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Texas Proves Rookie Race is Chase Elliott’s to Lose

With a fifth-place run at Saturday’s Duck Commander 500 at Texas Motor Speedway, Chase Elliott, and his No. 24 crew have proved that the 2016 Rookie of the Year competition is in their favor. Not only was it his first career top-five, it was also his fourth top-10 in seven races. With that, he holds a spot safely in 14th, well within the confines of the 16-car Chase for the Cup. In comparison, Elliott’s nearest rookie competition, Ryan Blaney, has only two top-10s this season and sits 20th in points.

Although his season has been marred with crashes at Daytona (where he started on the pole) and Las Vegas, Elliott has proven to be consistent and consistently fast. He can usually be found running in the top-10, regularly fighting for the fifth-through-eighth positions, which is stellar for a rookie. Although he’s not setting the track on fire like his predecessor Jeff Gordon, he’s still answering a lot of unknowns about whether or not he’s a good choice for that seat.

FORT WORTH, TEXAS – APRIL 09, 2016 Chase Elliott, driver of the No. 24 NAPA Auto Parts Chevrolet leads Joey Logano in the No. 22 Shell Pennzoil Ford during the Duck Commander 500 at Texas Motor Speedway. Photo by Tom Pennington/Getty Images

At the time, he still has a few weaknesses to overcome; he’s a rookie, so it’s expected. But when it comes to the 1.5-mile tracks and the superspeedways, Elliott has shown that he is up to the task, as he is constantly in position to do well in the No. 24. Take Texas, for instance. Late in the going it was looking like the No. 24 could have had something for the leaders. Two tires didn’t exactly work out well for him, and a four-tire pit stop set him back a bit, but to come back to a fifth-place finish is the sort of performance that’s going to take that team to Victory Lane this season.

Elliott said of his Texas performance, “I definitely think it was a solid night. It’s not a perfect night. We would love to turn all four cars in the top-10 to all four cars in the top-five and I think that’s a goal we have to shoot for. I think we have a team and people that are capable of doing that so we want to keep working at it. I think as I said before, we’re, for us, we’re excited to run in the top-five. We’re also not content, and we want to be contenders and running fifth isn’t a contender. You’ve got to be up a little higher. That’s our goal, and we’ll keep working at it.”

Surely the crew will be working on that and will be bringing home excellent results. With the way they’re performing, it’s perfectly reasonable to see them winning a race and making the Chase this season and ultimately winning the Rookie of the Year award at season’s end. It’s plausible, it’s probable, and with Alan Gustafson calling the shots on the pit box it’s all but a certainty this season.

April 10, 2016
Loose Wheel Robs Edwards of Chance at Victory

A missing lug nut cost Carl Edwards a chance at victory in the Lone Star State.

After starting on the pole, the driver of the No. 19 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota led a good chunk of the front-half of the Duck Commander 500. After leading 124 laps and coming off a fast stop, he was in position for a duel to the finish with Martin Truex Jr.

But prior to the restart, he felt a vibration and opted to ignore it. After the race restarted on lap 222, he started to slow down and made an unscheduled stop because of a loose wheel.

“I felt a problem right away,” Edwards said. “My mistake was I should have pulled to pit immediately. I was still in denial, (thinking) ‘Maybe I’m imagining something…maybe something got stuck on the tire.’ Then I realized, ‘This was not good.”‘

He rejoined the race in 19th one lap down.

Thanks to the misfortunes of others, he was able to salvage his race and bring his car home to a seventh-place finish. But that was little, if any, consolation to him as teammate Kyle Busch stole the race from Truex in the closing laps and scored the victory. He jokingly said he was “about done being happy for Kyle.”

“Nah. It’s awesome for JGR,” he said. “Our car is fast. That’s what it’s about. We run like that long enough and we’ll be fine. It was fun.

“It’s just racing. Look, I’m as disappointed as anybody but there’s nothing we can do about what happened. If we race like that regularly, we’re going to be great.”

For the most part, Texas Motor Speedway has been kind to Edwards over the years. In 23 career starts at the 1.5-mile circuit, he’s finished in the top-10 in over half his starts and in the top-five in just over a quarter of his starts. His 124 laps led were the first laps he’s led at Texas since 2013.

Despite the respectable numbers he’s put up, he’s yet to win at Texas in eight years.

“It’s been a good track for me,” Edwards added. “We’re doing great. We had the fastest qualifier, led the second-most laps. We were going for it tonight. It just didn’t work out.”

Edwards leaves Texas sitting fourth in the points 18 back of teammate Busch.

The next stop on the schedule is Bristol Motor Speedway, a track which he’s had some great runs at in the last two years.

April 10, 2016
Multi-Car Wreck on the Backstretch Collects Over a Dozen Cars

A spin on the backstretch turned into a multi-car wreck in the closing stages of the Sprint Cup Series race in the Lone Star State.

Exiting turn 2 with 47 laps to go in the Duck Commander 500 at Texas Motor Speedway, Austin Dillon was tapped from behind by Jimmie Johnson and sent sliding into the wall. After touching it with the right-rear corner, the driver of the No. 3 Richard Childress Racing Chevrolet overcorrected and turned back into the outside wall.

His car then slid down the track where it was clipped by Ricky Stenhouse Jr. He continued down and tapped the inside wall.

Because Dillon was running toward the front when he spun, his car came down just as the rest of the field was hauling the mail down the backstretch. As a result, a number of cars spun out in a chain-reaction, trying to avoid the lifeless No. 3 car.

“I haven’t seen (the replay) yet,” Dillon said after being released from the infield care center. “We were on older tires and I was trying to get all I could there. It’s part of trying to win a race. We put ourselves in a position to be out front, thinking that two laps wouldn’t mean much, but it did. That’s part of it. The good Lord kept me safe tonight and gave me a good race car. You have to be gracious in defeat. We’ll come back next week with another fast car and hopefully we can do the same thing we did today, and that’s run up front.

“It tore up a bunch of race cars. We had a good car. I just wish we could re-do it. But heck, we’re learning. We had another fast race car. We’ll go on from here. I don’t know why they put us a lap down for a speeding penalty. Usually, a speeding penalty is like the tail end of the longest line. So, that lost us some more spots there at the end. But, we’ll take it and go home.”

“Tonight wasn’t our night,” Ryan Newman said. “We started off the run tight and as more rubber was laid down, we got loose. There weren’t a lot of cautions, so we made green-flag pit stops and fell a lap down to the leader. With most of the stops under green, we didn’t have many opportunities to get our lap back, especially after we got caught up in a wreck towards the end of the race. The right-side of the car was tore up but not enough to take us out of the race. The Caterpillar team never gave up, that’s something to be proud of.”

In total, 13 cars were caught in or sustained damage from the wreck. The cars involved were Michael Annett, Trevor Bayne, Clint Bowyer, Dillon, Johnson, Matt Kenseth, Paul Menard, Newman, David Ragan, Brian Scott, Regan Smith, Stenhouse and Brian Vickers.

The damage was fatal to Bowyer’s and Vickers’s cars as they were unable to finish the race.

“It was a long day,” Vickers said. “That wreck just finally ended it for us. It’s unfortunate. I was really proud of the effort by the guys all weekend. We never really had the car we wanted. We fought hard for it. It was great having TaxAct Military Files Free on the car. We just didn’t have it tonight. We worked hard on it. The guys kept making it a little better we just couldn’t get what we needed. It just wasn’t our night.”

“It looked like at first I thought he (Dillon) was gonna come down the track and then it looked like he was gonna stay up on the top,” Stenhouse said. “I kind of committed to turning underneath thinking he was gonna stay at the top, then all of a sudden he came down and I got as much brake as I could and avoided him as much as I could. We just barely clipped him ever so slightly and it got us too much damage.”

Landon Cassill, who was caught right in the eye of the storm, managed to snake his way through the gaggle of cars and emerge without a scratch on his No. 38 Front Row Motorsports Ford.

April 10, 2016
Dominant Drive by Truex not Enough to Win

Despite having the strongest car in the race, Martin Truex Jr. was not able to take his car to victory lane in the Lone Star State.

The driver of the No. 78 Furniture Row Racing Toyota seemed poised to score his fourth NASCAR Sprint Cup Series victory in the Duck Commander 500 at Texas Motor Speedway, but two late race cautions and almost everyone behind him opting to pit led to him losing the lead with 32 laps to go and finishing sixth.

“We just ran out of tires, you know,” Truex said. “Made it through (turns) one and two side-by-side, got to three and just didn’t have the grip. Then we fell back because we were sliding around. Everybody had new tires, we ran under caution for a long time, they keep building air pressure and losing grip. Pretty big disadvantage, but can’t say enough about the guys for the race car they brought here and the weekend we had. It hurts. It’s happened a few times to me here. Hurts a little bit, but we’ll get over it and we’ll move on and we’ll take the positives out of it tonight.”

He led 142 of the 334 laps and was in control until the sixth caution of the race flew with 47 laps to go. When he opted to stay out, everybody expected Austin Dillon to pit.

“It’s just the way it goes,” he said. “Had we went green that next restart, we did OK. We got the lead and we drove away. We just kept getting yellows and caution laps and the tires just kept getting more air in them and more air in them. By the time we finally got moving there, we just didn’t have the grip everybody else had. Just sliding around.

“It’s frustrating, but that’s racing. That’s the way it goes sometimes. I’m proud of my guys for the race car they brought. That thing was so fast all night, we did everything we were supposed to do except for that one deal there. I don’t know. It hurts, it’s tough, but we have a lot to look forward to this year. We have great race cars and we have a lot to look forward to. We’ll go back home and get to work and hopefully come out smarter and stronger.”

Despite the disappointment of coming up short, Truex leaves Texas 11th in points trailing Kyle Busch by 72.

April 10, 2016
Rowdy is on a Roll in Texas

Kyle Busch continued his run of excellence in NASCAR with his win in the Lone Star State.

The driver of the No. 18 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota took the lead with 32 laps to go and drove on to score the victory in the Duck Commander 500. It’s his 36th career win, his second of the season, second at Texas Motor Speedway and the second weekend sweep this season.

“Our car was really, really fast, especially entry and the center of the corner,” Busch said. “As the night progressed, I think the track came to us. Our car got a little better. Adam made some great adjustments all night long. We fought it in the beginning. We weren’t very good. Our other teammates were really fast. The 19, the 78. I don’t know what happened to the 19 but the 78, we just out-tired them at the end. Overall, a great night for JGR, a great night for Toyota.”

Dale Earnhardt Jr. brought his No. 88 Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet home to a runner-up finish.

“We got a little behind and got caught on pit road on that one caution,” Earnhardt said. “We had a fast car, probably good enough to win. Martin (Truex Jr.) probably had the best car, but the best car doesn’t always win. Kyle did a great job on the outside on that last restart. Truss’s tires were worse than I thought. We finished up there where we should have. We need a win. We’d love a win; I know our fans want a win really bad. Trust me, man, we’re all working really hard and running great every week. Hopefully, that’s fun for everyone to watch. I had a blast inside the car – a lot of sliding around sideways and good, hard racing. We’ll go to the next one I guess and try again.”

Joey Logano rounded out the podium in his No. 22 Team Penske Ford.

“I’m proud of what my race team did,” Logano said. “This Shell/Pennzoil team executed perfectly today. We may not have had the fastest car, we obviously didn’t have the fastest car, but we executed into a top-three finish, and I’m very proud of my team for that. We had great pit stops and great calls, so everything worked out well. Everyone did their job. That’s kind of been our weak point this year is that we haven’t had the speed, but we haven’t been executing perfectly. Now it seemed like we executed right and we’ve got to work on our speed now.”

Jimmie Johnson’s run of three-straight wins at Texas came to an end after a collision with race winner Busch on pit road early in the race and a fourth-place finish in his No. 48 HMS Chevrolet.

“We overcame a lot today,” Johnson said. “On that first pit stop, everyone was checking up and I hammered the back of the 18. We had to fix damage on the nose, and it wasn’t pretty. There’s a big hole up front and that couldn’t have been helping us at all. There’s a lot of fight in this Lowe’s team today. I’m thankful for the great equipment and the fight that these guys have because with all the damage and adversity we went through tonight, to come home fourth is really good for this Lowe’s Chevrolet.”

Chase Elliott led one lap on his way to rounding out the top-five in his No. 24 HMS Chevrolet.

“Yeah, it was a step in the right direction,” Elliott said. “We’re definitely not satisfied running fifth. I feel like we have a group of guys that are capable of doing that. We’ll keep digging at it. We have a long way to go with a lot of racing to go in the season. We’ll keep working to get where we can roll with those guys.”

Martin Truex Jr. had the car to beat this morning after leading 142 of the 334 laps, but opting to stay out on the final caution ultimately cost him a chance at victory and forced the driver of the No. 78 Furniture Row Racing Toyota to settle for a sixth-place finish.

“We just ran out of tires, you know,” Truex said. “Made it through (turns) one and two side-by-side, got to three and just didn’t have the grip. Then we fell back because we were sliding around. Everybody had new tires, we ran under caution for a long time, they keep building air pressure and losing grip. Pretty big disadvantage, but can’t say enough about the guys for the race car they brought here and the weekend we had. It hurts. It’s happened a few times to me here. Hurts a little bit, but we’ll get over it and we’ll move on and we’ll take the positives out of it tonight.”

Carl Edwards led 124 laps and fell down a lap after pitting for a loose wheel, but the driver of the No. 19 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota worked his way back up and finished seventh. Kasey Kahne ended a run of bad finishes with an eighth-place finish in his No. 5 HMS Chevrolet.

“We just battled,” Kahne said. “We got behind, got a lap down early again and we just had to fight back. The team did an awesome job to do that. We had great calls to get the car tightened up; I was so loose that I couldn’t go fast enough for a little while there. There at the end, we were actually pretty competitive the last probably 250 laps, like really competitive. We were down a lap a lot of it, but we were really competitive. Once we got back up there I think we were definitely a top 10 car and we finished eighth. It was the best we have done in a long time. It feels nice.”

Kurt Busch finished ninth in his No. 41 Stewart-Haas Racing Chevrolet. Kevin Harvick led one lap on his way to rounding out the top-10 in his No. 4 SHR Chevrolet.

The race lasted three hours, 37 minutes and 16 seconds at an average speed of 138.355 mph. There were 17 lead changes among eight different drivers and seven cautions for 41 laps.

April 10, 2016
Kyle Busch Wins in XFINITY at Texas

Kyle Busch continued his run of dominance in the NASCAR XFINITY Series with a dominant win in the Lone Star State.

The driver of the No. 18 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota led 150 of the 200 laps on his way to taking the checkered flag in the O’Reilly Auto Parts 300. It’s his 80th career victory in the series and eighth at Texas Motor Speedway.

“We’ve had some really good runs here over the years,” Busch said after the race, “and we’ve been really fast. This NOS Energy Drink Camry was great. We got our money’s worth out of it and (crew chief Chris) Gayle got his money’s worth out of it, too, on the pit box today. We had to make some adjustments to it and fine-tune on it to make it better and better.”

Defending race winner Erik Jones led 12 laps on his way to a runner-up finish in the No. 20 JGR Toyota and was the highest finishing rookie.

Jones, who had to come back from the rear of the field after a penalty in the pits, said, “Getting the penalty didn’t help but it wasn’t the reason we ran second either. We just didn’t take a big enough swing to free it up (on the final pit stop on Lap 148). The track just tightened up as it rubbered up. Then it got slick again and we didn’t keep up with it enough.”

Brad Keselowski finished third in his No. 22 Team Penske Ford. Chase Elliott finished fourth in his No. 5 JR Motorsports Chevrolet while Dale Earnhardt Jr. rounded out the top-five in his No. 88 JRM Chevrolet.

Justin Allgaier finished sixth in his No. 7 JRM Chevrolet. Elliott Sadler finished seventh in his No. 1 JRM Chevrolet followed by Austin Dillon who finished eighth in his No. 2 Richard Childress Racing Chevrolet. Brandon Jones finished ninth in his No. 33 RCR Chevrolet as Ryan Sieg rounded out the top-10 in his No. 39 RSS Racing Chevrolet.

Seven cars failed to finish the race while 15 finished on the lead lap.

The race lasted two hours, seven minutes and 33 seconds at an average speed of 141.121 mph. There were five cautions for 22 laps and six lead changes among three drivers.

Daniel Suárez leaves Fort Worth with a one-point lead in the points standings.

Complete NXS Race Results at Texas Motor Speedway:

April 8, 2016
Truex Fastest in Final Sprint Cup Practice at Texas

April 8, 2016
Three-Time Texas Winner Carl Edwards Grabs Pole

April 8, 2016
Truex Fastest in First Sprint Cup Practice at Texas

Martin Truex Jr. topped the chart in the first Sprint Cup Series practice at Texas Motor Speedway Thursday evening. The driver of the No. 78 Furniture Row Racing Toyota was the fastest with a time of 27.995 and a speed of 192.892 mph.

“It was a good practice for our Bass Pro Shops Camry. We stayed in qualifying trim just so we could use our tires better for tomorrow. It went good. We were off a little bit at the start and got better each run and on our last run, felt really good about it. It’s been a while since I’ve had a pole,” Truex said.

Brad Keselowski was second in his No. 2 Team Penske Ford with a time of 28.101 and a speed of 192.164 mph. Teammate Joey Logano was third in his No. 22 Penske Ford with a time of 28.104 and a speed of 192.143 mph. Austin Dillon was fourth in his No. 3 Richard Childress Racing Chevrolet with a time of 28.182 and a speed of 192.612 mph and Brian Vickers rounded out the top-five in his No. 14 Stewart-Haas Racing Chevrolet with a time of 28.187 and a speed of 191.578 mph.

Jimmie Johnson was sixth fastest in his No. 48 Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet followed by AJ Allmendinger who was seventh in his No. 47 JTG Daugherty Racing Chevrolet. Greg Biffle was eighth in his No. 16 Roush Fenway Racing Ford, Kyle Larson was ninth in his No. 42 Chip Ganassi Racing Chevrolet as Ryan Blaney rounded out the top-10 in his No. 21 Wood Brothers Racing Ford.

No driver posted a 10 consecutive lap average during the session.

The Sprint Cup cars are back on the track Friday afternoon at 2:45 p.m. ET for qualifying.

Complete NSCS Practice 1 Results at Texas Motor Speedway:

April 8, 2016
Erik Jones Sweeps Texas XFINITY Practices

By Staff report | NASCAR.com

Erik Jones made a clean sweep of Thursday’s NASCAR XFINITY Series practices, pushing atop the leaderboard in the final session at Texas Motor Speedway.

Jones, driving the Joe Gibbs Racing No. 20 Toyota, blazed to a speed of 183.830 mph in final prep for Friday night’s O’Reilly Auto Parts 300 (8:30 p.m. ET, FS1, PRN, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio.) He netted his first XFINITY win last April at the 1.5-mile Fort Worth track.

Kyle Busch, the defending Sprint Cup champ and a three-time winner this season in the XFINITY Series, turned the second-fastest lap (182.297 mph) in JGR’s No. 18 Toyota.

Sprint Cup regular Kyle Larson was third-best at 181.922 mph in the Chip Ganassi Racing No. 42 Chevrolet. Ty Dillon (181.269) was fourth-fastest in the Richard Childress Richard Childress Racing No. 3 Chevy.

Daniel Suarez and rookie Brandon Jones tied for the fifth-best spot at 181.147 mph.

Coors Light Pole Qualifying is set for Friday at 4:45 p.m. ET, broadcast on FS1.

Jones shows muscle in early Texas session

Defending race winner Erik Jones topped the speed chart in opening NASCAR XFINITY Series practice Thursday at Texas Motor Speedway.

Jones registered a best lap of 186.968 mph in the Joe Gibbs Racing No. 20 Toyota in preparation for Friday night’s O’Reilly Auto Parts 300. The 1.5-mile track was the site of Jones’ first XFINITY win last April.

Ty Dillon claimed the second-fastest lap, driving the Richard Childress Racing No. 3 Chevrolet to a speed of 183.968 mph in the 85-minute session. He is a former winner at the 1.5-mile track, prevailing at Texas in the Camping World Truck Series in 2013.

Dillon was followed by RCR teammate Brandon Jones at 183.175 mph, third-fastest in the No. 33 Chevrolet. Jones’ JGR teammate Daniel Suarez was fourth-best at 182.865 mph in the No. 19 Toyota.

Brennan Poole and Jeb Burton tied for the fifth-fastest lap with identical speeds of 181.837 mph.

Sprint Cup champion Kyle Busch, winner of three of the last four XFINITY Series races, was ninth-fastest in another Gibbs-owned Toyota.

April 7, 2016