Author: SM Staff

“Fuggedabout” Cup driver Martin Truex, Jr. and his baby brother, K&N East Series Champion Ryan. There is a new Jersey boy in town and his name is Paulie Harraka, K & N Pro Series West ace and now officially a Nationwide driver based on his debut at Circuit Gilles Villeneuve last weekend.

Harraka, 20 year old native of Wayne, New Jersey, officially took the next step in his NASCAR career by running his first race on the famous road course north of the border. Harraka drove the No. 87 Nationwide car for NEMCO Motorsports, along with owner and race teammate Joe Nemechek.

According to Harraka, his deal came together when Joe Nemechek spotted him at Infineon Raceway, where both the West and Cup Series were running together. Harraka came in second in the West race at that track, solidifying Nemechek’s interest in the up and coming Jersey boy.

“That’s when Joe and I started talking,” Harraka said.

Harraka also took another important step in his rise up the ladder by snagging a sponsor for his Nationwide debut. In a deal that came together very quickly, the week before the race to be exact, Exide came on board Harraka’s car to sponsor the young driver.

Unfortunately, Harraka did not have the run he had hoped for in his inaugural introduction to the next level of racing in the Nationwide Series. Both he and owner Nemechek were involved in an early wreck, relegating Harraka to a 29th place finish.

“It was frustrating, you know,” Harraka said. “At the beginning of the race you have to be patiently aggressive, aggressive enough to be ahead of the wrecks when they happen and patient enough not to cause the wreck. I guess I was a little bit too patient.”

“Somebody got into Nemechek and spun him and by the time I got there, the entire race track was blocked,” Harraka continued. “Not an inch of racetrack was left for me to use. There was nothing for me to do at that point.”

“Unfortunately, we got the radiator and some other stuff and had to spend a fair amount of time in the garage, cutting pieces off to get back out there and score some points,” Harraka said. “And we did that, we finished and ended up 29th so overall it wasn’t terrible. It was just frustrating.”

In spite of the tough finish, Harraka thoroughly enjoyed his time on the road course in Montreal, including its unique challenges.

“Circuit Gilles Villeneuve is a ton of fun to run at,” Harraka said. “It’s a cool place and Montreal is a great city.”

“The race track is cool but it’s different than any other race tracks we run on,” Harraka noted. “It’s very narrow and the wall surrounding it is very narrow, with very little run off. So, if there’s a wreck you can’t just drive around it by virtue of it being narrow.”

“With all the foliage around the track, I had four different spotters,” Harraka said. “And even with that, I didn’t have a spotter that could see the entire race track. It makes for difficult situations and unfortunately our Exide car got caught up in one of them.”

Harraka had no time to be disappointed as shortly after leaving the track at Montreal he was headed back to Jersey to change, shower and catch a flight back to Duke University, where he was set to start his classes and his junior year.

“It’s not easy,” Harraka said about being a full-time student as well as a race car driver. “But I can do both. I can handle the schedule.”

If there is one thing that the young driver does get from his home state, it is that Jersey brashness and confidence. Harraka absolutely believes that he is meant to continue advancing up in NASCAR and has the boldness and belief in himself to do just that.

Harraka’s confidence and attitude are also evident in NASCAR’s newest show, Changing Lanes, about young racers of diverse backgrounds who are competing in the Drive for Diversity program. The show airing on BET spotlights 30 young drivers, including Harraka who is of Syrian descent, competing for shots at their NASCAR dreams.

Although Harraka has grown up in that program, spending four years under the D4D tutelage, he has now “graduated” and has moved on with his career based on his own networking and contacts.

As for his plans for the future now that he has a Nationwide start under his belt, Harraka acknowledged that it was all a work in progress.

“We’re working on some stuff,” Harraka said. “We don’t have any firm plans at present but we’re certainly working really hard to see what we can put together.”

Until that time when things do come together for the young Jersey boy, Harraka will continue to race for the K & N Pro Series West Championship, where he sits in the third position with just three more races to go in the season.

“We’re looking forward to the next few races, especially the next two,” Harraka said of his West Series run. “At Miller Motorsports Park, we finished second and Roseville (All American Speedway) we won last year.”

“We’re still pushing for the championship,” Harraka said. “We need to do very, very well and have some other guys have some bad luck. But winning the championship is still our goal.”

“I think for sure that’s the goal,” said Harraka of his bid to be the next NASCAR Jersey boy. “We’re working hard at it and things are falling in place.”

NASCAR’s Nationwide Series will join their Sprint Cup counterparts this weekend to race on the fastest track on their schedule; the Atlanta Motor Speedway. The Great Clips 300 is a Saturday night under the lights event that is expected to treat the series’ fans to an evening filled with side by side racing and perhaps even an oh so close finish that this race track is famous for. The starting field for the Great Clips 300 will once again be comprised of so called double duty drivers from the Sprint Cup Series with many of them representing high profile team owners.

THE STORY BREAKDOWN

With ten races left on the Nationwide Series schedule there will be a point in time when the official trophy manufacturer of NASCAR will receive a call from Daytona Beach informing them to start engraving a champion’s name. They will likely need some additional time in this process to perform a spell check on the name Keselowski.

Going into the Atlanta race, Brad Keselowski has a very healthy 365 point lead over season rival Carl Edwards. He padded that lead with an additional 52 points last weekend, at the Montreal race, with an impressive fourth place finish on a road course while his rival languished in the pits with a broken track bar.

With ten races left, 365 points is not exactly insurmountable but it’s also not likely that Keselowski will not suffer the kind of free fall Edwards is going to need to steal the series’ title. The time to call the NASCAR trophy engraver will be coming soon because it appears that this young driver is going to present team owner Roger Penske with a NASCAR Nationwide Series championship.

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Keselowski may also be presenting Penske with a Nationwide Series owner’s championship as well. However, this coveted title is going to be a lot harder because the points spread in this competition is still too close to call.

Team owner Joe Gibbs, and his #18 Toyota, leads the standings with 4,030 points going into Saturday night’s race. Needless to say those numbers are based on the amazing performance by driver Kyle Busch. The numbers associated with this driver and team are simply astounding especially in light of the fact that the driver is not running the full Nationwide Series schedule like he did last year when he won the championship. In 25 series races Busch has 20 starts, 10 wins, 16 top five finishes and 17 top tens. He’s also third in the series’ driver standing despite the five races he didn’t start.

As strong as these numbers are, they are not enough to walk away with the owner’s championship at this point in time. Team Gibbs only has a 35 point lead over Jodi Geschickter who is the owner of record for Brad Keselowski’s #22 Penske Racing Dodge. Look for this battle to go all the way to the season ending race in November.

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Also very interesting is the competition for the series’ Raybestos Brakes Rookie of the Year title. Going into Saturday night’s race Brian Scott, driver of the #10 Braun Racing Toyota, has a very slim 15 point lead over Ricky Stenhouse Jr. the driver of the #6 Ford for Roush Fenway Racing.

This rookie competition has always been regarded as being prestigious and has often become a career defining moment for a young driver.

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NASCAR Nationwide Series team owner Jay Robinson, who fields the #28 Chevrolet for driver Kenny Wallace, has endured a full season of obtaining sponsors virtually on a race to race basis. Of course it helps when one of NASCAR’s most popular personalities is sitting in the driver’s seat, but still it’s an arduous process that detracts from matters of equal importance.

It appears that Robinson and Wallace has once again found a unique sponsor for their Atlanta efforts. It’s the FX television network and their hit show “Sons Of Anarchy.” This wildly popular show about the gritty life of a southern California motorcycle gang will be using the Robinsion/Wallace ride to promote the start of their third season which begins on September 7th.

The always fun Wallace said “Sons Of Anarchy is a great show, one of the best on television. I create anarchy all around me and it follows me where ever I go so we’re a good match.”

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The frustration and stress level of an underfunded team owner in the NASCAR Nationwide Series can often push someone right up to the proverbial ragged edge. That’s pretty much what happened to team owner Johnny Davis who was involved in a pit road altercation following last Sunday’s Nationwide Series race at Montreal.

The details of that altercation are not exactly clear but NASCAR’s reaction were crystal clear on Wednesday morning when they announced that Davis was in violation of their rule known as “action detrimental to stock car racing.” The result was a $5,000 fine and probation until December 31st.

Here’s hoping that the team owner’s driver, Mike Wallace, can create a strong enough finish at the Atlanta race to help pay for Montreal misgivings.

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THE RACE BREAKDOWN

The Great Clips 300 is 195 laps/300.3 miles around the Atlanta Motor Speedway’s 1.54 mile oval.

The race has 44 entries vying for the 43 starting berths. 14 of those entries are on the go or go home list meaning these teams do not have a guaranteed start in the race because they are currently outside of the series’ top 30 in owner’s points. These teams will have to rely on qualifying speeds to earn a starting berth in the race.

The 2009 defending race winner is Kevin Harvick. The driver of his self owned #33 Rheem Heating, Cooling and Water Heating Chevrolet is one of the Sprint Cup double duty entries in the race and will be looking for his third series win of the season.

The Great Clips 300 will be broadcast live by the ESPN2 Network beginning at 630 pm eastern time.

With the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series taking the weekend off, the Nationwide Series was provided a much deserved opportunity to take center stage over the previous weekend. What a stage it was. The Series ventured north of the border to stage an exciting event in Montreal-Canada on the famed Circuit Gilles Villeneuve. 77 circuits later around the 2.7 mile, 14 turn, road course a very popular winner stood in victory lane.

Meanwhile, here in the states, the “Rowdy” one set another NASCAR milestone and then got a reality check when he went to play in someone else’s back yard.

Then there was the matter of animal control. To coin a phrase from a movie or television show’s closing credits, “no animals were harmed during the making of this production.” With those thoughts in mind, let’s begin with:

HOORAH to road racing veteran, and part time NASCAR veteran, Boris said for winning the Napa 200 at Montreal. As we all know, Said has a group of dedicated fans known as the “Said Heads” who wear black curly wigs to match their favorite driver’s natural hair style. I’m thinking the fan club is still yelling their favorite slogan: “WHO SAID? BORIS SAID ! ”

HOORAH to Said’s team, RAB Racing, who scored their first ever NASCAR Nationwide Series win. Their driver only led two laps of the race in their Zaxxby’s/PFC Ford but it was the most important laps: the final ones. Said came off of the front row of a green-white-checker finish to claim the win and the $101,000 plus winner’s check which is really going to help out the often underfunded RAB Racing organization.

He was followed across the line by Max Papis, in Kevin Harvick Inc’s #33 Chevrolet, by a mere 0.12 seconds. Montreal native and fan favorite Jacques Villeneuve, in the #32 Braun Racing Toyota, finished third to give the so called specially hired road course ringers a one-two-three sweep of the race.

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HOORAH for the European style, multi car, qualifying system used to determine the line for the Napa 200. It added a lot of pep to what can often be mundane live television broadcasts of NASCAR qualifying.

Wouldn’t you just love to see the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series race on this very beautiful, but very challenging, Montreal road course? I know I would.

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Question: why did the ground hog try to cross the road?

Answer: because he truly thought he could out run Robby Gordon’s Toyota

That question of course leads to a WAZZUP with Robby Gordon’s horrible luck during his visit to Montreal last weekend? The near miss of the errant ground hog was the least of his problems, but it’s the incident that’s going to make the video highlights all week long.

Gordon’s Canadian disaster began on Saturday afternoon during qualifying when his left side tires went off course and completely ripped a brake hose loose. In an effort to redeem himself, Gordon remained on the track to get the fastest qualifying lap possible.

It was one lap later than he met up with the errant ground hog who thought this would be a great time to cross the road. Fortunately this fat furry animal had second thoughts and held his position at the edge of the track as Gordon’s tires when flying by him. This precautionary action likely spared Gordon problems with PETA: People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals.

But the worst moment of all came on Sunday afternoon. Gordon, a pre race favorite, was en route to winning the Napa 200 when he ran out of gas. Gordon helplessly watched a trip to victory lane turn into a 14th place finish. This was the incident that set up the green-white-checker finish and the win for Boris Said.

You can bet that Gordon couldn’t wait to get back to the USA after that weekend.

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WAZZUP with the bad luck with two other pre race favorites? Carl Edwards led 29 laps of the Napa 200 and was a strong candidate to score his second NASCAR Nationwide Series win of the season. But the effort turned sour on him, with ten laps left in the race, when his Roush Fenway Racing Ford suffered a broken track bar. Edwards had to deal with the frustration of watching a race win turn into a 20th place finish.

Then there’s the matter of every one’s favorite “Aussie” : Marcos Ambrose. We’re all aware of the bizarre, last minute, bad luck that kept him out of the Montreal victory lane for the past three years in a row. We were all willing to bet the farm that last Sunday was going to the day that Ambrose rectified the situation and get the Montreal win he richly deserves.

The effort started on a strong note during Saturday’s qualifying session. Ambrose, in his JTG Daughterty Racing Toyota, set the Coors Light fast time after touring the massive road course with a speed of 97.079 MPH.

But, after leading 25 of 77 laps, during the race Ambrose found himself having to deal with a surprise electrical problem that sent him behind the wall on lap 50 and a 33d place finish.

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HOORAH to Kyle Busch for accomplishing his latest NASCAR milestone. Busch won the Enjoy Illinois Dot Com 225 NASCAR Camping World Truck Series race Friday night at the Chicagoland Speedway. In typical dominant fashion, Busch led 121 of the race’s 154 laps en route to his second, consecutive, win at Chicago as well as his 20th series career win. Remarkably, it was also the fourth NASCAR national touring series win for Busch within a period of nine days.

But, WAZZUP with the harsh racing luck Busch endured when the decided to visit the rough and tumble world of stadium off road racing last week? Busch had just secured a three race sponsorship deal with TRAXXAS, a well known manufacturer of radio conrolled race vehicles, for his self owned NASCAR truck team. TRAXXAS is also the official sponsor of TORC, The Off Road Championship Series.

Busch, well known for packing his schedule with appearances in a variety of racing formats, thought it would be a great idea to visit the TRAXXAS TORC Series while driving a Toyota truck at the Route 66 Raceway last Wednesday and Thursday nights.

Realizing that he was entering what is absolutely one of the most physically demanding forms of racing on man and machine, Busch knew he needed some prep work. He spent two days, the week before in Wisconsin, testing with series veterans Rob MacCrachen and Jeff Kincaid. By the time the test was over, Busch was within a tenth of a second from the fastest time. Everyone was extremely impressed with how fast he got the feel of flying a full sized truck off of those dirt jumps.

However, three trucks at a test session does not quite equate to a dirt track filled with racing trucks that are often flying by you with all four wheels in the air. On Wednesday night Busch found himself back in the garage area, with a broken shock, after only completing one lap. The news wasn’t any better on Thursday night when he was also sidelined early in the event by mechanical problems.

For a guy who’s generally favored to win any and every event he enters, Busch’s venture into stadium off road racing had to be a very large reality check.

This weekend, the Nationwide Series stood alone, racing at Circuit Gilles Villeneuve north of the border in Montreal, Canada.  Road racers, Nationwide regulars and up and coming rookies graced the track in a rare sunny Sunday in a race that went on and on but ended in a photo finish.

Here is what is surprising and not surprising from this weekend’s Nationwide race, affectionately known as the 24 hours of Montreal.

Surprising:  In a race marred by seven yellows and one red flag, the race came down to fuel mileage, pit strategy, and just hard as nails road racing.  And in a photo finish between road aces Boris Said and Max Papis, the ‘Said Heads’ rejoiced while their driver pumped his fist in victory lane, shouting “Finally, finally.”

Not Surprising:  While both Said and Papis rejoiced in their one, two finish, Marcos Ambrose yet again was denied anything close to a victory.  After leading the field to the green from the pole position, Ambrose looked strong, leading many laps.  But alas, misfortune again bit the Aussie in his “Little Debbie” and he succumbed to battery and alternator problems, relegating him to a more than disappointing 33^rd place finish.

Surprising:  Jacques Villeneuve, bearing the moniker of the track named after his late father, was the sentimental favorite, as well as the crowd pleaser, with cheers abounding each and every time he rounded the course.  Villeneuve did not disappoint, driving his heart out and coming in third at his home track.

Not Surprising:   Robby Gordon had his own Marcos-Ambrose like moments at this weekend’s Nationwide event.  Just as he experienced a few years ago when he thought he won, even doing his own burnout before NASCAR informed him otherwise, Gordon ran out of gas in the waning laps, coming in a heartbreaking 14^th.

Surprising:  Carl Edwards, winner of the previous race after taking it away from Ambrose in the last turn of the last lap at the same track, had his own set of troubles.   His first issue occurred as he was trying to enter the track, where he was stopped by an overzealous security guard checking parking passes. After finally getting on the track, where he led and looked to be a contender, Edwards broke a rear track bar, taking him out of contention and pushing him back to the 20^th finishing position.

Not Surprising:  Cup and Nationwide regulars Joey Logano and Brad Keselowski, while not escaping some on-track escapades of their own, still managed to rally back.  Logano, who had an early spin and Keselowski, who received a payback love tap from Brad Coleman, both had shaky starts to their races. Yet both recovered, with Keselowski finishing fourth and Logano finishing sixth, sandwiching Paul Menard between the two of them in the fifth spot.

Surprising:  Justin Allgaier, known as ‘Little Gator’ but not necessarily known for his road course prowess, had a surprisingly strong run.  Allgaier managed to stay out of the melee, bringing his car home for a top ten finish, leading his wife Ashley to tweet “P9…At a road course!!!  That’s like a win for us!!!”

Not Surprising:  On lap 19, the usually brash and aggressive son of Rusty Wallace decided to duke it out with road race ace Ron Fellows.  Steve Wallace got the worse end of the deal, wrecking and trailing oil all over the track.  After ripping off his helmet and giving Fellows the one-fingered salute, Wallace took his ailing machine behind the wall, finishing 38^th.

Surprising:   Jersey boy and K & N Pro Series West ace Paulie Harraka got his first Nationwide start, thanks to Joe Nemechek inviting him to take his second car to the dance.  According to Harraka, the deal came together quickly, securing sponsor Exide on the car the week before the race.

Not Surprising:  Unfortunately, both Joe Nemechek and his up and coming driver Harraka were both swept up in the same multi-car incident early in the race.  While Nemechek was out of the race, Harraka was able to soldier on.  The NEMCO Motorsports duo finished 28^th and 29^th respectively.

The top five finishers in the Nationwide NAPA Auto Parts 200 presented by Dodge were Boris Said, Max Papis, Jacques Villeneuve, Brad Keselowski and Paul Menard.  Rounding out the top ten were Joey Logano, J.R. Fitzpatrick, Parker Kligerman, Justin Allgaier and Trevor Bayne.

The Nationwide Series will next race on Labor Day weekend, heading to the hot and fast track of Atlanta Motor Speedway.   The Great Clips 300 will run under the lights on Saturday, September 4^th with coverage starting at 6:30 PM on ESPN2.