This Week
Race: Bank of America 500
Track: Charlotte Motor Speedway
TV: ABC, 7:30 p.m. ET
Radio: PRN radio affiliates, Sirius XM NASCAR Radio
Track Facts
Track Length: 1.5 miles
Race Length: 334 laps/500 miles
First Race: June 19, 1960
Banking in Corners: 24 degrees
Banking on Straights: 5 degrees
Frontstretch: 1,980 feet
Backstretch: 1,500 feet
Rearview Mirror
Last weekend at Kansas Speedway, Harvick earned the pole award with a track-record speed and lap time – a feat he also accomplished at the 1.5-mile track in May. He finished 12th on Sunday after the team had to make an unscheduled green-flag pit stop.
Budweiser Racing Team Notes of Interest
Kevin Harvick and the No. 4 Budweiser Chevrolet SS team will compete at Charlotte Motor Speedway (CMS) this weekend in Saturday night’s Bank of America 500 NASCAR Sprint Cup Series (NSCS) race.
Chase Update… Harvick is currently ranked sixth in the Chase for the NASCAR Sprint Cup championship standings with two races to go in the Contender Round. He’s 15 points back from leader Joey Logano and 10 markers ahead of the cut-off point for the next round.
Chassis Info…The No. 4 Budweiser team will utilize chassis No. 884 in Saturday’s race. Harvick last raced this car at Atlanta Motor Speedway in August. In that event, he scored the pole award and led a total of 195 laps before a late-race wreck relegated the team to a 19th-place finish. The team also utilized the car at Indianapolis Motor Speedway (eighth-place finish) and during a test session at CMS last week.
Loop Data… Harvick holds a number of impressive statistics in several of NASCAR’s Loop Data categories at CMS, including: first in closers (33 positions improved in the last 10 percent of each race); fourth in green flag passes (1,534); seventh in fastest on restarts (170.199 mph); eighth in laps in the top 15 (3,923); and ninth in fastest drivers early in a run (177.981 mph).
Charlotte Stats… Harvick has 27 NSCS starts at CMS and has earned two wins (2011, 2013), four top fives and 10 top-10 finishes. He has an average start of 17.9 and average finish of 16.3.
A Look Back… In last October’s race at CMS, Harvick started second and finished sixth. In this spring’s race at the 1.5-mile track, Harvick started 11th and led 100 laps before finishing second.
Harvick on Racing at Charlotte Motor Speedway
Even with some of the frustrations your team has experienced this year, I would think those frustrations would be overridden by the fact that every week when that car rolls off for the race, you guys always have speed.
“Yeah. Nobody on our team is frustrated. We know that we’re doing a really good job at everything that we can control. We know in the end we’re still right where we need to be to accomplish that big picture goal and that’s to win the championship. In the end, the rest of them are just stats. Our goal is to advance into each round and give ourselves a chance at Homestead, and if you’re loading that trophy up into the back of your hauler and hadn’t won a race, it doesn’t really matter.
Talk about your best Charlotte Motor Speedway moment. “The first time I raced there I think we finished second, and from about that point on it was tough up until we got to about 2007 and were able to win the All-Star Race. I still feel like we didn’t have the fastest car that night to win the race, but to be able to get to Victory Lane finally in something at Charlotte was great. But I think winning the first Coke 600 was probably the best moment for me, just for the fact that you know what that means to the sport and to check off that crown jewel race. Charlotte has been a great race track for me over the past several years. We’ve run great there this year and I look forward to going back.”
Even though all races pay the same points, there’s still something kind of special, isn’t there, about Charlotte Motor Speedway since it’s so close to home for most of the teams? “There really is. You wind up with a lot of the guys at the race track with their families there that normally don’t get to go to the race track. You go there and you feel like you want to do good because you want to be able to celebrate with those guys that aren’t normally there.”
Harvick’s Career Record at Charlotte Motor Speedway
For the online version of the Budweiser Racing media guide, please visit www.budweiserracingmedia.com.
