COREY LAJOIE | CODY WARE
Las Vegas Advance
Event Overview
● Event: South Point 400 (Round 33 of 36)
● Time/Date: 2 p.m. EDT on Sunday, Oct. 20
● Location: Las Vegas Motor Speedway
● Layout: 1.5-mile oval
● Laps/Miles: 267 laps/400.5 miles
● Stage Lengths: Stage 1: 80 laps / Stage 2: 85 laps / Final Stage: 102 laps
● TV/Radio: NBC / PRN / SiriusXM NASCAR Radio
Corey LaJoie, Driver of the No. 51 Mighty Fire Breaker Ford Mustang Dark Horse
● Corey LaJoie heads to Las Vegas Motor Speedway behind the wheel of the No. 51 Mighty Fire Breaker Ford Mustang Dark Horse. Sunday’s South Point 400 NASCAR Cup Series race will mark LaJoie’s 14th NASCAR Cup Series start at the 1.5-mile oval.
● In 13 previous starts at Las Vegas, LaJoie has one top-15 finish, five top-20s and six top-25s. The North Carolina native has a best-finish of 15th at Las Vegas, earned in March 2022.
● Mighty Fire Breaker LLC returns to the No. 51 Ford Mustang Dark Horse at Las Vegas. Mighty Fire Breaker is a leading provider of environmentally safe and sustainable solutions for proactive wildfire defense. The Mighty Fire Breaker portfolio includes EPA Safer Choice Certified Citrotech® Wildfire Inhibitors, mobile and stationary spray application systems, and GPS-tracking, recording and mapping technologies that support intelligent, proactive wildfire defense management practices.
Cody Ware, Driver of the No. 15 Evel Knievel / Parts Plus Ford Mustang Dark Horse
● Cody Ware, driver of the No. 15 Evel Knievel / Parts Plus Ford Mustang Dark Horse for RWR, will make his seventh Cup Series start at Las Vegas in the South Point 400. He has a best finish of 26th at Las Vegas, earned in March 2022.
● Ware also owns two NASCAR Xfinity Series starts at Las Vegas – in March 2015 and 2016.
● In eight Cup Series starts this season, Ware has an average finish of 21st, bolstered by a career-best fourth-place finish at Daytona (Fla.) International Speedway on Aug. 24 and a 12th-place result two weeks ago at Talladega (Ala.) Superspeedway.
Rick Ware Racing Notes
● The Mission Foods NHRA Drag Racing Series held its Texas Fall Nationals last weekend at Texas Motorplex in Ennis. Top Fuel driver Clay Millican was the seventh-ranked qualifier heading into Sunday’s eliminations. The Parts Plus team reached the final round for the third time this season, locking up valuable points in the Countdown to the Championship playoff standings. Millican sits sixth with two events left in the season.
● 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.
Corey LaJoie, Driver Q&A
When you return to some of these tracks for the second time in the season, do you have a better idea of what to expect?
“I think it depends. We pretty much know what to expect when we go to an intermediate track. The racing is the same and everyone has had all year to work on their package for this race, so now we get to see who has learned the most. If someone has figured out how to gain track position on a restart and not fall off too much over the long run, that’s probably who we’ll see up front at the end.”
At a track like Las Vegas, do you value speed or a good-handling car?
“You definitely need speed. It’s a fast track and you don’t want to be too far behind on that front. But, you need a car that handles really well. The track is rough, it gets dirty and there are a few different lines you can run so it can get busy. I’d say handling. Speed is always important, but Las Vegas is a track where you need your car to be in a good place.”
Cody Ware, Driver Q&A
Las Vegas will mark your first true intermediate track of the season. How are you feeling headed into Sunday’s race?
“Vegas is one of my favorite tracks to go to on the schedule. It’s one of the few 1.5-mile tracks that we go to that I feel has remained mostly unchanged in the last 10 years. After losing Atlanta to superspeedway-style racing, and the overhaul to Texas in turns one and two, I feel like it’s one of the few classic speedways we still race at.”
What makes Las Vegas different from the other so-called cookie-cutter mile-and-half tracks?
“The bumps in turns one and two give it character and make handling and your shock package important. The sand and heat of the desert make it a relatively low-grip track at times, especially in the heat of the day. I’m excited to see if it’s going to be a race of raw speed, or if we’re going to have long green-flag runs where we’ll see a lot of strategy come into play. Either way, I think it’s going to be a good weekend for us at RWR. Our intermediate program has come a long way this year.”
