AUTO CLUB SPEEDWAY NOTES
Saturday, February 25 – NASCAR Xfinity Series, 5 p.m. ET (FS1)
Sunday, February 26 – NASCAR Cup Series, 3:30 p.m. ET (FOX)
The annual West Coast swing begins this weekend as Auto Club Speedway hosts the NASCAR Cup and NASCAR Xfinity Series. This will mark the final event on the two-mile oval, which made its NASCAR Cup Series debut on June 22, 1997, as plans for a new short track configuration continue to take shape.
LOGANO AND BUESCHER 1-2 IN CUP STANDINGS
Two Ford drivers lead the NASCAR Cup Series standings after the first week as Team Penske’s Joey Logano and Roush Fenway Keselowski’s Chris Buescher hold down the first and second spots, respectively. Logano finished second to race-winner Ricky Stenhouse Jr. in Sunday’s Daytona 500 while Buescher scored points in all three stages before ultimately finishing fourth. Ryan Blaney is seventh in the point standings with Kevin Harvick one spot behind as Ford features four drivers in the top 10.
CHASE BRISCOE ON THE FINAL CUP RACE AROUND THE 2-MILE AUTO CLUB OVAL
“Auto Club is just so fun from a driver’s standpoint because it’s so slick. It’s wore out. It’s rough. You just bounce around. You literally run wherever on the racetrack, especially with the Next Gen car. I thought that it was just a really well put together racetrack for those cars, so I’m bummed. It’s one of my favorite tracks for sure to go to just because I feel like that’s one of the tracks where you as a driver can make quite a bit of a difference.”
RYAN BLANEY ON WHY DRIVERS ENJOY RACING AT AUTO CLUB SPEEDWAY
“It is a big, slick, multiple lane groove race track. It is bumpy and rough and drivers love that stuff. The reason why all of us loved Atlanta before they repaved it. Why all of us loved Texas before they repaved it. Chicago, we don’t even go there anymore but all of us loved that place. Old worn out tracks with a bunch of grooves and lanes are what drivers like. It is challenging and you are sliding around and there is room to race. Drivers enjoy that.”
KEVIN HARVICK
Bakersfield native Kevin Harvick goes into this weekend with 60 career NASCAR Cup Series victories and two of those have come on tracks in his home state. Harvick has one career NASCAR Cup Series win at Auto Club Speedway (2011) and another one at Sonoma Raceway, which happened to be his first win with Ford in 2017.
COLE CUSTER
Cole Custer grew up in Ladera Ranch, which is about 70 miles north of San Diego, and has enjoyed success at NASCAR’s top levels. He’s won two of the last three NASCAR Xfinity Series events at Auto Club Speedway (2019, 2022) and in four starts has an average starting position of 3.3. In addition to his two victories, Custer also has a sixth-place finish in 2018.
FOUR TIRES PROPELS KESELOWSKI
Thanks to a pair of cautions that resulted in two green-white-checker restarts, and a gamble by crew chief Paul Wolfe in the closing laps, Brad Keselowski came out of nowhere to win the Auto Club 400 in 2015. Kurt Busch looked ticketed for victory as he led the field coming to the white flag, but caution for debris came out before he crossed the start-finish line, resulting in a green-white-checker finish and a flurry of action on pit road. The decision for crew chiefs was whether to take two or four tires, and most of the leaders decided on two. Wolfe saw that and felt the only way his team could win was if they did something different, so he ordered four. Even though it put them back in 17th on the ensuing restart, the fresh tires enabled him to charge up to sixth on the restart. When the rear bumper of Kyle Larson’s Chevrolet flew off and brought out another caution, it set up Keselowski who had the freshest tires and made all the right moves on the restart to get past Harvick and Busch to win for the 17th time in his career.
KENSETH GOES 2-FOR-2 TO START 2009
Matt Kenseth followed up his first Daytona 500 victory by taking the checkered flag in the Auto Club 500 one week later on Feb. 22, 2009. Kenseth became the fifth driver in NASCAR Cup Series history to follow a Daytona 500 victory with another win the following week. On this day, he and Jeff Gordon had the two best cars on the track, but Kenseth’s advantage came on pit road, where his crew continually got him out first. Kenseth led a race-high 84 laps as he went on to post his third all-time win at the two-mile track.
BIFFLE RALLIES FROM ONE LAP DOWN
Despite falling a lap down, Greg Biffle found a way to not only get back to the front, but hold off a charging Jimmie Johnson to win the Auto Club 500 on Feb. 27, 2005. Biffle led a parade of four Roush Fords in the Top 10 as Kurt Busch finished third, Carl Edwards fifth and Mark Martin seventh. Biffle put himself in position to win when he stayed out on what proved to be the final caution of the day. Busch had the lead on the restart with 29 laps to go, but Biffle was able to pass him six circuits later.
ON THE MARK
Ford got its first checkered flag at Auto Club Speedway in the track’s second year of existence when Mark Martin won the NASCAR Cup Series race on May 3, 1998. Martin was in a class by himself that afternoon as he led 165 of the 200 laps en route to what was his 25th career victory. In all, six Fords finished in the top-10 as Jeremy Mayfield finished second, Chad Little, Geoffrey Bodine, and Johnny Benson were sixth, seventh and eighth, respectively, while Jeff Burton ended up 10th.
HERBST BECOMES FIRST FORD DRIVER SINCE…
Riley Herbst will likely never forget his NASCAR Cup Series debut. That’s because after being involved in a 13-car accident on lap 204 of Sunday’s Daytona 500, Herbst recovered to finish 10th driving the No. 15 Mustang for Rick Ware Racing. That came on the heels of a sixth-place effort in Saturday’s NASCAR Xfinity Series event with Stewart-Haas Racing. As a result, Herbst became the first full-time NXS driver since Austin Cindric in 2021 to have a top-10 run in both of NASCAR’s top two series in the same weekend. Cindric won the Indianapolis Road Course NXS event on Saturday and followed that up with a ninth-place Cup effort the following day.
FORD’S AUTO CLUB
CUP SERIES WINNERS
1998 – Mark Martin
2000 – Jeremy Mayfield
2001 – Rusty Wallace
2003 – Kurt Busch
2004 – Elliott Sadler
2005 – Greg Biffle
2006 – Matt Kenseth
2007 – Matt Kenseth
2008 – Carl Edwards
2009 – Matt Kenseth
2015 – Brad Keselowski
FORD’S AUTO CLUB
XFINITY SERIES WINNERS
2002 – Scott Riggs
2003 – Matt Kenseth
2004 – Greg Biffle (Sweep)
2005 – Mark Martin and Carl Edwards
2006 – Greg Biffle (1)
2007 – Matt Kenseth (1)
2018 – Joey Logano
2019 – Cole Custer
2022 – Cole Custer
