NASCAR Cup PR

The NASCAR Cup Series starts itsPlayoff run, while the Xfinity Series and Truck Series have Playoff milestones. The NHRA starts their Countdown to the Championship in Pennsylvania, and Formula DRIFT, ARCA and POWRi are also on track this weekend.

For the first time in 13 years, the No. 6 team has qualified for the NASCAR Playoffs after Ryan Newman and the team raced their way in through the first 26 races, culminating last week at Indy. His Championship hunt begins this weekend at Las Vegas Motor Speedway with the first of three races in the opening round. RFR boasts 16 wins all-time in the Entertainment Capital of the World, having finished in the top-10 in more the half of the races it has competed in at the track.

As Paul Menard begins to wind down his full-time Cup Series career, he and the Menards/Monster team have one main goal in mind – to deliver the Wood Brothers their 100th Cup victory.

Busch has qualified for the postseason in each of the six years of the current elimination format, with a best championship finish of seventh in 2016 and ’18. … Elliott, Bowman and Byron are Hendrick Motorsports drivers, while Busch and Larson drive for Chip Ganassi Racing. … At 21 years, 9 months, Byron is the youngest of the 16 playoff qualifiers. Elliott, 23, is the next youngest. Team Chevy drivers’ average age is 27.6; the other 11 qualifiers’ average age is 31.2 years.

Elliott on tracks he is looking forward to: “The next one, really. I think you have to have the ability to win all of them, or the majority of them, to have a shot at Homestead. We just need to have that mindset going in. This first round is going to be tough. Richmond and Charlotte haven’t been our best two racetracks, so it’s important for us to not overlook it and put some emphasis on the first round and not just think we’re going to breeze right through.”

“It's typically pretty hard to pass at Las Vegas. You've got to find the right speed in the car both in traffic and running by yourself. Back in March, we had a good car but made some mistakes that we couldn't recover from. We've made a lot of progress on our No. 34 Ford Mustang since then and I'm ready to show our partners at Love's Travel Stops and International Trucks what we are capable of at this track."

Two Playoff races and a regular-season finale highlight a NASCAR tripleheader this weekend at Las Vegas Motor Speedway.  The Gander Outdoors Truck Series will conduct a first round elimination race on Friday as their Playoff field gets trimmed from eight to six.  That’s followed by the final regular-season race for the NASCAR XFINITY Series on Saturday, and the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series Playoff opener on Sunday.

Stenhouse has eight-career Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series (MENCS) starts at Las Vegas with an average starting position of 14.8 and average finishing position of 21.1.

DIBENEDETTO BY THE NUMBERS: In five Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series career starts at Las Vegas, Matt DiBenedetto has an average start of 29.8 and an average finish of 24.8 with his best finish of 21st coming in March’s event earlier this season.  He’s completed 1,327 of 1,340 (99.0 percent) career laps at the 1.5-mile track.

Newman makes his 21st MENCS start at Las Vegas on Sunday. In 20 prior events, he has an average finish of 15.9 with nine top-10 and four top-five finishes.