This Week in Motorsports: June 15-21, 2020
· NCS/NXS/ARCA: Talladega Superspeedway – June 20-21
PLANO, Texas (June 17, 2020) – NASCAR returns to the high banks with superspeedway racing this weekend in Alabama.
NASCAR National Series – NCS | NXS
Superspeedway (and 2020) Success… Denny Hamlin has scored most of Toyota’s NASCAR Cup Series (NCS) superspeedway success. The Chesterfield, Virginia-native has won the Daytona 500 three of the past five seasons (2016, 2019, 2020), and earned Toyota’s most recent victory at Talladega Superspeedway (2014). So far this year, Hamlin has accumulated a series-leading three Cup Series, including winning on Sunday at Homestead-Miami Speedway after leading more than half of the laps. Kyle Busch was also victorious in a Camry in the Cup Series at the Alabama superspeedway in 2008.
Playoff Positioning… Talladega Superspeedway marks the halfway point of the Cup Series regular season. Currently three Toyota drivers are in Playoff positions – Hamlin (three wins) and Martin Truex Jr. (one win) have clinched spots due to victories, while Kyle Busch holds the third Toyota position in ninth-place in the point standings. Erik Jones currently sits 18th in the standings, less than 10 points behind the final Playoff spot.
Rookie Record… With an eighth-place result on Sunday at Homestead-Miami Speedway, Harrison Burton broke the NASCAR Xfinity Series (NXS) rookie record previously held by Carl Edwards for consecutive top 10 finishes in a driver’s first full-time season in the series. It was Burton’s 10th straight top-10 finish this year, highlighted by two wins at California’s Auto Club Speedway in February and Florida’s Homestead-Miami Speedway on Saturday.
Dash 4 Cash Opportunity… Brandon Jones is one of four drivers who are eligible to earn a $100,000 bonus from Xfinity after his second-place finish in Sunday’s NXS event. The third of the four Dash 4 Cash races takes place at Talladega this Saturday. Jones will achieve the bonus by being the highest-finishing driver at Talladega amongst himself, Chase Briscoe, Ross Chastain and A.J. Allmendinger.
Two Shots at The Win… Riley Herbst will compete twice on Saturday as he runs in both the ARCA Menards Series (AMS) and NXS events. Herbst will drive the No.18 Monster Energy Toyota for Joe Gibbs Racing (JGR) in both races.
NASCAR Regional Series – ARCA
Self Back on Track… Saturday’s AMS event at Talladega Superspeedway is the first event for the series since Phoenix in early March. The 2019 series runner-up Michael Self has had a strong start to the year – winning the season opener at Daytona International Speedway and following that up with a runner-up result at Phoenix Raceway. Self currently leads the point standings by 12 points. He will be joined in the field by Venturini Motorsports (VMS) teammates Drew Dollar and Ryan Repko.
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About Toyota
Toyota (NYSE:TM) has been a part of the cultural fabric in the U.S. and North America for more than 60 years, and is committed to advancing sustainable, next-generation mobility through our Toyota and Lexus brands. During that time, Toyota has created a tremendous value chain as our teams have contributed to world-class design, engineering, and assembly of more than 40 million cars and trucks in North America, where we have 14 manufacturing plants, 15 including our joint venture in Alabama (10 in the U.S.), and directly employ more than 47,000 people (over 36,000 in the U.S.). Our 1,800 North American dealerships (nearly 1,500 in the U.S.) sold nearly 2.8 million cars and trucks (nearly 2.4 million in the U.S.) in 2019.
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