MOORESVILLE, N.C. (Sept. 22, 2025) – It’s been a little more than four months since the NASCAR Cup Series last raced at Kansas Speedway in Kansas City. In this span, spring turned to summer and this week, summer officially turned to fall. The marathon-like Cup Series schedule, however, has remained omnipresent, with stock car racing’s premier division returning to the 1.5-mile oval for Sunday’s Hollywood Casino 400.
The sweeping, D-shaped layout on the outskirts of Kansas City plays host to round No. 31 on the Cup Series’ 36-race calendar, and the fifth race in the 10-race NASCAR Playoffs. For Cody Ware, driver of the No. 51 Evel Knievel Museum Ford Mustang Dark Horse for Rick Ware Racing, the Hollywood Casino 400 is about building off the learnings from his prior visit to the track in May while being mindful of the 12 drivers still vying for a Cup Series title.
“Kansas back in the spring was a learning experience for our whole race team,” Ware said. “We learned a lot of things the hard way during the first third of the season, but our mile-and-a-half program was fairly decent earlier in the year and I feel like it’s gotten better as the year’s gone on.
“After Kansas, we went to Charlotte for the Coke 600 and finished 25th. That’s when we started to turn a corner in terms of the balance of our racecar and some of the other things we were lacking at the start of the season.
“I’m super optimistic to get back to Kansas. Knowing what we know now, we have a much better plan of attack. I feel like we’re in a position to convert our speed into a tangible result.”
Kansas is a track that produces high speeds and daring, side-by-side racing. Drivers are able to explore multiple racing lines, and its smooth surface provides a consistent feel, instilling much-needed confidence when throwing a 3,400-pound racecar into a corner at around 170 mph.
“Kansas is in great condition. No bumps, no wear, you can pretty much run that track from top to bottom,” Ware said. “If you want to run the apron, you can run the apron. If you want to run the wall, you can run the wall. And you can run any combination of lanes in between. It’s really just a very good, solid, smooth, clean racetrack, which makes it easier to extract the car’s full potential.”
A car’s full potential is realized by finding the proper balance between aerodynamic and mechanical grip. Teams manage aero grip by distributing downforce between the front and rear of the car as best as possible, maximizing stability and turn-in at high speeds. Mechanical grip comes from the chassis setup, where the car’s suspension augments and amplifies the capabilities of the tires.
“At mile-and-a-half tracks, aero balance is a huge part of how your day’s going to go, and that’s something we’ve really been working on through the summer,” Ware said. “We have a much better idea of where we are today compared to when we were at Kansas back in May.”
Another new wrinkle to the Cup Series’ return to Kansas is that it’s in the midst of the playoffs. Just 12 of the 36 drivers in the Hollywood Casino 400 are still playoff eligible, creating a race within the 267-lap race. For Ware, that means focusing on his own race while keeping a careful eye on those still chasing a series championship.
“The best way to navigate it all is to have a good car. Ideally, you’re racing hard and you’re on the lead lap,” Ware said.
“Still, you’re always going to try and give those guys a little extra room just because they’re racing for a lot more than we are at the moment. You give those guys respect in a way that, hopefully, when the roles are reversed one day, it gets paid back. That’s important because there really are two separate races going on during the playoffs.”
The on-track preparation for these races begins Saturday with practice at 12 p.m. CDT/1 p.m. EDT followed by qualifying at 1:10 p.m. CDT/2:10 p.m. EDT. TruTV and SiriusXM NASCAR Radio will provide live coverage of both. The Hollywood Casino 400 goes green on Sunday at 2 p.m. CDT/3 p.m. EDT with flag-to-flag coverage delivered by USA 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, FIM World Supercross Championship (WSX) and zMAX CARS Tour.
