Who is hot and cold entering Talladega Cup race

By Daniel McFadinOct 10, 2018, 12:30 PM EDT

Outside the Charlotte Roval, arguably the biggest wild card of the Cup playoffs has arrived in the form of Talladega Superspeedway.

The Cup Series returns to the 2.66-mile speedway for its second race there of the season. It’s also the final restrictor-plate Cup race the track will host.

But it is Talladega, where a hot streak can end in a 20-car pileup and a streak can be born in an unexpected last-lap charge to the lead.

Here’s who is hot and cold entering Sunday’s 1000bulbs.com 500 (2 p.m. ET on NBC).

Who is Hot

Kevin Harvick
Dover
• Finished 6th at Dover (1st in Stage 1, 1st in Stage 2, 286 laps led); pit for a 2nd time on Lap 322 due to flat tire after valve stem got knocked off on Lap 321 stop
2018 Season- Very Good
• Finished in Top 10 in 11 of last 12 races, including 3 straight
• Finished in Top 5 in 3 of last 6 races
• Won 7 of last 29 races
• Thirty races in 2018: 25 top 10s (including 7 wins) & 5 finishes of 19th or worse
Talladega – Not Great
• Last 9 Talladega races: 5 top 10s and 4 finishes of 15th or worse (4th in April)
• Finished 20th in this race one year ago; DNF – started in the rear due to unapproved adjustments; collected in multi-car accident on Lap 172; collected in multi-car accident on Lap 178
Restrictor Plate Races – Bad
• Finished 19th or worse in 6 of last 7 restrictor-plate races

Chase Elliott
Dover
• Won at Dover (5th in Stage 1, 9th in Stage 2, 11 laps led); penalized for uncontrolled tire on Lap 122 while running 5th
• Advances to Round of 8 for 2nd straight season
2018 Season- Good
• Finished 6th or better in 3 straight races
• Finished in Top 10 in 9 of last 11 races
Talladega – Mixed
• 5 career Talladega starts: 2 Top 5s and 3 finishes of 12th or worse (3rd in April)
• DNF in two of the last three Talladega races
• Finished 16th in this race one year ago; DNF – penalized for pitting while pit road was closed on lap 26; contact with Daniel Suarez while battling for lead on Lap 183, collected Kyle Larson.
Restrictor Plate Races – Bad
• Finished 12th or worse in 9 of 11 career restrictor-plate races

Joey Logano
Dover
• Finished 3rd at Dover (2nd in Stage 1, 4th in Stage 2, 2 laps led); hit axle from Ross Chastain on Lap 339 while running 8th
2018 Season – Very Good
• Finished in Top 10 last two races and 6 of last 8
Talladega – So Good
• Won 3 of last 6 Talladega races (won in April)
• Finished top 5 in 4 of last 6 Talladega races
• Finished 4th in this race one year ago
• Team Penske has won the last 4 Fall Talladega races (Keselowski – 2 & Logano – 2)
Restrictor Plate Races – Good
• Finished top 10 in 9 of last 15 restrictor-plate races (4 wins)

Kurt Busch
Dover
• Finished 5th at Dover (8th in Stage 1, 6th in Stage 2)
2018 Season – Hot
• Finished 5th in back-to-back races
• Finished top 10 in 10 of last 12 races
Talladega – Hot
• Finished in top 10 in 6 of last 8 Talladega races (2nd in April)
• Finished 25th in this race one year ago; DNF – started in the rear due to unapproved adjustments; collected in multi-car accident on Lap 172
Restrictor Plate Races – Not Great
• Finished 25th or worse in 4 of last 5 restrictor-plate races (4 DNFs)

Who is Cold

Jimmie Johnson
Dover
• Finished 36th at Dover (38th in Stage 1, 38th in Stage 2); right front ball joint failed on pace laps and he to spend the first 10 laps in garage
2018 Season – below average
• Top 10 two of the last three races
• Only three top 10s in the last 10 races
• Currently on a 53-race winless streak (longest of career)
Talladega- Bad
• Finished 12th or worse in 5 of last 6 Talladega races (12th in April)
• Finished 24th in this race one year ago; DNF – collected in multi-car accident on lap 172 and parked by NASCAR after crew worked on car under red flag
Restrictor Plate Races – Bad
• One top 10 in the last 12 restrictor plate races, DNF three of the last four

Daniel Suárez
Dover
• Finished 10th at Dover (18th in Stage 1, 17th in Stage 2)
2018 Season – Slumping
• Last 4 races: 2 Top 10s and 2 finishes of 17th or worse
• Finished 11th or worse in 6 of last 8 races
Talladega – OK
• 3 career Talladega starts: 1 Top 10 and 2 finishes of 15th or worse (10th in April)
• Finished 15th in this race one year ago; DNF – contact with Chase Elliott while battling for lead on Lap 183, collected Kyle Larson
Restrictor Plate Races – Not good
• Finished 15th or worse in 6 of 7 career restrictor-plate starts

Paul Menard
Dover
• Finished 16th at Dover (16th in Stage 1, 22nd in Stage 2)
2018 Season – Bad
• Finished 16th or worse in 3 straight races
Talladega – Bad
• Finished 12th or worse in 4 of last 5 Talladega races (30th in April)
• Finished 12th in this race one year ago; penalized for pitting while pit road was closed on Lap 26; hit wall on Lap 51 while running 27th; slowed on Lap 171 after losing high gear while running 7th
Restrictor Plate Races- Good
• Finished top 10 in 4 of last 7 restrictor-plate races

William Byron
Dover
• Finished 19th at Dover (19th in Stage 1, 21st in Stage 2)
2018 Season – Bad
• Finished 19th or worse in 8 straight races
• Finished 12th or worse in 27 of 30 races this season
Talladega- Bad
• Finished 29th at Talladega in April, his only career start at the track
Restrictor Plate Races – Bad
• Finished 23rd or worse in 3 career restrictor-plate starts with 2 DNFs

Truck starting lineup at WWT Raceway: Ty Majeski wins pole

By Dustin LongJun 2, 2023, 7:45 PM EDT

Ty Majeski will lead the Craftsman Truck starting lineup to the green flag Saturday at World Wide Technology Raceway after winning the pole Friday night.

Majeski claimed his fourth career series pole and first of the season with a lap of 138.168 mph around the 1.25-mile speedway.

MORE: Truck starting lineup at WWT Raceway

Ben Rhodes, who won last week at Charlotte, qualified second with a lap of 137.771 mph. He was followed by Christian Eckes (137.716 mph), Carson Hocevar (137.057) and Stewart Friesen (137.007).

The series races at 1:30 p.m. ET Saturday on FS1.

Saturday Portland Xfinity race: Start time, TV info, weather

By Dustin LongJun 2, 2023, 1:00 PM EDT

There have been different winners in each of the last nine Xfinity Series races this season. Will the streak continue Saturday at Portland International Raceway?

Those nine different winners have been: Sammy Smith (Phoenix), Austin Hill (Atlanta), AJ Allmendinger (Circuit of the Americas), Chandler Smith (Richmond), John Hunter Nemechek (Martinsville), Jeb Burton (Talladega), Ryan Truex (Dover), Kyle Larson (Darlington) and Justin Allgaier (Charlotte).

Details for Saturday’s Xfinity race at Portland International Raceway

(All times Eastern)

START: The command to start engines will be given at 4:38 p.m. … The green flag is scheduled to wave at 4:46 p.m.

PRERACE: Xfinity garage opens at 10 a.m. … Practice begins at 11:30 a.m. … Qualifying begins at 12 p.m. … Driver introductions begin at 4:15 p.m. … The invocation will be given by Donnie Floyd of Motor Racing Outreach at 4:30 p.m. … The national anthem will be performed at 4:31 p.m.

DISTANCE: The race is 75 laps (147.75 miles) on the 1.97-mile road course.

STAGES: Stage 1 ends at Lap 25. Stage 2 ends at Lap 50.

STARTING LINEUP: Qualifying begins at 12 p.m. Saturday

TV/RADIO: FS1 will broadcast the race at 4:30 p.m. ... Coverage begins at 4 p.m. … Motor Racing Network coverage begins at 4 p.m. and can be heard on mrn.com. … SiriusXN NASCAR Radio will carry the MRN broadcast.

FORECAST: Weather Underground — Sunny with a high of 73 degrees and a zero percent chance of rain at the start of the race.

LAST TIME: AJ Allmendinger won last year’s inaugural Xfinity race at Portland by 2.8 seconds. Myatt Snider finished second. Austin Hill placed third.

NASCAR Friday schedule at WWT Raceway, Portland

By Dustin LongJun 2, 2023, 7:00 AM EDT

Craftsman Truck Series teams will be on track Friday at World Wide Technology Raceway to prepare for Saturday’s race. Cup teams will go through inspection before getting on track Saturday.

Xfinity Series teams will go through inspection Friday in preparation for their race Saturday at Portland International Raceway.

Here is Friday’s schedule:

World Wide Technology Raceway at Gateway (Cup and Trucks)

Weather

Friday: Partly cloudy with a high in the low 90s.

Friday, June 2

(All times Eastern)

Garage open

1 – 8 p.m. — Craftsman Truck Series
4 – 9 p.m. — Cup Series

Track activity

6 – 6:30 p.m. — Truck practice (FS1)
6:30 – 7:30 p.m. — Truck qualifying (FS1)

Portland International Raceway (Xfinity Series)

Weekend weather

Friday: Mostly sunny with a high of 77 degrees.

Friday, June 2

(All times Eastern)

Garage open

6-11 p.m. — Xfinity Series (no track activity on Friday)

Friday 5: NASCAR’s $1 million question is can the culture change?

By Dustin LongJun 2, 2023, 6:00 AM EDT

NASCAR Cup teams have paid nearly $1 million in fines this season, more than triple what they paid last season for inspection-related infractions.

The money — $975,000 after just 14 of 36 points races — goes to the NASCAR Foundation. While the fines help a good cause, it is a troubling number, a point that a senior NASCAR official made clear this week.

Stewart-Haas Racing was the latest Cup team to be penalized. NASCAR issued a $250,000 fine, among other penalties, for a counterfeit part found on Chase Briscoe’s car following Monday’s Coca-Cola 600. The team cited a “quality control lapse” for a part that “never should’ve been on a car going to the racetrack.”

Elton Sawyer, NASCAR senior vice president of competition, said this week that if violations continue, the sanctioning body will respond. NASCAR discovered the infraction with Briscoe’s car at the R&D Center. Series officials also discovered a violation with Austin Dillon’s car at the R&D Center after the Martinsville race in April.

“If we need to bring more cars (to the R&D Center), we’ll do that,” he said. “Our part of this as the sanctioning body is to keep a level playing field for all the competitors, and that’s what they expect us to do and that’s what we’ll continue to do. … Whatever we need to do, we will do that.”

Sawyer also noted that the “culture” of race teams needs to change with the Next Gen car.

“From a business model and to be equitable and sustainable going forward, this was the car that we needed,” Sawyer said. “To go with that, we needed a deterrent model that would support that.

“We’ve been very clear. We’ve been very consistent with this … and we will continue to do that. The culture that was in our garage and in the race team shops on the Gen-6 car was more of a manufacturing facility. The Next Gen car, that’s not the business model.

“The race teams, they’re doing a better job. We still have a lot of work to do, but they have to change that culture within the walls of the race shop.”

While NASCAR has made it clear that single-source vendor parts are not to be modified, teams will look for ways to find an advantage. With the competition tight — there have been 22 different winners in the first 50 races of the Next Gen car era — any advantage could be significant.

Twelve races remain, including Sunday’s race at World Wide Technology Raceway, before the playoffs begin. The pressure is building on teams.

“Some race teams, at this stage in the game, their performance is not where they would like for it to be and they’re going to be working hard,” Sawyer said. “If they feel like they need to step out of bounds and do things and just take the risk, then they may do that. That’s not uncommon. We’ve seen that over the years.

“The one thing that we have to keep in mind is we’ve raced the Next Gen car for a full season. We’re in year two, just say 18 months into it. So last year, they were just getting the parts and pieces, getting ready, getting cars prepared and getting to the racetrack.

“Now they’ve had them for a year. They’ve had them for an offseason. It’s given their engineers and the people back in the shop a lot more time to think, ‘Maybe we could do this, maybe we could do that.’

“By bringing these cars back (to the R&D Center) and taking them down to basically the nuts and bolts and a thorough inspection — and we will continue to do that — I believe we will get our message across. We’ll have to continue to do this for some period in time, but I have great faith that we will get there.”

A similar message was delivered by Sawyer to drivers this week when NASCAR suspended Chase Elliott one race for wrecking Denny Hamlin in retaliation for being forced into the wall.

Sawyer told SiriusXM NASCAR Radio that “in the heat of the battle things happen, but (drivers) have to learn to react in a different way.”

Sawyer also noted that the message on how to race wasn’t just for those in Cup.

“We have to get that across not only to our veterans, guys that are superstars like Denny, like Bubba (Wallace) and like Chase and all our of national series Cup drivers, but also our young drivers that are coming up through the ranks that are racing in the Northeast in modifieds and in short tracks across the country,” he said. “That’s just not an acceptable behavior in how you would race your other competitors.

“There are a lot of things you can do to show your displeasure. That’s just not going to be one of them that we’re going to tolerate.”

2. Special ride

Corey LaJoie gets to drive a Hendrick Motorsports car this weekend due to Chase Elliott’s one-race suspension.

“It’s a far cry difference from when I started my Cup career six years ago,” LaJoie said on his “Stacking Pennies” podcast this week. “There was a Twitter page “Did Corey crash?” … Going from that guy just trying to swim and stay above water and trying to learn the ropes to filling in for a champion like Chase Elliott for Hendrick Motorsports, it feels surreal.”

It was a little more than three years ago that LaJoie gave car owner Rick Hendrick a handwritten note to be considered to replace Jimmie Johnson in the No. 48 car after the 2020 season.

“This was the first time I’ve gotten a letter from the heart,” Hendrick told NBC Sports in February 2020 of LaJoie’s letter. “I’ve gotten letters and phones calls, usually from agents. It was really a heartfelt letter and it was really personal.

“I was impressed with him before and am more impressed after.”

LaJoie admitted on his podcast this week that he wouldn’t have been ready to drive the No. 48 car then.

“I wouldn’t have been ready, whether it be in my maturation, my game, my knowledge of the race cars,” he said. “The person that I was wasn’t ready for the opportunity like that.”

Now he gets the chance. He enters this weekend 19th in the season standings, 38 points behind Alex Bowman for what would be the final playoff spot at this time.

“It’s an opportunity to hopefully show myself, as well as other people, what I’ve been thinking (of) my potential as a race car driver,” LaJoie said on his podcast. “But I also think you have to just settle in and be appreciative of the opportunity.”

3. Special phone call

With Corey LaJoie moving into Chase Elliott’s car for Sunday’s Cup race, LaJoie’s car needed a driver. Craftsman Truck Series driver Carson Hocevar will make his Cup debut in LaJoie’s No. 7 car for Spire Motorsports.

Once details were finalized this week, the 20-year-old Hocevar called his dad.

“I don’t know if he really believed it,” Hocevar said.

He told his dad: “Hey, this is actually happening.”

His father owns a coin and jewelry shop and is looking to close the store Sunday and have someone watch his two puppies so he can attend the race.

For Hocevar, it’s quite a turnaround for a driver who has been at the center of controversy at times.

Ryan Preece was critical of Hocevar’s racing late in the Charlotte Truck event in May 2022. Preece said to FS1: “All you kids watching right now wanting to get to this level, don’t do that. Race with respect. Don’t wreck the guy on the outside of you trying to win your first race. It doesn’t get you anywhere.”

NASCAR penalized Hocevar two laps for hooking Taylor Gray in the right rear during the Truck race at Martinsville in April.

Hocevar acknowledged he has had to change how he drives.

“Last year was really, really tough for me and that’s no excuse,” Hocevar said this week. “I just was mentally wrong on a lot of things, had the wrong mindset. I wanted to win so badly that I thought I could outwork stuff and it kind of turned some people away. … I wasn’t enjoying the time there. I was letting the results dictate that.

“I was taking results too personal. If we were going to be running seventh, I took it as I was a seventh-place driver and I wasn’t good enough. So I started making desperate moves. I did desperate things at times, even last year, that I’ve been able to calm down and look myself in the mirror and had a lot of heart-to-heart conversations.”

He called the Martinsville race “a turning point” for him and knew he needed to change how he drove. He enters this weekend’s Truck race with three consecutive top-five finishes.

4. Moving forward

In a way, Zane Smith can relate to what Carson Hocevar will experience this weekend. Smith, competing in the Truck Series, made his Cup debut last year at World Wide Technology Raceway. Smith filled in for RFK Racing’s Chris Buescher, who missed the race because of COVID-19 symptoms. Smith finished 17th.

“That one that I got for RFK Racing was a huge opportunity,” Smith said of helping him get some Cup rides this season. “I was super thankful for that. I think that run we had got my stock up and then, honestly, getting the Truck championship helped that rise as well.

“I think just time in the Cup car is so important, and I think once that new Cup car came out, people realized that you don’t have to do the route of Truck, Xfinity, Cup. The Cup car is so far apart from anything, though it does kind of race like a truck, so I don’t think you need to go that round of Truck, Xfinity, Cup. I think a lot of people would agree with me on that.

“I’m happy for these Cup starts that I’m getting. I’m happy for that one that I got last year at a place like Gateway. I think every time that you’re in one you learn a lot.”

Smith has made five Cup starts this season, finishing a career-best 10th in last week’s Coca-Cola 600 for Front Row Motorsports. The former Truck champion has two Truck series wins this year and is third in the season standings.

5. Notable numbers

A look at some of notable numbers heading into this weekend’s Cup race at World Wide Technology Raceway in Madison, Illinois:

5 — Most points wins in the Next Gen car (William Byron, Kyle Larson, Joey Logano, Chase Elliott)

7 — Different winners in the last seven points races: Christopher Bell (Bristol Dirt), Kyle Larson (Martinsville), Kyle Busch (Talladega), Martin Truex Jr. (Dover), Denny Hamlin (Kansas), William Byron (Darlington), Ryan Blaney (Coca-Cola 600).

17 — Points between first (Ross Chastain) and sixth (Christopher Bell) in the Cup standings

88 — Degrees at Kansas, the hottest temperature for a Cup race this season (the forecast for Sunday’s race calls for a high in the low 90s)

100 — Consecutive start for Austin Dillon this weekend

500 — Cup start for Brad Keselowski this weekend

687 — Laps led by William Byron, most by any Cup driver this season

805 — Cup start for Kevin Harvick this weekend, tying him with Jeff Gordon for ninth on the all-time list.

MORE: Truck starting lineup at WWT Raceway

Read more about NASCAR

Details for Saturday’s Xfinity race at Portland International Raceway

(All times Eastern)

Read more about NASCAR

World Wide Technology Raceway at Gateway (Cup and Trucks)

Weather

Friday, June 2

(All times Eastern)

Portland International Raceway (Xfinity Series)

Weekend weather

Friday, June 2

(All times Eastern)

Read more about NASCAR

2. Special ride

3. Special phone call

4. Moving forward

5. Notable numbers

Read more about NASCAR