NASCAR Cup Series

With a 16th-place finish last weekend at Dover, Marcos Ambrose and the No. 9 STANLEY Ford team continue to show improvement. Overcoming a tough weekend to finish 16th shows that the team is getting stronger.

Aric Almirola and the No. 43 Nathan's Famous team scored their fourth consecutive Top-15 finish last weekend at Dover. The team looks to keep up the consistency and hopes to improve with a Top-10 finish this weekend at Pocono (Penn.) Raceway.

The 2.5-mile track located in the Pocono Mountains is unique in many ways to other tracks on the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series circuit. With some of the longest straightaways and a wide pit road, the track is proud of its triangular shape, leading to its popular moniker, the Tricky Triangle.

Joey Logano, driver of the No. 22 Shell Pennzoil Ford Fusion, was a guest of the NFL’s Detroit Lions at OTA practice Tuesday morning, promoting the upcoming Quicken Loans 400 NASCAR Sprint Cup Series race at Michigan International Speedway.

“It was great to get up there and get a team test in with Clint and Jeff. It’s been a few years since I have been to Pocono. I have never raced on the new surface. I had to really take a few laps just to feel the track out.

In 132 starts at Pocono Raceway, RCR team owner Richard Childress has two wins, both with Dale Earnhardt, who won on July 19, 1987 and July 18, 1993. Additionally, RCR has earned one pole award, 16 top-five and 52 top-10 finishes with 599 laps led at the uniquely-shaped, three-turn track.

“I’m looking forward to Pocono. It’s been an up and down track for us, but with the new repave I’ve liked it a lot better and we’ve done a lot better. We’re struggling with our cars right now and we are struggling to get them to turn. We are looking for speed and hopefully a high-speed place like Pocono will play into our hands a bit. We’ll try and knock off a top-five finish and get ourselves back towards the front.”

“Last year was the first time I had raced at Pocono in the Cup car and I felt like I learned a lot during those two races. Pocono was recently repaved which has made it a fast triangle-shaped track. Pocono is tricky because all three corners are different. After last weekend it would be great if we could leave Pocono with a top-10 finish.”

“It’s definitely a tough racetrack,” Allmendinger said. “You can’t really make anything perfect. You just try to get all three corners good. It seems that if you make one perfect, the other two are horrible.”

“I think seeing the success that the team has had there in the past and seeing the success that Hendrick Motorsports has had, I think Pocono has probably been one of the places on the schedule that I’m looking forward to going to the most this year.