NASCAR O'Reilly Series

Montreal Preview: The FedEx Racing colors will return to Canada this weekend for Saturday’s NASCAR Nationwide Series race at Circuit Gilles Villeneuve in Montreal. Joe Gibbs Racing driver Michael McDowell will pilot the #18 FedEx Express Toyota in the 74-lap, 200-mile event on the 2.7-mile permanent street course. McDowell -- a Phoenix native -- has recorded four top-10 finishes in four Nationwide starts this season, including a season-best runner-up result at Road America in Elkhart Lake, Wis., in June. McDowell is making his fourth Series start at Montreal on Saturday. His best finish of third came in last season’s event after starting fifth.

Justin Allgaier and the BRANDT team took to the 2.45-mile road course at Watkins Glen with hopes of continuing the momentum they had been building through the summer months. The weather threatened to dampen their plans, but moved out of the Finger Lake region of New York in time for the 82-lap race on Saturday. After running in the top-15 for the majority of the event, leading one lap and surviving an exciting finish, Allgaier brought home another top-10 finish for the BRANDT team, scoring a ninth-place result. Allgaier gained four points on the leader in the NASCAR Nationwide Series (NNS) point standings, but remains fifth, 74 points back from first.

Michael Annett on Going to Montreal: “I always look forward to going to Montreal because it is different than any other track we go to on the circuit. We just came off a decent road course finish in Watkins Glen and we learned a lot throughout that race that we can apply to this weekend’s event. Montreal has it’s own set of new challenges that we don’t face anywhere else, and it is the final road course of the year."

DODGE QUOTES: “We just need to keep our heads down and do the right things. You come to a couple of road course races in the Nationwide Series and even in the Cup series, it’s about staying on the island all day long and not letting somebody use you up but also being smart enough to let ‘em go when you know it’s somebody that’s going to give you problems and generally doesn’t care if they finish the race or not. I feel good about our progression, how we’ve been. The good thing is that we’ve had good reliability out of our Dodge engines and out of our race cars. I’ve felt really good about the road course testing that we’ve done.” -Sam Hornish, Jr.

Final Road Course Race of 2012….Eric McClure and the No. 14 team head north of the border to Montreal, Canada to participate in the final road course race of the season at Circuit Gilles Villeneuve. This weekend marks McClure’s 188th start in NNS competition and his third at the 15-turn course.

TOYOTA TIDBITS THREE TOP-10S AT THE GLEN: Three Camry drivers claimed top-10 results in Sunday's NASCAR Sprint Cup Series (NSCS) road course race at New York's Watkins Glen International. Michael Waltrip Racing (MWR) teammates Clint Bowyer and Martin Truex Jr. finished fourth and 10th, respectively , and Kyle Busch claimed a seventh-place result.

Skimming through the entry list for this weekend's NASCAR Nationwide Series race in Montreal one may find a few names that jump off the page. What do Ron Fellows, Jacques Villeneuve, Alex Tagliani, and Patrick Carpentier all have in common this weekend?

Guthrie’s Sixth-Place Showing 35 Years Ago At Bristol Remains Best By Female Driver - When Janet Guthrie arrived at Bristol Motor Speedway in April of 1977 for the spring NASCAR race, it was the very first time she had ever laid eyes on the track.

This week Roush Fenway travels north to its ‘home track’ of Michigan International Speedway in the Sprint Cup Series and for road course action at Montreal in the Nationwide Series.

Patrick Carpentier will pilot RAB Racing chassis No. 54 in Saturday's NAPA AUTO PARTS 200 NASCAR Nationwide Series race. Purchased from Michael Waltrip Racing, Carpentier piloted this Toyota Camry to a 32nd-place finish at Circuit Gilles Villeneuve last August. Misfortune struck the Quebec native in the late-stages of the 74-lap contest when he was spun by another competitor which resulted in the less-than-desired finish.