Auto Racing Blog

Jeff Burton is glad there are no road courses in the Chase. “I don’t think one belongs in the Chase,” he said. “I think the Chase should have a fair representation of the race tracks we run the majority of the time. I’m a proponent of the fact that we have 36 races a year and two of them are road courses, which is a small percentage, so the Chase shouldn’t have a road course in it because it would be unfairly represented in what we currently know the Cup Series to be.” – USA Today

On August 16, during the CARFAX 250 NASCAR Nationwide series race at Michigan International Speedway, the #20 Old Spice Car will have a new look as it races to help special children from around the world. Give Kids The World, the nonprofit organization that provides week-long, cost-free vacations to Central Florida for children with life-threatening illnesses and their families, will be honored with its very own “Give Kids The World Village” design. The brightly colored car was designed by Wish child Emily Marsala (pictured) and will be driven by Joe Gibbs Racing driver Tony Stewart.

In celebration of this unique partnership, Give Kids The World is encouraging NASCAR fans everywhere to participate in a View-A-Thon to help us raise $25,000, or $100 for every mile of the race.

– Fundraiser, view https://www.firstgiving.com/gktwnascar

– To learn more about the Give Kids The World View-A-Thon, view http://www.gktw.org/newsletter/nascar_gktw.html

– Learn more about Give Kids The World at http://www.gktw.org

Martin Truex Jr. has finalized an agreement on Wednesday to return to Dale Earnhardt Inc. next season in the No. 1 Chevrolet at least through 2009.

The deal ends speculation that Truex would leave the company he has been with since making the move from Dale Earnhardt Jr.’s Nationwide Series team in 2004.

DEI president Max Siegel referred all questions to Truex, and a spokesman for the driver said he’d discuss his status Friday at Watkins Glen International.

Patrick Carpentier says that he should know by Aug. 15 what his future with Gillett Evernham Motorsports holds, but the NASCAR rookie isn’t obsessing over his contract status at this point. Instead, he’s focusing on running in both the Sprint Cup and Nationwide series races on the road course at Watkins Glen International this weekend, a pair of events in which he expects to perform well.
   
Carpentier finished second in the Nationwide Series race on the road course in Montreal last weekend, so he’s already primed for a winding track. He says that he and his team have been steadily improving over the course of the last five weeks and that could pay off for them this weekend.
   
As to his contract status, Carpentier’s future with the team seems to hinge on sponsorship for his No. 10 car.
   
Asked what could be the largest factor in the process, the former open-wheel driver frankly assessed the situation.
   
“Money,” he said. “You know how racing is, it’s always guided by sponsorship. They’ve done an amazing job this year to get my car sponsored. I think they’ve found like $5 million in sponsorship during the year, so it’s a lot. It’s quite an achievement.  … I think I’m going to stay there, but you never know in life and it’s racing, so things change pretty quickly.” Full Story…

Source: Scenedaily

Rain tires at Watkins Glen this week? NASCAR used rain tires at the Nationwide series race in Montreal on Saturday, and it first tested rain tires at Watkins Glen a few years ago. But Jimmie Johnson said that there’s no way that rain tires will be used in the Sprint Cup race at Watkins Glen this weekend , or in any other Cup race. “NASCAR made a statement last week that there is no way that the Cup cars would run on rain tires under any set of circumstances,” Johnson said. “I enjoyed watching it, a lot like everyone did. But you want to put on a quality show, and I’m not sure our cars were at speed (in Montreal) and easy enough to drive to really put on a quality show. “I spoke to Clint Bowyer and Carl Edwards and those guys, and they said they had an absolute blast. But I don’t think they put on a show for the fans. “If you’re spending money to come sit in the grandstands and watch a race, you want to see a competitive race and not a rain race where you have guys just tiptoeing around.” — Winston-Salem Journal

Joey Logano said that NASCAR should have called the race much sooner than it did. “I just don’t understand why we go past halfway in the rain. I think if you’re halfway, you’ve got to stop it. And we went until there were 26 laps to go. It’s pouring rain and we’re racing. “I hit a lapped car with no brake lights. I have no idea who it was. I couldn’t see five feet in front of me down the straightaway, under caution. Somebody stopped; I locked up all four, and Boom!” Dave Rogers, Logano’s crew chief, said that NASCAR officials should have handled the rain differently. “The priority in this sport has to be our drivers ? and you had a number of drivers on the radio saying they can’t see and are hydroplaning under caution,” Rogers complained. “I don’t think as a series we did a good job of listening to those. “I have to be honest — I had a lot of fun, this is pretty cool, the first points race in the rain. But when drivers are saying enough is enough, we need to heed that caution, and we did not.” — Winston-Salem Journal

Jack Roush on Carl Edwards’ ability to win the Sprint Cup: “I’ll say this and he may slap me, and he can if he wants, but he wasn’t ready to win a championship, I think, until this year. I think this year he can go head-to-head with Jimmie Johnson or Tony Stewart or with anybody else . . . and I think he can close the deal. The championship ultimately winds up normally being determined by how well you do when things go bad.” — Florida Today

The following is a Q&A with Ron Fellows winner of this week’s NASCAR Nationwide Series NAPA Auto Parts 200 at Circuit Gilles Villeneuve on Saturday.

Announcer:
With drivers using wet-weather tires for the first time since they were built in 1999, Canadian Ron Fellows raced through the rain to victory in the NAPA Auto Parts 200 at Circuit Gilles Villeneuve on Saturday.

Ron Fellows:
I’ve done some rain racing before, and you know the conditions were just treacherous with the downpour, lots of flooding, and that’s as flooded as I’ve seen it since Le Mans in 2001. So it’s obviously very, very difficult and visibility is a big, big problem, especially to see anything over about 70 MPH, there’s just so much spray from other cars, it’s just very, very difficult. So I’m happy that it ended, and I think we did just fine winning a race.

This was, I think, a great day for Canadians and obviously very special to be here on Circuit Gilles Villeneuve, and I’ve got to thank the fans. The race fans here in Quebec are incredibly passionate and very vocal and it’s just like the Trans-Am days in Trois-Rivieres—and I hope I didn’t spoil anything but we’ll take this win.

Announcer:
Fellow Canadian Patrick Carpentier came home the runner-up.

Patrick Carpentier:
I’m happy for Ron, he’s a great competitor and he’s always been fast on road course so he definitely deserves it and I’m happy for him but, no I wish we would have gone a little bit longer for me. But not in those conditions so they made the right decision, they made the right call.

NASCAR has long dodged the question of why it keeps letting the manufacturers improve engine designs and create more horsepower, when the sport — and its fans — might be better served with engines with less horsepower. “Do people want to see drivers going into the turn at Indy at 210 mph or 180 mph?” Suhy asked. NASCAR and Detroit did study new, smaller, lower-horsepower engines a few years ago, but after extensive discussion, the project was shelved. “When we were all discussing ‘the engine of the future’a few years ago, we were looking at 600 horsepower engines, with fewer cubic inches,” Suhy said. “They wound up putting it on the shelf, saying, ‘We have it if we ever need it.’” Engine builder Robert Yates started pushing NASCAR for smaller, less powerful engines back in 1994, but NASCAR has ignored the issue. – Winston-Salem Journal

Carl Edwards won Sunday’s NASCAR Sprint Cup race at Pocono Raceway, gambling with a pit strategy that he thought would cost him the victory.

“Luck went our way today,” Edwards said after winning his fourth NASCAR Sprint Cup race of the season and moving from fifth to third in the points.