Ryan Blaney and the Motorcraft/Quick Lane Racing team started 12th and finished 11th at the Tales of the Turtles 400 at Chicagoland Speedway this afternoon but there was plenty of NASCAR Playoff excitement between the green and checkered flags.
Chase Elliott piloted the No. 24 NAPA Brakes Chevrolet SS to a second-place finish in the 2017 Playoff opener Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series (MENCS) Tale of the Turtles 400 at Chicagoland Speedway. Elliott and his team had a strong day leading twice for 42 circuits around the 1.5-mile venue. Elliott also won Stage 2, which marked his third Stage win of the season thus far earning valuable championship points.
CHASE ELLIOTT, NO. 24 NAPA BRAKES CHEVROLET SS – Finished 2nd - DESCRIBE YOUR RUN: “Yeah, just a huge step in the right direction. Days like this are the days we are going to have to have. There is no way around that. I thought we had a solid day overall. Our car drove good, it had pace, our pit stops were good. I didn’t have anything for Martin (Truex, Jr.). I thought we made the most of our day without some luck I wasn’t going to get around him unless we had a late-race restart or something. I had a solid day and frankly, it is a lot better than we have been doing and we’ve got to have days like this to keep moving forward.”
KEVIN HARVICK, No. 4 Jimmy John’s Ford Fusion -- “Our focus was to make sure that we didn’t make any mistakes today and everybody at Stewart-Haas Racing worked hard to work on that gap between those cars, but we’ve known about that gap and feel like we’ve closed that up and we knew that not making mistakes was gonna go a long way. We saw the 78 made mistakes today, but they had a fast enough car to recover from that. The 18 didn’t recover from his mistakes. I just have to thank everybody from Jimmy John’s, Busch, Ford, Mobil 1, Outback, Hunt Brothers, Morton Buildings and Textron Off Road for all they do for putting us on the race track.
Chevrolet claimed the Manufacturer’s Championship today in the GTS class of the Pirelli World Challenge Series, its second title in the highly competitive production-based series. It also capped a stellar year for the all-new Chevrolet Camaro GT4.R, including two wins and 12 podium finishes in its debut season.
South Boston Speedway crowned its four NASCAR division champions in Saturday night's GCR Presents Spaulding Equipment PASS 150 racing program, with Peyton Sellers of Danville, Virginia emerging as the track's 2017 NASCAR Whelen All American Series Late Model Stock Car Division champion.
Austin Dillon Continues Streak of Top-Six Finishes in NASCAR XFINITY Series Competition at Chicagoland Speedway with Fifth-Place Result in Rheem Chevrolet "I really didn't have anything for the lead pack guys in the Rheem Chevrolet today. I almost feel like our motor was hurting there at the end. Something must have gotten on the grill because I could not go on the last restart. I was wide open through the corner and it just would not go anywhere, so we'll take a look at the car and see what it did there and keep working on it. I'm proud of our guys. We worked hard for that finish. I wish we could have come home first, second or third there. Overall, the speed just wasn't there."- Austin Dillon
Recap: Ryan Blaney and the No. 22 team finished a disappointing 26th place in TheHouse.Com 300 after late race contact took Blaney out of winning contention. After starting the race from the fourth position, Blaney established himself as one of the top contenders as he quickly moved into second place. Blaney’s Mustang showed tremendous short run speed but by the end of the 45 lap segment, he fell back to the fourth position battling a very loose racecar.
COLE CUSTER, No. 00 Haas Automation Ford Mustang “I was happy with that today. That is the best speed we have had all year in the Haas Automation Mustang. It was really good. The four of us up front kind of gave it to the 7 car but that is how it is sometimes. I was happy with our run. I think we showed a lot of speed today.”
Bobby Gossett (No. 44 BSI Racing) might have thought lady luck was not on his side at Canadian Tire Motorsports Park on Saturday when his provisional pole time was disallowed, but she made herself known in the race.
Daniel Hemric continued his consistent road course handiwork with a sixth-place finish on Saturday afternoon at Lime Rock Park and substantially increased his cushion on the provisional Chase cutline.
Christian Eckes notched a gritty fifth-place finish on Saturday afternoon at Lime Rock Park to advance to fourth in the NASCAR CRAFTSMAN Truck Series (NCTS) standings.
