In The Know – Pocono
We head to Pocono Raceway this weekend, known as the “Tricky Triangle” for its three distinct corners connected by three straightaways, including an enormously long 3,740-foot frontstretch. Get up-to-speed on race info, driver stats, our weekly wraps and more below as we race into the tricky weekend ahead.
The Details
NASCAR Cup Series Overview
● Event: M&M’s Fan Appreciation 400 (Round 21 of 36)
● Time/Date: 3 p.m. EDT on Sunday, July 24
● Location: Pocono (Pa.) Raceway
● Layout: 2.5-mile triangle
● Laps/Miles: 160 laps/400 miles
● Stage Lengths: Stage 1: 30 laps / Stage 2: 65 laps / Final Stage: 65 laps
● TV/Radio: USA / MRN / SiriusXM NASCAR Radio
BROADCAST
SHR FAST FACTS
Kevin Harvick:
Harvick comes into Pocono riding a wave of front-running consistency. The Bakersfield, California-native hasn’t finished worse than 12th in his last five races, including a strong fifth-place result last Sunday at New Hampshire Motor Speedway in Loudon.
Sunday’s M&M’s Fan Appreciation 400 will mark Harvick’s 43rd NASCAR Cup Series start at Pocono. The 22-year Cup Series veteran has finished among the top-10 in half of those starts, and among active drivers, Harvick leads the series in top-fives (15), top-10s (22) and laps led (6,992).
Harvick has a five-race streak of top-10 finishes at Pocono. If you take out a lone 22nd-place finish in June 2019, Harvick’s run of top-10s at the 2.5-mile triangle would extend back to June 2016 when he finished ninth, a span of 11 races.
On June 27, 2020 in his 39th NASCAR Cup Series start at Pocono, Harvick finally nabbed a coveted victory at the “Tricky Triangle”. After starting ninth and methodically working his way toward the front, Harvick led the final 17 laps to take the checkered flag by .761 of a second over runner-up Denny Hamlin in the first race of a doubleheader weekend at Pocono. Harvick then followed up his win with a strong second-place finish on Sunday.
Aric Almirola:
Almirola will make his 20th Cup Series start at Pocono (Pa.) Raceway this weekend. Almirola has four top-10s, two top-fives and 67 laps led at the 2.5-mile track.
The No. 10 Ford driver sits 18th in the playoff standings, 129 points behind the top-16 cut line. Almirola has scored more points than six of the 14 drivers currently locked into the playoffs by virtue of race wins this season.
Chase Briscoe:
Briscoe already has two victories at Pocono – one in the NASCAR Xfinity Series and one in the ARCA Menards Series. In 2020, the native of Mitchell, Indiana, overcame a pit-road speeding penalty, a near-miss in a multicar accident and a late-race spin while leading to notch his fourth Xfinity Series win of the season and the first home-track win for HighPoint.com. He led 24 laps that day.
On July 29, 2016, Briscoe won the ARCA event at Pocono, the last in a series of four consecutive victories that year. He led all but nine of the race’s 60 laps. Following Pocono, he picked up two more victories to take the ARCA championship by an impressive 535 points.
Cole Custer:
Sunday’s 160-lap, 400-mile race will be Custer’s 96th career Cup Series start and his sixth at Pocono. His best Cup Series results at the 2.5-mile “Tricky Triangle” came during his 2020 Rookie of the Year campaign, when he posted finishes of 16th and 17th, respectively, in the Saturday and Sunday races of the June 2020 weekend doubleheader.
Custer scored a victory and two pole positions in his three Pocono Xfinity Series starts behind the wheel of the No. 00 SHR Ford from 2017 through 2019. He never started worse than third, never finished worse than seventh, and led a total of 95 laps in the three events. He qualified third and finished seventh in 2017, then qualified on the pole in both the 2018 and 2019 races, finishing fifth in 2018 and scoring the victory by .228 of a second over Tyler Reddick in 2019 after leading a race-high 58 laps.
OUR WEEKLY WRAPS
Painted for Pocono. Check out the schemes we’re bringing to the track this week.
What Our Drivers are Saying:
Kevin Harvick, Driver of the No. 4 Busch Light Apple #BuschTrickyTrivia Ford Mustang for Stewart-Haas Racing:
What makes a lap at Pocono so challenging?
“When you look at Pocono, you know that you’re going to have a challenge of getting your car to handle in all three corners. That’s the biggest challenge when it comes to Pocono. You have to make sure you can get all you can coming to turn three because the straightaway after that is really, really long. You can kind of give up the tunnel turn, but you still need to be very good in all three corners. It’s just a different style of racetrack than what we go to on a week-to-week basis.”
Aric Almirola, Driver of the No. 10 Haas Automation for Stewart-Haas Racing:
What is going to be the key to success this weekend?
“It’s going to be important to have cars that drive good. These cars have shock limiters, and the amount of shock travel we have, and going through three different corners to try and make this aero platform correct is going to be a challenge. There are just so many variables that make Pocono unique, and it takes somewhat of a compromise, so whoever figures out that compromise best, not only from the drivers but the engineers, as well, is going to win, and I hope we got a head start on that because of that test.”
Chase Briscoe, Driver of the No. 14 HighPoint.com Ford Mustang for Stewart-Haas Racing:
The playoff picture has changed a lot the last few weeks with some new winners, repeat winners, and some shifts in points. How do you feel about where you stand with only six races left in the regular season?
“I’m not really sure. It makes me a little nervous, but I can’t worry about it too much. We just need to do a better job each week because it could definitely come down to a points situation. You know a lot of people think it’s the playoff points, but it’s the regular-season points that we’re going to start going off of when guys start to get eliminated if we’ve got more than 16 race winners. So, for us, we just need to try and capitalize on the stages and just maximize our day because we’re racing for those final spots against guys that have won and guys that are running really well. We can hope it’s just repeat winners the next few weeks and that helps, but there are too many tracks left where anything can happen. It would be nice to go get another win and take ourselves out of that position, but it’s just not that easy. You really have to put a whole race together with no mistakes and hit the right setup. It’s definitely nerve-wracking that there are six races left and only two guys without wins in (the playoff field). That’s what makes it exciting, though.”
Cole Custer, Driver of the No. 41 HaasTooling.com Ford Mustang for Stewart-Haas Racing:
You’re well into the dog days of summer. How do drivers deal with the mental and physical aspects of keeping yourselves fresh week in and week out?
“It’s an extremely long season. We have one of the longest seasons in sports. We race a lot of races and the biggest thing is you just have to keep yourself feeling good and you have to keep yourself in a positive mindset. I think if you’re dragging it out every single week and you’re taking the last week a few days into your next week, it starts dragging on and you start not feeling great and you start getting down on yourself. You have to just put the last week in the past, usually, and move on to the next week and keep yourself feeling good.”
MENTOR & MENTEE: HARNESSING EMOTIONS
Harnessing your emotions is an advantage. Tony Stewart and Chase Briscoe talk about staying in control when it matters on the latest episode Mentor & Mentee presented by Mahindra Tractors.
#BUSCHTRICKYTRIVIA
Kevin Harvick’s No. 4 Busch Light Apple Ford Mustang is rocking a #BuschTrickyTrivia hashtag on its quarterpanels as Busch Light tees up some in-race trivia during USA’s broadcast of the M&M’s Fan Appreciation 400 at 3 p.m. EDT on Sunday. During each stage of the 160-lap race around the 2.5-mile triangle, Busch Light will tweet out three trivia questions – one at the beginning, middle and end of each stage – and fans will have only three minutes to answer each question. To enter, fans just need to follow @BuschBeer, turn on their notifications, and tweet #BuschTrickyTrivia and #Sweepstakes, along with their answer, to win tricked-out prizes. Each stage will have a theme, with Stage 1 relating to NASCAR’s history at Pocono, Stage 2 being about Harvick, and the third and final stage highlighting Busch Beer’s NASCAR affiliation. So with this speech as our recital, we think it’s very vital, to tweet #BuschTrickyTrivia because tricky is a part of the title. Here we go!
