Frontstretch Newsletter: Aug. 8, 2023
Volume XVII, Edition CXXXIII |
- Teams are back at their shops and currently preparing for this weekend's action in Indianapolis. We'll have any news that breaks for you
today at Frontstretch. |
| | Chris Buescher Goes Back to Back With Michigan
Win Chris Buescher used pit strategy to get into the lead Monday, then held off the quick Martin Truex Jr. to win the FireKeepers Casino 400 for his second consecutive
victory. Truex was second, then Denny Hamlin, Brad Keselowski and Kyle Larson. |
| | Martin Truex Jr. Settles For 2nd With Dominant Car at
Michigan Martin Truex Jr. could seemingly do whatever he wanted to for most of the day Monday in Michigan. However, he couldn't quite overcome Chris Buescher and had to
settle for second. |
| | Legacy Adds Mike Rockenfeller for Indy, Watkins
Glen Legacy Motor Club announced Tuesday morning that Mike Rockenfeller will drive the No. 42 Chevrolet at Indianapolis and Watkins
Glen. |
| | Entry List: 2023 Verizon 200 at the
Brickyard For Sunday's NASCAR Cup Series race in Indianapolis, there are 39 teams entered. Chicago winner Shane van Gisbergen is back and he's brought his fellow Repco
Supercars Championship contender Brodie Kostecki with him. Multi-time FIA World Endurance Championship champion Kamui Kobayashi will make his Cup debut for 23XI Racing. |
| | Entry List: Pennzoil 150 at the
Brickyard Saturday's 150-mile NASCAR Xfinity Series race in Indianapolis has 42 teams entered for 38 spots. AJ Allmendinger returns to the No. 10 in search of his 12th road
course victory. Camden Murphy returns to the series for the first time in four years, while Conor Daly will suit up for Alpha Prime Racing. |
| | Entry List: 2023 TSport
200 For Friday night's NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series race at Lucas Oil Indianapolis Raceway Park, there are 39 teams entered. Shane van Gisbergen will make his series
debut for Niece Motorsports, while Layne Riggs will drive for Spire Motorsports. |
| | Jonathan Davenport
Running Lucas Oil SRX Race Superstar Racing Experience (SRX) announced Monday that dirt late model racer Jonathan Davenport will make his series debut in the Camping World SRX Series season
finale next Thursday at Lucas Oil Speedway in Missouri. |
| | Matt Stallknecht Wins Monday Night Racing Superspeedway
Title, Chase Cabre Falls Short Despite Win Chase Cabre won the MNR Summer Bash superspeedway finale Monday night at the virtual Daytona International Speedway. Chase's brother Cole was second, then Michael
Fischer, Alex Monteferrate and Gary Sexton. Matt Stallknecht finished sixth and won the Superspeedway championship. |
Photos are courtesy of Nigel Kinrade Photography, World Racing Group via Jacy Norgaard, iRacing and our own Phil Allaway. Have news for Frontstretch? Don't hesitate to let us know; email us
at frontstretcheditors@googlegroups.com with a promising lead or tip. |
Seeking the NASCAR Cup Series Playoffs: Martin Truex Jr. Expands Lead With Near-Perfect Race In Michigan
by Phil Allaway
Martin Truex Jr. had the best car Monday and could seemingly charge through the field at will. Chris Buescher was able to prevent him from winning, but not from earning the most points Monday (55). As a result, Truex has expanded his lead to 57 points over teammate Denny
Hamlin, who finished third. William Byron hit the wall Sunday on the final lap of stage one and was unable to continue. That cost him a bunch of points, but he stays in third. Christopher Bell crashed on lap 65 Sunday, but still managed to finish 13th to stay in fourth. Kevin Harvick is up one place to fifth after finishing eighth. Kyle Larson used an alternate pit strategy to finish fifth and move up two spots to sixth. Ross Chastain led the opening 16 laps and finished seventh to stay seventh in points. Brad Keselowski moved up three places to eighth after finishing a strong fourth. Kyle Busch crashed out on lap 14 Sunday. The 37th-place finish dropped him four places to ninth. Ryan Blaney is down one spot to 10th after finishing ninth without stage points. Buescher's second straight win moved him two places to 11th, while Joey Logano is down to
12th. Tyler Reddick lost a lot of ground due to his loose wheel, but stays in 13th. Bubba Wallace is up to 14th after scoring 16 stage points and finishing 18th. Wallace jumped over Ricky Stenhouse Jr., who finished 21st.
Ty Gibbs is back up to 16th after finishing 11th. Gibbs is the last driver in the playoffs on points. He has a three-point advantage over Michael McDowell, who damaged his splitter Sunday by running into the back of Austin Cindric. He would
eventually finish 24th. Daniel Suarez is up one place to 18th after finishing sixth and is only five points behind Gibbs. AJ Allmendinger is down to 19th, while Alex Bowman is 20th. Point Standings (1-16): 1) Martin Truex Jr. 799, 2) Denny Hamlin -57, 3) William Byron -96, 4) Christopher
Bell -122, 5) Kevin Harvick -136, 6) Kyle Larson -137, 7) Ross Chastain -143, 8) Brad Keselowski -148, 9) Kyle Busch -150, 10) Ryan Blaney -157, 11) Chris Buescher -160, 12) Joey Logano -163, 13) Tyler Reddick -190, 14) Bubba Wallace -258, 15) Ricky Stenhouse Jr. -269, 16) Ty Gibbs -313. Note: Drivers in italics are either outside of the playoffs, or ineligible for points. Playoff Points: 1) William Byron 22, 2) Martin Truex Jr. -2, 3) Kyle Busch -5, 4) Denny Hamlin -8, 5) Denny Hamlin
-9, 6) Chris Buescher -11, 7) Ross Chastain -12, 8) Tyler Reddick
-13, t-9) Ryan Blaney -14, t-9) Joey Logano -14, 11) Christopher Bell -15, t-12) Ricky Stenhouse Jr. -17, t-12) Shane van Gisbergen -17, 14) Brad Keselowski -19, t-15) Kevin Harvick -21, t-15) Austin Cindric -21, t-15) Aric Almirola -21, t-15) Ryan
Preece -21, t-15) Chase Elliott -21. Stage Points: 1) William Byron 207, 2) Martin Truex Jr. -12, 3) Denny Hamlin -25, 4) Tyler Reddick -43, 5) Kyle Larson
-48, t-5) Ross Chastain -59, 7) Christopher Bell -60, 8) Ryan Blaney -66, 9) Joey Logano -82, 10) Brad Keselowski -84, 11) Kevin Harvick -90, 12) Kyle Busch -113, 13) Alex Bowman -121, 14) Bubba Wallace -123, 15) Chris Buescher -128, 16) Daniel Suarez -136. Outside of the top-16, but in the playoffs: 19) Ty Gibbs -153, 25) Ricky Stenhouse Jr. -173.
Note: The Stage Points also include the Bluegreen Vacations Duels at Daytona. Old Point Standings (1-16): 1) Martin Truex Jr.
710, 2) Denny Hamlin -38, 3) Chris Buescher -52, 4) Kyle Busch -56, 5) Kevin Harvick -63, 6) Christopher Bell -74, 7) Brad Keselowski -75, 8) William Byron -93, 9) Ross Chastain
-96, 10) Joey Logano -97, 11) Kyle Larson -101, 12) Ryan Blaney -105, 13) Ricky Stenhouse Jr. -122, 14) Bubba Wallace -154, 15) Tyler Reddick -162, 16) Ty Gibbs -182. Note: These standings are based on the old point system that was used before stages were created. WC
Points (1-16): 1) Martin Truex Jr. 3183, 2) Denny Hamlin -145, 3) Kyle Busch -193, 4) Chris Buescher -222, 5) Kevin Harvick -243, 6) Christopher Bell -257, 7) Brad Keselowski -265, t-8) Kyle Larson
-311, t-8) Joey Logano -311, 10) Ross Chastain -327, 11) William Byron -350, 12) Ryan Blaney -357, 13) Ricky Stenhouse Jr. -460, 14) Tyler Reddick -536, 15) Bubba Wallace -540, 16) Ty Gibbs -655. Note: The WC points are based on the original points system created by Bob Latford in 1975. Race Winners: Ricky Stenhouse Jr. (Daytona), Kyle Busch (Fontana, Talladega, Gateway), William Byron (Las Vegas, Phoenix, Darlington, Atlanta-2), Joey Logano (Atlanta-1), Tyler Reddick (Austin), Kyle Larson (Richmond-1, Martinsville), Christopher Bell (Bristol), Martin Truex Jr. (Dover, Sonoma, Loudon), Denny Hamlin (Kansas,
Pocono), Ross Chastain (Nashville), Shane van Gisbergen (Chicago), Chris Buescher (Richmond-2)
Note: Race wins in Italics do not count towards playoff eligibility.
Phil Allaway is the Frontstretch newsletter manager. He can be reached at phil.allaway@frontstretch.com. Photo is courtesy of Nigel Kinrade Photography.
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Letter of the Race: Monday's FireKeepers Casino 400 was brought to you by the letter B for Breakout. That is what we are seeing at the moment from Chris Buescher. He is currently in the best form in
his career. As you can see above, the current points system really doesn't show this, but Buescher has been one of the best drivers on the grid this season. - Phil Allaway |
Quotes to Remember: FireKeepers Casino
400 compiled by Phil
Allaway
"I am so proud of everyone at RFK and what we have been able to accomplish these last few years. To get it here at Ford’s home track, this one
is always big. It is Jack [Roush’s] home track and Brad [Keselowski]’s home track and this is where we needed one. To fight for it and have such a clean race there with Truex at the end, he was really close to getting us at one point. We had to keep digging on it. I am really proud of everybody. That was awesome to put our Castrol Edge Mustang in victory lane here at Michigan and we have road courses coming up, I am really excited for those. "We talked a lot yesterday about [Martin Truex Jr.] being very fast and probably being the class of the field. We also talked about dirty air and how bad it was for us so the only thing I could think was to make it as dirty behind us as possible to make it difficult. He was so good on the bottom. I just couldn’t quite pull the car
down that low but I was able to dirty up the air enough to hold him off and get away with some traffic. It was a tough race." - Chris Buescher, race winner "I think we just needed a little longer run. I felt like we were a little better, but it is just really hard to pass the leader on equal tires. We
had an unbelievable Auto Owners Toyota Camry. Hats off to everybody that puts the work in these things, Toyota, TRD, Bass Pro, Resers – everybody that supports us. It was a rocket – just the leader in clean air is really, really hard to pass. We just didn’t quite have enough, but all-in-all a good day. "We are excited. Every week we feel like we have a shot to win, that is all I can ask for. It’s exciting to come to the track every weekend knowing what these guys are going to bring me. Hopefully, we can keep it up. It would have been nice to get a win today, but all-in-all it was a good day, strategy kind of shook us up a little bit. We were luckily able to get our track position back all day because of our speed. One more stinks – it’s been tough to get a win
here. We’ve been really good here in the past. Just can’t get it done, hopefully next year." - Martin Truex Jr., finished second "I just stalled it and couldn’t get it refired. Something with the ECU – just had to get it refired and cycled it there. I thought we were really close with [Martin
Truex Jr.]. I thought he got through traffic better than I did all day, and it looks like [Chris Buescher] was pretty good too. That’s no shock – he showed some speed yesterday. Showed some things on the track that I felt like – caught my eye. Track position was king, we just never got to be up towards the front enough until the very end. Proud of the whole Mavis Toyota team – we will go onto the next one." - Denny Hamlin, finished third "Chris [Buescher] nailed it there at the end. We got really fast right at the end of the race with both cars and hadn’t shown that speed all
weekend. Credit to both teams working together and making good adjustments and learned from each other applied them to get the speed out of our cars. We drove from 21st or 22nd there the last run up to fourth. I wish the race was like 30 or 40 laps longer because I was coming. We were running 37.80 [second laps] and the leaders were running 38.0. We just ran out of laps. If we can’t win it, I am so glad Chris [Buescher] did. "We're letting our results speak for themselves. Chris [Buescher] has done a heck of a job driving the car. When you get [a] win, it feels really good. We got to keep some humbleness and keep our head down. There's some great competition out here." - Brad Keselowski, finished
fourth "I felt like we were a little bit better, and then after that wreck off of [turn 2], [Chase Briscoe] and I hit pretty decently, and I just felt like we were a little slower after that. I think the handling was still similar, but just a little bit slower overall. We took what we could get out of the day.
Happy with the pit strategy there at the end to get some track position and come away with a top-five for the No. 5 HendrickCars.com Chevy. We’ll take it." - Kyle Larson, finished fifth "Proud of my No. 99 Worldwide Express Chevy team. This is exactly what we needed after a couple of rough weeks. The team did
an amazing job with execution and the car was fast. It wasn’t easy – we had to work for this one. Two days ago in practice, I knew our car had the speed, but we were just very off on balance. Once we found the balance, the car was pretty fast so I’m happy with that. I feel like we still have maybe one more step to go to be able to win races, but it was definitely a race that we needed, especially heading into two road course races. Now we have a little momentum on our side and I’m optimistic for
the final three races of the regular season." - Daniel Suarez, finished sixth "Yeah, I feel good. I hate that it happened. It was really early in the day to have a tire blow like that. It was really weird. It’s a bummer, but not surprised." - Chase Elliott, finished 36th (Crashed out) "They all run hard. They all want to race to crash. I tried to make a move and in the old days, guys that you were racing would let you go and have that spot and work for it later. But in this day in age, it’s completely different. So I got a guy that ran on my outside and took the air off." - Kyle Busch, finished 37th
(Crashed out) Phil Allaway is the Frontstretch newsletter manager. He can be reached at phil.allaway@frontstretch.com. Photo is courtesy of NASCAR Media via Meg Oliphant of Getty Images.
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![Denny Hamlin Recovered Nicely After Stalling The Car: "It Didn't Really Do Much [To Hurt Us]"](https://hostedimages-cdn.aweber-static.com/MTUwNjA2Nw==/original/b5dd455523c941fe86f4f2a4c1852309.png)
