Official Release

Johnson on his 600th Cup start:“I’m not huge into milestones but I really can’t believe I am sitting here at 600 starts. All I ever wanted to do was win a race and now we are here with seven championships, 83 wins and hopefully there are many more to come. I’m proud to have come all this way with one sponsor in Lowe’s and hope that this weekend will be a good one for this No. 48 team. I definitely want to try to get more wins for Lowe’s before they exit the sport.”

Pocono Preview: The Series returns to Pocono Raceway for Sunday’s 400-mile race around the 2.5-mile “Tricky Triangle”. Hamlin is looking to rebound from his 35th-place finish that resulted from a late-race crash in the June event and add a fifth victory at Pocono to his impressive résumé of 10 top-five and 15 top-10 finishes at the Pennsylvania track.

KAHNE BY THE NUMBERS: In 29 Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series career starts at Pocono, Kasey Kahne has an average start of 11.8 and an average finish of 19.0. He’s completed 4,829 of 5,110 (94.5 percent) career laps, and has led for a total of 219 laps. Kahne has earned two poles, two wins (June 2008 and August 2013), five top-five and nine top-10 finishes at the 2.5-mile track located in Long Pond, PA.

Gallagher and the No. 23 team will utilize chassis no. 222; this chassis has been raced three times this season, twice by Spencer Gallagher at ISM Raceway (Start:12th/Finish:14th) and at Richmond Raceway (Start:17th/Finish:17th) then by Justin Haley in his NXS debut at Iowa Speedway (Start:13th/Finish:12th).

Stenhouse has 11 Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series (MENCS) starts at Pocono Raceway with an average starting position of 21.9 and average finishing position of 22.7.

AJ ALLMENDINGER, NO. 47 KROGER CLICKLIST CAMARO ZL1 - RACING AT POCONO RACEWAY: "It's always interesting because you never know what kind of weather you're going to get at Pocono Raceway," Allmendinger said. "The first race weekend this season in June, we had decent weather conditions. However, we have had some seasons where it's gotten really hot at the first race and really slick on the first weekend, and you go back for the second race weekend and it can be cooler."

Microsoft will become the Official Cloud Partner of Hendrick Motorsports after renewing its marketing and technical relationship with the 12-time NASCAR Cup Series champions for the 2018 and 2019 racing seasons.

The No. 2 team will unload chassis no. 307 this weekend at Pocono Raceway. Coughlin has raced this chassis three previous times in 2018, collecting two top-10 finishes and three top-15 finishes. This is also the same chassis that Coughlin secured a career-best qualifying effort of second at Kansas Speedway back in May.

The Gander Outdoors 400 race weekend, taking place at ‘The Tricky Triangle’ from July 27-29, is jam packed with fan-driven activities and thrilling on-track activity. The major races each day include the ModSpace 150 ARCA Racing Series presented by Menards (ARCA) race on Friday, the Gander Outdoors 150 NASCAR Camping World Series (NCWTS) race on Saturday and the Gander Outdoors 400 Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series (MENCS) race on Sunday. 

Richard Petty Motorsports and STP today unveiled a historic look for NASCAR's throwback weekend. The scheme will take fans back to the beginning of one of NASCAR's longest partnerships. Darrell "Bubba" Wallace Jr. will race the first-ever STP scheme during the Southern 500 at Darlington Raceway on Labor Day weekend. The car was unveiled at the NASCAR Hall of Fame.