Motorsports Racing News & Blog Articles

Joey Gase is busy running a NASCAR Xfinity Series team, but he has time to dabble in the Camping World Truck Series. On Monday, Young’s Motorsports announced Gase will drive the #20 Chevrolet Silverado in Saturday’s Truck race at Richmond Raceway.

It will be his second Truck start of 2022 after finishing twenty-fourth at Knoxville for On Point Motorsports. That race was his first in the Trucks since 2019, when he was a start-and-park entry for Jennifer Jo Cobb’s team over the previous two seasons.

The Iowa native has mainly competed at the Xfinity level since 2011, which included full-time campaigns from 2014 to 2019 with three top tens. After bouncing between multiple rides in 2020 and 2021, he partnered with Patrick Emerling to form Emerling-Gase Motorsports for the 2022 season. EGR’s flagship #35 has been split between the two owners, Chris Dyson, Jeffrey Earnhardt, Parker Kligerman, and Shane Lee, and is currently thirtieth in owner points; Gase has run five races in the car with a best finish of sixteenth at Talladega. He also piloted a part-time #53 in the season opener at Daytona to a twenty-sixth, and the car will be elevated to the full season in 2023.

With Richmond only being added to the Truck schedule in 2020 and Gase’s two-year absence, Saturday will obviously mark his first time competing there in the series. He has seventeen Xfinity starts at Richmond with a best finish of twentieth on three occasions, along with five Cup Series runs with thirty-third being his highest run.

While Spencer Boyd is in the #12 and Kaz Grala and Jesse Little split the #02, the #20 serves as Young’s multi-driver truck. Drivers who have piloted the vehicle in 2022 include Little, Danny Bohn, Trey Burke, Sheldon Creed, Austin Dillon, Matt Mills, Thad Moffitt, Stefan Parsons, Garrett Smithley, and Dillon Steuer. Like ECR’s #35, the #20 is thirtieth in its series’ owner standings.

Peck Motorsports has struggled to make races in the NASCAR Camping World Truck Series since their return as a part-time operation in 2020, failing to qualify for all three attempts with owner Todd Peck. On Friday, the team will hope to turn around their misfortune with Mason Maggio behind the wheel of the #96 Chevrolet Silverado.

“Excited to be heading to Richmond Raceway this weekend for the NASCAR truck series race driving the 96 for Peck Motorsports,” Maggio posted on social media. “Big thank you to Todd Peck, Jason Miller, and all of our partners for making this possible. Grateful for the opportunity and hoping to have a solid weekend!!!”

Maggio made his Truck début at Gateway in June for Reaume Brothers Racing, where he finished twenty-seventh and one lap down. The eighteen-year-old mainly races in late models, winning four races in 2021 and currently competing in the Carolina Pro Late Model Series. After eight races, Maggio sits second in the CPLMS standings with three victories.

After the 2021 late model season, he joined Cup Series team Rick Ware Racing as a development driver.

Peck Motorsports is a family team that first appeared in the Trucks with Todd Peck as driver. Making sporadic starts over the next six years, Peck Motorsports’ best finish was twentieth at the 2014 Chicagoland race with Peck in the #40 Silverado. Peck eventually drove for other teams in 2017 and 2018 before reviving the programme in 2020. However, the team failed to qualify in their lone attempt that year at Daytona, and the same occurred for the 2021 Daytona and Darlington events.

Justin Haley is perhaps one of the top superspeedway racers in NASCAR today with all of his Cup and Xfinity Series victories coming at either Daytona International Speedway or Talladega Superspeedway. He has also won the second Daytona Xfinity race back-to-back since 2020, and will hope for a three-peat as he rejoins Kaulig Racing‘s Xfinity programme in the newly opened #14 Chevrolet Camaro.

“In a way, it feels like this is my bread and butter, especially at Daytona, one of my favorite tracks,” said Haley. “Together, we had three, successful Xfinity Series seasons at Kaulig Racing that transpired into a great first, full season so far in the Cup Series.”

While Kaulig has also enjoyed success on road courses with current Xfinity points leader A.J. Allmendinger, superspeedways have also been a favourite of theirs with three wins each at Daytona and Talladega by Haley, Jeb Burton, and Ross Chastain. Haley contributed four victories to those six, with his most recent win at the 2021 Daytona August race seeing all three Kaulig drivers leading a three-abreast finish.

“Having four of our five wins at superspeedway tracks in the Xfinity Series, there was no question that given an opportunity for a fourth entry, we would bring back Justin Haley,” commented owner Matt Kaulig. “For the past few years, our drivers have meshed so well together, especially on these types of tracks, and Justin Haley has been a huge part of our success as a team.”

After finishing sixth in the 2021 Xfinity standings, Haley graduated to the Cup Series with Kaulig in the #31. After twenty-three races, he sits twenty-second in points with a pair of top tens at Darlington and Atlanta, the latter being a 1.5-mile track that races like a superspeedway following its reconfiguration.

Teemu Suninen who became the WRC2 class winner in Secto Rally Finland was disqualified on Sunday evening after the front bumper on his Hyundai i20 N Rally2 was found to be underweighted during the scrutineering which resulted in Toksport WRT´s Emil Lindholm is handed the win.

Suninen who had bad luck over the season in the WRC2 class had it all settled for a first win of the season on the home rally but once again the win got taken away this time by a simple human error, last time it happened he was on route for a win but he crashed on the final stage of Rally Portugal and handed the win to Yohan Rossel.

The stewards’ decision said that in the scrutineering the weight of the front bumper was measured at 3,931g which is below the minimum allowed weight of 4,510g required to comply with homologation and Suninen’s team manager Pablo Marcos and Andrea Cisotti who is the manager at Hyundai Customer Racing agreed the part was underweight as the front bumper was not an original part produced by the team.

The copied part was fitted on to Suninen´s car by the Red Grey team as a human error, the team are also running the WRC2 outfit for the South Korean manufacturer.

This means the disqualification resulted in Lindholm being promoted to rally win, he finished before the steward decision in second place with 7.7 seconds behind Suninen, Estonian´s Egon Kaur was moved up to second place while WRC returneer Hayden Paddon ends with a third place.

Official rally results for WRC2:

With the début of the Next Gen car, the 2022 NASCAR Cup Series has seemingly presented itself as a new opportunity to reach outside the United States, such as Formula One veterans Daniil Kvyat and Kimi Räikkönen entering the sport. Team Hezeberg, who fielded a car for Kvyat, added some European flavour to the grid as the first Dutch operation in NASCAR’s highest level when they began racing this year.

Now, 3F Racing hopes to become the first German-led Cup team. If things go to plan, they will field the #30 Chevrolet Camaro ZL1, with Speedway Digest‘s Ethan Miller reporting they intend to run the final five races of the 2022 season beginning with the Charlotte Roval on 9 October followed by a part-time 2023 slate and going full-time in 2024.

3F stands for “3Friends” in reference to the team being run a triumvirate of, well, friends. The lead owner Dennis Hirtz comes from a European GT racing background, working as the marketing director for Phoenix Racing (no relation to the former NASCAR team) from 2017 to 2020. The 39-year-old is also a minor league ice hockey goaltender, rostering with ESV Bergisch Gladbach (and its junior team) and TuS Wiehl from 2009 to 2013 and FASS Berlin II in 2019/20; in March 2019, Hirtz and his Phoenix Racing colleagues played an exhibition against Eisbären Berlin, the current back-to-back Deutsche Eishockey Liga champions.

“For us it is more than entering a new racing series, it’s making a childhood dream reality,” reads a statement from Hirtz on the team’s website. “And we will succeed with a very strong team, as friends, and with high-class drivers.”

A driver was not announced, though Hirtz’s email to Frontstretch said the team will have a two-time 24 Hours of Le Mans winner for the Roval followed by an experienced NASCAR regular. The former, when coupled with Hirtz pointing out 3F will have a Richard Childress Racing alliance, might suggest 2015 and 2017 Le Mans overall winner Earl Bamber, who ran a NASCAR Xfinity Series race for RCR in 2020. 3F and Xfinity driver Justin Allgaier also follow each other on Instagram.

Ty Gibbs is the only NASCAR Xfinity Series driver with five wins in 2022, with nobody else having more than three. Did we mention he is just nineteen years old?

Despite Noah Gragson winning the first two stages, Gibbs started and finished the final segment in first to win in such dominant fashion that the only time he did not lead was due to green-flag pit stops from laps 100 to 109.

The win is the sixth at Michigan for Joe Gibbs Racing‘s Xfinity programme, breaking a tie for first with what is now RFK Racing.

“I think this style of racing shows the strategy and the pit stops,” said Gibbs. “It’s pretty spread out, but my guys did a great job and the pit crew worked so hard. I work out with them during the week and I see how hard they work, every one of them. They do a great job and my cousin (Jackson) is pitting now too so it’s cool to see my family involved. […]

“I just race week in and week out, but people can get all excited and think they’re making a huge statement and then go into Playoffs and suck. I’m just doing what I do week in and week out.”

The Estonian Ott Tänak became the first Hyundai Motorsport driver to win in Jyväskylä when he won his third Rally Finland over the weekend which also became his second win of the season.

Tänak took over the lead of the rally on Friday morning and held on to the lead over the three days, but also had to face a number of fast approaching drivers behind whom he managed to defend off and finished the rally with a good margin of 6.8 seconds over the current WRC championship leader Kalle Rovanperä. Tänak struggled to be comfortable in his Hyundai i20 N Rally1 from the start due to problems with the settings of the car but was able to achieve top times throughout the rally thanks to good grip on the Finnish dirt roads and determination.

Rovanperä had to open the roads on Friday’s stages and finished the first-full day in fourth place, during the two following days he moved up to two places while to bring home his Toyota GR Yaris Rally1 to a second place meanwhile his teammate Esapekka Lappi kept the third place after a brutal rolling on the penultimate stage, where he lost about 18 seconds, the car was however able to drive to the finish line and Lappi managed to held off teammate Elfyn Evans who finished in fourth place with 16.8 seconds behind.

Thierry Neuville, who has also had problems with his settings in the Hyundai, had to settle for fifth place, while Toyota Gazoo Racing NG driver Takamoto Katsuta did well with a sixth place and Gus Greensmith became the best M-Sport driver with a seventh place.

Emil Lindholm who otherwise finished the rally in second place in the WRC2 class was promoted to become the class winner as Teemu Suninen was disqualified after post-rally inspection, Lindholm finished eighth overall. Jari Huttunen who made his debut for M-Sport in the Rally1 class ended the home rally in ninth place after several problems with the car during the weekend and the Estonian Egon Kaur took tenth place and claimed second place in the WRC2 class.

Official rally results for Rally1 class:

In 2020, Kevin Harvick lit up the NASCAR Cup Series with a nine-win season that included a sweep of a Michigan International Speedway doubleheader. Nearly two years later, he returned to Victory Lane for the first time after an agonising sixty-five-race winless drought.

After Ross Chastain continued to antagonise everyone in the garage by tapping Christopher Bell and sending him into the wall with forty laps remaining, Harvick held off pole winner Bubba Wallace on the ensuing restart after electing to stay out over pitting. He maintained a steady pace over Wallace and would win by nearly three seconds. It is his sixth Cup victory at Michigan.

“The last restart, I had the #5 (Kyle Larson) behind me, and I knew I didn’t need to let the #23 up,” Harvick recalled in his post-race press conference. “I knew I needed to drive it in the corner far enough, but the #5 had given me such a good push. I had a car length, and I think Bubba got about up to my door. I knew that if we could just get off of turn two, we would have a chance.

“Then they were side-by-side, and then we drove down into turn one and two the next lap, and I watched them. I don’t know what happened. They all wound up all goofed up down there and up the racetrack. I was hoping that the #23 didn’t cycle out to be the second car because then we were going to have a pretty constant race on our hands, but the more they race, the further we got away.

“That’s what you want, right? To try to get away so they don’t have a draft and can make up that time quicker. #5 launched good, #5 gave us a good push, and the key was just clearing the #23 off of two and being able to go down the back straight-away by myself and not door to door and in a firestorm. That all went smooth.”

Gavin Harlien lost the Stadium Super Trucks‘ Music City Grand Prix Race #1 win to Matt Brabham on the final lap, but he was not going to suffer the same fate two days in a row. Despite a wreck while battling Cleetus McFarland for the lead that sent the latter into a flip, Harlien squared off with Brabham and Ben Maier in the closing laps of Sunday’s Race #2 to win at Nashville for the first time.

The final restart with three laps remaining saw a mad scramble for the win as Brabham led Maier and Harlien. Maier made his move in turn nine to lead the next lap, only for Brabham to capitalise on an error outside turn eight to retake the position. Harlien caught Brabham and the two ran neck-and-neck to the white flag, and the chicane allowed the former to briefly clear him.

Brabham retaliated on the backstretch run down the Korean War Veterans Memorial Bridge to once again place himself next to Harlien for the remainder of the lap. Although Brabham found the inside line in the final corner, Harlien carried enough momentum to the finish line to win by .0811 of a second.

“Usually, you only have to [come from the back to the front] once, especially if you qualify well,” Harlien said in his podium interview. “Yesterday, I was lucky enough to start up front and kind of sit there the whole time, but today, I had my work cut out for me for sure. I had to go front, back, front again but couldn’t be happier with how it went.”

Harlien started eighth and was able to move up to second behind pole sitter McFarland by the competition caution on lap three. The two duelled as the race resumed with Ryan Beat in tow, only for McFarland and Harlien to collide with each other exiting turn eight; the contact caused Harlien’s truck to get loose before bouncing back into McFarland, who was turned sideways before Beat—with nowhere to go—pushed him onto his passenger’s side door. McFarland’s truck was rolled over and his relatively tall height enabled him to exit the vehicle without assistance, though it meant he suffered a retirement in both Nashville races.

Three things are inevitable in life. Death, taxes, and Scott Dixon competing for an NTT IndyCar Series championship.

Dixon started buried in the field in fourteenth and sustained damage to the floor of his car in the lap 26 caution. Yet with luck on the final pit stop, no grip, and 50-lap old tyres, Dixon out-dueled fellow countryman Scott McLauglin to the race win.

“We had a big crash there that took half the floor off the car, we had to take four turns of front wing out so we had no grip,” Dixon said. “…and then I think we did 45 or 50 laps on that last set of tyres, so the last stop we didn’t even take tyres!”

“Nashville is awesome!”

With his unlikely win, the “Iceman” now only sits six points behind points leader Will Power as he tries to tie A.J. Foyt for the most championships in series history with seven.

Marco Andretti had been eyeing a NASCAR ride since exiting the NTT IndyCar Series, and he will finally get his chance when he enters the NASCAR Xfinity Series race at the Charlotte Motor Speedway Roval on 8 October. He will drive the #48 Chevrolet Camaro for Big Machine Racing Team.

Andretti, whose lineage needs no introduction, was a mainstay in IndyCar from 2006 to 2020, winning twice and scoring the Indianapolis 500 pole in 2020. Upon retiring from full-time competition (only returning for the 500), he turned towards closed-wheel racing such as IMSA and the Superstar Racing Experience.

SRX, a short track series owned by three-time NASCAR Cup Series and 1997 IndyCar champion Tony Stewart, saw Andretti win at Slinger Speedway during the inaugural season in 2021 before taking the championship in 2022 despite going winless. During the 2021 SRX season, he revealed plans of racing in the Xfinity Series with speculation pointing at Stewart’s Stewart-Haas Racing as a potential suitor. Following the SRX race at the Nashville Fairgrounds on 9 July, he disclosed to Frontstretch that he was “talking to some people” about going to NASCAR.

Although SRX exclusively competes on ovals and one of Andretti’s two IndyCar victories was on one (Iowa in 2011), Big Machine Racing will place him on a road course to as a track type he is particularly accustomed to.

“I think [team owner Scott Borchetta] choosing [the Roval] race is pretty awesome because I actually did want to try road courses as well, plus I mean Charlotte’s the home turf for them,” Andretti told Steven Boero of The Sports Credential at the Big Machine Music City Grand Prix in Nashville on Sunday.

Saturday’s NASCAR Xfinity Series race at Michigan International Speedway marked a historic moment for the sanctioning body as Tiffany Myrick oversaw the event as race director, becoming the first woman to serve in that capacity for a NASCAR national series.

A lifelong racing fan from Alabama, Myrick has worked for NASCAR since 2018, initially as a technical inspector which entailed leading pre- and post-race car inspection and being the flagwoman. In March 2021, she was elevated to the position of Senior Coordinator of Racing Operations and Event Management.

In May, Myrick was the race director for the ARCA Menards Series at Kansas Speedway, also making her the first female director for that series. The FS1 booth, whose play-by-play commentator Jamie Little is the first woman in such a position for major American racing, gave her a shout-out during the broadcast.

“If it wasn’t for all those brave women back in the fifties and sixties getting into the workforce, it was male predominant back then, I know I wouldn’t be where I am today,” Mynick said in a March 2021 video posted by NASCAR to celebrate Women’s History Month. “Just remembering where we came from and knowing that we had so far left to go and just kind of helping pave the way for the future and girls growing up.

“I think that any woman trying to get into a male-dominated industry—NASCAR, for example, I was really nervous getting into this. I grew up around this sport, so I knew everything that I could about it until I got into it. The nerves coming in and just being a female and actually inspecting cars and stuff like that, it feels like this added pressure is out on you because of your gender.

For the first time in his NASCAR Cup Series career, Bubba Wallace will start on the pole after topping qualifying for the FireKeepers Casino 400 at Michigan International Speedway. In doing so, he became only the second black pole sitter in Cup history after Wendell Scott in 1962, and the third in any NASCAR national series with Bill Lester the other.

Wallace was the only driver of the thirty-seven entered to set a qualifying speed of over 190 miles per hour at 190.703 mph (118.497 km/h) with a lap time of 37.755 seconds. He led a trio of Toyotas as Joe Gibbs Racing allies Christopher Bell and Kyle Busch followed, with Wallace’s time being .160 quicker than Bell.

Besides being the maiden Cup pole for Wallace and his 23XI Racing team, the driver secured his sixth career national series pole and first since the 2014 Xfinity Series race at Dover. His previous best Cup starting spot was fourth at New Hampshire in July.

“Let’s go! First time pole sitter here,” Wallace said in a Twitter video. “So excited, so pumped, so proud of my team. McDonald’s Toyota Camry is super fast, the test that we had here a couple months ago definitely proved that.

“Now, we’re showing back up to come get the big trophy when it matters.”

In his interview with The Checkered Flag in March, three-time Stadium Super Trucks champion Matt Brabham said he would likely only return to the series on weekends where Indy Lights did not clash. This was subverted with the Music City Grand Prix in Nashville as he entered both due to favourable scheduling, and in fact weather gave him an even better slate on Saturday as Indy Lights’ lone session for the day (qualifying) was cancelled due to weather while SST Race #1 was greenlit.

By the end, Brabham is already in good shape for his Indy Lights/SST double on Sunday after holding off Gavin Harlien on the final lap to win his twenty-fourth SST race and first of 2022.

After starting sixth, Harlien took the lead on lap three from Zoey Edenholm who in turn had assumed the spot after pole-sitter Bill Hynes overshot turn nine on the opening lap. Brabham started eighth and worked up to second by the competition behind Harlien, and the two quickly built a comfortable lead over the field on the ensuing restart.

As those behind them fought for position, Brabham closed the gap to Harlien before making his move on Harlien’s inside in turn eleven. The duo took the white flag side-by-side before Brabham finally cleared Harlien through the following chicane. Harlien tried to catch up on the two runs across the Korean War Veterans Memorial Bridge but was unable to find an overtaking opportunity.

“I saw Matty catching me a little bit there at the end and I was thinking he was only going to be able to pass me after one of the bridges and then he got me right before the finish line which I wasn’t expecting, so that was a good move,” Harlien explained in his post-race interview. “I tried to get a run on him on the last lap coming down, but I hit the wall coming back down the second bridge and wasn’t able to get it.”

What was supposed to be a day off for NASCAR Cup Series veteran Kyle Busch and his family on Thursday ahead of his race at Michigan International Speedway became a scary situation when a shooting occurred at the Mall of America in Bloomington, Minnesota. No injuries occurred and the family was able to depart the mall prior to it entering lockdown, and Busch and wife Samantha have since offered their perspectives on what they saw and felt.

According to Bloomington Police, the situation began with an argument involving two parties in the Mall of America’s Nike Store at approximately 4:15 PM Central Time. One of the groups departed before an unidentified person fired at least three shots into the store before escaping. The mall was placed on lockdown before lifting it at 5:40 PM, and reopened on Friday morning.

No injuries were reported in the shooting while police continues to search for suspects.

The Busch family was at the mall to take a break from seven-year-old son Brexton‘s dirt track racing. Many of Brexton’s recent events leading up to Thursday were in the Midwest at tracks like Thunder Hill Speedway in Menomonie, Wisconsin, with Mall of America providing a brief break before travelling to Brooklyn, Michigan for his father’s Cup race. Kyle and Brexton were in queue for a ride while Samantha was shopping at the time of the shooting, and the former were caught on video among the group of evacuating patrons by WFFT’s Andy Paras.

“We were at the @mallofamerica yesterday when a shooting happened,” Samantha posted on Instagram on Friday. “We had been spending the afternoon riding the rides in the center of the mall and then the girls split up to shop while the boys stayed for more rides. Then chaos ensued. I was standing at the entrance of H&M which is on floor 1 when I heard screaming from above. A group of people were running and yelling. My brain instantly thought it was just teenagers being goofy and then a split second later herds of people on levels 2 and 3 were running. Next a wave of people started down our corridor and that’s when I heard people shouting ‘active shooter in the mall’. You know the logical thing to do is run out the doors but with Kyle and Brexton still somewhere inside I froze where I was.