STEWART-HAAS RACING
Pala Casino 400
Date: Feb. 26, 2023
Event: Pala Casino 400 (Round 2 of 36)
Series: NASCAR Cup Series
Location: Auto Club Speedway in Fontana, California (2-mile oval)
Format: 200 laps, broken into three stages (65 laps/65 laps/70 laps)
Race Winner: Kyle Busch of Richard Childress Racing (Chevrolet)
Stage 1 Winner: Ross Chastain of Trackhouse Racing (Chevrolet)
Stage 2 Winner: Ross Chastain of Trackhouse Racing (Chevrolet)
SHR Race Finish:
● Kevin Harvick (Started 10th, Finished 5th / Running, completed 200 of 200 laps)
● Chase Briscoe (Started 31st, Finished 20th / Running, completed 200 of 200 laps)
● Ryan Preece (Started 27th, Finished 33rd / Accident, completed 87 of 200 laps)
● Aric Almirola (Started 17th, Finished 35th / Accident, completed 86 of 200 laps)
SHR Points:
● Kevin Harvick (4th with 79 points, 13 out of first)
● Aric Almirola (25th with 31 points, 61 out of first)
● Chase Briscoe (33rd with 19 points, 73 out of first)
● Ryan Preece (34th with 15 points, 77 out of first)
SHR Notes:
● The Pala Casino 400 marked Harvick’s 29th career NASCAR Cup Series start at Fontana, the most among all NASCAR drivers, past and present.
● This was Harvick’s 750th consecutive NASCAR Cup Series start. He is just the third driver in series history to reach the milestone, joining Jeff Gordon (797 consecutive starts) and Ricky Rudd (788 consecutive starts). The last time Harvick was not in a Cup Series race was April 2, 2002 at Martinsville (Va.) Speedway, a span of 7,623 days between race dates.
● Harvick earned his first top-five of the season and his eighth top-five at Fontana. This was also Harvick’s 15th top-10 at the 2-mile oval.
● This was Harvick’s fourth straight top-10 at Fontana. He finished seventh last year, ninth in in 2020 and fourth in 2019. (The NASCAR Cup Series did not race at Fontana in 2021.)
● Since joining SHR in 2014, Harvick has only two finishes outside the top-15 at Fontana.
● Harvick finished eighth in Stage 1 to earn three bonus points and fourth in Stage 2 to earn seven more bonus points.
● Harvick led twice for five laps to increase his laps-led total at Fontana to 243.
● Harvick has now led 11,492 laps since joining SHR in 2014. He has led 15,907 laps in his entire NASCAR Cup Series career.
● In two career NASCAR Cup Series starts at Fontana, Briscoe has never finished outside the top-20. He finished 16th in his first start at the track last year.
● This was the first time Almirola finished outside the top-12 at Fontana since he joined SHR in 2018.
Race Notes:
● Kyle Busch won the Pala Casino 400 to score his 61st career NASCAR Cup Series victory, his first of the season and his fifth at Fontana. His margin over second-place Chase Elliott was 2.998 seconds.
● There were eight caution periods for a total of 38 laps.
● Only 20 of the 36 drivers in the race finished on the lead lap.
● Ross Chastain leaves Fontana as the championship leader by a single point over second-place Joey Logano.
Sound Bites:
“Our GEARWRENCH Ford Mustang was really good on the long runs. I just really struggled on the restarts with the front end. In the end, we had a chance, but I couldn’t put us in the right position on the restarts to guard our track position like we needed to. It was still a great day for our GEARWRENCH Ford Mustang. The guys did a great job on pit road all day and kept us up in the front.”– Kevin Harvick, driver of the No. 4 GEARWRENCH Ford Mustang
“We definitely had high hopes coming in here. This is one of my better racetracks and we just completely struggled all day long from a lot of different issues. That’s not how we wanted to run, obviously. We’ve got a lot of work to do going into next week, but I feel like we can learn from it and move on.” – Chase Briscoe, driver of the No. 14 Rush Truck Centers/Mobil Delvac Ford Mustang
“It’s kind of stupid, to be honest with you, on a professional level and we all wreck on a restart. I don’t know what happened, but just a victim of circumstances. It sucks. I was racing around Aric (Almirola) and we were just trying to be smart and get to the end of the race. Something like that, you’re not expecting everyone to wreck coming to the restart line. It’s unfortunate. That adjustment could’ve gotten us a lot better, and we could’ve kept on making little gains. That was our goal, not to beat ourselves and just be there in the last 50 or 60 (laps). That’s why we stayed out that run – to see what our car would do in clean air and if we needed to work on it, which we did, and I felt like we just kept on making it better and better. It’s really a bad ending for this HaasTooling.com Ford Mustang, and even Aric, so we just have to go to Vegas and be on offense and start digging out of this hole we’re in right now.” – Ryan Preece, driver of the No. 41 HaasTooling.com Ford Mustang
“I took off on the restart and went from second to third gear and, all of a sudden, everybody in front of us just stopped. I think the leader was just playing games, trying to prevent the runs coming from behind, and where they stopped in the middle of the restart zone was right about where they should’ve been accelerating. It was just a huge accordion effect. We were back in 16th, so everybody just started stacking up, and you can’t stop on a dime. It’s disappointing to get wrecked out of the race like that on a silly Mickey Mouse restart, but I should’ve known better.” – Aric Almirola, driver of the No. 10 Smithfield Ford Mustang
Next Up:
The next event on the NASCAR Cup Series schedule is the Las Vegas 400 on Sunday, March 5 at Las Vegas Motor Speedway. The race begins at 3:30 p.m. EST with live coverage provided by FOX and SiriusXM NASCAR Radio.
