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In the Know – Phoenix

NASCAR Cup Series Overview:

●  Event:  United Rentals Work United 500k (Round 4 of 36)

●  Time/Date:  3:30 p.m. EDT on Sunday, March 12

●  Location:  Phoenix Raceway

●  Layout:  1-mile oval

●  Laps/Miles:  312 laps/312 miles (502 kilometers)

●  Stage Lengths:  Stage 1: 60 laps / Stage 2: 125 laps / Final Stage: 127 laps

●  TV/Radio:  FOX / MRN / SiriusXM NASCAR Radio

SHR FAST FACTS:

Kevin Harvick:

Who owns Phoenix Raceway? NASCAR or Kevin Harvick? NASCAR owns the facility, at least on paper, but Harvick owns the track. The driver of the No. 4 Hunt Brothers Pizza Ford Mustang for Stewart-Haas Racing (SHR) has won a record nine Cup Series races at the desert mile. No other active Cup Series driver has won more than three races at Phoenix. Former fulltime Cup Series driver Jimmie Johnson is the closest to Harvick with four wins at the track.

Aric Almirola:

Phoenix is the track where Aric Almirola has arguably been most consistent in recent years. In his last 11 starts there, he has earned six top-10 finishes – two of those being top-fours. He’s also led 33 laps at the mile oval. Almirola qualified fifth and finished 12th in last year’s March race there.

Chase Briscoe:

A year ago this weekend, on March 13, 2022, Briscoe captured his first career Cup Series win. He started sixth on the desert mile oval, led three times for 101 laps, and drove away from Tyler Reddick, Ross Chastain and nine-time Phoenix winner and SHR teammate Kevin Harvick during a green-white-checkered shootout to score the first win for the No. 14 team since Clint Bowyer’s 2018 win at Michigan International Speedway in Brooklyn. When he returned for last November’s season finale, the 28-year-old from Mitchell, Indiana, started third and finished fourth after leading 11 laps.

Ryan Preece:

Ryan Preece heads to Phoenix Raceway Sunday for the eighth time in his NASCAR Cup Series career. He made his first start at the track in 2015 and has a best finish of 18th in the March 2020 race. Preece has made three NASCAR Xfinity Series starts at Phoenix and tallied a best finish of fifth in 2018 for Joe Gibbs Racing.

OUR WEEKLY WRAPS:

Check out this week’s paint schemes for the battle in the desert

 

What Our Drivers are saying:

Kevin Harvick Driver of the No. 4 Hunt Brothers Pizza Ford Mustang

With all of your success at Phoenix, is it safe to say it’s your favorite racetrack?

“Results-wise, I would say yes. Phoenix has always been a good racetrack for me. Growing up on the West Coast, that was really the facility that you wanted to win at the most because we always had our biggest Southwest Tour races there. And in the Winston West Series, they actually had provisionals that would get you into the Cup Series race at that particular time, so you had a lot of Winston West guys who would go over and try to participate in the Cup race. I’ve been able to race in front of fans that I started racing in front of in 1994. I’ve been there through reconfigurations and grandstands moved around and start-finish lines moved, but Phoenix has always been a successful spot for us. And I’m fortunate for that because as a kid I dreamed of going there and winning Late Model races, and then you’re coming back and winning Cup races. So it’s fun to be able to live out a lot of those childhood dreams, and I also remember that while I’ve been successful at Phoenix, it really didn’t start that way. I crashed a lot of cars and Trucks there leading up to finally being successful at that particular racetrack. I think I wrecked in ’94 and ’95, in ’96 we didn’t race, ’97 we did OK, ’98 was OK, and we always just kind of did OK with everything that we had.”

Aric Almirola Driver of the No. 10 Go Bowling Ford Mustang

Phoenix is such an important track to get right because it hosts the season finale and crowns a champion at the end of the year. How do you as a team enter this weekend?

“Well, we always want to bring fast racecars and get what we can out of a weekend, but Phoenix is a track where you’re really paying attention to how your car is responding and what you could bring back in the fall. For us, we’re trying to have another consistent weekend and stay out of trouble. We had a rough start in California, getting caught up in an accident with nowhere to go, and you can’t put yourself in a hole early. When we came here last March, we had a really good car. We had an issue on pit road that put us at the back of the field and we still came back to finish 12th. We definitely had a top-five car last March. This weekend in Phoenix is crucial to get the No. 10 team back on track.” 

Chase Briscoe Driver of the No.14 Mahindra Tractors Ford Mustang

Do you think the changes made to the short track rules package will make for better racing at Phoenix this weekend?

“I think any time you can have less downforce, it’s going to bring the cars closer together and create a better race. The tires wear out and you start slipping and sliding around. It just makes it more competitive. There’s good and bad to that. It means as a team we have to be on it if we want to have a chance at a win but, if you can hit your setup right and keep track position, then it just adds that much more excitement. I don’t know that we can take much from last year because of the changes that have been made, so we’ll have to see what happens when we get on track for practice.”

Ryan Preece Driver of the No. 41 United Rentals Ford Mustang
What are you looking forward to most about racing at Phoenix this weekend?
“It’s not necessarily a short track but it’s your cross between an intermediate and short track. I feel like we’ve been consistently gaining on it and speed hasn’t necessarily been a problem. I’m looking forward to getting some practice in at Phoenix and seeing where we stack up. We’re all working as a team to continue unloading fast racecars. We just have to put it all together now. I think Phoenix matches my driving style a little more, so we’ll see.”

 

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Kevin Harivck on Phoenix

With the most success of any driver at Phoenix Raceway, Kevin Harvick has earned the moniker of “cactus king”. The Closer dives in on what’s made him one of the favorites to win on every trip to Arizona.