NASCAR Cup Series

Four-time Indianapolis 500 winner Rick Mears and legendary chief mechanic Karl Kainhofer were inducted into the Team Penske Hall of Fame this afternoon, joining team owner and founder Roger Penske and the team’s first champion, Mark Donohue, as the first four members of the historical group. The announcement was made during the Verizon IndyCar Series Media Day at the famed Indianapolis Motor Speedway in advance of this weekend’s 101st running of the Indianapolis 500.

DALE EARNHARDT, JR., NO. 88 NATIONWIDE PATRIOTIC CHEVROLET SS, met with members of the media at Charlotte Motor Speedway and discussed having PFC McClamrock’s name on his car windshield for this weekend, the 2018 Hall of Fame Class, what it would mean to win a point race at Charlotte in his final season and many other topics.

Kevin Harvick heated up a cool LiftMaster Pole Night evening on Thursday at Charlotte Motor Speedway. The two-time Coca-Cola 600 winner thrilled the crowd by setting a blistering, 193.424-mph lap to win the pole for the world’s toughest test of man and machine.

Kevin Harvick scored the fastest lap time in Round 3 of qualifying in his No. 4 Stewart-Haas Racing Ford at Charlotte Motor Speedway Thursday with a speed of 193.424 mph, winning his first pole for the Coca-Cola 600.

KEVIN HARVICK – No. 4 Mobil 1 Ford Fusion – “I never thought I’d be close to anyone on that list for years, but I think as you look at our cars have been fast, we’ve qualified well, we’ve had a lot of speed and we just hadn’t put together the weekend. But we’ve been running well and tonight is no different. The car unloaded fast and was very edgy to drive. It was definitely a hairy lap, but I think the main thing is the car went really well through turns three and four and that’s always our goal – to get the car to turn through the middle of three and four and be able to stay in the gas."

Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series team Richard Petty Motorsports will partner with two U.S. Air Force Academy engineering students to conduct research and develop innovative new strategies during the summer competition season.

KEVIN HARVICK – No. 4 Mobil 1 Ford Fusion – “The cars in qualifying were a lot looser than they were in practice and just based on past experience here it was a handful through one and two. I just about lost it the first run, but the car was so good in three and four I didn’t want to overadjust on it and make it too tight down there because you get tighter as the lap runs, so the guys did a good job of making adjustments, but not making it so tight that I couldn’t carry the throttle like I needed to in three and four. So they just did a great job on our Mobil 1 Ford.”

With a speed of 192.260 mph around the 1.5-mile Charlotte Motor Speedway, Chase Elliott qualified his No. 24 NAPA Chevrolet SS to a third place starting position for Sunday’s Coca-Cola 600 Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series race.

KYLE BUSCH, No. 18 M&M's Red, White & Blue Toyota Camry, Joe Gibbs Racing - You could become the eighth driver to sweep the Charlotte race weekend. What would that mean to you? "It would certainly mean a lot. That's what we come to the race track to do is to try to win each and every weekend. But it's been a long, long time since I won at Charlotte, which was never in a Cup car, so finally we got that out of the way, and now we look forward to hopefully being able to make it back‑to‑back. We'll see how it goes. I thought we had some speed there to fire off with practice. A lot of guys kind of caught up to us and got a lot faster, so we've got to gain a little bit more in order to be where we need to."

RYAN BLANEY – No. 21 Motorcraft/Quick Lane Ford Fusion – ARE YOU DUE ON SUNDAY? “I don’t know if you’d call it due. We’ve been pretty strong on mile-and-a-halves this year, which has been a lot of fun to drive the race cars because they’ve been so fast. Last week in the Open and the All-Star Race, we struggled pretty bad all weekend for some reason and could never really get to where we wanted to be.