Ryan Blaney passed former champion Kyle Busch with nine laps to go and held off former champion Kevin Harvick to capture his first Cup Series race Sunday afternoon at Pocono Raceway, behind the wheel of the Motorcraft/Quick Lane Ford Fusion.
Blaney and his Wood Brothers Racing teammates, celebrating their 99thcareer win, overcame a loose wheel after their first pit stop and a lack of two-way radio communications throughout the day to get the Woods’ historic No. 21 into Victory Lane for the first time since the 2011 Daytona 500. The second-year driver and the 18thto win for Wood Brothers Racing talked about dueling with Busch and Harvick in the final 10 laps of the Axalta Presents the Pocono 400.
“Kyle stayed out and he was on a little bit older tires and it looked like he was getting pretty tight, especially off of one and that’s where new tires really seemed to come alive because you could hold the line and get runs on him, downshift and get next to him,” Blaney said after climbing out of his classic red-and-white racer. “I had a big run on him off of three and he did a good job blocking, and we were able to get under him, but then I had to hold the 4 off. He was super-fast. I can’t thank Kevin enough for racing me clean. That was really cool of him, but it was definitely hectic. Hopefully the fans liked it. It was really cool.”
Growing up with Dale Earnhardt Jr. Featured
You could argue that Dale Earnhardt Jr. and I grew up together, in a roundabout way.
When fate took that left turn at just the right moment and I got hooked on NASCAR a little over 20 years ago, Dale Jr. was just a kid with blonde hair trying to prove to the fans that he deserved the rides his daddy had given him.
When I attended my first ever live NASCAR event at Michigan Speedway in August of 1997, it happened to be Dale Jr’s fifth career race In the Busch series.
He started 18th, and finished 7th (his best finish in a year where he qualified for 8 races but DNQed in two others – yes, this was back when people DNQed and there weren’t short fields)
With him being roughly the same age as me, I was naturally drawn to Jr. as he made his way up the ranks of NASCAR. The stories of his fun younger days – parties at his house and nightclub, and his rumored affinity for the Budweiser girls – fit well with my narrative as a young man. He seemed like a guy you would want to have a beer with, and that’s not always the case with celebrities/athletes, especially those with a famous name.
Jason Lucas has been named the director of marketing and communications at Michigan International Speedway.
Lucas joins MIS after serving as the director of consumer marketing at Daytona International Speedway since 2016. In that role he was responsible for the promotion and strategies for the speedway. He developed and implemented marketing plans across all media channels to promote the diverse schedule at the “World Center of Racing.”
“We are excited to have Jason join us as the director of marketing and communications,” MIS President Rick Brenner said. “He brings a wealth of knowledge to the speedway and is well positioned to lead the department.”
Daytona International Speedway was recently transformed into the world’s only motorsports stadium with DAYTONA Rising, a $400 million renovation. Thanks to the marketing efforts of Lucas and his team, the stadium was awarded the SportsBusiness Journal’s prestigious Sports Business Award for Sports Facility of the Year.
Erik Jones and Furniture Row Racing’s No. 77 5-hour ENERGY Toyota team look to add to his already impressive track record at Phoenix International Raceway in Sunday’s NASCAR Cup Series Camping World 500.
The Sunoco Rookie of the Year candidate has earned three victories and three pole positions, as well as five top-five and eight top-10 finishes in just nine starts at the flat one-mile oval east of Phoenix. The statistics from eight of those races were achieved in the NASCAR XFINITY Series, where he won the spring race last season, and the NASCAR Camping World Truck Series where he earned his first NASCAR victory in 2013 and then repeated the next year.
The ninth race took place in the Cup series (Nov. 15, 2015), when Jones subbed for Matt Kenseth in the No. 20 Toyota Camry for Joe Gibbs Racing. His strong seventh-place qualifying effort was followed by a very respectable 19th-place race finish despite it being just his third NASCAR Cup Series start.
Three races into the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series and Ryan Blaney rolls into Phoenix International Raceway in sixth place overall, seemingly on the cusp of victory.
Blaney was an ounce or so of American Ethanol shy of victory at Daytona last month and finished second. He was strong again, but snake-bitten, at Atlanta winding up in 18th. Then he spent all of last weekend at Las Vegas Motor Speedway in the top 10, including the seventh-place finish.
Phoenix, the second leg of NASCAR’s three-race West Coast Swing, is a track that suits Blaney’s driving style. In his first two visits to PIR as a rookie last season, Blaney finished 10thin the spring and eighth in the fall.
Add those impressive results to his three consecutive Phoenix top 10s (2012-2014) in the NASCAR Camping World Truck Series and he’s never finished a race there outside of the top 10.
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