April 18, 2016
- Entry List for the Toyota Owners 400 Sprint Cup Series race at Richmond International Raceway is posted, 41 teams/drivers [for 40 spots] are listed, including: #14-Vickers, #21-Blaney*, #30-Wise*, #32-Jeffrey Earnhardt, #55-Sorenson*, #93-Ryan Ellis*, #95-McDowell, #98-Whitt*.
Drivers who are not a Charter team, an Open Team, and must get in via speed: #21-Blaney, #30-Wise, #55-Sorenson, #93-Ellis, #98-Whitt
Drivers who would miss the race if qualifying is canceled (least race attempts, then owners pts): #93-Ellis
* Open Team (no Charter)
See the full entry list on Jayski.com’s Richmond Entry List - Special Mountain Dew schemes at RIR for 3 Hendrick cars: This summer, Mountain Dew is bringing back two all-time fan favorite flavors — Pitch Black and Baja Blast. It’s up to America to decide which flavor will take the honors. There are three ways to vote online — cast your vote at MountainDew.com/DEWcision, complete one of DEW’s video and photo challenges or simply tweet #VotePitchBlack or #VoteBajaBlast (HMS) The cars of #5-Kasey Kahne, #24-Chase Elliott and #88-Dale Earnhardt Jr. will all run special Mountain Dew paint schemes at Richmond International Raceway in the Toyota Owners 400 Sprint Cup Series race this coming weekend. See images of the cars on the #5 Team Schemes page, #24 Team Schemes page and #88 Team Schemes page.(4-18-2016)
- DiBenedetto gets sponsor for Richmond: BK Racing announced the signing of sponsor E.J. Wade Construction to a primary sponsorship on Matt DiBenedetto’s #83 E.J. Wade Construction Toyota this weekend in the Toyota Owners 400 at Richmond International Raceway. The race on April 24, 2016, will be E.J. Wade Construction’s debut into the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series. Licensed in Virginia, North Carolina, Maryland and West Virginia, E.J. Wade Construction is a company that believes in quality, reliability, friendliness, and putting the concerns of the client first. “I’m excited to have E.J. Wade Construction on board our #83 car this weekend at Richmond International Raceway,” said DiBenedetto. “We’ve got a sharp looking car for a track that I really enjoy racing at, so we’re looking forward to the Toyota Owners 400.”
“We’re proud to have E.J. Wade Construction, another Virginia-based company, join us at a track that means a lot to our race team,” said Doug Fritz, CMO of BK Racing. “Matt DiBenedetto has shown perseverance and excellence in his drive to succeed,” said Jeff Wade, President of E.J. Wade Construction. “We are excited for the opportunity to partner with and support such a talented and focused driver. He will represent E.J. Wade Construction well.”(140 Buzz / BK Racing), DiBenedetto is coming off a career best finish of 6th at Bristol.(4-18-2016) - NASCAR will discuss lug nuts and loose wheels: NASCAR executive vice president Steve O’Donnell said Monday that a recent rash of loose wheels would be a topic in the Sprint Cup Series’ monthly competition meeting with teams. #78-Martin Truex Jr., #24-Chase Elliott and #48-Jimmie Johnson were among several who needed extra pit stops because of loose wheels during Sunday’s Food City 500 at Bristol Motor Speedway. There also were multiple loose wheels in the previous race at Texas Motor Speedway, prompting much debate last week over the risks and rewards of the practice of tightening fewer than five lug nuts during a pit stop. A loose wheel is a safety hazard for drivers, who can be left with little warning of losing control at a high rate of speed. “We’ll continue to look at it,” O’Donnell said during his weekly appearance on “The Morning Drive” on SiriusXM’s NASCAR channel. “We’ve got our competition meeting monthly where we meet with the teams and certainly raise any issues that they see as something we’ve got to address, probably more so immediately.” NASCAR once monitored and punished teams for hitting fewer than five lug nuts on a stop. But it hasn’t been policed since an overhaul of pit road officiating before last season.(in part from NBC Sports)(4-18-2016)
- Light attendance at Bristol’s Cup race: A crowd estimated at 90,000 attended the (Sprint Cup Series) race (at Bristol) despite near-perfect weather conditions of 72 degrees and sun.(Bristol Herald Courier)
AND Everything was there for a great Food City 500 race weekend at Bristol Motor Speedway except the crowds. NASCAR quit putting out official attendance figures a few years ago and track officials quit commenting on them around the same time, but from the eyeball test, the Bristol Motor Speedway looked around a third full for Sunday’s Sprint Cup Series race. The crowd was even more sparse for Saturday’s Xfinity Series race and the Friday qualifying crowd was virtually non-existent. The Sunday crowds were clearly better than the last two years for the spring race when March and then April showers not only brought May flowers but washed away race fans. But, this weekend had perfect weather and a great Xfinity Series race leading into the Food City 500 (Johnson City Press)(4-18-2016) - Earnhardt Jr. finishes runner-up for 2nd straight race: Dale Earnhardt, Jr.’s second straight NASCAR Sprint Cup Series runner-up effort in the #88 Nationwide Chevrolet SS was impressive, but didn’t come easy at Bristol Motor Speedway. Earnhardt suffered an issue with the ECU unit right after the start of the race and lost two laps to the leaders. But by lap 146, he had moved back to the lead lap in 27th position. “Junior” methodically made his way back to the front and had a shot at the win in the waning laps before finishing second. This was the fifth top 10 finish in eight races so far for Earnhardt and the #88 team. Some Q&A;’s:
THE MODERATOR: “We are also joined by our second-place finisher, Dale Earnhardt Jr., driver of the No. 88 Nationwide Chevrolet for Hendrick Motorsports. This is second runner-up finish. Could you talk a little bit about that great come back?”
DALE EARNHARDT JR: “Yeah, we got the Roush system on our cars for the stuck-throttle issue, and just warming the brakes up, I engaged that system to kill the throttle. I was warming the brakes up like I always do, and apparently I applied too much pressure and it killed the motor. We’ll work on that and maybe raise that threshold a little bit because I wasn’t really using the brake that much. So I just needed to cycle the ECU, reset that, came to pit road and did that. I probably could’ve done it on the track and saved ourselves a lot of trouble, but you don’t know what’s going on at that particular point, and you listen to the first thing anybody tells you when it comes to direction, and the first thing that my spotter said was that if I need to pit, I need to come on now. We got on pit road, cycled it, lost a couple laps. Greg did a good job getting the wave-arounds and knowing when to take them and stuff, and we got back on the lead lap. We had about a 10th-place car. We weren’t really that good all day. We tried a setup that we’ve never really ran here before, just trying to learn a little something going forward, and we’ll go home and science it out a little bit. We got real lucky the last three restarts to be on the outside line. We restarted 10th, 6th and 4th, and when you restart 4th you’re typically going to come out in second place after that. I was hoping we didn’t have any more cautions after that. So it was good. We’ll take it.
Q. So it’s a system where if you brake really hard, it kills the engine?
EARNHARDT JR.: “Yes. If your throttle is stuck and you mash the brake to a certain, you’re going to mash the (expletive) out of that brake when the throttle sticks, it’ll shut the motor off. That’s a system, that’s one of the two systems that you have to choose from in this sport. The other is a button on the steering wheel. I don’t like the button on the steering wheel, because when the throttle sticks, I ain’t going to think mash a button. I’ll be in the fence before it’s over with. So the brake thing works too good.”
Q. How did you keep yourself from just panicking when you had the problem and you tried several times to get a lap back and it took several times?
DALE EARNHARDT JR.: “Yeah, I turned 40. Quit panicking. It is what it is these days. You know, as I got older, I tried harder to enjoy what I’m doing, and not get really upset and too out of shape when things aren’t going our way, plus I know Greg and them guys are on the pit box trying everything they can, and for me to — they’re the only ones I’m going to be able to yell at, so for me to — it doesn’t do any good to be hollering at them or upset or just lose your mind, and the over-the-wall guys especially, we don’t really spend a ton of time with the over-the-wall guys, and they’re real sensitive. They’re big ol’ guys and athletes, but they’ve got big hearts, too, so you can’t be screaming and coming unglued because they don’t want to work for people like that.”(Team Chevy)(4-18-2016) - Goodyear to examine tires: #19-Carl Edwards avoided the tire issues that plagued his teammates and took off on the final restart to win the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series at Bristol. “I just kept getting tighter in the long run, not sure why that was,” said #18-Kyle Busch, who had two other tire failures and was penalized for speeding off pit road. “I guess it wasn’t meant to be.” #20-Matt Kenseth led three times for 142 laps and seemed to be one of the few drivers capable of challenging Edwards before his day ended early after he cut a right front tire a second time and hit the wall. #11-Denny Hamlin had problems too. Goodyear will examine all the tires from Busch and Kenseth to determine if the failures were due to the tire makeup or the aggressive setups drivers use at the high-banked track. “Because all of them had the same problem, we wanted to take a look,” Goodyear racing director Greg Stucker said.(ESPN)(4-18-2016)
- Bayne scores first top-five since 2011 Daytona 500 win: #6-Trevor Bayne won the 2011 Daytona 500 in his second NASCAR Sprint Cup Series start, but that he hadn’t scored a top-five since then – until Sunday’s Food City 500 at Bristol Motor Speedway. Bayne qualified 10th and ran near the front until a commitment-line violation on Lap 149 sent him to the rear of the field. Undeterred, Bayne drove back through the field and took advantage of late restarts to finish fifth, his first top-five result after a drought of 99 races.”It was a lot of battling back,” Bayne said after the race. “We went through a lot of adversity to get there, but we just didn’t give up. We had a really good race car. That’s what paid off. You can’t come back if you don’t have good race cars, and we’ve got that now. I need to minimize my mistakes going forward, but we were able to make mistakes and get back to a top-five finish. I kept getting on the bottom on restarts every time, but it came back to me at the end. We were able to start on the top those last three, and that’s really what got us in the top five.”(NASCAR Wire Service)(4-18-2016)
- Kyle Busch’s car hits woman in garage area: A woman who was struck by Kyle Busch’s car in the garage area at Bristol Motor Speedway at first said she was uninjured by the minor contact, but Sunday went to a hospital to check for possible injuries. Erin Vandyke, a longtime race fan, was bumped into as was taking pictures on pit road. Busch was heading to the garage area after a second blown right-front tire when his #18 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota made sight contact with her, briefly knocking her to the ground. Vandyke at first said she was completely fine after the incident and suffered no injuries. But she did go to the track’s infield care center afterwards, and later went to a local hospital Sunday night to be evaluated.(FoxSports)(4-18-2016)
- DiBenedetto has career-best run for BK Racing: If Matt DiBenedetto had done a burnout alongside race winner #19-Carl Edwards, no one would have blamed him. That’s how unexpected DiBenedetto’s sixth-place finish was in Sunday’s Food City 500 at Bristol. After going a lap down, the driver of the #83 BK Racing Toyota got a free pass as the highest-scored lapped car for a restart on Lap 345, and subsequent cautions kept him on the lead lap. On the final three late-race restarts, DiBenedetto lined up 14th, 10th and eighth – all in the top lane – and took full advantage of the fast way around the .533-mile concrete oval. On the final restart with five laps left, the NASCAR Next alumnus passed Kevin Harvick for sixth and held the spot to the finish. That result was a career-best for both DiBenedetto and BK Racing. “That’s unbelievable for a team like to us to be growing this much and for us to get a sixth-place run,” said DiBenedetto, who came to driver introductions disguised as ZZ Top lead guitarist Billy Gibbons, beard and all. “I’m sorry I’m so emotional. It’s just this is like a win for us. I’m so excited. I see my family back here – my wife, Taylor, my brother is in town from the military and I’m so glad he got to experience this. This is just… this is incredible. I’m so blessed to be here.” Race winner Carl Edwards had made a point of congratulating DiBenedetto on his 20th-place run in Phoenix in the fourth race of the season, but Edwards wasn’t aware of the driver’s strong run behind him. “They finished sixth?” Edwards asked, incredulous. “Man that’s unbelievable. That’s probably tougher than what we did.”(NASCAR Wire Service)(4-18-2016)
- Bristol Race and Commercial Breakdown of the 2016 Food City 500: For those of you NASCAR fans that like stats and love to hate commercials, here is the breakdown for Sunday’s race. Began recording the times at the Invocation of the race at 1:00 PM, and stopped at the waving of the checkered flag at 4:36 PM (all times are EDT). Fox was the broadcast team for this event.
Total number of commercials: 105
Total number of companies or entities advertised: 50
Number of traditional commercials (not split-screen): 87
Total number of companies or entities advertised: 46
Number of ‘Side-by-Side’ commercials during race broadcast (split-screen): 18
Total number of companies or entities advertised: 13
Number of times Fox utilized ‘Side-by-Side’ commercials during this broadcast: 4
Start time to record race/commercial periods: 1:00 PM
End time to record race/commercial periods: 4:36 PM
Total minutes of complete race broadcast: 216
Minutes of race broadcast: 176
Minutes of traditional commercials (not split-screen): 40
Minutes of ‘Side-by-Side’ commercials (split-screen): 10
Number of missed restarts: 0
Number of ‘mystery cautions’ (debris not shown): 0
Total race brdcst time 176 Total comm. brdcst time 40
See past races, more info on the commercials with links at CawsnJaws.com.(4-18-2016) - The sixth win ever for car #19: Carl Edwards win in the Food City 500 at Bristol Motor Speedway is the sixth overall Sprint Cup Series win for a car number 19. Edwards has won three of those races, Bristol in 2016, Darlington and Charlotte in 2015. Before Edwards, the #19 had only three other race wins in the history of the Sprint Cup Series (1949). In 1960 when John Rostek won at the Arizona State Fairgrounds in Phoenix. And twice with Jeremy Mayfield in 2004 at Richmond and 2005 in Michigan. For more info on car number wins and some history, see Jayski.com’s Wins by Car Number page.(4-18-2016)
- XFINITY Entry List: There are 41 cars on the preliminary entry list for Saturday’s ToyotaCare 250 at Richmond International Raceway. A few notes:
Cole Custer will drive the #5 for JR Motorsports;
Jeff Green returns to the Tri-Star #10;
Timmy Hill returns to the #13;
The Rick Ware #15 is TBA;
Matt Tifft will drive the #18 for Joe Gibbs;
Spencer Gallagher and the #21 team return to the track;
The #24 JGL team was entered with Corey LaJoie but has withdrawn;
The Rick Ware #25 is TBA;
Dale Earnhardt, Jr. will drive the #88;
Josh Wise remains in the #93 for RSS;
The #97 is TBA, but Ryan Ellis has driven is the last 2 races.(4-18-2015)
See the complete list on the Richmond entry list page. - MARADYNE Extends Partnership With MB Motorsports: MARADYNE High Performance Fans, a DCM Manufacturing brand, has extended its partnership with MB Motorsports, the sole surviving original team in the NASCAR Camping World Truck Series. MARADYNE High Performance Fans is a brand name owned by DCM Manufacturing, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Dreison International, Inc. DCM Manufacturing manufactures and sells accessories and components serving the off-road equipment, agricultural machinery, heavy-duty truck, automotive, bus, RV, marine and military markets.(MB Motorsports)(4-18-2016)
- Bristol Driver Song Selections: Bristol Motor Speedway has always featured the most unique driver introductions on the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series circuit, but 2016 takes it to a whole new level with the addition of Colossus TV. The sights and sounds of each driver selecting their own songs was presented on the world’s largest, outdoor, center-hung, four-sided video display. See the full list on Jayski.com’s Bristol Motor Speedway Track News and Links page (BMS)(4-18-2016)
- Charlotte Motor Speedway’s Song Superstar Trophy Tour: The Share a Coke and a Song Superstar Trophy Tour (starts April 18th in Charlotte, ends in Concord on May 16th) will feature appearances by NASCAR celebrities, Hall of Famers and Miss Sprint Cup, tire changing station and simulator, the Charlotte Motor Speedway pace car, plus the opportunity for fans to take photos with the Sprint All-Star and Coca-Cola 600 race trophies. Fans can also register to win tickets to the Sprint All-Star Race and Coca-Cola 600, as well as sample delicious Coca-Cola products. Aspiring performers will have the chance to sing their way to stardom during Charlotte Motor Speedway’s May events with on-site auditions at each tour stop April 18 through May 16. Five lucky winners will be selected to perform at Charlotte Motor Speedway during the 10 Days of NASCAR Thunder. For the tour schedule and more info go to charlottemotorspeedway.com (4-18-2016)
- Pocono Raceway, GEICO Establish Partnership: Pocono Raceway President & CEO Brandon Igdalsky announced that GEICO will be the Official RV and Recreational Insurance sponsor of ‘The Tricky Triangle.’ The multi-year deal aligns Pocono Raceway with GEICO and adds to the insurance companies motorsports offering. As part of the agreement, GEICO will have branded naming rights to GEICO RV and Camping Registration, GEICO Motorcycle Parking and GEICO Family Camping. In addition, GEICO will have a large presence during race weekends at Pocono Raceway and will rely on its street team to identify the best campsite and present the “Golden Gecko” to the winner. Tickets for all races are now on sale at www.poconoraceway.com or by calling 1-800-RACEWAY.(Pocono Raceway)(4-18-2016)
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