Month: September 2020

Chase Briscoe Notes of Interest

Aric Almirola, driver of the No. 10 HighPoint.com Ford Mustang for Stewart-Haas Racing (SHR) in the NASCAR Cup Series, continued his career-best season last weekend when he secured his sixth top-five finish of 2020 at Bristol (Tenn.) Motor Speedway and advanced in the NASCAR Playoffs to the Round of 12 for the second time in his career.

His six top-five finishes surpass his previous best of four in a season in 2018. In addition, his 288 laps led is a career-high for a season, and his 17 top-10 finishes tied his season-best. While a win in 2020 still has eluded the No. 10 Ford team, the goal for Almirola is to race for a championship – the ultimate high point of any Cup Series driver’s career.

“This year has been like no other,” Almirola said. “The chemistry of this team is unmatched and the results are showing it. To have the best year of my career with a brand new crew chief says a lot. The first time we visited Las Vegas (site of Sunday’s South Point 400) we were still working through our communication. It was the second race of the year with a new crew chief and driver combination and we’re coming back 28 races later with a solid championship-caliber team.”

Almirola is not only optimistic due to the season stats he’s racked up, but applauds NASCAR for giving the drivers and fans a playoff schedule that crowns a champion utilizing all track configurations.

“You can’t just be good at your short-track program or your 1.5-mile program or superspeedway program,” he said. “It all has to be good. I think that is really, when you crown a champion, what you want to identify. You want to crown somebody who has been successful at every different type of racetrack throughout the year. Incorporating that into the playoffs is awesome.”

Almirola has run toward the front of the field this year at every kind of track. At intermediate-style tracks like Las Vegas, Almirola has six top-10s. And when the series races next week at Talladega (Ala.) Superspeedway, it marks a return to Almirola’s first top-three of the season – a third-place drive in June where he crossed the finish line backward upon spinning while vying for the lead. That result tied the record of eight consecutive Talladega top-10s set by Dale Earnhardt Jr., between April 2001 and October 2004. If that front-running consistency can be repeated, it should set Almirola up well for the next cutoff race Oct. 11 at the Charlotte (N.C.) Motor Speedway Roval – where a solid points cushion can mitigate the adversity that seems omnipresent on the Roval’s tight and circuitous layout.

While Almirola and the team continue their journey to reach their career high point, HighPoint.com, a leading customer service and technology solutions company, will sponsor Almirola’s No. 10 car at Las Vegas with a slick blue, black and white paint scheme for the first time this year.

It’s a proper partnership, as Almirola is one of the more tech-savvy drivers in the NASCAR Cup Series. Even before COVID-19 led to remote competition meetings via Microsoft Teams and countless media availabilities by way of Zoom, Almirola managed life via his phone and laptop.

“It’s amazing how much we rely on technology to help manage our lives,” he said. “You kind of take it for granted until you step back and realize the complexity of it all. And when it comes to what we do at Stewart-Haas Racing, the mechanical parts and pieces we use out on the racetrack don’t work as well if the IT isn’t there to support our efforts. Everything we do is engineering-based and measured in thousandths. Tape measures are long gone. It’s all about IT.”

Technology has played an increased role in 2020, with no practice or qualifying in advance of races during this COVID-19 era. Almirola and the No. 10 have embraced this brave new world and thrived, with a win being the next item on their to-do list. Las Vegas loves winners, so Almirola and the No. 10 HighPoint.com team are in the right place.

ARIC ALMIROLA, Driver of the No. 10 HighPoint.com Ford Mustang for Stewart-Haas Racing:

How much confidence has your crew chief given you this year?  

“Mike (Bugarewicz) has been great to work with. He is a very passionate and intense crew chief and I enjoy that about him. He works really hard on the racecars and pays attention to all the details on the car and the simulation side of things. That is kind of where he came from. He had been an engineer for most of his career and then graduated to being a crew chief, and a good one at that. He has been a lot of fun to work with. He is certainly fiery and competitive and I appreciate that about him. He certainly expects the most out of me as the driver and he expects the most out of our team. All the guys rally around that and we do our best to make sure we give our best – and we do that anyway, but Mike expects that out of us.”

Looking at this round with Las Vegas, Talladega, and the Charlotte Roval, what are your feelings with some wild-card races in that group?

“I like it. I really enjoy the excitement that this schedule has put into our playoffs. Our playoffs are already intense and exciting and, from a fans perspective, I just think the way they have set this schedule for the playoffs is incredible. You go from the 1.5-mile track at Las Vegas, a downforce track, to Talladega, which is certainly exciting and a little bit of a wild card, and then to the Roval. It is three distinctly different racetracks. I think it is just really awesome for the fans. From the driver standpoint, I like it, too. It really sets up for that versatility and makes sure you have to be good everywhere.”

For the final NASCAR Cup Series race of September, Cole Custer and the No. 41 HaasTooling.com team for Stewart-Haas Racing (SHR) venture out to Las Vegas Motor Speedway for Sunday’s South Point 400. The season’s second stop at the mile-and-a-half desert oval will be Custer’s 33rd Cup Series start.

Las Vegas marks the first race of the Round of 12 in this year’s Cup Series playoffs. Custer qualified for the playoffs in his rookie season. He finished 12th at Darlington (S.C.) Raceway and 14th at Richmond (Va.) Raceway in the opening two races of the Round of 16, but missed advancing to the next round by 28 points after finishing 23rd at Bristol (Tenn.) Motor Speedway last Saturday night after battling an ill-handling Mustang. Nonetheless, the season isn’t a wash for Southern California native. He can finish as high as fifth in the championship points. “I studied as much as I could going into Bristol to figure things out, but I just missed it somewhere,” Custer said. “We’ll keep trying, though, even though we aren’t moving on to the next round.”

In February at Las Vegas, Custer started 17th and finished 19th after fighting a tight-handling car throughout the day. He also made a Cup Series start in 2018 at Las Vegas in a Rick Ware Racing-owned entry, starting 30th and finishing 27th in his first ever Cup Series outing.

In addition to the HaasTooling.com paint scheme on the No. 41 Ford Mustang, Custer will have two special people riding along with him this weekend. In support of the Martin Truex Jr. Foundation and the NASCAR Foundation’s Cancer Heroes program, Custer will have the names of Kieran Ecker above the driver’s side door and Margaret Evelyn Crosby above the passenger door. Ecker who was nominated by his wife Bethany, was diagnosed with diffuse large b-cell lymphoma last year. Ecker continued to work at Ford Motor Company while undergoing treatment. Evelyn Crosby was nominated by Joe Custer, Cole’s father. Crosby is the rookie driver’s great grandmother and was diagnosed with leukemia and succumbed to the disease in 1937.

In the Xfinity Series, Custer has five starts at Las Vegas from 2017 to 2019 with three pole awards and four top-10 finishes. In total, Custer has an average Xfinity Series starting position of 5.4 and an average finishing position of 7.2, along with 54 laps led. Custer has one 2016 outing in the Gander RV & Outdoor Truck Series at Las Vegas. He started and finished third.

So far this season, Ford has won 17 races, and Custer and his SHR teammate Kevin Harvick have both earned wins for the Blue Oval – one for Custer and nine for Harvick. Ford’s milestone 700th win in the Cup Series came at the hands of Harvick on Aug. 23 at Dover (Del.) International Speedway. Ford captured its first victory on June 25, 1950. Ford drivers made up 50 percent of this year’s starting playoff field, with eight drivers representing the Michigan manufacturer in the Round of 16, and five drivers continuing on to the Round of 12.

With Custer’s Cup Series win July 12 at Kentucky Speedway in Sparta, he became one of 10 drivers who have won in each of NASCAR’s top three national series, as well as in ARCA and one of NASCAR’s developmental series.

Team co-owner Gene Haas’ newest holding, Haas Tooling, was launched as a way for CNC machinists to purchase high quality cutting tools at great prices. Haas’ cutting tools are sold exclusively online at HaasTooling.com and shipped directly to end users. Beginning July 1, HaasTooling.com products became available nationally. The cutting tools available for purchase at HaasTooling.com are even more important during the current COVID-19 pandemic as CNC machines have become vital to producing personal protective equipment.

In 47 starts at Las Vegas, SHR has three wins with team co-owner Tony Stewart capturing the first in March 2012, and Harvick adding wins in March 2015 and March 2018. In total, SHR has three pole awards, eight top-fives and 16 top-10s along with 994 laps led at Las Vegas.

Haas Automation, founded by Haas in 1983, is America’s leading builder of CNC machine tools. The company manufactures a complete line of vertical and horizontal machining centers, turning centers and rotary tables and indexers. All Haas products are constructed in the company’s 1.1-million-square-foot manufacturing facility in Oxnard, California, and distributed through a worldwide network of Haas Factory Outlets.

Custer, who had a trio of starts in the Cup Series in 2018, clinched 2020 Rookie of the Year honors in his official rookie season in NASCAR’s most prestigious series. Competing against fellow rookie notables Christopher Bell and Tyler Reddick, he was the only rookie to clinch a playoff spot this season.

COLE CUSTER, Driver of the No. 41 HaasTooling.com Ford Mustang for Stewart-Haas Racing:

What has been the hardest thing for you to adapt to this season as a rookie?

“The 550 package on the mile-and-a-halves that we run. It’s been strange getting used to that. It’s so different from what we ran in the Xfinity Series. You can look at as much data and video as you want, but you really don’t get to feel it until you’re out there. It was really confusing to me at the beginning of the year, honestly. Now I feel like we know what I want in the cars and what I want on the track. Now it’s just trying to be consistent with it.”

What does it actually mean from the driver’s perspective when you talk about the difference between the 550 and 750 package?

“Well, the aero is different, so how the car works traffic is a lot different. The gas is a lot different because you’re carrying so much more throttle time. How you work the brake, how you work the restarts, everything about it is just different. So if you’re not hitting it 100 percent as good as you can in all of those areas, you’re going to get eaten up. You’re trying to perfect it and know exactly what you need to do in each situation.”

What’s the best piece of advice you’ve been given on how to get to that next level in your career?

“I think the best piece is just taking it one step at a time. Find ways to make yourself better and still stay hungry. You’re going to stress yourself out too much if you don’t take it one step at a time.”

You’ve raced against Kyle Busch a lot in the Xfinity Series. He’s having a tough year in the Cup Series without a win, yet, but he is the defending series champion. Regardless, how hard and tough is it to beat Kyle on the track?

“Kyle is one of the best out there and can do impressive things in the car. It’s a huge deal to get to race with him. You can learn a lot from him and his year goes to show that you have to have all of the pieces of the puzzle come together to win a race. It’s not easy, and some of the best out there go through some dry spells.”

Clint Bowyer has some lofty goals for Sunday’s NASCAR Cup Series event at the 1.5-mile Las Vegas Motor Speedway oval, the first of three races in the Round of 12 of this year’s playoffs.

Obviously, Bowyer wants to win the 400-mile race and earn the free pass to the next round. If not a victory, then he’d like to begin scoring enough points so he will be in the top eight after the Oct. 4 race at Talladega (Ala.) Superspeedway and the Oct. 11 race on the “roval” at Charlotte (N.C.) Motor Speedway, when NASCAR trims the playoff field from 12 to eight drivers.

While he is making his wish list, Bowyer also would like to find a cancer cure.

“We’ve got to get out to Las Vegas and swing for the fence,” Bowyer said, talking about his competition strategy and certainly describing efforts to fight the elusive disease.

“These are the playoffs – you don’t base hit it,” he said. “‘Steady Eddie’ got us through the first round, but from here on you’ve got to get up to the plate and swing for the fence every time, and every decision, and that’s in the car and out of the car. We’ve got to lay it on the line and go for it, and that’s why these playoffs are fun.”

Bowyer’s No. 14 Ford Mustang will carry the colors of longtime supporter One Cure, whose mission is to find a cancer cure through research benefiting man’s best friend – the dog.

The One Cure project is led by the Flint Animal Cancer Center at Colorado State University. It is founded on the principle that cancer affects all creatures and that treatment breakthroughs come through collaboration between scientists and doctors working with people and animals. This approach is known as comparative oncology and it is the guiding concept of One Cure and the Flint Animal Cancer Center. The center works to improve prevention, diagnosis and treatment of cancer in pets, and teams with the human medical field to translate research findings that will help people with cancer.

The center, located in Colorado State’s James L. Voss Veterinary Teaching Hospital, sees more than 1,500 new animal cancer patients every year, with approximately 130 of them enrolled in carefully monitored clinical trials specific to their cancer type. The canine and feline patients are helping pioneer cancer research, moving cutting-edge treatments out of the laboratory and into clinical practice, ultimately providing hope for the next generation of animal and human cancer patients.

Bowyer’s Las Vegas paint scheme will call special attention to the Vaccination Against Canine Cancer Study (VACCS) created to evaluate a new vaccine strategy for the prevention of cancer. If successful, this study could provide important justification for eventually looking at a similar approach in humans.

VACCS will be the largest clinical trial conducted to date for canine cancer. Its goal is to evaluate a new vaccine strategy for the prevention, rather than treatment, of dogs with cancer. Healthy dogs of certain breeds, 5.5 years or older, will be randomized to receive either a series of vaccines similar to other routine vaccines that are given to dogs currently, or placebo vaccines. Dogs will live at home and be checked two to three times yearly for five years after enrollment.

The hope is that vaccinated dogs will have a lower rate of cancer development. If so, this could lead to advances to prevent cancer, in the first place in pets, and perhaps also in people. A financial incentive will be offered to defray the cost associated with diagnostics and treatment of any cancers that dogs develop, regardless of whether they are receiving vaccine or placebo.

The goal is to enroll 800 dogs in the study. Race fans interested in enrolling their pet to play a key role in helping find a vaccine to prevent cancer, or those interested in donating, may do so at www.Vaccs.org.

The paint scheme of Bowyer’s No. 14 Ford Mustang at Las Vegas will picture two dogs already enrolled in the study.

“I hope what One Cure is doing will make life better for pets and humans in the coming years,” he said. “Anyone who knows me knows how much my family and I value animals. Whether it’s our dogs, pigs, goats or any of our farm animals, there have always been pets around my house. And everyone knows someone whose life has been touched by cancer. I couldn’t think of many things better than finding a cancer cure.”

The decal on the roof of Bowyer’s racecar that normally displays his name will be replaced Sunday by the name of 10-year-old cancer survivor Claire Kochenower of Houston, Texas. Her name will ride on Bowyer’s car as part of the Martin Truex Jr., and NASCAR foundations’ Nominate a Cancer Hero program. Bowyer has been a favorite of the Kochenower family, and even one of Claire’s teddy bears is a Bowyer fan.

Bowyer hopes to take her name to victory lane on Sunday, or at least get a good start in the Round of 12. More importantly, maybe the attention generated by Bowyer’s paint scheme and the work done by One Cure can lead to an even greater victory for Claire and millions like her.

CLINT BOWYER, Driver of the No. 14 One Cure Ford Mustang for Stewart-Haas Racing:

How are you running heading into the Round of 12?

“I feel comfortable we’re getting back to our consistency. I guess for a long time in my career I was kind of ‘Steady Eddie,’ and that’s what it takes in these playoffs – to go the rounds. You can’t make mistakes. I said that going into these playoffs. For our team, we’ve got to live up to our capabilities and, if we can do that and race to our capabilities and not make the mistakes we were making through the summer months, we can contend and move forward rounds in this playoff system. And that’s what we’re doing.”

What is your strategy Sunday?

“I’m looking forward to getting out to Sin City and having some fun out there. Hopefully we can double down, get some stage points and continue to march forward up through this playoff system and the points.”

In December 1991, Nintendo released Tecmo Super Bowl to a worldwide audience.

Tecmo Super Bowl was for the 8-bit Nintendo Entertainment System and included the names and attributes of the National Football League. It was based on the 1990-91 NFL season, which was 30 years ago.

The game has a cult following and is still popular with players who use emulators to play the game on other systems and computers with updated NFL teams, or even college teams. So the University of Florida Gators could be playing the Purdue University Boilermakers. Or the Brown University Bears could battle the Princeton University Tigers.

In the original NFL version, Lawrence Taylor from the New York Giants was an unstoppable defender, while Bo Jackson from the Los Angeles Raiders could not be defended, and the Buffalo Bills, led by Jim Kelly, were quite good. Tecmo had a 16-game NFL schedule and then a playoff format in which a player could lead his chosen “team” to the Super Bowl. But as the playoffs progressed, the games got more and more difficult.

For Kevin Harvick, driver of the No. 4 Mobil 1 Ford Mustang for Stewart-Haas Racing (SHR), he begins the Round of 12 of the NASCAR Cup Series playoffs Sunday at Las Vegas Motor Speedway and knows, like Tecmo, the races and competition will get much more difficult.

Fortunately for Harvick, he’s led the point standings since March and has a big advantage behind a career-high nine wins and counting.

As always, he will have the help of Mobil 1 as a sponsor and partner at Las Vegas, and that relationship has paid off nicely for Harvick with those nine wins in 2020. Included in those wins was the early August doubleheader weekend at Michigan International Speedway in Brooklyn, where with just one Ford engine in more than 90-degree air temperatures both Saturday and Sunday, he totaled 634 miles and came home with two trophies thanks to the advantage Mobil 1 technology gave him and the No. 4 team.

In the late-August doubleheader weekend at Dover (Del.) International Speedway, Harvick finished fourth Saturday and won Sunday, and his engine went 622 miles with air temperatures in the 80s. Afterward, Harvick said simply, “Thank you to Mobil 1. They put a lot into the oils and lubricants in these cars and grinding to find more horsepower and less drag. It is an honor to drive for these guys.”

Harvick opened the playoffs with a win in the crown jewel Southern 500 at Darlington (S.C.) Raceway, which is known for tearing up racecars during the Labor Day-weekend heat. It didn’t affect Harvick or his team this year as he led 32 laps en route to victory.

Mobil 1 isn’t just the world’s leading synthetic motor oil brand, it also provides the entire SHR team with leading lubricant technology, ensuring that all SHR Mustangs have a competitive edge over the competition on the track. In its 18th consecutive season as the “Official Motor Oil of NASCAR,” Mobil 1 is used by more than 50 percent of teams throughout NASCAR’s top three series.

Harvick now heads to Las Vegas for Sunday’s South Point 400. Las Vegas is a place where Harvick has had a lot of success, with wins in March 2015 and 2018 and a Busch pole in March 2019.

In 2015 at the 1.5-mile oval, he started 18th, led five times for a total of 142 laps and beat runner-up Martin Truex Jr., by 1.640 seconds. In the March 2018 race, he started second and dominated by leading 214 of 267 laps en route to beating runner-up Kyle Busch by 2.906 seconds.

Harvick has six top-five finishes and 10 top-10s at Las Vegas. The 44-year-old driver has led 679 laps, has an average starting position of 15.8, an average finish of 13.9, and has completed 93.9 percent – 5,541 of 5,900 – of the laps he’s contested there.

He also has 2004 and 2010 NASCAR Xfinity Series wins at Las Vegas and started three NASCAR Gander RV & Outdoors Truck Series races there in the late 1990s.

It’s also going to be a special race for the family of the late Terry Chesbro as Harvick and the No. 4 team support the Martin Truex Jr., Foundation and the NASCAR Foundation. Chesbro died on July 3, 2019 after a long cancer battle and, sadly, that was also the birthday of Chip Chesbro, his younger brother. Chip Chesbro is a big Harvick fan, but his brother Terry was his hero. Terry’s name will appear above the driver’s door of Harvick’s Mobil 1 Ford Sunday as a tribute to the fight against cancer.

The Round of 12 starts Sunday and Harvick is hoping to win to lock himself into the Round of 8, get more points and make the family of the late Terry Chesbro happy.

Plus, if anyone has ever won a playoff game in Tecmo Super Bowl, it’s usually quite the celebration.

KEVIN HARVICK, Driver of the No. 4 Mobil 1 Ford Mustang for Stewart-Haas Racing: 

A lot was made about the points cushion you had entering the playoffs, but you proved quickly that you didn’t even need to worry about using the cushion, capturing two wins in this first round. How important is it for you to stay consistent throughout the playoffs like you did in the opening round?

“Yeah, I think for us you just want to keep doing what you’re doing. You don’t want to get out of rhythm, you don’t want to start thinking about what could happen or what did happen. You just go and do what you do on a week-to-week basis, climb in the car, drive it as hard as you can. The guys are going to put what they think is the best setup in the car for that particular week, and everybody wants to achieve the same goal, so nobody is trying to have a bad night or a slow car. Everybody is coming to the racetrack trying to do everything that we can, but the thing I can tell you is when things aren’t going 100 percent correctly on a race weekend, we’ve got a great group of guys on pit road, we’ve got a great group of guys back at home helping us and on the pit box and doing all the things that it takes to try to climb back in the race or strategize our way back in the race. Sometimes those weeks, and I think Darlington is a great example of that, we just kept ourselves in the race and wound up in a position that capitalized on winning the race even though we weren’t really in contention to win. You just want to stay in rhythm. It’s kind of like basketball or football and you look at the teams that get the first-week bye and then they go to the next week and it always makes me wonder if you wouldn’t just rather keep playing to stay in that rhythm, because I know for us staying in the rhythm and just thinking the same way that we have all year is the best way to do it for us.”

A lot of people want to look at the second round and talk about all the potential pitfalls. You’ve always talked about looking at just one race ahead of time. How did you get that approach? How tough was it to kind of focus in this playoff system where it can be easy to get wrapped up? And do you see other people getting wrapped up with, ‘Oh, look, here’s Talladega, here’s the ‘roval, here’s all these bad things that can happen, I-have-to-do-more-in-Vegas’ type of thing?

“I think for us, you just don’t want to read anything that’s happening in the sport, honestly, at this particular time of the year. You just want to keep your mind as clear as possible. We’ve made a decision of how we want to think and what we want to talk about and pay attention to, and it’s us. I know that sounds selfish, but the thing that I can tell you is it’s way less mentally exhausting than worrying about where you need to have a good race and where you need to have a bad race. It’s how do we get the most out of this week, and once you start the race, it’s, ‘OK, what do we need to do to our car? Are we good? Are we bad? Where do we need to work and just try to be productive and proactive of thinking toward what we need to do next?’ I don’t have the capacity to think more than one week ahead, anyway, and trying to overthink things just takes way too much space in my brain for me to function during the week.”

Why do your prefer Mobil 1 synthetic?

“I’m a synthetic guy because, in 1993 when we were sitting in the engine shop, we dumped Mobil 1 synthetic in and that’s all we did and gained seven horsepower. From that day on, we would actually save our money and then go to the local auto parts store because, at that time, it was like $5.50 a quart and the conventional and other oils were like $3.50. At the big races, we would put the Mobil 1 in the car and the regular races would put the regular oil in there. You know I’m going to say synthetic.”