Category: Pre-Race Reports

In The Know – Fontana

NASCAR Cup Series Overview
● Event: Pala Casino 400
● Time/Date:  3:30 p.m. EDT on Sunday, Feb 26
● Location:   Auto Club Speedway
● Layout:   2.0 mile oval
● Laps/Miles:   200 laps, 500 miles
● Stage Lengths:  Stage 1: 65 laps / Stage 2: 65 laps / Final Stage: 70 laps
● TV/Radio:   FOX/MR

SHR FAST FACTS:

Kevin Harvick:

Harvick will make some history of his own Sunday at Auto Club Speedway. When he takes the green flag for the Pala Casino 400, Harvick will make his 750th consecutive NASCAR Cup Series start, becoming just the third driver in series history to reach the milestone, joining Jeff Gordon (797 consecutive starts) and Ricky Rudd (788 consecutive starts). The last time Harvick was not in a Cup Series race was April 2, 2002 at Martinsville (Va.) Speedway, a span of 7,623 days between race dates.

Aric Almirola:

In 14 cup series starts at Fontana, Aric Almirola has three top-10 finishes and seven laps led, all coming since he joined Stewart-Haas Racing in 2018. He finished sixth in his most recent start. Almirola will race for his fourth consecutive top-10 finish at Fontana this weekend.

Chase Briscoe:

Briscoe will strap into the No. 14 Rush Truck Centers/Mobil Delvac Ford Mustang this weekend for his second Cup Series race at the 2-mile oval in Fontana. His two Fontana starts in the NASCAR Xfinity Series resulted in a best finish of fifth in 2019. In 2020, Briscoe started third and led five times for 16 laps before a spin on lap 126 relegated the team to a 19th-place finish.

Ryan Preece:

Sunday’s Pala Casino 400 at Auto Club Speedway in Fontana, California, will be Preece’s third Cup Series start at the 2-mile oval. His first came in 2019, when he started 26th and finished 23rd. He second was in 2020, when he started 20th and finished 30th. He has three NASCAR Xfinity Series appearances at Fontana with a best finish of eighth in 2019.

Our Weekly Wraps:

 

What Our Drivers are saying:

Kevin Harvick  Driver of the No. 4 Gearwrench Ford Mustang:

When you race at Fontana, is there a heightened desire to win because it is your home track?

“It’s in my home state, and every year you go there, you want to win the race because you’ve got a lot of family and a lot of friends there, along with a lot of race fans who have come there to watch you race. On the Cup side, I’ve only gotten to do that one time. It was against another California native in Jimmie Johnson, and it was a really cool finish. I got to push him all the way down the back straightaway and then pass him coming to the checkered flag. Cup has not been as successful as I’d like it to be in the win column.”

Aric Almirola Driver of the No. 10 Smithfield Ford Mustang:

You ran well at Fontana last year in the Next Gen car’s debut. How much more helpful will those notes be heading back there this weekend?

“I personally do best when I’m prepared. I thrive when I can study and outwork the guys I’m competing against. I can’t just wing it when it comes to performing. Last year, we relied heavily on guessing and hoping the setup was right. This year I get the opportunity to take notes not only from myself but from Ford and Stewart-Haas Racing as a whole. We saw at the Clash that we could turn a bad car in first practice into a heat-winning car that started us on the pole because we have notes and learned from last year. At Daytona, we qualified fourth and won our Duel race and had a fast car, so yeah, notes are really important, and knowing we came from the rear of the field last year to sixth (at Fontana) gives us a big boost of confidence.”

Chase Briscoe Driver of the No. 14 Rush Truck Center/Mobil Delvac Ford Mustang:

The plan is for Fontana to be reconfigured into a half-mile track following this weekend’s race. How do you feel about it possibly being the last race on the 2-mile layout?

“I think it’s going to be bittersweet for all the drivers because it’s just so fun from a driver’s standpoint. It’s so slick and worn out. It’s rough and you just bounce around. You can run wherever on the racetrack, especially with the Next Gen car. I thought that it was just a really good racetrack for these cars so I’m bummed we didn’t get more time to race it as is. It’s one of my favorite tracks to go to just because I feel like that’s one of the tracks where a driver can make quite a bit of a difference, so I’ll be sad to see it go. But, if it becomes a short track, that may not be so bad. We don’t have a short track out West, so that would give us some variety during the West Coast swing.”

Ryan Preece Driver of the No. 41 Haas Tooling Ford Mustang:

You’re heading to a track with a completely different configuration than what you experienced in the first two races of the season. What are your expectations for this weekend’s race at Fontana?

“Yeah, we’ve gone to two completely different racetracks so far and we’ve had speed at both of them, so I know this weekend is completely different and more of a baseline track that most teams are looking at to see the speed. I feel confident going into it that we’re going to unload fast. Hopefully, we consistently have speed all weekend and start continuing to lay the foundation that we have with our team.”

HARVICK FONTANA HELMET

Hear from the closer on his special edition Spears tribute helmet that he will  wear this weekend at Fontana.

 

COLE CUSTER RACING ROOTS

Returning to his home track of Auto Club Speedway, Cole Custer takes a look back on his racing roots and how he got to the NASCAR Xfinity Series.

In The Know – Daytona

NASCAR Cup Series Overview
● Event:  Daytona 500 (Round 1 of 36)
● Time/Date:  2:30 p.m. EDT on Sunday, Feb 19
● Location:   Daytona International Speedway
● Layout:   2.5 mile oval
● Laps/Miles:   200 laps, 500 miles
● Stage Lengths:  Stage 1: 65 laps / Stage 2: 65 laps / Final Stage: 70 laps
● TV/Radio:   FOX/MRN

SHR FAST FACTS:

Kevin Harvick:
 The 2023 season marks Harvick’s 23rd year in the NASCAR Cup Series. Of his 790 career, points-paying starts, 43 of them have come on Daytona’s 2.5-mile oval. In addition to his 2007 Daytona 500 victory, Harvick won the 2010 Coke Zero 400. He has 11 top-fives and 16 top-10s on the Daytona oval. The 65th Daytona 500 will be his 44th points-paying start on the Daytona oval

Aric Almirola:
 Almirola scored his first career Cup Series win in the rain-shortened July 2014 race at Daytona, when he led 14 laps. In the NASCAR Xfinity Series, he started on the pole in his first outing in July 2007, and he captured a win there while piloting the No. 98 Biagi-Den Beste Ford Mustang in July 2016. In 2021, he won his Duel qualifying race for the first time in his career. Almirola also has three Daytona starts in the NASCAR Camping World Truck Series with a best finish of 12th. This year’s Daytona 500 marks Almirola’s 23rd points-paying Cup Series start at the 2.5-mile superspeedway.

Chase Briscoe:
 Sunday’s 65th annual Daytona 500 at Daytona (Fla.) International Speedway marks Chase Briscoe’s third start in the prestigious NASCAR Cup Series event. In last year’s race, Briscoe drove his No. 14 Mahindra Tractors Ford Mustang for Stewart-Haas Racing (SHR) to a third-place finish, his best at the 2.5-mile superspeedway. His Daytona 500 debut in 2021 resulted in a 19th-place finish.

Ryan Preece:
 Perseverance has paid off for Preece. The 32-year-old racer from Berlin, Connecticut, was promoted by SHR to his role as fulltime driver of the No. 41 Mustang in the Cup Series after serving as a reserve driver with the organization in 2022. He spent last season performing simulator work while running a mix of races across each of NASCAR’s top three national touring series – two in the Cup Series, three in the Xfinity Series, and 10 in the Truck Series. His season was punctuated by a Truck Series win from the pole on June 24 at Nashville (Tenn.) Superspeedway, his second straight win at the 1.333-mile oval east of Music City.

OUR WEEKLY WRAPS:

Check out the schemes we’re bringing to the Great American Race

What Our Drivers are saying:

Kevin Harvick Driver of the No. 4 Busch Light Ford Mustang:

What does it take to win the Daytona 500?

“The superspeedways, in general, are difficult to have everything line up to get a win out of the weekend. For the Daytona 500, it’s our biggest race of the year, but it’s also the one race a year that you have months to prepare for. Every team in the garage has their most prepared car that shows up at the Daytona 500. On top of that, you have the most aggression and enthusiasm to try to take risks and do things that you normally wouldn’t do to win races because the Daytona 500 only comes once a year, and it can make a year and it can also make a career out of winning that race. I think as you look at the Daytona 500, it’s just different than any other race and it becomes difficult to win because of all the risk-taking that you don’t see on a weekly basis.”

Aric Almirola Driver of the No. 10 Smithfield Ford Mustang:

Why is the Daytona 500 such an iconic and much-anticipated race for you?

“First off, Daytona is always exciting for me. It’s my home racetrack, having grown up just two hours away in Tampa. I have a lot of childhood memories from going there with my family. To top it off, I’ve won there both in Xfinity and Cup cars. I just have a tremendous amount of fond memories of spectating at Daytona, even all the way back to my beginning days. I would go back and go-kart in Daytona. It’s always exciting because it brings back all those great memories. Not to mention, it’s the world center of racing. It’s the greatest place on earth to go race at. It’s the biggest race of the year, the one everyone wants to win. Your name is forever etched in history. There’s just no other race like it. It’s such a special race because of the prestige and the paycheck at the end. It’s the highest-paying race. Anybody who is alive and breathing knows of the Daytona 500. Even if you’re not a huge race fan or even a NASCAR fan, you know of the Daytona 500. There’s just so much history around this race that being a Daytona 500 champion is a really big deal.”

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

You’ve had two very different Daytona 500 experiences. Does this race set the tone for how you approach the season?

“Not necessarily. The Daytona 500 is such a unique race. You never know how the race will play out. No one is really thinking about points, you’re so focused on being in the right position at the right time, so the intensity of the race is a little more than what we see at some other places. Everybody is just trying to get to the end and you see a lot of different strategies. You definitely want to start the season off on a strong note, but at the same time it’s not the end of the world if you don’t have a great run at Daytona. I’ve been on both sides of it. One where we didn’t finish great and then last year finishing up front. It’s definitely a lot nicer when you can have that good points finish to start the year off and kind of build that momentum early. So we’ll see what we can do.”

Ryan Preece Driver of the No. 41 Haas Tooling Ford Mustang:


Some might consider this a comeback year for you now that you’re back to fulltime racing in the Cup Series. What does this moment feel like after all the hard work you’ve put in
“I mean, it’s a dream come true and it’s honestly the perfect matchup. Getting this opportunity at Stewart-Haas Racing is exactly the opportunity I need to succeed. I know what I can do in a racecar and there’s nobody who’s harder on me than I am on myself. I’m going to make the best of every opportunity I get and that’s what I’ve always done. I feel like being in the position I am now with this organization and this team – it can’t get any better. I’m ready to go out there and win races. That is always my goal, every single weekend. Having Chad Johnston as my crew chief this season, too, is just another motivator. We’ve worked together before and we’re very similar. I think we work really well together. We have the same goals for this 41 team. It is a great feeling to be back fulltime in Cup. Sometimes I don’t think I let myself enjoy those moments. They are special and I’m very thankful. I’m just ready to get out there and race.”

2023 Season Expectations

Hear from all six Stewart Haas Racing drivers as they prepare for the 2023 season

Harvick on Daytona

On Sunday Kevin Harvick will make his 44th career start on the high-banked oval of Daytona International Speedway. Hear from the closer himself on what the track has meant to him and his favorite memories of the famed super speedway.

In the Know – Darlington

In The Know – DARLINGTON

The NASCAR Playoffs begin Sunday with the Cook Out Southern 500 at Darlington (S.C.), with Kevin Harvick and Chase Briscoe making playoff runs. Get up-to-speed on race info, driver stats, our weekly wraps, and more as we look to tame the Lady In Black.

The Details

NASCAR Cup Series Overview

●  Event:  Cook Out Southern 500 (Round 27 of 36)
●  Time/Date:  6 p.m. EDT on Sunday, Sept. 4
●  Location:  Darlington (S.C.) Raceway
●  Layout:  1.366-mile oval
●  Laps/Miles:  367 laps/501.32 miles
●  Stage Lengths:  Stage 1: 115 laps / Stage 2: 115 laps / Final Stage: 137 laps
●  TV/Radio:  USA / MRN / SiriusXM NASCAR Radio

SHR FAST FACTS

Kevin Harvick:
For the 16th time since the advent of the playoffs in 2004, Harvick is a part of it. Harvick qualified for this year’s playoffs by scoring two wins – Aug. 7 at Michigan International Speedway in Brooklyn and Aug. 14 at Richmond (Va.) Raceway. This is Harvick’s 13th consecutive playoff appearance. He won the championship in 2014.

Darlington is one of the 10 tracks that make up the NASCAR Playoffs, and of Harvick’s 60 career NASCAR Cup Series victories, 26 have come at playoff tracks. Three of those wins have been at Darlington, while Harvick also has three wins apiece at Kansas Speedway in Kansas City, Bristol (Tenn.) Motor Speedway and Texas Motor Speedway in Ford Worth. He has two wins at Las Vegas Motor Speedway and one win each at Talladega (Ala.) Superspeedway, Homestead-Miami Speedway and Martinsville (Va.) Speedway. The remaining nine wins were earned at the most valuable playoff venue – Phoenix Raceway, home to the championship-deciding race. The only track where Harvick doesn’t have a win is the Charlotte (N.C.) Motor Speedway Roval.

Darlington is known as “The Track Too Tough To Tame” but Harvick has tamed the venerable 1.366-mile oval three times, the second-most of any active NASCAR Cup Series driver. The 46-year-old racer from Bakersfield, California, owns two Southern 500 victories (2014 and 2020) and one win in the track’s 400-mile race. In fact, Harvick enters Darlington with an impressive record – he hasn’t finished outside the top-10 since 2012. How long ago was that? “Gangnam Style” and its music video by South Korean singer Psy went viral in 2012, four years before the social media app TikTok became reality.

Aric Almirola:
In 14 starts at the 1.33-mile egg-shaped oval, Almirola has earned two top-10 finishes, which came in back-to-back starts in 2020. Almirola finished 11th at Darlington earlier this year after running in and around the top-10 for the majority of the race.

Earlier this year, Almirola announced that he would step down from fulltime racing following the 2022 season. In the course of the year, Almirola has discovered a new balance between his passion for racing and dedication to his family. His wife Janice, and kids Alex and Abby, join him on most race weekends, oftentimes enjoying once-in-a-lifetime experiences together as they travel the country. His rapport with crew chief Drew Blickensderfer has flourished, and the intense pressure he had put on himself was replaced with the joy of simply being present. Not only did Almirola see a new perspective on the sport, but so did anchor partner Smithfield Foods, who broached the subject of Almirola returning to fulltime racing in 2023. On Friday, Aug. 26, Almirola, Stewart-Haas Racing, and Smithfield Foods announced their return with a multi-year agreement and the largest allotment of races since joining the team in 2018. View the full press release here.

Chase Briscoe:
Darlington marks Briscoe’s debut in the Cup Series playoff format. The playoffs begin with 16 drivers, including the 15 drivers who combined to win the first 26 races of the year. Four drivers will be eliminated at the end of each of the first three rounds before the final four drivers compete for the championship Nov. 6 at Phoenix Raceway, where Briscoe and the No. 14 team claimed victory earlier this year. Briscoe starts the playoffs in the 12th position with a two-point cushion above the cutoff line.

Briscoe has three Cup Series starts at Darlington with a best finish of 11th in the May 2021 race. He also has three NASCAR Xfinity Series starts at “The Track Too Tough To Tame,” one being the most memorable performance of his career – his May 2020 win over two-time Cup Series champion and the winningest driver across NASCAR’s top three series, Kyle Busch.

This Sunday at Darlington, Briscoe will drive a black-and-white HighPoint.com Ford Mustang, eschewing the traditional blue-and-white colors of HighPoint for one of the crown jewel races of the NASCAR Cup Series – the Southern 500. The change in color honors the late sportswriter and 2016 Squier-Hall Award recipient Benny Phillips, who gave Darlington the moniker, “The Lady in Black.” The No. 14 will also carry the name of HighPoint employee Joe Conforth.

Cole Custer:
Sunday night’s 367-lap race will be Custer’s 102nd career Cup Series start and seventh on the 1.366-mile egg-shaped oval. The 2020 Cup Series Rookie of the Year’s 11th-place finish in last September’s Southern 500 was the best of his previous six Darlington outings.

The native of Ladera Ranch, California, was credited with the victory in his most recent NASCAR Xfinity Series race at Darlington in 2019 after finishing second the previous year and ninth in 2017, all behind the wheel of the No. 00 SHR Ford. In the 2019 race, he crossed the finish line .602 of a second behind the apparent race-winner Denny Hamlin. But Hamlin’s racecar was disqualified after a ride-height violation was discovered in postrace inspection, giving Custer his eighth of 10 career Xfinity series victories. In the September 2018 Xfinity Series race at Darlington, Custer was runner-up to Brad Keselowski by .738 of a second.

OUR WEEKLY WRAPS

We’re bringing nothing but our Sunday best to tame the Lady In Black.

What Our Drivers are Saying:

Kevin Harvick, Driver of the No. 4 Busch Light Retro Ford Mustang for Stewart-Haas:

You’re in the playoffs for a 13th consecutive season and your 16th overall. How does making the playoffs this year compare to any of those previous playoff seasons?
“I would say it’s been a very different route to get to this point. As we started the year with the new car, we were on the wrong side of the fence and trying to figure everything out. And as we’ve gone through the year we’ve become progressively better, and we figured some things out and got back to victory lane and really have some momentum as we start the process of these last 10 weeks and racing for a championship. The biggest thing is, we’re giving ourselves a chance to race for the championship – that’s the first goal. That looked bleak for a little while, but now we’re in a good position to get started.”

Aric Almirola, Driver of the No. 10 Renegade Ford Mustang for Stewart-Haas Racing:

You’re not in the playoffs this year, but there is still a lot to look forward to. What are your goals for the remainder of the season?
“We obviously wish we were in the playoffs to have a run at the championship, so that is tough. This year has had so much parity with new winners and an extremely competitive series. This new car has really leveled the playing field. I think this year is going to be different with cars that are not in the playoffs, though. Our team has found more and more speed each weekend, and we’re constantly progressing. We’re not holding back anything for the next 10 weeks. While our goal to win a championship is gone, we’re still planning to run like championship contenders and make our presence known.” 

Chase Briscoe, Driver of the No. 14 HighPoint.com Ford Mustang for Stewart-Haas Racing:

Are the playoffs a chance for this team to start over?
“Truthfully, I feel like we’ve had speed every week but, unlike a lot of teams, we run anywhere from seventh to 12th for a lot of the race. Then we finish 18th to 23rd. So, it’s definitely nice to have a little bit of a reset button. I know we have the speed, it’s just a matter of putting the whole race together. And you know, there are a lot of variables that determine what that means each week. I definitely think it’s a bit of a second life to a certain extent, and one that I’m looking forward to having.”

Cole Custer, Driver of the No. 41 Feeding America / Wow Wow Classic Waffles Ford Mustang for Stewart-Haas Racing:

Darlington is one of the trickiest tracks in the Cup Series. How do you approach racing on “The Track Too Tough To Tame?”
“I would say Darlington is one track that I always look forward to. It’s one of those races that every driver looks forward to because of the challenge behind it and how much you can do as a driver. There are so many different lanes you can work and you’re running right up against the wall. It’s just a driver’s racetrack and I feel there’s not one guy who doesn’t feel excited when they hear Darlington is coming up.”

THE BOSS TALKS PLAYOFFS

When you have a 3x NASCAR Cup Series Champion as a boss, it’s always good to get a little advice before the playoffs start. See what Tony Stewart had to say about the keys to playoffs and advice for Kevin Harvick and Chase Briscoe as the playoffs kick begin.

 

THE BOSS TALKS PLAYOFFS

Join the fight against hunger with Feeding America and Wow Wow Waffles. Bid on an at-track experience with Cole Custer at the race of your choice. Bid now here. 


In the Know – Daytona

In The Know – DAYTONA

It’s time for the regular season finale at the World Center of Racing. Get up-to-speed on race info, driver stats, our weekly wraps, and more as we look to wrap up the regular season with a Daytona dub.

The Details

NASCAR Cup Series Overview

●  Event:  Coke Zero Sugar 400 (Round 26 of 36)
●  Time/Date:  7 p.m. EDT on Saturday, Aug. 27
●  Location:  Daytona (Fla.) International Speedway
●  Layout:  2.5-mile oval
●  Laps/Miles:  160 laps / 400 miles
●  Stage Lengths:  Stage 1: 35 laps / Stage 2: 60 laps / Final Stage: 65 laps
●  TV/Radio:  NBC / MRN Radio / SiriusXM NASCAR Radio

SHR FAST FACTS

Kevin Harvick:
When Harvick takes the green flag for the Coke Zero Sugar 400, it will be his series-leading 43rd NASCAR Cup Series start at Daytona. Harvick made his Cup Series debut at the track on July 7, 2001, starting 10th and finishing 25th, one spot ahead of his SHR car owner, Tony Stewart. In his 42 starts at the 2.5-mile oval, Harvick has won twice – the 2007 Daytona 500 and the 2010 Coke Zero 400 – and scored 11 top-fives and 16 top-10s while leading 283 laps.

Harvick’s 11 top-fives are tied with Denny Hamlin for the second most among active Cup Series drivers. Harvick’s 16 top-10s are also the second most among active Cup Series drivers. Kurt Busch is the leader in top-fives (13) and top-10s (18) at Daytona.

Harvick’s first NASCAR Cup Series win at Daytona was one of the biggest of his career. Harvick won the 2007 Daytona 500 by edging Mark Martin for the victory by .02 of a second in a frantic, green-white-checkered finish. It remains the second-closest finish in Daytona 500 history, trailing only Hamlin’s .01-of-a-second margin over Martin Truex Jr., in 2016.

Harvick was efficient in his second win at Daytona. When he won the 2010 Coke Zero 400, Harvick started from the pole and led eight times for a race-high 28 laps to take the victory by .092 of a second over runner-up Kasey Kahne.

Harvick has proven prolific in the non-points NASCAR Cup Series races at Daytona. He is a three-time winner of the Busch Clash when it was held on the 2.5-mile oval (2009, 2010 and 2013) and he is a two-time winner of the Duel (2013 and 2019), twin 150-mile qualifying races that set the field for the Daytona 500.

Aric Almirola:
Almirola scored his first career Cup Series win in the rain-shortened July 2014 race at Daytona, when he led 14 laps. In the NASCAR Xfinity Series, he started on the pole in his first Daytona outing in July 2007, and he captured a win there while piloting the No. 98 Biagi-Den Beste Ford Mustang in July 2016. Last year, he won his Duel qualifying race for the Daytona 500 for the first time in his career. Almirola also has three Daytona starts in the NASCAR Camping World Truck Series with a best finish of 12th in the 2010 season opener. Almirola finished fifth in this year’s season-opening Daytona 500.

In the 2018 Daytona 500, Almirola was a half lap away from becoming a Daytona 500 champion. As he was leading the field to the checkered flag, he made an aggressive block on the No. 3 car of Austin Dillon before he was turned into the outside wall, ending his bid. In last year’s Daytona 500, Almirola showed strength by running at the front of the field on occasion, but his day ended when he was caught in a multicar accident on lap 190.

Chase Briscoe:
Chase Briscoe, driver of the No. 14 Mahindra Tractors Ford Mustang for Stewart-Haas Racing (SHR), returns to the scene of his career-first top-five finish in the NASCAR Cup Series during Saturday night’s Coke Zero Sugar 400 at Daytona (Fla.) International Speedway. Briscoe finished third there in this year’s season-opening Daytona 500. It was his best finish in three points-paying starts at Daytona.

Three weeks later, on March 13 at Phoenix Raceway, Briscoe followed up his Daytona breakthrough with his first Cup Series victory. It secured the 27-year-old driver’s position in this year’s 16-driver playoff field. In his two fulltime NASCAR Xfinity Series seasons in 2019 and 202, Briscoe qualified for the playoffs both years and reach the Championship 4 at Phoenix in 2020. He will make his Cup Series playoff debut next weekend at Darlington (S.C.) Raceway.

Outside the Cup Series, Briscoe has made six previous starts at Daytona – four in the Xfinity Series and one apiece in the NASCAR Camping World Truck Series and in the ARCA Menards Series. He has started inside the top-10 for five of those races, with his best being a third-place qualifying effort in the 2016 ARCA season opener. His best finish is third, earned twice – August 2020 in the Xfinity Series and February 2017 in the Truck Series.

Cole Custer:
Saturday’s 160-lap race will be Custer’s 101st career Cup Series start and sixth on the Daytona oval. His 11th-place finish in last year’s season-opening Daytona 500 is his best result at the iconic track. He finished 20th in this year’s Daytona 500.

In NASCAR Xfinity Series competition at Daytona, Custer made six starts from 2017 through 2019, all in SHR Fords. He had a best start of third in the August 2018 race, and best finishes of 14th in the 2018 and 2019 openers, both seasons culminating with runner-up finishes in the series championship.

OUR WEEKLY WRAPS

We’re ready to close out the season in style. Check out our schemes for Daytona.

What Our Drivers are Saying:

Kevin Harvick, Driver of the No. 4 Mobil 1 Ford Mustang for Stewart-Haas:

You haven’t missed the playoffs since 2009. Is the key to that consistency your experience?
“Well, there are just different ways to race, right? There are different ways to solve the equation, and sometimes we’re going to run fourth, and we have to accept that and be able to say, ‘If we have a fourth-place car, we need to finish fourth.’ On the days when stuff is chaotic and there are cars torn up everywhere and you finish ninth with a 20th-place car, those are really big wins. I’ve done all that. I’ve been on that side of the fence where you’ve had 20th-place cars all year and you have to figure out how to make something out of it. They’re going to have the races, regardless, and you still have to show up. You can’t just quit because your cars are slow. So you just have to figure out how to manage that, and also manage it when you have fast cars, medium cars, know what you have that day and get the most out of that day.”

Aric Almirola, Driver of the No. 10 Smithfield Ford Mustang for Stewart-Haas Racing:

How do you race this weekend knowing you have to win to make the playoffs?
“You take more chances and you put yourself in positions you wouldn’t typically put yourself in – especially when it comes down to the end of the race. Typically you try to win the race, but I think on a normal day if you can get out of there with a top-five finish and some good points, then you take those in and you always weigh out that risk versus reward. Right now, as we go to Daytona for the final race of the regular season, you’re willing to go with extremely high risk because the reward is extremely high. It’s the last opportunity to get in the playoffs.”

Chase Briscoe, Driver of the No. 14 Ford Performance Racing School Ford Mustang for Stewart-Haas Racing:

What makes Watkins Glen so different from other road courses?
“It’s not as technical as some of the others. You have to focus a lot on the balance of the car to be able to get around it. It’s a very high-speed track and there isn’t really a slow corner that you can use to set up a pass if you get behind. We’ve seen with the new car it’s been tough to pass, and guys have been really aggressive on the road courses, so I think we’ll for sure see some guys making moves that might not work.”

Cole Custer, Driver of the No. 41 Autodesk / HaasTooling.com Ford Mustang for Stewart-Haas Racing:

You’ve now had three races with the NextGen car on superspeedway-style tracks this year. What have you learned about what it will take to win at Daytona on Saturday night?
“I think the biggest thing about the superspeedway racing this year is this new car is really all about getting the pit stops good and making sure you stay with the lead draft. If you’re the last car in line, it’s really easy to lose the draft. So I think that’s been the biggest thing. At the end of the day, it’s been really similar. You’re still able to push really hard, you’re still able to draft and run three-wide, and four-wide at times, so it puts on good racing. You just want to make sure you can stay with the lead draft.”

 

 

In the Know – Watkins Glen

In The Know – Watkins glen

The Go Bowling! At The Glen serves as the fifth of six road-course races on the 2022 NASCAR Cup Series schedule. Get up-to-speed on race info, driver stats, our weekly wraps, and more as we take on the twists and turns of road racing in the Empire State.

The Details

NASCAR Cup Series Overview

●  Event:  Go Bowling! At The Glen (Round 25 of 36)
●  Time/Date:  3 p.m. EDT on Sunday, Aug. 21
●  Location:  Watkins Glen (N.Y.) International
●  Layout:  2.45-mile, seven-turn road course
●  Laps/Miles:  90 laps / 220.5 miles
●  Stage Lengths:  Stage 1: 20 laps / Stage 2: 20 laps / Final Stage: 50 laps
●  TV/Radio:  USA / MRN / SiriusXM NASCAR Radio

BROADCAST


SHR FAST FACTS

Kevin Harvick:
After enduring a 65-race winless streak, Kevin Harvick is now undefeated in his last two NASCAR Cup Series starts. Harvick earned a breakthrough win Aug. 7 at Michigan International Speedway in Brooklyn and promptly followed it with another victory in the very next race last Sunday at Richmond (Va.) Raceway. It marked the eighth time in Harvick’s 22-year-and-counting Cup Series career that he has scored back-to-back wins.

Harvick, driver of the No. 4 Busch Light Ford Mustang for Stewart-Haas Racing, has made a total of 53 NASCAR Cup Series starts on road courses. He has 21 starts at Sonoma, 20 at Watkins Glen, four at the Charlotte Roval and two apiece at COTA, Road America, Indianapolis and the road course at Daytona (Fla.) International Speedway. He has scored two road-course wins – Watkins Glen in 2006 and Sonoma in 2017 – along with 11 top-fives and 26 top-10s with 195 laps led.

When Harvick scored his first road-course victory at Watkins Glen in 2006, he had to beat his current team owner to do it. Tony Stewart – the “Stewart” in Stewart-Haas Racing – had won the past two NASCAR Cup Series races at The Glen and was poised to capture a third straight win as he was leading Harvick with four laps to go in the 90-lap race. But Harvick, who had already led once for 24 laps, passed Stewart on lap 87 as the two drag-raced down the frontstretch and into turn one. Harvick held onto the lead despite Stewart in his rearview mirror, earning a margin of victory of .892 of a second.

Aric Almirola:
 In 10 NASCAR Cup Series starts at Watkins Glen, Almirola has five top-20 finishes with a best of 12th in the 2019 race. He has also competed in two NASCAR Xfinity Series races there with a best finish of fifth in the 2018 race while driving the No. 98 Go Bowling Ford. He also finished eighth in the 2011 Xfinity Series race.

Almirola was the only NASCAR Cup Series driver to finish in the top-10 in this year’s opening three races. He finished fifth in the season-opening Daytona 500 at Daytona (Fla.) International Speedway, sixth at Auto Club Speedway in Fontana, California, and sixth at Las Vegas Motor Speedway. Almirola’s top-10 streak ended with a 12th-place finish at Phoenix Raceway despite running inside the top-10 throughout the race.

Chase Briscoe:
In his lone Xfinity Series start at Watkins Glen in 2019, Briscoe started and finished sixth.

The 27-year-old racer from Mitchell, Indiana, has picked up two Xfinity Series wins on road courses. His first career Xfinity Series victory was in the series’ inaugural race on the Charlotte (N.C.) Motor Speedway Roval in 2018. He also fulfilled his childhood dream of kissing the historic Yard of Bricks when he scored his fifth win of the 2020 season on the Indianapolis Motor Speedway road course.

Briscoe finished among the top-10 in all but three of the 10 road-course races in which he competed in the Xfinity Series. And in his lone NASCAR Camping World Truck Series start on a road course – the 2017 race at Canadian Tire Motorsports Park in Bowmanville, Ontario – Briscoe finished seventh in a Ford F-150.

Cole Custer:
Cole Custer will make his milestone 100th career NASCAR Cup Series start when he and his No. 41 HaasTooling.com Ford Mustang for Stewart-Haas Racing (SHR) head to Watkins Glen (N.Y.) International for the penultimate road-course race of the season, Sunday’s Go Bowling at The Glen.

Sunday’s 90-lap race will be Custer’s second on the seven-turn, 2.45-mile Watkins Glen circuit and his 14th Cup Series start on a road course. Custer equaled his career-best Cup Series road-course finish of ninth in the July 31 event on the Indianapolis Motor Speedway circuit. He also finished ninth in the October 2020 race on the Charlotte (N.C.) Motor Speedway Roval.

In his three Watkins Glen starts in the Xfinity Series from 2017 through 2019, all in the No. 00 SHR Ford, Custer finished in the top-12 in all three, his best resulting in a sixth-place finish in 2018. He debuted with a 12th-place finish in 2017 and added a seventh-place finish in 2019.

OUR WEEKLY WRAPS

We’re ready for some road racing in New York state. Check out our schemes for The Glen.

What Our Drivers are Saying:

Kevin Harvick, Driver of the No. 4 Busch Light Ford Mustang for Stewart-Haas:

What’s a Watkins Glen moment that stands out for you?
“Watkins Glen is home to one of my favorite wins because I was able to beat Tony (Stewart). That was a fun day. Tony has always been really good at Watkins Glen and had a lot of success up there. It’s just a fast racetrack with some unique corners that determine the amount of speed that’s in the lap just because of where the car placement is. The thing that I remember about racing Tony that year is just how good he was in the braking zone going into the ‘bus stop’ in the back. He was always a good road racer and, in those years, he was getting in the Grand-Am cars and he wouldn’t even practice. He would just show up at the races and jump in the car and be competitive. That was just what he did, and he could do that in pretty much anything, and Watkins Glen was just another one of those places that stood out for him through the years where he just dominated.”

Aric Almirola, Driver of the No. 10 Go Bowling Ford Mustang for Stewart-Haas Racing:

You had a solid run at Richmond last weekend. How does that help your confidence heading to the final two races of the regular season?
“When the clouds came and the track cooled, we kind of lost it. The first couple runs of the race we were so fast. We drove from 32nd up to the top-five. Our car was really good on the long run. We took care of the tires really well and it did everything I needed it to do. As the pace picked up and the track cooled off, I just couldn’t get the car to rotate like I needed it to and just couldn’t quite carry the speed those other cars could. It was a good day. We have had a rough month, so to go there and rebound and have a good run was important. We need a win, but to have a good run is a confidence booster.”

Chase Briscoe, Driver of the No. 14 Ford Performance Racing School Ford Mustang for Stewart-Haas Racing:

What makes Watkins Glen so different from other road courses?
“It’s not as technical as some of the others. You have to focus a lot on the balance of the car to be able to get around it. It’s a very high-speed track and there isn’t really a slow corner that you can use to set up a pass if you get behind. We’ve seen with the new car it’s been tough to pass, and guys have been really aggressive on the road courses, so I think we’ll for sure see some guys making moves that might not work.”

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

How would you evaluate the road-course program at SHR?
“I would say, for us as an organization, we’ve been solid in the road-course races. You definitely always want to be better, but I feel like we’ve been in the mix more often than not, at least. I feel like we can run top-10 most of the time and, from there, it’s just a matter of one adjustment and one thing going right on pit road and you’re in the top-five and looking for a win. So I think it’s just a matter of fine-tuning it a little bit, but I’ve been pretty happy with our road-course cars. It’s just a matter of having the whole race play out right.

MENTOR & MENTEE: INVEST IN YOUR PEOPLE

People are our greatest asset, and no one knows that better than the boss, Tony Stewart. Hear Chase Briscoe and Tony Stewart talk about what it means to invest in the team around you. 

 

 

 

In the Know – Richmond

In The Know – Richmond

Richmond marks the third-to-last race of the regular season before the NASCAR Playoffs begin Sept. 4 at Darlington (S.C.) Raceway. Get up-to-speed on race info, driver stats, our weekly wraps, and more as we head to Virginia, the state that is for racers.

The Details

NASCAR Cup Series Overview

● Event:  Federated Auto Parts 400 (Round 24 of 36)
● Time/Date:  3 p.m. EDT on Sunday, Aug. 14
● Location:  Richmond (Va.) Raceway
● Layout:  .75-mile oval
● Laps/Miles:  400 laps/300 miles
● Stage Lengths:  Stage 1: 70 laps / Stage 2: 160 laps / Final Stage: 170 laps
● TV/Radio:  USA / MRN / SiriusXM NASCAR Radio

BROADCAST

SHR FAST FACTS

Kevin Harvick:
Speaking of winning, with his victory at Michigan, Harvick has now won in 18 of his 22 NASCAR Cup Series seasons. His first victory was on March 11, 2001 at Atlanta Motor Speedway. Harvick has 59 career Cup Series wins, 28 of which have come since he turned 40. Now, the 46-year-old Harvick is 10th on the series’ all-time win list, and with his last 24 victories being with Ford, Harvick is also 10th on Ford’s all-time win list, where he is one of only 13 drivers to win 20 more races with the manufacturer.

Harvick has made 777 career NASCAR Cup Series starts, with 125 of those starts coming on short tracks. And of his 59 Cup Series wins, seven have been on short tracks, with Richmond accounting for three of those victories. Harvick scored his first Richmond win in September 2006, his second in September 2011 and his third in April 2013.

Harvick joined Stewart-Haas Racing (SHR) in 2014 and has since recorded 36 of his 59 career NASCAR Cup Series wins. However, none of them have been at Richmond. But Harvick has remained stout at the .75-mile oval. In his last 16 starts at Richmond as a member of SHR, Harvick has three runner-up finishes, nine top-fives and 12 top-10s. He has only one finish outside of the top-15.

Aric Almirola:
In 20 starts, Almirola has earned seven top-10 finishes, two top-fives, and has led one lap on the .75-mile Richmond (Va.) Raceway oval. In his last seven qualifying attempts there, he has started outside the top-10 just twice with a best start of sixth in the September 2016 race.

Almirola has shown speed at shorter tracks this season. He qualified second at Martinsville (Va.) Speedway and secured a top-10 finish. Almirola qualified fifth at Phoenix Raceway in March and had a fast Smithfield Ford. He qualified 10th in his last visit to Richmond this past April, but an ill-timed caution put him two laps down, ultimately finishing 21st.

Chase Briscoe:
Briscoe, a dirt-racer from Indiana, struggled to find success on the short tracks throughout his time in NASCAR’s Camping World Truck Series, Xfinity Series and in his first year in the Cup Series in 2021. When this Cup Series season began with the Busch Light Clash at the L.A. Coliseum on Feb. 6, Briscoe was consistently one of the best on track through practice, qualifying and the first laps of the race. The first points-paying race of the year at a track 1 mile or shorter came March 13 at Phoenix Raceway, a track that had seemed to have a stranglehold on Briscoe. However, the 27-year-old conquered Phoenix this time to earn his first Cup Series victory.

Since the win at Phoenix, Briscoe has finished no worse than 15th  in six starts on tracks 1 mile or shorter, with the exception of his 22nd-place result April 17 on the dirt at Bristol (Tenn.) Motor Speedway, when he led 59 laps but spun on the final lap while attempting a pass for the win. Last year, Briscoe’s best finish on the shorter tracks on the NASCAR schedule was a 13th-place result earned in the fall at Bristol.

Cole Custer:
Sunday’s 400-lap race will be Custer’s 99th career Cup Series start and his sixth at Richmond. His 14th-place finish in the September 2020 race there is the best of his previous five outings and it helped him earn that year’s Cup Series Rookie of the Year honors. He qualified 12th and finished 22nd in this season’s first Richmond race April 3.

In NASCAR Xfinity Series competition, Custer’s seven career starts at Richmond is more than he’s had at any other track. Best among those starts was the April 2019 race, when he qualified fourth in the No. 00 SHR Ford, led a race-high 122 of 250 laps and took the checkered flag 2.639 seconds ahead of runner-up and fellow Ford driver Austin Cindric. He followed that up with a third-place finish in that year’s September race for his fourth Xfinity Series top-six in seven Richmond starts. Custer also started on the pole and led 43 laps en route to a sixth-place finish in the April 2018 race in his SHR Ford, and scored a sixth-place finish in his Richmond debut in the Xfinity Series, driving the No. 5 JR Motorsports entry in the April 2016 race.

OUR WEEKLY WRAPS

Check out the schemes we’re bringing to Richmond for some short track racing.

What Our Drivers are Saying:

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

You won last Sunday at Michigan. After developing the NextGen car and finally getting that coveted victory, what has this car been like to get it to where you want it to be?
“It’s all totally different. I think after the Roval test last year, I knew not to have any expectations for this year. We were either going to be on the front side of this thing or we were going to be behind. There wasn’t going to really be any middle road. We found out we were behind and had to start really going to work, and I think as you look at this particular car, everything about it is different. You’ve got an electronic mirror, which I love, because it’s just so easy to use, right in your line of sight, you don’t have to move your eyes as far. But when you talk about stuff like that, you have to be very open-minded to, just, change. For me, I was prepared for change. I was prepared for work. We had a pretty extensive plan this year of using the simulator and trying to make it better, to make it fit with what we do at the racetrack with the short practices.”

Aric Almirola, Driver of the No. 10 Smithfield for Stewart-Haas Racing:

What kind of challenge does a short track like Richmond bring?
“I would say Richmond is one of the most challenging racetracks we go to for managing your tires throughout the run. The first 10, 15 or 20 laps of the run can make you feel like Superman roaring through the field, but you will pay a major penalty for that by lap 40. It makes it fun because, when we show up at Richmond, it really is about managing tire fall-off and making sure your car stays consistent throughout the run as the tires fall off.”

Chase Briscoe, Driver of the No. 14 HighPoint.com Ford Mustang for Stewart-Haas Racing:

We’re getting closer to the end of the regular season. Is Richmond a place you feel like you can improve your playoff standing before Daytona?
“I think so. We’ve been really strong on the short tracks this year and SHR has done a great job getting the most we can out of these cars. So, yeah, I think we can have a really good day. The most important thing for us is to survive and have a good points day. We’re definitely in a better place than we were two or three weeks ago but we can’t get too comfortable. It’s been a long time since we’ve seen a lot of big wrecks at Richmond, but there was a time when it was really easy to get caught in someone else’s mess, so we have to stay on the lookout for that and do the best we can to be there at the end.”

Cole Custer, Driver of the No. 41 Jacob Construction Ford Mustang for Stewart-Haas Racing:

You’ve run at Richmond so much during your career, are you immersed in footage and data from your previous runs there to figure out how you’re going to get around there Sunday?
“Yeah, that’s every weekend for me. I look at old races and try and talk to (SHR teammate) Kevin (Harvick) every weekend to find out what he’s looking for. He’s been a huge help the last few years. All of my teammates have been. It was tough going straight to racing with no practice or qualifying the last two years. You can look at as much film and data as you want, but you’re still missing the experience of actually being out there. You know what you need to work on, but you really don’t learn as much until you’re actually out there on the track. In the spring race this year, it was huge to have the chance to practice and qualify before the race. Hopefully, that experience will help put us over the top on Sunday.”

Relive Harvick’s clutch win

Kevin Harvick snapped a 65-race winless streak at a critical time in the season, needing a win to get into the playoffs. Relive the magical moments of The Closer’s victory and the moment he proved all the doubters wrong. 

 

MENTOR & MENTEE: Highs & lows

The boss Tony Stewart has some advice for Chase Briscoe on the highs and lows of our sport: racers keep diggin’ no matter what. Hear all of the boss’ advice to Chase on episode 3 of our Mentor & Mentee series presented by Mahindra Tractors. 

 

 

In the Know – Michigan

In The Know – MICHIGAN

We head to the Great Lake State this week to take on 400 miles on the 2-mile oval of Michigan International Speedway. Get up-to-speed on race info, driver stats, our weekly wraps and more.

The Details

NASCAR Cup Series Overview

● Event: FireKeepers Casino 400 (Round 23 of 36)
● Time/Date: 3 p.m. EDT on Sunday, Aug. 7
● Location: Michigan International Speedway in Brooklyn
● Layout: 2-mile oval
● Laps/Miles: 200 laps/400 miles
● Stage Lengths: Stage 1: 45 laps / Stage 2: 75 laps / Final Stage: 80 laps
● TV/Radio: USA Network / MRN / SiriusXM NASCAR Radio

BROADCAST

SHR FAST FACTS

Kevin Harvick:
The FireKeepers Casino 400 will mark Harvick’s 42nd career NASCAR Cup Series start at Michigan, the most among active drivers. Since making his first start at the track on June 10, 2001, Harvick has scored five wins, 15 top-five and 21 top-10 finishes while leading 699 laps, all of which are series bests. Harvick’s five wins are two more than Kurt Busch, Kyle Larson and Joey Logano, all of whom are tied with three wins apiece. Harvick’s 15 top-fives are five more than next best Denny Hamlin and Martin Truex Jr. (10 top-fives apiece). Harvick’s 21 top-10s are four more than nearest pursuers Busch and Logano (17 top-10s each), as are his 699 laps led, which is 109 more laps than Logano (590 laps led).

Harvick’s first NASCAR Cup Series win at Michigan came on Aug. 15, 2010. Fifteen races passed before Harvick’s second win on Aug. 12, 2018, but in that span he finished second six times, including a run of four straight runner-up finishes (2013-2014).

The victory on Aug. 12, 2018 might have been one of the most satisfying of Harvick’s career. Upon climbing from his car on the start/finish line, Harvick waved his son, Keelan, over to grab the checkered flag. Then after Harvick completed his TV interview, a then 6-year-old Keelan rode with his dad around the racetrack and on to victory lane. It was a tradition that continued a year later when Harvick successfully defended his win at Michigan. This time, Keelan joined his dad on pit road and rode in the car en route to the frontstretch, riding shotgun as Harvick performed an epic burnout on the way to the start/finish line to pick up another checkered flag.

Aric Almirola:
In 18 NASCAR Cup series starts at Michigan International Speedway in Brooklyn, Almirola has two top-10 finishes and 13 laps led. He has three NASCAR Xfinity series starts there with a best finish of eighth, and has one win in the NASCAR Camping World Truck series in only two starts, the win coming in June 2010.

Almirola and the No. 10 Smithfield Ford team have proven they can find speed at 2-mile ovals. In just their second points-paying start in the NextGen car Feb. 27 at Auto Club Speedway in Fontana, California, they finished sixth.

Chase Briscoe:
In the 2021 edition of the FireKeepers 400, Briscoe’s Cup Series debut at Michigan, he started 21st and was riding comfortably inside the top-10 with just three laps to go before contact with Kurt Busch caused damage to the nose of the No. 14 Ford Mustang. While the injured car became a handful for Briscoe in the closing laps, he held on for an 11th-place finish.

Prior to last year, Briscoe never finished outside of the top-10 in his three previous starts there, each in a different series. In his lone NASCAR Xfinity Series start in 2019, he started 14th and finished seventh. He finished ninth in his only NASCAR Camping World Truck Series start there in 2017, and second in the 2016 ARCA Menards Racing Series event.

With 22 races complete and four remaining before the playoff field is set, Briscoe sits 15th in the driver standings with one win, earned in March at Phoenix Raceway. The win earned Briscoe a chance to make the Cup Series playoffs for the first time, provided there are no more than 16 different race winners following the Aug. 27 regular season finale at Daytona (Fla.) International Speedway.

Cole Custer:
After equaling his season-best finish of ninth during last Sunday on the road course at Indianapolis Motor Speedway, Cole Custer and his No. 41 HaasTooling.com Ford Mustang team for Stewart-Haas Racing (SHR) head to the Irish Hills for Sunday’s NASCAR Cup Series FireKeepers Casino 400 at Michigan International Speedway in Brooklyn.

Sunday’s 200-lap race will be Custer’s 98th career Cup Series start and his fourth on the 2-mile Michigan oval. In a Saturday-Sunday doubleheader weekend during his 2020 Rookie of the Year season, he posted finishes of 34th and 25th, respectively. Custer bettered those results during last year’s return to the Irish Hills with a 23rd-place finish.

In three NASCAR Xfinity Series appearances at Michigan from 2017 through 2019, all in the No. 00 SHR Ford, Custer never finished outside the top-12 or qualified worse than seventh. His best outing was a third-place finish from the fourth starting position in 2018. He finished 10th from seventh on the grid in 2017, and finished 12th from sixth on the grid in 2019.

OUR WEEKLY WRAPS

Check out the schemes we’re bringing to Michigan this week.

What Our Drivers are Saying:

Kevin Harvick, Driver of the No. 4  Busch Light Apple #BuschelOfBusch Ford Mustang for Stewart-Haas Racing:

You’ve enjoyed a lot of success at Michigan. Does that experience have any bearing when you return there with the NextGen car?
“Maybe. You can have a baseline interpretation, but it seems to have migrated in a number of different directions at different racetracks and different scenarios this year just because of the different characteristics that come with the car. Places that we haven’t been, you just don’t really know where it’s going to go. You go to some of these places, I think Darlington is a good example, where California, Darlington, places that have been super rough, have been really difficult to navigate in traffic, and even by yourself sometimes, because of the way that the cars bounce around.”

Aric Almirola, Driver of the No. 10 Smithfield for Stewart-Haas Racing:

Do you feel confident heading to Michigan?
“Michigan is always a weird place for me because, in my mind, I feel like I run well there. I won a Truck race there years ago and, from that point forward, I just always loved going to Michigan. My wife’s family is from Michigan, so I go to Michigan with such a great attitude. We have had a few top-five cars at Michigan and didn’t execute and things didn’t go our way with the restarts and I didn’t get the result, so I’m confident this 10 team can bring us a fast car. I’m excited about going back. Going to Michigan, there’s always a lot of pride for the manufacturers. I’d love to go there and keep the trophy in Ford’s backyard.”

Chase Briscoe, Driver of the No. 14 Rush Truck Centers/Cummins Ford Mustang for Stewart-Haas Racing:

In the last four races, you’ve raced on the 1.5-mile Atlanta superspeedway oval, the flat, 1-mile New Hampshire oval, the Pocono triangle, and the Indianapolis road course. Does the diversity of the 2022 schedule make it tough for teams to find a rhythm?
“It’s definitely tough. You go to a road course and then you have a short track and then you’re racing in a pack and drafting. The consistency just isn’t there. I feel like, my first year, there were a lot of mile-and-a-half tracks in a row, and it was kind of easy to get in a rhythm. We haven’t had a true mile-and-a-half since the Coca-Cola 600 in May. I don’t think you can really put Atlanta in that category now, which really changes things. So, that part makes it a little tougher because the schedule is so back and forth, a lot of different racetracks. But to be fair, it should be hard to get into a rhythm. The diverse schedule makes it interesting. We’re supposed to be some of the best drivers in the world. I like how tough the schedule is but, yes, it is hard to get in a rhythm.”

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

With the regular season winding down, what can you look back on as some of the positives so far this year?
“We’ve shown speed at times. We went to Bristol and sat on the pole. That was really cool for my first Cup pole. I’m not a dirt guy, so it was pretty surprising to me. But it was cool to have that. It was fun to go to Fontana and win the Xfinity race. And also the road courses, we’ve been pretty fast, ran top-10 at all of them but just didn’t have the finishes. Martinsville, we were good. It’s just a matter of having it all come together.”

MENTOR & MENTEE: Highs & lows

The boss Tony Stewart has some advice for Chase Briscoe on the highs and lows of our sport: racers keep diggin’ no matter what. Hear all of the boss’ advice to Chase on episode 3 of our Mentor & Mentee series presented by Mahindra Tractors. 

 

 

In the Know – Indianapolis

In The Know – INDIANAPOLIS 

The Verizon 200 at the Brickyard serves as the fourth of six road-course races on the 2022 NASCAR Cup Series schedule. Get up-to-speed on race info, driver stats, our weekly wraps and more as we go road racing this weekend.

The Details

NASCAR Cup Series Overview

●  Event:  Verizon 200 at the Brickyard (Round 22 of 36)
●  Time/Date:  2:30 p.m. EDT on Sunday, July 31
●  Location:  Indianapolis Motor Speedway
●  Layout:  2.439-mile, 14-turn road course
●  Laps/Miles:  82 laps / 200 miles
●  Stage Lengths:  Stage 1: 15 laps / Stage 2: 20 laps / Final Stage: 47 laps
●  TV/Radio:  NBC / IMS Radio Network / SiriusXM NASCAR Radio

BROADCAST

SHR FAST FACTS

Kevin Harvick:
Harvick, driver of the No. 4 GEARWRENCH Ford Mustang for Stewart-Haas Racing, has made a total of 52 NASCAR Cup Series starts on road courses. He has 21 starts at Sonoma, 20 at Watkins Glen, four at the Charlotte Roval, two apiece at COTA, Road America, and the road course at Daytona (Fla.) International Speedway, and one on the road course at Indianapolis – last year’s inaugural Verizon 200 at the Brickyard where Harvick finished 14th. He has scored two road-course wins – Watkins Glen in 2006 and Sonoma in 2017 – along with 11 top-fives and 26 top-10s with 195 laps led.

When Harvick scored his first road-course victory at Watkins Glen in 2006, he had to beat his current team owner to do it. Tony Stewart – the “Stewart” in Stewart-Haas Racing – had won the past two NASCAR Cup Series races at the 2.45-mile, seven-turn road course and was poised to capture a third straight win as he was leading Harvick with four laps to go in the 90-lap race. But Harvick, who had already led once for 24 laps, passed Stewart on lap 87 as the two drag-raced down the frontstretch and into turn one. Harvick held onto the lead despite Stewart in his rearview mirror, earning a margin of victory of .892 of a second.

Harvick’s second career road-course win also had a connection to Stewart. When Harvick won at Sonoma in 2017, he gave Stewart-Haas Racing its second straight victory at the 1.99-mile, 10-turn road course. The winner in 2016? None other than Stewart. It ended up being his 49th and final NASCAR Cup Series victory as Stewart retired from NASCAR racing at the conclusion of the season.

Aric Almirola:
After 21 races this season, Aric Almirola is the only driver in the NASCAR Cup Series without a DNF (Did Not Finish).

Almirola has 31 road-course starts in the NASCAR Cup Series with two top-10 finishes and a best of eighth at Sonoma (Calif.) Raceway, five top-20s at Watkins Glen (N.Y.) International with a best finish of 12th, three top-20s on the Charlotte (N.C.) Motor Speedway Roval with a best finish of 14th, and a top-12 finish in the non-points Busch Clash in 2020 on the Daytona (Fla.) International Speedway road course.


Chase Briscoe:
Just 85 miles south of Indianapolis sits the town of Mitchell, Indiana. The old railroad town spans 3.6 square miles with a population of less than 4,000. But it was in the center of town at a family shop on 14th Street that a young boy watched his father and grandfather prepare cars for the local dirt tracks while dreaming of his shot of carrying on the family legacy and someday returning back home again to Indiana to race at the most famous venue in motorsports – the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. This weekend, Chase Briscoe, driver of the No. 14 HighPoint.com Ford Mustang for Stewart-Haas Racing (SHR), will have two shots to once again kiss the bricks and climb the fence in victory at the Brickyard – first in Saturday’s NASCAR Xfinity Series race driving the No. 07 Ford Mustang for SS Greenlight Racing, and then on Sunday in the Verizon 200 NASCAR Cup Series race.

The son of Kevin, an accomplished dirt racer, and grandson of Richard, a renowned car owner and builder, Briscoe aspired to follow in the footsteps of his favorite driver and fellow Hoosier Tony Stewart. Stewart, at the time a Cup Series champion, would return home to race at the local short tracks when not behind the wheel of the No. 14 SHR entry, often competing against Kevin as the youngest Briscoe looked on. He practiced his victory celebration dressed in a replica of Stewart’s uniform and helmet until he was old enough to start racing himself. At the age of 14, Briscoe earned his first sprint car win at Paragon Speedway, marking the end of NASCAR champion Jeff Gordon’s reign as the youngest driver to win in a 410 sprint car. From there, Briscoe blazed a path of his own in the stock car world, dominating his first season in the ARCA Menards Series to become the 2016 champion, then earning his first NASCAR Truck Series win in 2017 in his 23rd start.

But it was after a breakthrough 2020 season in the Xfinity Series that saw Briscoe visit victory lane nine times that he finally felt like he was overcoming the odds that always seemed to be stacked against him. Just six years after leaving home to pursue a dream, he found himself back in Indiana, sitting next to his idol as he and his family were told he’d be the next driver of the famed No. 14 Ford Mustang for SHR in the Cup Series. Last year, when the series returned to Indianapolis to compete on the road course for the first time, Briscoe was introduced as the pilot of the No. 14 in front of hundreds of friends, family members and residents of Mitchell who had turned up to see him race at his home track, and he made sure to put on a show for the hometown crowd.

Twenty-four races into his rookie season and determined to earn his first Cup Series win at Indianapolis a year ago, Briscoe qualified second, missing the pole by just .426 of a second, and took the lead on lap two of the race. He finished the first stage in ninth, but from there struggled with a series of flat-spotted tires and green-flag pit stops until a caution on lap 79 set up Briscoe to restart third for the first attempt at a green-white-checkered finish on lap 88. That run was halted by the second multicar incident in a 12-lap span, and Briscoe once again restarted third, behind leader Denny Hamlin, for the second attempt at a green-white-checkered finish. As Hamlin drove wide into turn one and cars bunched up on the restart, Briscoe slid off into the grass. He returned to the track right behind Hamlin and was vying for the lead when contact sent Hamlin’s No. 11 into a spin. Briscoe was subsequently served a penalty for his venture through the grass and making contact with the leader and was parked for the final lap of the race, resulting in a 26th-place finish.

Briscoe’s move for the lead might have ruffled feathers, but his composure when confronted by Hamlin following the race made many take notice of his commitment to carrying on the legacy of the No. 14. Stewart stood by, observing his driver’s tenacity with pride, a moment that Briscoe has noted as a turning point in his career. “Personally, I felt like I was doing my job,” he said. “I’m there to win. But, to have Tony tell me he was proud of me for standing up for myself, that made me realize I’m doing the right thing. He’s the guy I looked up to as a kid and the driver I always wanted to be. He knew who he was and didn’t let anyone push him around, and it’s time for me to do the same.”

Briscoe has been a standout on the 2.439-mile, 14-turn Indianapolis road course layout since his first outing there in 2020 during the NASCAR Xfinity Series’ inaugural race on the circuit. He started 12th in the 38-car field and took the lead for the first time on lap 24, eventually leading five times for a race-high 30 laps. Over the final two laps, the Hoosier had to battle road-course ace AJ Allmendinger, who took the lead from Briscoe on lap 59 and sent him to third after the SHR pilot overdrove a corner. But Briscoe set his sights on regaining the lead and repositioned himself at the front of the field with a powerful drive past second-place Austin Cindric and leader Allmendinger on the penultimate lap. Briscoe wheeled his Ford Mustang throughout the hallowed grounds of the Brickyard en route to victory, beating runner-up Justin Haley to the finish line by a 1.717-second margin. It was Briscoe’s fifth of nine wins in 2020.

It was three months later that Briscoe was announced as the next driver of the No. 14, and he completed the 2021 season having earned Cup Series Rookie of the Year honors. He once again drew attention when he began the 2022 season with a third-place finish in the Daytona 500, then scored his first Cup Series win in the fourth race of the season at Phoenix Raceway.

With 21 of 36 races complete this season, Briscoe has three top-fives and four top-10 finishes, a career-best for the 27-year-old who earned three top-10s in his rookie season. Briscoe is currently 16th in points and holds a spot in the 16-driver playoff field with five races remaining in the regular season.

Cole Custer:

Custer has one other start at the facility, when he drove to an impressive fifth-place finish in the 2020 Brickyard 400 on its iconic 2.5-mile oval. It was his first of two top-fives during his Cup Series Rookie of the Year campaign, which he followed up with a dramatic victory the following weekend at Kentucky Speedway in Sparta.

Sunday’s race will be Custer’s 13th road-course start in the Cup Series. He qualified 10th and finished 15th in the July 3 race at Road America in Elkhart Lake, Wisconsin. He posted stout qualifying efforts at the previous two road-course races – third for the March 27 event at Circuit of the Americas (COTA) in Austin, Texas, and sixth for the June 12 race at Sonoma (Calif.) Raceway – but late-race, multicar chaos foiled his bids for finishes deep inside the top-10 at both events. Custer’s best Cup Series finish on a road course was ninth in the October 2020 race on the Charlotte (N.C.) Motor Speedway Roval.

 

OUR WEEKLY WRAPS

Check out the schemes we’re bringing to the Brickyard this week.

What Our Drivers are Saying:

Kevin Harvick, Driver of the No. 4  GEARWRENCH Ford Mustang for Stewart-Haas Racing:

Last year’s road-course race at Indianapolis turned into a bumper-car race, particularly at the end when Chase Briscoe and Denny Hamlin traded bumps that sent them both off the track and into an animated post-race discussion on pit road. What’s OK and what’s not OK in road-course racing, because we saw similar bumping and banging earlier this year at COTA?
“Road-course racing in general has become rougher over the last decade just because of the stage racing and the double-file restarts and everything that comes with that. I wish we could implement our choose rule in some of these situations at places like that because I think it would make it even more entertaining. But road-course racing has just progressively gotten rougher, and now with the new car and not having to worry about caving in a fender or something, you can pretty much just lay it in there and see what happens.”

Aric Almirola, Driver of the No. 10 Mobil 1/GEARWRENCH for Stewart-Haas Racing:

You’re two positions behind the playoff cut line right now and 140 points out. What is the game plan for the next five races?
“Win. Fortunately, we’re 13th in the point standings so a win would put us in a good spot if we had more than 16 winners before the playoffs begin. There has been so much parity this year that you don’t know who’s going to be good each weekend. There are some guys that are better on road courses than others, but you look at Michigan, Richmond and Daytona as complete wild cards. We even had guys far back in the standings that have run top-three at road courses, too. Hopefully, this weekend is one we show a lot of speed. A lot can change in the next five weeks and we hope it doesn’t come down to a Hail Mary at Daytona.”

Chase Briscoe, Driver of the No. 14 HighPoint.com Ford Mustang for Stewart-Haas Racing:

How are you feeling about returning to Indianapolis this weekend and running double duty?
“I’m excited. There’s a lot of pressure that I put on myself during Indy weekend. I want to go there and win both practice sessions, both qualifying sessions and both races and that’s kind of the mentality I start with weeks out because I know it’s something that is definitely attainable. When you go to Indy being an Indiana guy, you have pressure coming from everywhere. There are a lot of people, friends and just fans, that don’t get to see me race anywhere else that are from that area. So, I’m definitely excited to get there and pull double duty. It looks like the Xfinity race is going to have a lot of Cup guys, so it’ll be a good test for Sunday. I’m really looking forward to getting there and spending a week at home.”

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

f you could have the keys to the Indianapolis Motor Speedway for a day, what would you do?
“I’d probably just go over and see all the trophies and all the history in the museum there. It’s one of the coolest things. They have some special stuff downstairs that I think would be really cool to see, all the historic stuff that they have there. Having the first (Cup Series) road-course race there last year was huge, it was historic, and it was a crazy race. Indy is obviously the most historic track maybe in the world, definitely in the United States, so I’m really looking forward to going back.”

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.

 

In the Know – Pocono

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!

 

 

In the Know – New Hampshire

In The Know – New Hampshire 

We head to the Magic Mile this weekend where SHR has won three of the last four races (2018, 2019 and 2021). Get up-to-speed on race info, driver stats, our weekly wraps and more below as we look to earn our lobster in New Hampshire.

The Details

NASCAR Cup Series Overview

●  Event:  Ambetter 301 (Round 20 of 36)
●  Time/Date:  3 p.m. EDT on Sunday, July 17
●  Location:  New Hampshire Motor Speedway in Loudon
●  Layout:  1.058-mile oval
●  Laps/Miles:  301 laps / 318.46 miles
●  Stage Lengths:  Stage 1: 70 laps / Stage 2: 115 laps / Final Stage: 116 laps
●  TV/Radio:  USA / PRN / SiriusXM NASCAR Radio

BROADCAST

SHR FAST FACTS

Kevin Harvick:
Harvick has won two of the last four races at New Hampshire (2018 and 2019), and in his last eight starts at “The Magic Mile”, he only has one finish outside the top-six. Harvick finished sixth last year at New Hampshire, and he comes into this year’s Ambetter 301 looking to score his fifth straight top-10.

While Harvick has always been good at New Hampshire, his performance at the track took a dramatic turn upward when he joined SHR in 2014. In the 12 races contested at New Hampshire since wheeling the No. 4 car for SHR, Harvick has scored three wins and has only four finishes outside of the top-five. And of his 831 career laps led at New Hampshire, 512 have come in the last 11 races (46.5 percent)

Aric Almirola:
Almirola is the most recent NASCAR Cup Series race winner at New Hampshire Motor Speedway.After a two-hour rain delay, Almirola and the field battled daylight during the race last July. With darkness closing in on the 1.058-mile oval, Almirola sprung to life late and pulled off the surprise victory, his and Stewart-Haas Racing’s first of the year. The win catapulted Almirola from 27th in the standings to the playoffs for the fourth consecutive year and fifth time in his career.

History at New Hampshire: While last year’s win was his first at New Hampshire, Almirola has been on a hot streak there since joining SHR. In the last four races at “The Magic Mile,” Almirola is ranked second overall behind only teammate Kevin Harvick. In his first start at New Hampshire with SHR in 2018, he finished third, then 11th the following year. In 2020, he started from the pole and finished seventh before returning last year for his first career victory at the track. In 18 starts at New Hampshire, Almirola has four top-10 finishes and two top-fives with 56 laps led.

Almirola has already shown success at a track like New Hampshire in the NextGen car. The No. 10 driver finished fifth at Gateway International Raceway in Madison, Illinois, which is a flat, 1.25-mile oval with similarities to New Hampshire in turns three and four

Chase Briscoe:
Briscoe is 18th in the driver standings with seven races remaining in the regular season. He currently holds a spot in the 16-driver playoff field by virtue of his March 13 win at Phoenix Raceway.

In last year’s 301-lap event at New Hampshire, Briscoe started 19th and finished 27th in his first start at “The Magic Mile” in nearly two years.

Cole Custer:
Sunday’s race on the flat, 1.058-mile New Hampshire Motor Speedway oval will be Custer’s 95th career NASCAR Cup Series start and his third at New Hampshire. He started 14th and finished eighth in his first start there during his 2020 Cup Series Rookie of the Year campaign. He started 21st and finished 14th there last July.

In his three New Hampshire starts in the NASCAR Xfinity Series from 2017 through 2019, Custer finished in the top-10 in all three, his best resulting in a runner-up finish from the pole in his most recent outing. His first two appearances resulted in ninth-place finishes. All three outings came behind the wheel of the No. 00 SHR Ford.

OUR WEEKLY WRAPS

Our schemes this week are as fresh as the lobster. Check them out.

What Our Drivers are Saying:

Kevin Harvick, Driver of the No. 4  GEARWRENCH Ford Mustang for Stewart-Haas Racing:

Phoenix Raceway is your best track, statistically, but New Hampshire isn’t far off from your results at Phoenix. Four career wins and eight top-fives in the last 11 races is proof of that. Are there similarities between Phoenix and New Hampshire?
“Flat tracks have always been really good for me in my career. When you look at SHR and the things we’ve been able to accomplish at Loudon and Phoenix, they’ve kind of followed that same trend. A lot of that goes back to that open test time we had at Milwaukee and Nashville. Those are the places where we would practice and practice and practice. Our guys have done a great job of having a good short-track, flat-track program, and Loudon is a place that has followed along with Phoenix and the success that we’ve had there and to be able to capitalize on that success and continue it at another track.”

Aric Almirola, Driver of the No. 10 Smithfield Ford Mustang for Stewart-Haas Racing:

Do you feel like you have to make the playoffs to consider it a great year?
“Making the playoffs is the goal. You can’t run for a championship if you don’t make the playoffs. We start every year with a list of goals and the priority is to do everything you can to make the playoffs, whether that is on points or winning races. We’ve done a good job this year of scoring points and putting ourselves in a position that typically would have us racing our way in by points. But with this atypical year, we’ve had a ton of different winners. I feel like we are having a good year and that’s crazy to feel that way considering where we are in the points. I feel like I’ve had as good of a year as any year at Stewart-Haas and the playoffs were achieved in those years. To be on the outside right now just speaks to the competitiveness. Last weekend, you saw Corey Lajoie almost win it, and he’s outside of the top-30, so it’s a crazy year where anyone can win it at any time.”

Chase Briscoe, Driver of the No. 14 Mahindra Tractors Ford Mustang for Stewart-Haas Racing:

We saw some aggression on the flatter, shorter tracks like Gateway. Is that what we’ll see at New Hampshire?
“For sure. I feel like on the short tracks, this car’s been kind of harder to pass with. And I think guys know that now, especially now that we’ve run a couple of them. So I think you’re definitely going to see more aggression. And I think New Hampshire is going to be a handful, just from how rough the racetrack is in this car, getting on the limiters and things like that.”

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

What do you think it will take to enable you and the team to run up front on a more consistent basis?
“It’s just the little things with this brand new car. There’s been a lot of learning this year trying to figure out what these cars really want, setup-wise, to run up front. I think we’re starting to dial that in a little bit more and more, and I think execution from there, if we can do that, we’ll be where we need to be.”

MENTOR & MENTEE: RACING TOUGH

In episode 1 of our 8-part series, ​Mentor & Mentee presented by Mahindra Tractors, Chase Briscoe and Tony Stewart talk about racing tough and everything that comes with it.