JUSTIN HALEY | KAZ GRALA
Watkins Glen Advance
Event Overview
● Event: Go Bowling at The Glen (Round 28 of 36)
● Time/Date: 3 p.m. EDT on Sunday, Sept. 15
● Location: Watkins Glen (N.Y.) International
● Layout: 2.45-mile, seven-turn road course
● Laps/Miles: 90 laps / 220.5 miles
● Stage Lengths: Stage 1: 20 laps / Stage 2: 20 laps / Final Stage: 50 laps
● TV/Radio: USA / MRN / SiriusXM NASCAR Radio
Justin Haley, Driver of the No. 51 Pinnacle Home Improvements Ford Mustang Dark Horse
● Justin Haley will make his fourth start at Watkins Glen (N.Y.) International with the No. 51 Pinnacle Home Improvements team in Sunday afterrnoon’s Go Bowling at The Glen. Haley earned an 18th-place finish at The Glen in 2022, marking his best result on the 2.45-mile, seven-turn road course.
● The 25-year-old racer from Winamac, Indiana, has shown strength on road courses this year. Haley qualified 13th, his best effort this season, and ran inside the top-10 in the first road-course event of the year March 24 at Circuit of theAmericas (COTA) in Austin, Texas. He crossed the finish line 17th but the car was disqualified following post-race technical inspection. The No. 51 faced steering issues at Sonoma (Calif.) Raceway in the second road-course event of 2024, but when the NASCAR Cup Series visited the downtown streets of Chicago in July for the Grant Park 165, Haley was back to form. He qualified 23rd, found his way into the top-five and was in position to earn his best finish of the season before a costly penalty during late-race pit stops. Haley left Chicago with a 16th-place finish.
● Haley has two top-five finishes and three top-10s in 22 career Cup Series road-course starts. Best of those was his runner-up finish in last year’s inaugural Chicago Street Race, in which he led 23 laps.
● In the NASCAR Xfinity Series, Haley owns three starts at Watkins Glen with a best finish of ninth in 2021. He has four top-fives and 10 top-10s in 16 career Xfinity road-course starts, including two runner-up finishes – 2020 at Indianapolis Motor Speedway, and 2021 at the Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course in Lexington.
● The No. 51 Pinnacle Home Improvements team enters Watkins Glen after a 12th-place effort at Atlanta. The result was Haley’s second-best finish of the season behind two ninth-place finishes in the spring races at Darlington (S.C.) Raceway and World Wide Technology Raceway in Madison, Illinois. Haley’s average finish to date (22.9) is 4.1 positions higher than any other driver who has made 10 or more starts in a season for Rick Ware Racing (RWR) in team history.
● Pinnacle Home Improvements returns to the No. 15 this weekend after last appearing at Richmond (Va.) Raceway. Headquartered in Alpharetta, Georgia, Pinnacle is a direct-to-homeowner provider of home improvement services, with a focus on roof replacement, window replacement and other exterior services for existing single-family homes. With additional offices in Knoxville, Chattanooga, and Nashville, Tennessee, as well as Charlotte, North Carolina, the company’s existing service footprint covers a range of attractive Southeast U.S. markets, with planned expansion into new Southeastern markets.
Kaz Grala, Driver of the No. 15 Meat N’ Bone Ford Mustang Dark Horse
● Kaz Grala is set to make his first Cup Series start at Watkins Glen in the No. 15 Meat N’ Bone Ford Mustang Dark Horse. In five starts on road courses in the Cup Series, the 25-year-old has one top-10 finish, earned in his first start in the series. It came in 2020 on the Daytona (Fla.) International Speedway road course, where Grala started 10th in the field of 39 cars piloting the No. 3 Richard Childress Racing entry, and he led three laps en route to a seventh-place finish.
● Grala has finished on the lead lap in all three road-course events this season. He finished 27th at COTA, 23rd at Sonoma and 26th at Chicago.
● Though Grala has yet to compete at Watkins Glen in the Cup Series, he has three NASCAR Xfinity Series starts at the track, which include a best finish of fifth, earned in 2022. The Boston native has four top-fives and eight top-10s in 19 Xfinity Series starts on road courses with a best finish of fourth earned in 2020 at Road America in Elkhart Lake, Wisconsin.
● Road-course racing is nothing new for Grala. In 2014, at the age of 15, Grala became the youngest driver ever to compete in an IMSA event when he drove in the Michelin Pilot Challenge. Two years later, he made his debut in the Rolex 24 At Daytona, where he was the youngest driver in the field, co-piloting a GT3-class car for RWR president Robby Benton.
● Meat N’ Bone returns to the No. 15 RWR Ford Mustang Dark Horse after debuting with Grala at New Hampshire Motor Speedway in Loudon on June 23. Meat N’ Bone is an online butcher shop offering premium quality meats delivered locally and shipped nationally. Customers can order from over 300 products, including USDA Prime and Wagyu A5, and have it delivered fresh to their door. Meat N’ Bone also offers local pickup and a personalized retail experience in its boutiques.
Rick Ware Racing Notes
● It’s Championship Weekend for the Progressive American Flat Track (AFT) series, which is set to make its inaugural visit to Lake Ozark Speedway in Eldon, Missouri. AFT Singles rider Kody Kopp enters the weekend with a 22-point lead in the standings. The two-time defending champion will need to earn only a minimal number of points at the Parts Plus Lake Ozark Short Track presented by Arrowhead Brass & Arby’s to become the first-ever three-time AFT Singles champion. Mission Foods SuperTwins rider Briar Bauman looks for one more win to close the season. Though he sits fourth in the standings, with a third win he could end the season in a three-way tie for most wins in 2024.
● The Mission Foods NHRA Drag Racing Series heads this weekend to Maple Grove Raceway in Reading, Pennsylvania, with Clay Millican riding a wave of momentum following his Top Fuel win at the prestigious U.S. Nationals in Indianapolis on Labor Day Weekend. It was the seventh career win for the native of Drummonds, Tennessee, and it officially locked him into the Countdown to the Championship playoffs, which kick off this weekend and concludes Nov. 15-17 with the In-N-Out Burger NHRA Finals in Pomona, California.
● Rick Ware has been a motorsports mainstay for more than 40 years. It began at age six 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 seat and into fulltime team ownership. In 1995, Rick Ware Racing was formed, and with wife Lisa by his side, Ware has since built his eponymous organization into an entity that fields two fulltime entries in the 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), where RWR won the 2022 SX2 championship with rider Shane McElrath.
Justin Haley, Driver Q&A
There has been talk of more tire wear than we’ve seen in past races at Watkins Glen this weekend. Does that change how you and the team will execute strategy?
“It’s really hard to pass at Watkins Glen. A lot of the wrecks we saw in the past were guys getting aggressive to gain position and it just going wrong. Like we see on ovals, you can get to someone but can’t make the pass. It should help with that. Conserving tires would be more important and would give a few options as far as pit strategy. You know all the ways it can be different, but you really never know what you’ll get until we’re on track.”
You have had some positive moments at the road-course events this season. What will it take to come out of Watkins Glen with a finish that reflects that?
“Just putting it all together. Every time we’ve just had one thing go wrong that takes that finish away from us. I think we can do it. I have all the confidence in the world in Chris (Lawson, crew chief) and the guys on the No. 51 team. We’ll have some things to work on during practice with the changes that have been made with the track, but we’re all in that situation. We’ve had a lot of speed and I really enjoy road-course racing, so I think we can leave with a good finish.”
Kaz Grala, Driver Q&A
You’ve raced at Watkins Glen in NASCAR and other series. Where does it rank on your list of road courses?
“Watkins Glen is one of my favorite tracks. I’ve gotten the chance to race there many times, run a few endurance races and got a top-five in Xfinity a few years ago. It’s just a really fun track to drive and is a place that will really keep you on your toes.”
What do you hope to achieve at Watkins Glen and in the last stretch of races to close out the season?
“I’d like to run more consistently at the front and get a top-10 or two. Those are lofty goals, but we’ve come close and I feel like we’re on the path of getting there.”
