MOORESVILLE, N.C. (June 4, 2025) – When drivers have their right foot mashed to the floorboard, their throttle wide open as they run more than 190 mph, fuel efficiency is not top of mind. But at Michigan International Speedway in Brooklyn, the conundrum of balancing outright speed and maximizing fuel mileage is ever present.
The 2-mile oval in the state’s Irish Hills region produces some of the fastest speeds on the NASCAR Cup Series schedule. Its sweeping corners, banked at 18 degrees, grants drivers the ability to go wide-open or, at least attempt to, based on how much grip their tires and their own grit allow.
“Michigan is about as fast as it gets,” said Cody Ware, driver of the No. 51 Jacob Construction Ford Mustang Dark Horse for Rick Ware Racing. “You’re just about wide-open, and completely wide open when your car’s right and the track conditions are right.
“It takes a mega-level of commitment to keep your foot to the floor. You’ve got to tell yourself not to lift when you really want to going into the corner.”
As drivers push these boundaries, they also push how far their car’s 18-gallon fuel cell can take them. For as many Michigan races have been won by brute strength, seemingly just as many have been won by those who drive as if there was an egg between their foot and the gas pedal.
“You’ve got to have a car that’s really, really fast if you want to try to save fuel because the only way you’re going to do that is by having less wide-open throttle time,” Ware said. “It’s always good to be driving a Ford at Michigan because those Roush-Yates engines make really good gas mileage. That really helps with strategy. Fords can take less fuel and get more track position on restarts. I think that’s why you’ve seen the Blue Oval in victory lane on so many Sunday afternoons at Michigan.”
Ford owns a series-best 44 Cup victories at Michigan, including a recent streak of nine straight that began in June 2018 and lasted all the way through the 2023 FireKeepers Casino 400.
Fuel strategy delivered more than a few of those wins. Among that run of nine consecutive victories was Kevin Harvick’s win in August 2019 when he stretched his fuel for a 48-lap, green-flag run to the finish.
The ability to go fast, yet still save fuel, is an art that requires in-race adaptation.
“Being smooth is always key at Michigan,” Ware said. “You want to find your rhythm – your throttle points, your lift points, your pickup points – but when you have to break that in an effort to save fuel, it gets tricky. You have to find a whole new set of markers on the track to sustain that new rhythm. You can get jumbled up and make a mistake.”
How does Ware view his ability to save fuel?
“I don’t think there’s ever anyone who walks away from a fuel-mileage race and says, ‘Yeah, I did that perfectly,’ because in the moment you never know. There’s no fuel gauge in the car. We don’t see how many miles-per-gallon we’re getting,” Ware said.
“Sometimes, you slow down too much. Other times, you don’t slow down enough and you run dry. You even try to get ready for the moment and look at historical data before the race weekend even starts, but still, in the moment, it’s almost impossible to really know if you’re doing a good job or not.”
The ultimate validation comes with a trip to victory lane. But is there an asterisk attached to a fuel-mileage win?
“A win is a win is a win,” Ware said. “I don’t care if it’s superspeedway racing, fuel-mileage racing, rain racing – you and your team have done something right if you’ve won a NASCAR Cup Series race. You just don’t fluke into it at this level.”
The FireKeepers Casino 400 will mark Ware’s 121st career Cup Series start, and his drive toward his first Cup Series win begins Saturday at 9:30 a.m. EDT when practice begins. Qualifying for the FireKeepers Casino 400 follows at 10:40 a.m. Sunday’s 200-lap race begins at 2 p.m. All of the action will be broadcast live by Prime Video and SiriusXM NASCAR Radio.
About Rick Ware Racing:
Rick Ware has been a motorsports mainstay for more than 40 years. It began at age 6 when the third-generation racer began his driving career and has since spanned four wheels and two wheels on both asphalt and dirt. Competing in the SCCA Trans Am Series and other road-racing divisions led Ware to NASCAR in the early 1980s, where he finished third in his NASCAR debut – the 1983 Warner W. Hodgdon 300 NASCAR Grand American race at Riverside (Calif.) International Raceway. More than a decade later, injuries would force Ware out of the driver’s seat and into full-time team ownership. In 1995, Rick Ware Racing was formed, and with his wife Lisa by his side, Ware has since built his eponymous organization into an entity that competes full-time in the elite NASCAR Cup Series while simultaneously campaigning successful teams in the Top Fuel class of the NHRA Mission Foods Drag Racing Series, Progressive American Flat Track and FIM World Supercross Championship (WSX).
