and $6,000 for 10th.
In addition, the top five competitors in national series points will receive $400 in tow money, while positions six through 10 will receive $300. For the second night of a two-night event, a tow package of 50 percent will be issued. Tow money for drivers is like appearance fees in other forms of entertainment.
Every competitor who draws in for a race night will be required to pay $20. The nightly draw fees will be awarded to that night’s hard charger.
“Even though everything is coming together quickly with our involvement in the ASCS, establishing the championship points fund and tow package ahead of next week’s season opener was important so racers and their teams know what they’re competing for over the course of the season,” said Brian Dunlap, who is leading the integration of the ASCS into World Racing Group. “The World of Outlaws and the Edwards family go back to the beginning of the Outlaws in 1978, so it’s only fitting we’re kicking off our leadership of the ASCS with Martin Edwards promoting the first event next week at RPM Speedway.”
All competitors will be required to purchase a DIRTcar Sprint Car membership, trackside or online at DIRTcarMembers.com. That membership will allow racers to compete in World of Outlaws competition, as well. Competitors who have already purchased a 2024 ASCS membership will have to complete a DIRTcar Sprint Car membership, but no payment will be required. The DIRTcar Sprint Car membership is $125 annually.
A nearly 40-race tour across 10 states will make up ASCS’ 2024 national championship season, including the prestigious $20,000-to-win 360 Knoxville Nationals at Iowa’s Knoxville Raceway, Aug. 1-3.
The 2024 ASCS national championship season begins March 15-16 at RPM Speedway, marking the Series’ inaugural event under the World Racing Group banner.
To watch every national American Sprint Car Series race live, visit DIRTVision.com or download the DIRTVision App.
CHEVY RACING–NHRA–Gatornationals wrapup
| CHEVROLET IN NHRA2024 AMALIE MOTOR OIL NHRA GATORNATIONALS GAINESVILLE RACEWAY GAINESVILLE, FLORIDA TEAM CHEVY RACE ADVANCE | NOTES & QUOTES MARCH 8-10, 2024 CHEVROLET ROARS INTO THE 2024 NHRA MISSION FOODS DRAG RACING SERIES SEASON LOOKING TO CAPTURE A RECORD-EXTENDING 29TH MANUFACTURERS CUPTeam Chevy Looks to Start the New Year Strong at the 2024 Amalie Motor Oil NHRA Nationals and Gainesville Dragway |
| Team Chevy opens the 2024 NHRA Mission Foods Drag Racing season at Gainesville Dragway for the Amalie Motor Oil NHRA Gatornationals March 8-10, 2024.Chevrolet closed out the 2023 NHRA season capturing a record-extending 28th Manufacturers Cup since 1966, the most of any other manufacturer in professional drag racing.Team Chevy raced to the NHRA nitro winners’ circle five times in 2023, with overall holding 159 Funny Car victories in the series since 1967.John Force Racing enters the 2024 season after closing out 2023 runner-up in the NHRA Funny Car Championship standings with Robert Hight and the Cornwell Tools Chevrolet Camaro SS team.John Force Racing heads to Gainesville with 13 wins in hand, with eight of those coming from drag racing legend and team owner John Force (1992-1996, 1999, 2001, and 2017), four from Robert Hight (2012, 2014, 2016, and 2019), and one from Brittany Force (2016).Collectively, the drivers of John Force Racing also have 12 No. 1 qualifiers at Gainesville Raceway, the most recent coming from B. Force in 2023.Already an event winner this year, Austin Prock and his Cornwell Tools Chevrolet Camaro SS Funny Car team at John Force Racing look to start the season strong with another visit to the Winner’s Circle after winning the PRO Superstar Shootout in Bradenton, Fla., and notching his first win in his first race behind the wheel of a Funny Car.Prock has stepped into the driver’s seat for John Force Racing teammate Robert Hight as he tends to personal medical issues at the start of the 2024 season.Prock will make his NHRA Funny Car competition debut in Gainesville, pairing up with his father Jimmy, and brother Thomas, who serve as co-crew chiefs along with Nate Hildahl.John Force, driver of the PEAK Chevrolet Camaro SS Funny Car and team owner of John Force Racing, enters Gainesville seeking his 156th Wally trophy, as well as Chevrolet’s 80th in a Camaro SS-bodies Funny Car. 24 of Team Chevy’s wins have come from John Force and his team.Legendary driver and team owner J. Force and his PEAK Chevrolet team are led by crew chief Chris Cunningham, entering the 2024 season on the hunt for a record-extending 17th Funny Car championship. J. Force is first on the most NHRA World Series Championships list, ahead of Bob Glidden (Pro Stock) with 10.Looking to capture her 17th Top Fuel victory in NHRA with her Monster Energy Chevrolet dragster team, Brittany Force heads to Gainesville seeking a needed return to the winner’s circle with John Force Racing.B. Force and her team are once again led by decorated crew chief David Grubnic at the helm, competing for a third NHRA Top Fuel World Championship this season along with her 18th Top Fuel victory in the series, starting at Gainesville.Gainesville Dragway is near and dear to B. Force’s heart, being the site of her first win in NHRA Top Fuel in 2016. Since then, she’s amassed two championships, 16 wins, and 46 No. 1 Qualifiers in her career thus far. |
| Quotes:BRITTANY FORCE, DRIVER OF THE MONSTER ENERGY CHEVROLET TOP FUEL DRAGSTER:“The 2024 NHRA Drag Racing season is starting and we kick off in Gainesville at the Gator Nationals. I’m excited to get this year rolling after a tough season and a tough test in Bradenton. Our team got our first win in 2016 here in Florida and we’re looking for another one this season. We want to start off strong, we want to qualify well, make use of every qualifying lap we make, and not only win this thing but win the Pep Boys All-Star Callout. Our Team Chevy Dragster is ready for battle. It’s an exciting way to open the season with two races in one. Top Fuel kicks it off, and it’s the second or third year of the Pep Boys Callout. The fans love it. Drivers get up there and call out other drivers, and it’s just this new, exciting race within a race.” AUSTIN PROCK, DRIVER OF THE CORNWELL TOOLS CHEVROLET CAMARO SS FUNNY CAR:“I’ve been a part of the Chevrolet family my entire career, but this year is special. I get to be behind the wheel of a Chevrolet Camaro SS for the first time in competition. Can’t wait to get this hotrod in the winners’ circle!” JOHN FORCE, DRIVER OF THE PEAK ANTIFREEZE & COOLANT CHEVROLET CAMARO SS FUNNY CAR:“I’ve raced in Gainesville for years. Everybody came out of Canada and the north, you know, Boston and places. And we’ve got fast Chevrolets and, you know, Chevrolet builds great race cars. We’re very excited. We’re excited to get out here. These cars will run 338. They’ll run 340. And they’ve got big pushes with their current fleet and their electric cars. But we’ve got big pushes with our hot rods too. Our Camaro SS cars, we love to race them and we love to drive them on the streets too. And all their trucks, I love them too. It’s going to be a great year.” |
| How to Watch:The 2024 Amalie Motor Oil NHRA Gatornationals at Gainesville Dragway kicks off with Friday’s qualifying airing Saturday, March 9, 2024, at noon ET from Gainesville, Fla. Following qualifying, the Top Fuel All-Star Callout airs Saturday evening at 7 p.m. ET. Saturday’s qualifying session airs Sunday at 8:30 a.m. ET with Finals Round 1 and 2 airing following at 10:30 a.m. ET. Sunday’s eliminations wrap up the weekend, with the remaining final rounds airing at 9 p.m. ET. All sessions from Gainesville Dragway air with NHRA on FOX on FOX Sports 1 (FS1). Coverage streams live throughout the weekend on NHRA.tv, and is available via AppleTV, Android TV, and Roku devices. |
| TEAM CHEVY BY THE NUMBERS:1,442: Round wins for John Force (1st all-time).626: Round wins for Robert Hight; 13th all-time. Cruz Pedregon (Funny Car), sits 12th, with 628.166: Number of career No. 1 qualifiers for John Force (1st all-time).159: Number of Chevrolet Racing Funny Car wins since 1967.84: Number of career No. 1 qualifiers for Robert Hight (6th all-time). Tony Schumacher (Top Fuel) is fifth with 88.79: Number of Chevrolet Racing Funny Car wins with the Camaro SS body.46: Number of career No. 1 qualifiers for Brittany Force.28: Number of NHRA championships Chevrolet holds as a manufacturer since entering the first in 1966. This is the seventh-consecutive award and ninth in 11 seasons. No other manufacturer has won it more than Chevrolet.24: Wins by John Force in a Chevrolet-bodied Funny Car.20: Chevrolet career Top Fuel wins in NHRA.16: Number of Chevrolet career wins by Brittany Force.7: Number of Funny Car driver championships.2: Number of Top Fuel driver championships. |
Davies Brings New Sponsor and Passion to Flexjet Factory Stock Showdown Opener
GAINESVILLE, FL (March 8, 2024) — One of the most exciting classes on the NHRA tour will hit the track this weekend starting their ten-race series of Chevrolet COPOs, Dodge Drag Paks and Ford Cobra Jets battling it out for manufacturer supremacy in the Flexjet Factory Stock Showdown Series. David Davies III will be racing in the series for the third year in a row wheeling a new-look Dodge Challenger with Mission 22, a national non-profit organization that aims to raise awareness and combat the issue of veteran suicide, as the primary brand on his race car. Davies, a US Air Force Veteran, has offered space on his Dodge Challenger throughout his career to veteran organizations.
David Davies Flexjet Dodge Challenger
“I am looking forward to getting the season started on the race track of course because it has been a long off-season and I love to race this class but I am equally excited to get the word out about Mission 22,” said Davies. “It breaks my heart that according to the Department of Veterans Affairs 22 veterans lose their lives to suicide every day. These men and women served our country with pride and I want to let them know they are seen, appreciated and if they need help Mission 22 will be there for them.”
Throughout his Flexjet Factory Stock Showdown racing career Davies has been a threat to win and the 2024 season should provide the aviation executive the opportunity to achieve his goal of standing in the winner’s circle. This weekend over 20 competitors will be vying for one of 16 qualifying positions.
“We are thrilled for the opportunity to partner with D H Davies Racing to raise awareness about the issues that Veterans face upon returning home. Dave and his team are so generously providing Mission 22 a platform to let Veterans know we are here for them” said Carley Hill, Mission 22’s Community Outreach Coordinator. “At Mission 22, our commitment to supporting Veterans and ending Veteran suicide is unwavering but its just not possible without support like this so it means everything to us.”
An accomplished business executive and US Air Force Veteran David Davies brings his passion for racing and competition to the Flexjet Factory Stock Showdown Series. This season Davies will also work with Save Our Allies, E3, Welsy Motorsports, and Fig Leaf Coffee. Davies has raced in both the National Muscle Car Association (NMCA) and National Hot Rod Association (NHRA) with both a 2018 Dodge Demon and most recently a 2021 Dodge Drag Pak. Davies’ NHRA debut event was Norwalk, 2021 and since that event the racer from Kirtland, Ohio, has been a regular qualifier and is pursuing his first Flexjet Factory Stock Showdown Series national event win.
For more information about Mission 22, please visit www.Mission22.com or call 503-908-8505
Daniels Increases Daytona Win Streak to Three in Dramatic Progressive AFT Opener
| DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. (March 7, 2024) – The opening Mission SuperTwins victory of the 2024 Progressive American Flat Track, sanctioned by AMA Pro Racing, season went to Dallas Daniels (No. 32 Estenson Racing Yamaha MT-07 DT) in a Royal Enfield Short Track at DAYTONA I that contained far more drama than Daniels’ final 3.769-second margin of victory would seem to indicate. For much of the night – including the opening half of the Main Event – the fans that packed the Daytona International Speedway Flat Track grandstands thought they just might just witness Sammy Halbert (No. 69 Dodge Bros. Racing/Castrol Harley-Davidson XR750) give the iconic Harley-Davidson XR750 its 503rd Grand National Championship race win more than five decades after its first. In fact, Halbert topped a session in both practice and qualifying, won his heat race, and then proved victorious in the Mission #2Fast2Tasty Challenge aboard the venerable machine. He followed that up by grabbing the holeshot in the Main Event and then stretching open more than a second’s worth of padding at the front. That advantage was further aided by the stiff fight Brandon Price (No. 92 Memphis Shades/Corbin/OTBR Yamaha MT-07) provided all comers while running second despite the likes of Daniels, Brandon Robinson (No. 44 Mission Roof Systems Indian FTR750), and Briar Bauman(No. 3 Rick Ware Racing/KTM/Parts Plus KTM 790 Duke) all seeking a way through. Daniels finally managed to make a pass that stuck a little over six minutes remaining on the clock and immediately went about eating up the gap to Halbert. However, what promised to be a thrilling dogfight for victory was spoiled when Halbert’s machine began to smoke heavily with half of the race still remaining. The Estenson Racing Yamaha ace dove through to steal away first. Moments later, the black flag was (first) shown to Halbert, who continued to push for several laps before finally heeding the instruction. Halbert’s misfortune saw Price move back up into second with Bauman third, while Daniels weaved his way through traffic out front en route to victory. After the contest, Daniels – who will now look to equal last year’s season-opening double victory at the venue – said, “This track was so technical. It was nothing like last year where you could just kinda go in and get it on. What a ride for the team. We kind of struggled all day, and I was just chipping away. I started catching up to Sammy, and he started to blow up and coolant was getting in my face. (Once in front), I started looking back a lot. For some reason I got nervous, but the last five laps, I really buckled down and those were my fastest laps of the race. “After Springfield, we left a little bitter. It didn’t feel good. That whole offseason we worked hard. To get three in a row at Daytona feels good. That Main Event, I had so much fun plugging away. I would prefer to get the holeshot and be out front but being able to come through and dig my way to the front felt good.” Price held on for a most welcome runner-up finish in his all-new team’s maiden outing, while Robinson moved through on a fading Bauman to earn the final spot on the podium. In fact, Bauman’s tumble down the order wouldn’t end there, as he was also displaced by Davis Fisher (No. 67 Rackley Racing/Bob Lanphere’s BMC Racing Indian FTR750), nine-time Grand National Champion Jared Mees (No. 1 Rogers Racing/SDI Racing/Indian Motorcycle FTR750), and Jarod Vanderkooi (No. 20 JMC Motorsports/Fairway Ford Ohio Indian FTR750) before finishing seventh in the end. Cameron Smith (No. 34 RVR/KTM/Schaefer’s Motorsport KTM 790 Duke) picked up eighth, one spot ahead of Dan Bromley (No. 62 Big Red Super Twins/Al Lamb’s Dallas Honda Transalp), who took ninth in the new Honda-powered effort’s debut. Mission SuperTwins rookie Trevor Brunner(No. 21 Mission Foods/Zanotti Racing KTM 790 Duke) completed the top ten. Parts Unlimited AFT Singles presented by KICKER Double defending Parts Unlimited AFT Singles presented by KICKER champion Kody Kopp (No. 1 Rick Ware Racing/Parts Plus KTM 450 SX-F) opened his quest for an unprecedented third class crown in near-perfect fashion, walking away with the Main Event after earlier winning both his heat and the Al Lamb’s Dallas Honda Challenge. It was a fine way to not just start his title defense but also an all-new partnership after joining the Rick Ware Racing outfit just days prior to the opener. While Kopp claimed the checkered flag running alone in the end, it wasn’t quite that simple in the doing. Despite grabbing the holeshot, he was actually overhauled by former class champ Dalton Gauthier (No. 79 D&D Racing/Certified KTM 450 SX-F) before completing the first lap. Gauthier then pulled some space at the front while Kopp had his hands full with projected title rivals Tom Drane (No. 59 Estenson Racing Yamaha YZ450F) and Chase Saathoff (No. 88 JPG Motorsports Honda CRF450R). But Kopp found his groove at mid-distance, putting in a charge that allowed him to reclaim the lead and power forward to secure the victory by 1.502 seconds over Gauthier. “We just kept our heads on straight the whole offseason,” said Kopp. “I love this track, and I love Daytona. Huge shout out to Rick Ware for coming on the program a little over a week ago. We pulled it together, and we got a win tonight. Wally Brown built one heck of a KTM 450 – arguably even better than the factory bikes I might say.” Meanwhile, the final spot on the box went to neither Drane – who crashed on the last lap and was ultimately credited in 15th – nor Saathoff. Rather it was Trent Lowe (No. 48 American Honda/Mission Foods CRF450R), who finished third by battling his way back through the pack after being pushed wide and well down the order in the early stages of the Main. Saathoff finished fourth another 0.309 seconds back with Justin Jones (No. 91 J&H Racing Husqvarna FC 450) rounding out the top five. Tyler Raggio (No. 55 Raggio Racing/Sluggo Racing KTM 450 SX-F), James Ott (No. 19 1st Impressions/Media HT Husqvarna FC450), Travis Petton IV (No. 82 ECG Racing/A.M Ortega KTM 450 SX-F), Jared Lowe (No. 63 BigR/Little Debbie Racing Honda CRF450R), and Logan Eisenhard (No. 66 Hannum’s Harley-Davidson KTM 450 SX-F) finished sixth through tenth, respectively. Earlier in the evening, Taia Little (No. 11 Royal Enfield/Parts Unlimited) kicked off the Main Event program by winning the Royal Enfield Build. Train. Race. season opener in runaway fashion. Next Up: The world’s premier dirt track motorcycle racing series will return to action tomorrow night with the second half of the double opener, the Royal Enfield Short Track at DAYTONA II. Visit https://www.tixr.com/groups/americanflattrack/events/daytona-short-track-ii-86992 to secureyour tickets now. For those that can’t catch the live action from the circuit, FloRacing is the live streaming home of Progressive AFT. Sign up now and catch every second of on-track action starting with Practice & Qualifying and ending with the Victory Podium at the end of the night at http://flosports.link/aft. FOX Sports coverage of the Royal Enfield Short Track at DAYTONA I will premiere on FS1 on Saturday, March 16, at 9:30 a.m. ET (6:30 a.m. PT), while the Royal Enfield Short Track at DAYTONA II will air the following day, Sunday, March 17, at 12:00 p.m. ET (9:00 a.m. PT). |
MyRacePass Announced as Preferred Ticket Providerfor the Lucas Oil Late Model Dirt Series
| LINCOLN, Neb. (03/07/24) – The Lucas Oil Late Model Dirt Series is pleased to announce MyRacePass as the preferred online ticketing partner for the 2024 season. Promoters, who use MyRacePass Online Tickets for their Lucas Oil Late Model Dirt Series events, will have their tickets shown for sale directly on LucasDirt.com, the track website (if applicable), the series profile at MyRacePass.com, and the MyRacePass App. Additionally, the online tickets links are also displayed on the schedule pages of driverwebsites hosted through MyRacePass. MyRacePass Online Tickets allows promoters and scorers to promote their pre-sale tickets online with a variety of features including ● General Admission Seating● Reserved Seating, Camping, Pit Stalls, Tailgating and Parking● Multi-Day Passes● Digital Season Passes● Digital Punch Cards● Ticket Promos With convenience in mind, the new Box Office System allows track staff to print event tickets at the gate on race day. These tickets can then be quickly scanned using the MyRacePass app. Promoters receive 100% of the funds from each ticket sold. Additionally, MyRacePass handles all event cancellation refunds and handles any potential individual event chargeback. Following the event, promoters can use the enhanced analytics page to review their ticket sales for events, track locations of sales, and view numerous demographic information to help improve future sales. Promoters are able to interact with their purchasers for future online marketing campaigns as well. MyRacePass Online Tickets is free to use for any promoter currently using the MyRacePass Race Management Program. Promoters interested in learning how MyRacePass can help you with your next event are encouraged to visit MRPTickets.comor email Support@MyRacePass.com. MyRacePass works with nearly 800 weekly promoters across the United States and Canada, including circle tracks, both asphalt and dirt, as well as recently expanding into the drag racing genre of grassroots motorsports. Specializing in Website Development, Race Management Systems, Online Ticket Sales, and of course the ever-so-popular and race fan engaging MyRacePass App, MyRacePass has grown to be the industry leader in motorsports technology. |
Fourteen-Year-Old Elijah Gile to Tackle Rookie National Midget Season with Xtreme Outlaw Series
CONCORD, NC (March 7, 2024) – The wave of youth in national Midget racing continues to sweep through the Xtreme Outlaw Midget Series presented by Toyota with the addition of 14-year-old Elijah Gile to the list of 2024 championship chasers.
Gile, of Phoenix, AZ, has been a presence in the Micro Sprint ranks for the past two years and will take on the biggest challenge of his career this year, piloting the Racecraft-sponsored Spike/Stanton No. 13 Midget for all 30 races on the Series schedule.
“I’ll give it my all, and I feel like we’ll have a really good year,” Gile said. “I’m excited to run with them. I’m glad I have this opportunity and can’t wait for the races coming up.”
Elijah will hit the road with his father, Dennis Gile, sporting the colors of Dennis’ newly founded motorsports coaching brand Racecraft. Elijah was one of the first students of the program – which pairs young drivers with an experienced professional for one-on-one, at-track coaching – and received his first lessons with World of Outlaws NOS Energy Drink Sprint Car Series driver Logan Schuchart during the Germfree Southern Sprint Car Shootout at Volusia Speedway Park in January.
“We didn’t make the A-Main the first night but we for sure improved the second night,” Elijah said. “We got faster in Qualifying; we did a little bit better in the Heat Race, we made the A-Main. We got laps under our belt, and it was just a good week; a lot of learning.”
Elijah also has plans to contest several dates with the American Sprint Car Series (ASCS), which World Racing Group recently acquired, in addition to the Xtreme Outlaw Midget schedule. He posted his best career finish on the national scene during the Xtreme Outlaw season finale last October at I-44 Riverside Speedway, starting 21st on the grid and advancing to 10th by the checkered flag.
“I got into the A-Main, got some laps down and got a top 10,” Gile said. “We were racing with Daison Pursley, throwing slide-jobs. I was just trying to get around the pack to get up front. That boosted my confidence, and that’s what I can hope we do this year to get a championship.”
Now, the young Arizonan turns his attention to the 2024 regular season, where he’ll encounter several tracks he’s yet to race at. He’s ready for the challenge of racing against some of the best drivers the national Midget circuit has to offer each night, and above all, is looking to learn as he navigates his most hectic season planned to-date.
“Just go out there, have fun, and if we have our downs, we can get it next time,” Gile said. “Pass as many cars as we can, get the best finishing spots. Every race, just be confident and tell yourself you’re good enough to race with these guys, you’ve proved it before, and see what we can do from there.”
Elijah Gile begins his season with the Xtreme Outlaw Midget Series presented by Toyota with the opening events – Friday-Saturday, March 15-16, inside the Southern Illinois Center in Du Quoin, IL.
Tickets will be on sale at the gate on race day. If you can’t be there in person, stream every lap live on DIRTVision.
Chevy Racing–INDYCAR–St. Petersburg Advance
| CHEVROLET IN NTT INDYCAR SERIES FIRESTONE GRAND PRIX OF ST. PETERSBURG ST. PETERSBURG, FLORIDA TEAM CHEVY RACE ADVANCE MARCH 7, 2024 CHEVROLET KICK-STARTS DRIVE FOR NINTH NTT INDYCAR SERIES MANUFACTURER TITLE IN ST. PETERSBURG DETROIT (March 7, 2024) – The Team Chevy drivers and teams of the NTT INDYCAR SERIES kick off the 2024 season on the Streets of St. Petersburg, Fla. this weekend with the 20th running of the Firestone Grand Prix of St. Petersburg. Chevrolet earned its eighth NTT INDYCAR SERIES Engine Manufacturer Championship of the 2.2-liter twin turbo direct-injected era since 2012 after the 2023 season and carries significant momentum heading into 2024. The drive for a ninth title starts in Round 1 on the Streets of St. Petersburg, Fla., a 1.8-mile, 14-turn temporary circuit featuring city streets and a section of the Albert Whitted Airport’s runway, with long straights and heavy braking zones. “While 2023 is in the rearview mirror, 2024 is a great opportunity for everyone at Chevrolet to drive towards our ninth engine manufacturer title, potentially our third-in-a-row in the NTT INDYCAR SERIES, said Mark Stielow, Director of Motorsports Competition Programs at General Motors. “We’re carrying positivity, talent, and momentum from our successful season last year with all our teams and drivers, and look forward to racing with new drivers, engineers, and team members as well.” “St. Petersburg provides an excellent opportunity to kick the new season off successfully and provides a strong challenge with a field that’s ever-evolving competitively,” continued Stielow. “We’re looking forward to getting on track in St. Petersburg soon.” Entering the weekend for the 200th race of Chevrolet’s V6 era, the Bowtie brand holds eight victories on the Streets of St. Pete as well as eight earned NTT P1 Pole Awards. Team Chevy has also scored 20 podiums and 684 laps led since 2012 at St. Petersburg and looks to return to Victory Lane this year. Leading 23 of Chevrolet’s 61 laps in the 2023 event and finishing on the podium, Arrow McLaren’s Pato O’Ward, driver of the No. 5 for Team Chevy, notes of excitement heading into a new year. “I’m always pumped to go back to St. Pete every year because that means we’re starting a new season,” said O’Ward. “It’s a track that I’ve had the pleasure of driving on multiple types of open wheel cars through the years and can’t wait to add another one to the books. The team and I are coming off a strong test in Sebring and are ready for the challenges that lie ahead this year.” With a strong showing in 2022 that saw Team Penske and Chevrolet capture both the NTT P1 Pole Award and the St. Pete victory, and a solid race effort in 2023, Scott McLaughlin returns searching for his fifth career NTT INDYCAR SERIES win. “I’m really excited to head to St. Pete for the first round of the season,” said McLaughlin. “2024 is going to be a really big year for the Thirsty 3s. I’m back to DEX Imaging’s home round at the Tampa region. St. Petersburg is awesome, and I just have really good vibes heading into it. We nearly won it; we nearly went two-for-two last year and were really close without the problem we had toward the end of last year’s race. I have a lot of confidence in my group and the DEX Imaging Chevrolet to make sure we can get to the front again and start the season off strong.” The Firestone Grand Prix of St. Petersburg kicks off with Practice 1 at 2:45 p.m. ET on Friday. Practice 2 starts at 9:35 a.m. ET on Saturday, with qualifying following at 2 p.m. ET. A final warm-up at 9:10 a.m. ET on Sunday will lead into the noon ET race start. All practice and qualifying will be live on Peacock, INDYCAR Radio, and SiriusXM Channel 160. |
| WHAT THEY’RE SAYINGJosef Newgarden, No. 2 Chevrolet at Team Penske:“It has been a very long, very busy off-season. From the residual effect of winning the Indianapolis 500 to helping push the hybrid program forward, it has been nice to settle in and get ready for St. Pete over the last few weeks. I love starting the season down there. It has become one of the top events on our schedule. I couldn’t imagine starting the season anywhere else. Fans will get to see our beautiful No. 2 PPG Chevrolet this weekend too. Hopefully we can qualify well, stay up front and get another St. Pete win.” Will Power, No. 12 Chevrolet at Team Penske:“I really feel as ready for the start of the season as I have in a long time. It was a long off-season, but it has been anything but quiet with helping get the hybrid system into a good spot. Our test at Sebring last week was very strong. Chevy has done a lot of work to the current car while working on the hybrid, which is amazing. They’ve absolutely gone to work to improve the 2.2-liter product with an eye on the hybrid, which takes a lot of work. So, we’re all ready to get the No. 12 Verizon Business Chevy on track at a place I love in St. Pete.” Callum Ilott, No. 6 Chevrolet at Arrow McLaren:“It’s been a crazy schedule to make this all work, and I’m very grateful to finally be here and to make it happen. The Homestead test was very positive, and then we got the ball rolling again at the shop this week to get last minute preparations in. It’s going to be good, I think. I’m very impressed with the team and how they operate, and I’m excited to see what we can do. I had a good race last year at St. Pete and I’m coming off the back of a good race in Qatar in the World Endurance Championship, so the mindset is good. There’s a lot to discover and a lot to learn.”*Note: Ilott is filling in for David Malukas in St. Petersburg who is currently recovering from a hand injury sustained off track. Alexander Rossi, No. 7 Chevrolet at Arrow McLaren:“I am so excited to get to St. Pete to kick off 2024. It has been a very long off-season, but at the same time, it has been incredibly productive. It is amazing to see how far we’ve come since the season opener last year, and we have a lot of confidence as an entire organization. As always, it’s important to start the year off with some positive momentum and that is exactly what we are looking to do this weekend. I can’t wait to see everyone at the track wearing papaya.” Gavin Ward, Team Principal at Arrow McLaren:“It’s been a long off-season, but we’re finally here. I’m excited to get down to St. Petersburg and compete with a really talented group that’s worked hard all winter to improve many of our processes. I think we’re in a really strong place and hopefully we can roll off the truck strong to, frankly, take care of some unfinished business here from last year. I couldn’t imagine a better group to go racing with, and I’m looking forward to getting this season started the right way.” Christian Rasmussen, No. 20 Chevrolet at Ed Carpenter Racing:“I am very excited to get back to racing! The anticipation has been extra big this year with the Firestone Grand Prix of St. Petersburg being my debut in the NTT INDYCAR SERIES! This has been my dream for many years now and I can’t wait to get started with Ed Carpenter Racing and Team Chevy!” Rinus VeeKay, No. 21 Chevrolet at Ed Carpenter Racing:“St. Pete is right around the corner! I am really excited to get the season going, it’s been a pretty quiet offseason for us with not many days of testing. We are ready to show the progress that we have made as a team and get started on the right foot! Of course, the car looks great in its new color thanks to askROI! Green has been a successful color for me, now to make that translate to the NTT INDYCAR SERIES!” Santino Ferrucci, No. 14 Chevrolet at AJ Foyt Racing:“Very much looking forward to another year with Chevrolet power and being part of AJ Foyt Racing. I think St. Pete can be a solid kickoff. Chevy has made some incredible improvements over the offseason. I think that showed in preseason testing and I’m excited to see what we can do during the race weekend.” Sting Ray Robb, No. 41 Chevrolet at AJ Foyt Racing:“St. Pete is a great place to kick off the start of the NTT INDYCAR season. I’m looking forward to heading back there with more experience and with a new team in AJ Foyt Racing. Joining Team Chevy is a welcome change as well, as it will be the first time in my career, I get to race the brand associated with my namesake. There’s a lot to look forward to.” Romain Grosjean, No. 77 Chevrolet at Juncos Hollinger Racing:“Looking forward to start the adventure for Juncos Hollinger Racing, after limited but positive testing, I am looking forward to going back to St Pete. I really like the race track, I’ve had some great memories there, and I’m looking forward to see what we can do with the car and the team, during the first race of the season. Very happy to get back to racing after a long time of non-IndyCar racing.” Agustin Canapino, No. 78 Chevrolet at Juncos Hollinger Racing:“We start a season with great enthusiasm to be able to continue our evolution, on a personal size and with the team. We finished in very good shape last season and the tests were also positive, the team has grown during the break and all of us who are part of it are in better shape. The objective will be to start this first race by adding as many points as possible, in an always very demanding circuit where anything can happen throughout the 100 laps.” |
| CHEVROLET IN ST. PETERSBURG:Wins at the Firestone Grand Prix of St. Petersburg (since 2012): 82012 – Helio Castroneves2013 – James Hinchcliffe2014 – Will Power2015 – Juan Pablo Montoya2016 – Juan Pablo Montoya2019 – Josef Newgarden2020 – Josef Newgarden2022 – Scott McLaughlin Earned Pole Awards in St. Petersburg: 82012, 2013, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2019, 2020 – Will Power2022 – Scott McLaughlin Chevrolet Driver with the Most St. Petersburg Street Course Wins (since 2012): Juan Pablo Montoya (2015, 2016), and Josef Newgarden (2019, 2020) – 2 Chevrolet Driver with the Most St. Petersburg Street Course Pole Awards (since 2012): Will Power, 7 (2012, 2013, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2019, 2020) Number of Team Chevy Podiums on the St. Petersburg Street Course (since 2012): 20 Number of laps led by Team Chevy on the St. Petersburg Street Course (since 2012): 684 |
| 2024 CHEVROLET BY THE NUMBERS:199: NTT INDYCAR SERIES races as V6 engine supplier since 2012 return to INDYCAR. 111: Wins in the NTT INDYCAR SERIES since 2012. 127: Earned poles since 2012. Chevrolet holds 132 pole awards in total, with five recorded based on points for weather. 8: Manufacturer Championships since 2012. 7: Driver/entrant champions since 2012. 12: Indianapolis 500 victories by Chevrolet at Indianapolis Motor Speedway. 5: Indianapolis 500 wins by Chevrolet since 2012 in the V6 2.2-liter twin turbo direct injected era. 26: Wins by Will Power since 2012 – all with Chevrolet power – most of any driver with the same manufacturer. 9: Wins from the pole by Will Power with Chevrolet power since 2012, most by any driver. 46: Pole starts by Will Power since 2012 in a Chevrolet-powered car, most of any driver.*Will Power’s career total of 70 poles makes him the all-time pole winner in the NTT INDYCAR SERIES. |
Historic Little 500 at Anderson Speedway Races to DIRTVision Airwaves
Dirt racing’s premier broadcaster adds top pavement series 500 Sprint Car Tour to lineup
CONCORD, NC (March 7, 2024) – The 500 Sprint Car Tour, a pavement non-wing Sprint Car series which features the famed Little 500, will be broadcast on DIRTVision in 2024.
Formed by Anderson Speedway in Indiana, the 500 Sprint Car Tour includes 10 race days across Indiana, Ohio, and Michigan. The first two champions of the series were three-time Little 500 winner Kody Swanson and two-time Little 500 Winner Tyler Roahrig. The legendary 76th Little 500 runs May 25 at Anderson Speedway.
The Little 500 was first run in 1949 with Sam Skinner earning the victory. Many of racing’s legendary drivers have competed in the event, dating back to the likes of Parnelli Jones and Johnny Rutherford.
The 500 Sprint Car Tour is the first major pavement series DIRTVision will broadcast.
“In the storied history of the Little 500, many dirt Sprint Car drivers have crossed over and raced this event on pavement,” DIRTVision’s Brian Dunlap said. “The Little 500 and the 500 Sprint Car Tour is the pinnacle of open wheel paved short track racing, it’s an honor to be chosen as their broadcast partner and showcase their events alongside The Greatest Shows on Dirt.”
The first event will be Saturday, April 6, at Anderson Speedway. Other venues on the tour include Berlin Raceway and Kalamazoo Speedway in Michigan, Lucas Oil Indianapolis Raceway Park and Salem Speedway in Indiana, and Toledo Speedway in Ohio.
“We are very excited to bring DIRTVision on as our broadcast partner for the 2024 season,” said Jared Owen, 500 Sprint Car Tour Series Director. “As a pavement series, we will be exposed to an entirely new demographic being on a predominately dirt racing platform. We can’t wait to put on a great show for all the fans out there.”