Race Information
- Round: NASCAR Cup Series race No. 4 of 36
- Track Location: Phoenix Raceway – Avondale, Arizona
- Race Name: United Rentals Work United 500
- Broadcast: Sunday, March 12th at 3:30 PM ET live on FOX (TV), MRN (Radio), and SiriusXM NASCAR Channel 90
- Team Entrants:
No. 42 | Noah Gragson & Luke Lambert – Sunseeker Resorts Chevrolet
No. 43 | Erik Jones & Dave Elenz – Allegiant Chevrolet
Noah Gragson, No. 42 Sunseeker Resorts Chevrolet Camaro ZL1
Phoenix Raceway Stats
- NCS Starts: 1; Best start: 17th, Best finish: 11th (Fall, 2022)
- NXS Starts: 8; Best start: 4th, Best finish: 2nd (three times), Top 5s: 7, Top 10s: 8, Laps led: 142
- NCTS Starts: 3; Poles: 1 (Fall, 2018), Best finish: 12th (Spring, 2018), Laps led: 57
2023 NCS Season Stats
- Starts: 3; Best start: 20th, Best finish: 22nd (Auto Club), Current points position: 30th
- About Sunseeker Resorts: Opening in 2023, Florida’s newest luxury resort located in Charlotte Harbor is the first resort property of Sunseeker Resorts, a wholly owned subsidiary of Allegiant Travel Company. Sunseeker Resort Charlotte Harbor occupies over 22 waterfront acres with 785 guest rooms, including 189 Signature Sunsuites™. Set upon the Peace River and Florida Gulf Coast, this premier resort offers 20 original food and beverage concepts; including seven stand-alone restaurants, eleven bars and lounges, two poolside offerings and a 25,000-square-foot multi-dining experience. Additional hotel amenities include a waterfront promenade, two unique rooftop and waterfront pool experiences, 60,000-square-feet of combined convention space, full-service spa and salon, a 7,100-square-foot state-of-the-art fitness center with four group exercise studios with specialty instructor lead classes, three retail and market shops, and an 18-hole championship level golf club exclusive to hotel guests only. The resort is conveniently located within a short drive of Punta Gorda, Fort Myers, Sarasota, St. Petersburg-Clearwater, and Tampa airports. For more information, visit www.sunseekerresorts.com. Follow us on Instagram: @sunseekerresorts and like us on Facebook: @sunseekerresorts.
- Homecoming: Gragson’s homecoming race at Las Vegas Motor Speedway didn’t go according to plan, as he suffered speeding penalties and a tight racecar throughout the 267-lap event. Unable to recover the track position, he drove the No. 42 Sunseeker Chevrolet home to a 30th place finish.
-Experience in Phoenix: The last time Gragson competed at Phoenix Raceway, he was one of the Xfinity Series Championship 4 contenders. Gragson qualified fourth for the event and led 35 laps but a slow pit stop in the final 40 laps caused him to fall back to eighth. He battled back to finish second at the checkered flag, .397 seconds behind rival Ty Gibbs, who ultimately won 2022 championship. In the Xfinity race one year ago, Gragson led 114 laps on the way to a win, which was the first of eight victories in 2022 for his JR Motorsports team.
-Testing: Gragson’s teammate Erik Jones was selected for a preseason NASCAR test session with the NextGen car at Phoenix Raceway back in January. LEGACY MOTOR CLUB co-owner Jimmie Johnson was also on hand. Gragson did not get behind the wheel but attended the test with his teammates as this weekend Gragson will make his first NASCAR Cup Series start at the 1-mile tri-oval.
-Lambert Knows Best: Gragson’s crew chief Luke Lambert has 18 starts in the NASCAR Cup Series at Phoenix Raceway. He won the 2017 spring race with driver Ryan Newman and has coached multiple drivers to three top-5 and four top-10 finishes throughout his career. In addition to Gragson’s win last season in the Xfinity Series, Lambert also coached driver Elliott Sadler to a win at the 1-mile tri-oval in 2012.
-Truckin’: Gragson has three starts in the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series, where he drove for Kyle Busch Motorsports. His best start and finish came in the fall of 2018 where Gragson won the pole position, led 43 laps, and finished second by a margin of .456 seconds.
- From the Driver’s Seat: “I’ve had some great success at Phoenix and we have some good notes from the No. 43’s test earlier this year. We had a tough race in Vegas last week and have some things to work on, but I love going to Phoenix and have had some really great runs there. We need a solid weekend – a good qualifying session and a good race – and that is our focus.”
Erik Jones, No. 43 Allegiant Chevrolet Camaro ZL1
Phoenix Raceway Stats
- NCS Starts: 13; Best start: 7th; Best Finish: 4th (Fall, 2017); Top 5s: 1; Top 10s: 4; Laps Led: 11
- NXS Starts: 7; Poles: 2 (Spring, 2016 and Fall, 2017); Best Finish: 2nd (Spring, 2016); Top 5s: 5; Top 10s: 7; Laps Led: 109
- NCTS Starts: 3; Wins: 2 (2013 and 2014); Poles: 2 (2014 and 2015); Top 5s: 2; Top 10s: 3; Laps Led: 304
2023 NCS Season Stats
- Starts: 3; Best Start: 22nd; Best Finish: 19th (twice), Current Points Position: 28th
- About Allegiant: Las Vegas-based Allegiant (NASDAQ: ALGT) is an integrated travel company with an airline at its heart, focused on connecting customers with the people, places and experiences that matter most. Since 1999, Allegiant Air has linked travelers in small-to-medium cities to world-class vacation destinations with all-nonstop flights and industry-low average fares. Today, Allegiant’s fleet serves communities across the nation, with base airfares less than half the cost of the average domestic roundtrip ticket. For more information, visit us at Allegiant.com.
- Testing, Testing, 1-2-3: Jones and the No. 43 Allegiant team were one of only seven select participants in a preseason test session at Phoenix Raceway back in January, where teams worked with NASCAR on refining the short track package for the NextGen car. Testing alongside his LEGACY MOTOR CLUB co-owner and part-time teammate in Jimmie Johnson, the duo were able to make the most of the session and update their notebook heading into this weekend’s race.
- Erik Jones Foundation Announcement: The Erik Jones Foundation recently announced Brent Nickola as its newly appointed Executive Director. Nickola recently spent more than two decades at the University of Michigan’s Flint campus as a development and fundraising professional. The Erik Jones Foundation launched in August of 2021 with three goals: to ignite children’s passion for reading, encourage early cancer detection and care and promote animal welfare. For more information or to make a donation to the EJF go to: www.ErikJonesRacing.com/foundation.
- Previous Success at Phoenix: Erik Jones knows how to get it done at Phoenix Raceway, boasting two wins at the facility. Jones put his name on the map by dominating the NASCAR CRAFTSMAN Truck Series event in just his fifth-career start for Kyle Busch Motorsports in 2013. Driving in a limited part-time schedule, Jones led a race high of 84 laps in that race on the way to his first-career win. Then in the following year of 2014, Jones followed that win up with another dominant NCTS win, leading 114 laps from the pole en route to the victory, the fourth of his career. In his NASCAR Xfinity Series tenure, Jones earned two poles at the track, scoring the first in March 2016 and the second in November 2017.
- Erik Jones Appearances: Fans attending the United Rentals Work United 500 will have a chance to meet Erik on race day:
Trackside Live! Stage: Sunday, March 12th – Jones will host a Q&A session for fans from 9:30 AM to 9:45 AM local time at the Trackside Live! stage in the Phoenix Raceway fan zone.
- From the Driver’s Seat: You and your team were able to test back in January, so what are some key takeaways from your time spent in the session to help your team prepare for this weekend?
“Yeah, hopefully we are able to take some of what we learned from the test there as far as this new aero package goes. It’s nice to have some at least have some laps on it compared to the rest of the field and have somewhat of an idea of how the car is going to drive and handle. We did a couple of long runs as well at the test, so we have a baseline of where our car is going to trend. You know, Phoenix was a tough track for our LEGACY MOTOR CLUB team last year, but we got better in the second race, so hopefully with some of this extra knowledge, we can go out there and have a solid run with the No. 43 Allegiant Chevy.”
ABOUT LEGACY MOTOR CLUB:
LEGACY MOTOR CLUB is a team that competes full-time in the NASCAR Cup Series, owned by Maury Gallagher and Jimmie Johnson. LEGACY M.C. operates two full-time entries, the No. 42 Chevrolet of Noah Gragson and the No. 43 Chevrolet of Erik Jones. The team also fields a third part-time entry, the No. 84 Chevrolet, for Johnson’s limited racing schedule.
For the last 75 years, the iconic Petty family name has been synonymous in NASCAR, spanning four generations. Over the course of his driving career, Team Ambassador Richard Petty forever enshrined himself as “The King”, earning 200 wins and seven NASCAR Cup Series championships alongside NASCAR Hall of Fame crew chief Dale Inman. GMS Racing entered the NASCAR Cup Series in 2021, later acquiring Richard Petty Motorsports to form Petty GMS.
The team was rebranded to LEGACY MOTOR CLUB in 2023 with the addition of Johnson, another seven-time NASCAR Cup Series champion, to the ownership structure. As a nod to car clubs of past eras, LEGACY M.C. is an inclusive club for the automobile racing enthusiast, fostering a team environment that will breed success for years to come. LEGACY M.C.’s vision is to honor the rich history of its past and acknowledge the future of the sport with some of today’s most iconic drivers.
LEGACY M.C. operates alongside GMS Racing, which fields three full-time entries in the NASCAR Truck Series. Since the formation of GMS Racing in 2012, Gallagher, along with one of the NASCAR garage’s most accomplished figures, Team President, Mike Beam, built a victorious organization, capturing the 2016 and 2020 NASCAR Truck Series championships, the 2015 ARCA Racing Series championship, as well as the 2019 & 2020 ARCA East championships, accumulating over 65 wins across six national racing circuits.
SOCIAL MEDIA:
To keep up-to-date with the latest news, information and exclusive content, follow LEGACY MOTOR CLUB on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
