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Sprint Cup
CUP: Weekly NASCAR News And Notes
A roundup of the week's news items from around NASCAR's Sprint Cup, Nationwide and Camping World Truck Series...
Dale Earnhardt Jr. has turned it up a notch this season. (Photo: LAT Photographic)
Junior Breakthrough Coming?: After his near-win in last Sunday’s Coca-Cola 600, Dale Earnhardt Jr. appears closer than ever to returning to victory lane for the first time in nearly three years. There’s certainly good reason for optimism. His 2011 season is looking much like the 2008 campaign – his first at Hendrick Motorsports and the last in which he won a race and made the Chase for the Sprint Cup. Just as encouraging for NASCAR's most popular driver and his legions of followers: This season looks nothing like 2009 and '10 when he finished the season 25th and 21st in points, respectively. Earnhardt’s six top 10s already eclipse his five from all of 2009. Last season he had eight. His two top fives match that of 2009, and are one short of last year’s total. Earnhardt’s average finish of 11.0 ranks third in the series behind points leader Carl Edwards (8.0) and Jimmie Johnson (10.9). He has completed more laps – 4,073 – than anyone in the series. Earnhardt has finished off the lead lap twice this season: Daytona (202 of 208 laps) and Richmond (398 of 400). His fourth-place points position is his highest after 12 races since 2008, when he was third. Last year after 12 races, Earnhardt was 16th in points, and he was 19th in 2009. Earnhardt has struggled recently at Kansas Speedway, however. His last two finishes have been outside the top 20. Overall, he has four top 10s in 10 races, leading laps in five of them.
Stewart Urges Consistency: Asked on a national teleconference this week how he felt about NASCAR’s decision not to throw a caution for a wreck late in Sunday’s Coca-Cola 600, the two-time champ didn’t come down with a hard stance on either side. Stewart did, however, express his desire for the sanctioning body to be consistent in its rulings from week to week. “I don't think anybody really has a problem with however they do it, as long as they do it the same every time all the time,” the Sprint Cup team owner/driver said. “And that's probably more from a driver's side and crew side what you want. That way it's the same for everybody, it's the same all the time, and you know what to expect. I think just the consistency is the biggest thing." If NASCAR had thrown the caution for the wreck, which occurred with just inside of two scheduled laps remaining, it would have forced another attempt at a green-white-checkered finish and likely changed the outcome of the race. “We were kind of in a situation that it didn't really pertain to us anyway,” Stewart said. “I ran out of fuel at the start/finish line or it didn't get to the pick-up, so we really weren't a factor in how the outcome ended up.”
Harvick The Classic Closer: Kevin Harvick, winner of a Sprint Cup Series-high three races in 2011, has mastered the art of closing. Each of the RCR driver’s three wins have featured late-race passes for the lead. At Auto Club Speedway, he passed Jimmie Johnson on the final lap. At Martinsville, he swiped the lead away from Dale Earnhardt Jr. with four laps remaining. Last Sunday, he won his first Charlotte points race, again snatching the lead from Earnhardt – this time on the final lap. Harvick has led a combined nine laps in his three victories this season. In his 17 career wins, he has led triple-digit laps four times. Of his 17 career wins, 10 featured race-winning passes for the lead with 10 laps or less remaining. Four his last seven victories came on last-lap passes for the win.
Homecoming For Bowyer, Edwards, McMurray: Sunday’s inaugural STP 400 is a homecoming of sorts for a trio of drivers – but so far Kansas Speedway hasn’t been very hospitable to any of them. Clint Bowyer, Carl Edwards and Jamie McMurray count one NASCAR national series Kansas victory between them – and none in the Sprint Cup Series. Edwards, from Columbia, Mo., won the 1.5-mile track’s Camping World Truck Series stop in 2004. Bowyer, from Emporia, Kan., finished second in his second trip to Kansas Speedway in 2007. He once was a regular at nearby Lakeside Speedway. A victory at Kansas would be special on several levels for McMurray, whose hometown of Joplin, Mo., was virtually leveled by a tornado on May 22. McMurray hasn’t had much luck at the track since back-to-back top-10 finishes in his first two appearances. McMurray, however, will leave thoughts about the upcoming race until later this week after a Thursday visit to his hometown with Convoy for Hope, a group bringing tornado relief supplies to the devastated city. "I haven’t been back to Joplin for four or five years and I moved away from there when I was 20 years old,” said McMurray. “But Joplin will always be my hometown. And I’ve got, I don’t know, maybe it’s a different outlook now, but when we go do fundraisers, certainly I’m still going to do a lot with Autism, but I think for a long time it will be about Joplin and trying to get the city back where it was."
Drivers Test Tires At Kentucky: NASCAR drivers Greg Biffle, Kevin Harvick, Brad Keselowski, Travis Kvapil, Joey Logano, Mark Martin and David Reutimann became acquainted with the race conditions at Kentucky Speedway Wednesday during a Goodyear tire test held in preparation for the Sprint Cup Series’ inaugural race at Kentucky on July 9. The 1.5-mile track and the tires were greeted with mostly positive reviews. “The race track is fun and different,” Logano said. “You can run the bottom and go over the bumps or you can run the top and have a smoother race track with a longer distance. You might see guys set up their car just to run the high line in turns 1 and 2 and maybe some guys that do both. I’m going to try to make my car do both. There’s a balance in there somewhere that you can get your car to go over the bottom and still try to put some grip in your car.” The Quaker State 400 will mark the Sprint Cup Series’ first visit to a new track since 2001.
Hamlin On The March: Denny Hamlin, handicapped by a miserably slow start to 2011, is quietly on the way up. The Joe Gibbs Racing driver, who stood 20th and 39 points out of the top 10 after the season’s seventh race, has climbed to 12th in the standings and just 14 points out of the top 10. With this Sunday’s STP 400 at Kansas Speedway marking halfway to September’s Chase cutoff, the Virginia native still has plenty of time to make the Chase cut. He finished second to Jimmie Johnson in the 2010 standings.
Cup Tidbits: On hand at Kansas Speedway will be 1,100 corn farmers from across the Midwest associated with the National Corn Growers Association, the workers behind American Ethanol, which has been used in all three NASCAR national series starting this season. To help further recognize NASCAR’s historic partnership with American Ethanol, the backstretch at Kansas will be painted green this weekend’s NCWTS and NSCS events. … Fittingly, Richard Petty will serve as the grand marshal for Sunday’s STP 400. Richard Petty Motorsports driver AJ Allmendinger will pilot the No. 43 STP Ford, which will feature a 1972 STP Petty Blue paint scheme made famous by the NASCAR Hall of Famer. … Patrick Carpentier returns to Sprint Cup racing in the No. 32 FAS Lane Racing Ford. His last race was Texas, last November. ... Kansas is known as a track with surprise winners. Three of the seven Kansas Chase races have been won by non-Chasers. … Don’t be surprised if Sunday’s winner comes from the back of the pack. Seven of the 12 races this season have been won from a starting position of 20th or lower, including Kevin Harvick’s win on Sunday from the 28th starting position. That’s the most wins from 20th or worse through 12 races in series history.
Bayne, Patrick Back In The Saddle: Daytona 500 champion Trevor Bayne and IndyCar driver Danica Patrick will be making their respective returns to the NASCAR Nationwide Series this weekend at Chicagoland Speedway. Patrick is back after a nine-race NASCAR layoff, during which time she returned to her full-time IndyCar gig. Bayne, who has been recovering from an illness with symptoms that included nausea, fatigue and impaired vision, has not raced since finishing sixth on April 23 at Nashville. Heading into this weekend at Chicago, Patrick has made one start at the 1.5-mile track, finishing 24th in 2010. Bayne has made two starts at Chicago, posting a best finish of 12th in 2009.
Truck Series Nearing 400: The NASCAR Camping World Truck Series will celebrate its 400th race this Saturday at Kansas Speedway in the running of the O’Reilly Auto Parts 200 (1:30 p.m. ET on SPEED). The historic race will take place during the series’ 17th NASCAR season. Ron Hornaday – who is winless so far in 2011 – has been known to find victory lane during monumental races, having won two of the past three hundred-race celebrations. Greg Biffle, Sprint Cup Series driver and 2000 NCWTS champion, will lead the field to the green as the honorary pace truck-driver for the series’ eighth race of the season. Four tracks – Bristol, Martinsville, Phoenix and LOP – hosted events during the inaugural season in 1995 and remain on the schedule in 2011.
New Qualifying Orders At Kansas: Beginning this weekend, there will be a revision to the qualifying procedures for the Nationwide Series and Camping World Truck Series. Qualifying order will still be determined based upon practice speeds – from slowest to fastest – but will no longer be separated between those teams that are locked into the race and those teams that must qualify based on speed.
Drama In Nationwide Owner Points?: The battle for the Nationwide Series owner championship, won by Joe Gibbs Racing the last three seasons, could take a rare twist on Saturday night at Chicagoland Speedway. JGR’s No. 18 team (2009 and 2010) and JGR’s No. 20 (2008) team have captured the last three owner titles, tying the series record for consecutive owner championships. The No. 20 entered the week having led the standings since race No. 6 at Texas Motor Speedway and boasted a 15-point lead over its sister team, the No. 18. However, on Tuesday, JGR announced the No. 20 would not race at Chicagoland, making it the first time since the season-finale at Homestead-Miami Speedway in 2002 the car will not run a Nationwide event. The absence leaves the door open for the No. 18 team – this week led by driver Kelly Bires – to make a significant move and also keep JGR in the running for a record-setting fourth straight trophy. That void also is a potential boost to the No. 60 Roush Fenway Racing team, which ranks one point behind the No. 18 in third place. Carl Edwards, the 2007 Nationwide champion, will drive the No. 60 per usual this weekend.
Truck Series Tidbits: Kansas Speedway is the only track on the schedule holding multiple races without a repeat winner – a streak reaching 10 a year ago. There have been three first-time winners: Ricky Hendrick (2001), Jon Wood (2003) and Erik Darnell (2007). Ron Hornaday, defending winner Johnny Sauter and Todd Bodine are the only previous winners in this week’s field. … Four drivers who competed in the Kansas Speedway’s 2001 inaugural race have entered Saturday’s O’Reilly Auto Parts 250: Matt Crafton, Brendan Gaughan, Travis Kvapil and Jason White. … Kyle Busch will be making his first NCWTS start at Kansas Speedway, as will Clint Bowyer. Busch won a Nationwide race at the track in 2007. … The series has competed in and around Kansas City in all but one year (2000) before making Kansas Speedway its home. Races were held at I-70 Speedway in Odessa, Mo., and Heartland Park Topeka from 1995-99.
Jared Turner is an Associate Editor for SPEED.com, covering NASCAR and Formula One, and is an Editor for TruckSeries.com. His professional motorsports writing career began in 2005.
Stewart Urges Consistency: Asked on a national teleconference this week how he felt about NASCAR’s decision not to throw a caution for a wreck late in Sunday’s Coca-Cola 600, the two-time champ didn’t come down with a hard stance on either side. Stewart did, however, express his desire for the sanctioning body to be consistent in its rulings from week to week. “I don't think anybody really has a problem with however they do it, as long as they do it the same every time all the time,” the Sprint Cup team owner/driver said. “And that's probably more from a driver's side and crew side what you want. That way it's the same for everybody, it's the same all the time, and you know what to expect. I think just the consistency is the biggest thing." If NASCAR had thrown the caution for the wreck, which occurred with just inside of two scheduled laps remaining, it would have forced another attempt at a green-white-checkered finish and likely changed the outcome of the race. “We were kind of in a situation that it didn't really pertain to us anyway,” Stewart said. “I ran out of fuel at the start/finish line or it didn't get to the pick-up, so we really weren't a factor in how the outcome ended up.”
Harvick The Classic Closer: Kevin Harvick, winner of a Sprint Cup Series-high three races in 2011, has mastered the art of closing. Each of the RCR driver’s three wins have featured late-race passes for the lead. At Auto Club Speedway, he passed Jimmie Johnson on the final lap. At Martinsville, he swiped the lead away from Dale Earnhardt Jr. with four laps remaining. Last Sunday, he won his first Charlotte points race, again snatching the lead from Earnhardt – this time on the final lap. Harvick has led a combined nine laps in his three victories this season. In his 17 career wins, he has led triple-digit laps four times. Of his 17 career wins, 10 featured race-winning passes for the lead with 10 laps or less remaining. Four his last seven victories came on last-lap passes for the win.
Homecoming For Bowyer, Edwards, McMurray: Sunday’s inaugural STP 400 is a homecoming of sorts for a trio of drivers – but so far Kansas Speedway hasn’t been very hospitable to any of them. Clint Bowyer, Carl Edwards and Jamie McMurray count one NASCAR national series Kansas victory between them – and none in the Sprint Cup Series. Edwards, from Columbia, Mo., won the 1.5-mile track’s Camping World Truck Series stop in 2004. Bowyer, from Emporia, Kan., finished second in his second trip to Kansas Speedway in 2007. He once was a regular at nearby Lakeside Speedway. A victory at Kansas would be special on several levels for McMurray, whose hometown of Joplin, Mo., was virtually leveled by a tornado on May 22. McMurray hasn’t had much luck at the track since back-to-back top-10 finishes in his first two appearances. McMurray, however, will leave thoughts about the upcoming race until later this week after a Thursday visit to his hometown with Convoy for Hope, a group bringing tornado relief supplies to the devastated city. "I haven’t been back to Joplin for four or five years and I moved away from there when I was 20 years old,” said McMurray. “But Joplin will always be my hometown. And I’ve got, I don’t know, maybe it’s a different outlook now, but when we go do fundraisers, certainly I’m still going to do a lot with Autism, but I think for a long time it will be about Joplin and trying to get the city back where it was."
Drivers Test Tires At Kentucky: NASCAR drivers Greg Biffle, Kevin Harvick, Brad Keselowski, Travis Kvapil, Joey Logano, Mark Martin and David Reutimann became acquainted with the race conditions at Kentucky Speedway Wednesday during a Goodyear tire test held in preparation for the Sprint Cup Series’ inaugural race at Kentucky on July 9. The 1.5-mile track and the tires were greeted with mostly positive reviews. “The race track is fun and different,” Logano said. “You can run the bottom and go over the bumps or you can run the top and have a smoother race track with a longer distance. You might see guys set up their car just to run the high line in turns 1 and 2 and maybe some guys that do both. I’m going to try to make my car do both. There’s a balance in there somewhere that you can get your car to go over the bottom and still try to put some grip in your car.” The Quaker State 400 will mark the Sprint Cup Series’ first visit to a new track since 2001.
Hamlin On The March: Denny Hamlin, handicapped by a miserably slow start to 2011, is quietly on the way up. The Joe Gibbs Racing driver, who stood 20th and 39 points out of the top 10 after the season’s seventh race, has climbed to 12th in the standings and just 14 points out of the top 10. With this Sunday’s STP 400 at Kansas Speedway marking halfway to September’s Chase cutoff, the Virginia native still has plenty of time to make the Chase cut. He finished second to Jimmie Johnson in the 2010 standings.
Cup Tidbits: On hand at Kansas Speedway will be 1,100 corn farmers from across the Midwest associated with the National Corn Growers Association, the workers behind American Ethanol, which has been used in all three NASCAR national series starting this season. To help further recognize NASCAR’s historic partnership with American Ethanol, the backstretch at Kansas will be painted green this weekend’s NCWTS and NSCS events. … Fittingly, Richard Petty will serve as the grand marshal for Sunday’s STP 400. Richard Petty Motorsports driver AJ Allmendinger will pilot the No. 43 STP Ford, which will feature a 1972 STP Petty Blue paint scheme made famous by the NASCAR Hall of Famer. … Patrick Carpentier returns to Sprint Cup racing in the No. 32 FAS Lane Racing Ford. His last race was Texas, last November. ... Kansas is known as a track with surprise winners. Three of the seven Kansas Chase races have been won by non-Chasers. … Don’t be surprised if Sunday’s winner comes from the back of the pack. Seven of the 12 races this season have been won from a starting position of 20th or lower, including Kevin Harvick’s win on Sunday from the 28th starting position. That’s the most wins from 20th or worse through 12 races in series history.
Bayne, Patrick Back In The Saddle: Daytona 500 champion Trevor Bayne and IndyCar driver Danica Patrick will be making their respective returns to the NASCAR Nationwide Series this weekend at Chicagoland Speedway. Patrick is back after a nine-race NASCAR layoff, during which time she returned to her full-time IndyCar gig. Bayne, who has been recovering from an illness with symptoms that included nausea, fatigue and impaired vision, has not raced since finishing sixth on April 23 at Nashville. Heading into this weekend at Chicago, Patrick has made one start at the 1.5-mile track, finishing 24th in 2010. Bayne has made two starts at Chicago, posting a best finish of 12th in 2009.
Truck Series Nearing 400: The NASCAR Camping World Truck Series will celebrate its 400th race this Saturday at Kansas Speedway in the running of the O’Reilly Auto Parts 200 (1:30 p.m. ET on SPEED). The historic race will take place during the series’ 17th NASCAR season. Ron Hornaday – who is winless so far in 2011 – has been known to find victory lane during monumental races, having won two of the past three hundred-race celebrations. Greg Biffle, Sprint Cup Series driver and 2000 NCWTS champion, will lead the field to the green as the honorary pace truck-driver for the series’ eighth race of the season. Four tracks – Bristol, Martinsville, Phoenix and LOP – hosted events during the inaugural season in 1995 and remain on the schedule in 2011.
New Qualifying Orders At Kansas: Beginning this weekend, there will be a revision to the qualifying procedures for the Nationwide Series and Camping World Truck Series. Qualifying order will still be determined based upon practice speeds – from slowest to fastest – but will no longer be separated between those teams that are locked into the race and those teams that must qualify based on speed.
Drama In Nationwide Owner Points?: The battle for the Nationwide Series owner championship, won by Joe Gibbs Racing the last three seasons, could take a rare twist on Saturday night at Chicagoland Speedway. JGR’s No. 18 team (2009 and 2010) and JGR’s No. 20 (2008) team have captured the last three owner titles, tying the series record for consecutive owner championships. The No. 20 entered the week having led the standings since race No. 6 at Texas Motor Speedway and boasted a 15-point lead over its sister team, the No. 18. However, on Tuesday, JGR announced the No. 20 would not race at Chicagoland, making it the first time since the season-finale at Homestead-Miami Speedway in 2002 the car will not run a Nationwide event. The absence leaves the door open for the No. 18 team – this week led by driver Kelly Bires – to make a significant move and also keep JGR in the running for a record-setting fourth straight trophy. That void also is a potential boost to the No. 60 Roush Fenway Racing team, which ranks one point behind the No. 18 in third place. Carl Edwards, the 2007 Nationwide champion, will drive the No. 60 per usual this weekend.
Truck Series Tidbits: Kansas Speedway is the only track on the schedule holding multiple races without a repeat winner – a streak reaching 10 a year ago. There have been three first-time winners: Ricky Hendrick (2001), Jon Wood (2003) and Erik Darnell (2007). Ron Hornaday, defending winner Johnny Sauter and Todd Bodine are the only previous winners in this week’s field. … Four drivers who competed in the Kansas Speedway’s 2001 inaugural race have entered Saturday’s O’Reilly Auto Parts 250: Matt Crafton, Brendan Gaughan, Travis Kvapil and Jason White. … Kyle Busch will be making his first NCWTS start at Kansas Speedway, as will Clint Bowyer. Busch won a Nationwide race at the track in 2007. … The series has competed in and around Kansas City in all but one year (2000) before making Kansas Speedway its home. Races were held at I-70 Speedway in Odessa, Mo., and Heartland Park Topeka from 1995-99.
Jared Turner is an Associate Editor for SPEED.com, covering NASCAR and Formula One, and is an Editor for TruckSeries.com. His professional motorsports writing career began in 2005.
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