NASCAR Cup PR

The Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series Playoffs have reached the halfway mark and three Ford drivers are part of the Round of 8, which begins this weekend at Martinsville Speedway.  Joey Logano, Kevin Harvick and Ryan Blaney are still in contention for this year’s championship.  The NASCAR Gander Outdoors Truck Series will also be in action at the half-mile oval as the Round of 6, featuring Ford’s Matt Crafton, continues with its second of three races.

Joey Logano experienced a full range of emotions on Sunday afternoon at Kansas Speedway. Logano started deep in the field, won Stage 1, and scored a 17th-place finish after considerable damage to the Shell-Pennzoil Ford late in the race. He scored 14 valuable stage points on the afternoon, which were critical for the No. 22 team to advance into the Round of 8 for the second consecutive season. Logano stays alive in his quest to become the first driver to successfully defend a championship since the playoff format was adopted in 2014.

A wreck just before the end of Stage 1 rendered Ryan Newman's No. 6 ROUSH Performance Ford Mustang unable to continue, and relegated the driver to a 40th-place finish at Kansas Speedway.

After the race was sent into overtime with two green-white-checkered attempts, Ricky Stenhouse Jr. picked up six positions in the final six laps to take the checkered flag in the 16th position.

Paul Menard and the No. 21 Menards/Atlas Roofing Shingles Ford Mustang flirted with a top-10 finish before falling back to 18th over two eventful green-white-checkered-flag runs to the finish of Sunday’s Hollywood Casino 400 at Kansas Speedway.

Denny Hamlin earned his fifth win of the season, second at Kansas Speedway and 36th of his career this afternoon.

"Man, what a day. I was excited about our top-10 starting position, but we were just way too loose to start the race and lost a lot of positions. We ended up falling one lap down to the leader and struggled all day to earn our lap back. Crew chief Danny Stockman called for a lot of adjustments but no matter how many my crew made, we just never got a solid feel for the handling of the Roland Chevrolet. In the closing laps, we had to make a last-minute pit stop for tires after we got a flat from a multi-car incident. We were able to still finish in the top 20, and I'm really proud of everyone at RCR and ECR for working so hard all weekend."-Austin Dillon

CHASE ELLIOTT, NO. 9 NAPA AUTO PARTS CAMARO ZL1 – Finished 2nd “Honestly, I was just trying to win the race and the rest of it just kind of fell into our hands a little bit, with the 2 (Brad Keselowski) having a misfortune and the 22 (Joey Logano) being in that crash. Luckily, we got a good bit of stage points in that first one, got five more in the second stage, and battled for the win. I was proud of that. We weren’t the best car by any stretch, but I did feel like we came here with the mindset to win and I was proud of the fact that we came here and fought for a win.”

RYAN BLANEY, No. 12 Menards/Dickies Ford Mustang -- Finished 21st (Advanced to Playoff Round of 8) “It was an up and down day. We didn’t start off great but we got better throughout the race. We were able to get up to second there but the 11 was pretty phenomenal and I could only make time at the wall and had to pound the fence to do anything."

Daniel Hemric was the fastest qualifier for Sunday’s Hollywood Casino 400 Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series (MENCS) playoff race at Kansas Speedway with a quick lap around the 1.5-mile tri-oval of 178.047 mph in 30.329 aboard his No. 8 Caterpillar Camaro ZL1. He was the only driver in the 40-car field to surpass the speed of 178 mph, and it marked the first MENCS career pole win for Hemric.