Race Information
- Round: NASCAR Cup Series race No. 2 of 36
- Track Location: Auto Club Speedway – Fontana, California
- Race Name: Pala Casino 400
- Broadcast: Sunday, February 26th at 3:30 PM ET live on FOX (TV) and MRN (Radio)
- 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
Auto Club Speedway Stats
- Noah Gragson will make his first NASCAR Cup Series start at Auto Club Speedway on Sunday
- NXS Starts: 3, Best start: 6th, Best finish: 2nd (2022), Top 5s: 1, Top 10s: 1, Laps led: 28
2023 NCS Season Stats
- Starts: 1, Best start: 22nd, Best finish: 24th (Daytona), Current points position: 25th
- 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.
- Fontana Preview: Noah Gragson will race for the first time in a NASCAR Cup Series Chevrolet Camaro ZL1 at Auto Club Speedway this weekend. The Las Vegas native, Gragson, has three Xfinity Series starts at the 2-mile oval, leading 25 laps and finishing second one year ago.
- Lambert at California: Crew chief Luke Lambert has eight starts in the NASCAR Cup Series at Auto Club Speedway and a best finish of fifth with driver Ryan Newman in 2015.
- Daytona in the Rear View: In his second DAYTONA 500, Gragson finished 24th, after being collected in the melee of the final laps of the overtime event finishing two laps down with heavy damage on the Wendy’s Chevrolet. Gragson and the No. 42 team sit 25th in the NASCAR Cup Series point standings as the team heads west for the next three events.
- Noah Found the Beef: Gragson spent much time in Daytona fostering the LEGACY MOTOR CLUB partnership with Wendy’s by helping the fast food chain talk about their square hamburger patties appropriately called, “The Beef”. The campaign featured social media videos where Gragson took flight in the Goodyear Blimp using binoculars to find his No. 42 Chevrolet with “The Beef” on the hood. He was also featured in DAYTONA 500 in-race content filmed with FOX talent Michael Waltrip and Jamie Little, and made several appearances at the Wendy’s Winner’s Square activation in the infield of Daytona International Speedway where they gave out free single-patty hamburgers, fries and the special Frosty Gragson designed. To watch the Gragson’s Goodyear Blimp ride in search of “The Beef” click here. - From the Driver’s Seat: “It’s pretty cool that the first race I’ll race a Cup car on this track is the final race for this configuration. There have been a lot of really good races here in the past but the new plans for this track look really fun too. Last year we came up one spot short in the Xfinity Series after having a strong car. Late in the race I slid through the pit box and struggled with the handling with the cloud cover. It’s not been one of my better tracks so a second-place finish was pretty good for us last year. Luke (Lambert, crew chief) and I learned a lot and last year Erik (Jones) and Dave (Elenz) had a great car there last year so we have a good baseline.”
Erik Jones, No. 43 Allegiant Chevrolet Camaro ZL1
Auto Club Speedway Stats
- NCS Starts: 5, Best start: 2nd, Best finish: 3rd, Top 5s: 1, Top 10s: 3, Laps led: 18
- NXS Starts: 3, Poles: 1 (2015), Best finish: 3rd (2015), Top 5s: 2, Top 10s: 2, Laps led: 4
2023 NCS Season Stats
- Starts: 1, Best Start: 25th, Best Finish: 37th (Daytona), Current Points Position: 35th
- 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.
- Jones at Auto Club Speedway: Erik Jones will make his sixth Cup Series start at the 2.0-mile California oval on Sunday, February 26, for the Pala Casino 400. In his previous five starts at the track, Jones has a best career finish of third in this event last season where he started the race from the second position and led 18 laps. Jones has a total of three top-10 finishes and all five starts with finishes in the top 20.
In addition to his Cup Series starts, Jones has three starts in the Xfinity Series with one pole starting position and a career-best finish of third in 2015. All three finishes resulted in top-15 finishes.
- From the Driver’s Seat:
Looking ahead into the season – Fontana, last race on the 2-mile configuration there. Your thoughts?
“Yeah, I don’t know, I’m kind of sad about it in a way. I’ve had a lot of fun racing there. Just been fast there, too, which probably makes it harder, right? But I think it’s a really good track. It’s been a really racy intermediate (track) for us.. it’s more of a speedway almost. But it’s been a really racy track for a lot of years, so I’m sad to see it go, but obviously we will be coming back there on a short track. Hopefully we can get the short track program a little better with the Next Gen car and put on a good show there, too.”
What do you think about it being a short track? Do you think that is what it needs?
“Yeah, I don’t know. I thought the last couple of years, we’ve had a good turnout at that race and I thought the racing was phenomenal last year. We had a really good show there, so I think there will be a good crowd out there this year. But I’m sure the short track people are still going to show up, especially at first. If the racing is good, they’re going to come back again. I don’t have anything against it, necessarily. I’m just going to miss what we have there now.”
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.
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