Harrison Burton and the No. 21 DEX Imaging team are headed to Phoenix Raceway, hoping to build on their most recent performance at Las Vegas Motor Speedway, where they recovered from some mid-race misfortunes to post a 16th-place finish.

Burton, making his first appearance at Phoenix in a Cup Series car, said he believes his past races at the unique one-mile track will be a confidence booster for him and the DEX Imaging team. In his four Xfinity Series starts there he has a runner-up finish and a third-place finish, along with a sixth-place run and a 12th. He also has a third-place finish at Phoenix in NASCAR’s truck series.

“Phoenix is a great track for me personally,” Burton said. “I love it there, and building on the past race at Vegas is important.”

“Obviously 16th isn’t what our goal was, but to finish the race and show flashes of the speed we need was great.”

“I’m excited to move forward with the group and carry the momentum.”

He’s also proud to be representing DEX Imaging, which has been his primary sponsor in all but one of his prior Phoenix races, including two in the K&N Series.

“Every time DEX is on the car it’s pretty special,” Burton said. “They have been with me since I was a kid, so to get to try to have success with that group in Cup is very fun.”

Practice for the Ruoff Mortgage 500K is set for Saturday at 11:30 a.m. (1:30 p.m. Eastern Time) to be followed by qualifying at 12:05 (2:05 p.m. Eastern).

Sunday’s 312-mile race is set to get the green flag just after 12:30 p.m. (3:30 p.m. Eastern) with TV coverage on FOX. Stage breaks are set for Laps 60 and 185.

About DEX Imaging
DEX Imaging is the digital document imaging division of Staples, the world’s largest business solutions provider. DEX sells and services the broadest selection of copiers, printers and data management solutions, such as HP, Konica Minolta, Canon, Kyocera and numerous others.

COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGES:
Reducing Operating Costs
Reducing Paper Consumption
Increasing Productivity

DEX Imaging has been the recipient of virtually every industry award since the company’s inception, including the JD Power & Associates Award for Best Customer Experience, the prestigious ProTech Service award by Konica Minolta, the Diamond Premier Dealer Award by Kyocera, and the Elite DEALER Award by ‘ENX’ magazine. Other accolades include being named ‘Best Place to Work’ by numerous business journals in the markets DEX serves.

Wood Brothers Racing
Wood Brothers Racing was formed in 1950 in Stuart, Va., by Hall of Famer Glenn Wood. Wood Brothers Racing is the oldest active team and one of the winningest teams in NASCAR history. Since its founding, the team won 99 races (including at least one race in every decade for the last seven decades) and 120 poles in NASCAR’s top-tier series. Fielding only Ford products for its entire history, the Wood Brothers own the longest association of any motorsports team with a single manufacturer. Glenn’s brother, Leonard, is known for inventing the modern pit stop. The team currently runs the Ford Mustang driven by Harrison Burton in the famous No. 21 racer.

NASCAR CUP SERIES
PHOENIX RACEWAY
RUOFF MORTGAGE 500
TEAM CHEVY PRESS CONF. TRANSCRIPT
MARCH 9, 2022

TYLER REDDICK, NO. 8 GUARANTEED RATE CAMARO ZL1. met with media via teleconference in advance of this weekend’s Ruoff Mortgage 500 at Phoenix Raceway. Press Conference Transcript:

ANY PROGRESS ON THE LEG NUMBING ISSUES AND WHAT ARE YOU GOING TO TRY THIS WEEK?
“Yeah, so I just think with this new car there are some things (inaudible). The last car, from since I have been racing really stayed much the same. (inaudible) Yeah, you know just making some mistakes in how I think I needed to be sitting in this car. So, we’ve been able to, now that we are back home, came back from Vegas, been able to sit in the car and adjust some things. Pinpoint some areas where I think I just had my body in a bad posture, not really allowing the weight of my body in the seat being distributed the way it should. Nothing like to the extent of having to change inserts, do that sort of thing. Just moving some things around in the car seems to be better. Obviously, the reason this has been an issue is pretty challenging to understand sitting still you know with no load, no bumps, no heat, whatever it might be to really feel if there is going to be a problem. It’s hard to really understand what’s ok and what’s not. After we ran Fontana, you know we had our Vegas car right there, it was already in Fontana. Sat in it, moved some things around, thought I was going to be good to go in Vegas and obviously I was looking in the wrong places. We had some help this week and were able to make some adjustments and continue learning more and more about it. You know I just think I was in a really good place in that old car for such a long time and didn’t realize how easy or how bad you could end up missing it, the comfort side of things. Unfortunately going through that, that process right now (inaudible) a lot better.”

IS IT ABOUT KIND OF HOW THE PEDALS ARE MOUNTED AND HOW YOU POSITION YOUR FOOT? OR IS IT MORE KIND OF WHERE THE SEAT IS IN RELATION TO PEDALS AND MAYBE THE HEIGHT OF THE SEAT?
“I think more than anything its just having you know no matter where you put your seat its kind of important to have your legs comfortable for you. You know, not too high, not too low. You don’t want to cut circulation off having the pedals too low, on the edge of your seat or having your legs really having a lot of weight or force on the bottom of your seat cutting your circulation off that way. Certainly, with this deeper car, or deeper driver area or cockpit (inaudible) with how ramming my current insert was. So, we made some adjustments there. Certainly, I think I have frustrated some things in my body by putting it through that the last two weeks in a row now. I normally don’t give myself a lot of rest time in between with exercising and everything, so just coming up with the best approach to get my body some time to get out some of the stress I’ve been putting it though the last two weekends.”

HOW WELL TIMED WAS IT TO GET THAT FIRST TOP 10 OF THE YEAR AT LAS VEGAS, GIVEN HOW CRAZY THAT RACE WAS FOR YOU GUYS?
“It was important. I guess for our whole team it was an important thing to be able to come back from that. For me, personally too, I have a lot of distractions in the car. Just hard to give it my best effort with everything going on, not really allowing you to be 100 percent. To still get a top-10 was good, but certainly still I can’t let it keep taking away potential good runs for our team. I do think that it held me back in Vegas. Held us back in Fontana even though we were still really good, still able to execute fairly well on pit road and everything. After going through what I did in Vegas and not always having the track position all day long, it tells me that I was leaving some on the table in Fontana too. I mean I felt like I was and couldn’t really run the bottom because of what I was fighting, but we still had a pretty good car there. Yeah, it was good to get that top 10. The biggest thing that we’re focused on is making sure that we (inaudible) when we get to Phoenix, a place that requires a lot of braking, a lot of thinking about the car and its such a fine line balance wise at that place. It’s going to be very important to have all that worked out, so that is what we are going to try to do, my team is. Make sure that I can be 100 percent.”

WITH YOU HAVING THE FITNESS REGIMEN THIS OFF SEASON AND CHANGING YOUR BODY SO MUCH, DO YOU GUYS CHANGE THE SEAT INSERT FROM YEAR TO YEAR AND IS THAT KIND OF PART OF THIS SITUATION?
“It could be, but weight wise I haven’t moved that much shape wise a little bit. In the areas that I have changed shape, I don’t think it would, well thinking about it off the top of my head I don’t think it’s where our issue is coming from. I think it just has more to do with it’s a brand new race car, it’s a lot more options of where you can put the pedals in relation to the seat and I just think that’s where some of it is. I guess, yeah, with where I end up putting my pedals for the last couple weeks yeah it could have added some material underneath me to help fill the gap that was there. Yeah, I mean it’s not like the insert itself doesn’t fit me too bad. If anything, I feel like I fit a little bit better, like snug in it than I did. It’s just those other things that we moved around unknowingly really.”

WHAT DO YOU THINK WE ARE GOING TO SEE NEXT WEEKEND?
“I don’t know. It’s hard to say. These cars, it’s been a lot of fun. it’s been challenging to understand so far. I don’t know. I think the transitioning from straightaways to corners is going to be interesting. It will be interesting to see how that plays out. I haven’t even read on it. I have only heard you know a little bit about it, so I really can’t say. I have tried, for the most part, to go into a lot of the race weekends with not a lot of expectations so I can be ready to adapt to anything. That has been a good approach for me and I’m pretty much carrying that thought process, that approach, into Atlanta as well.”

JUST FOLLOWING UP ON THE LEG NUMBNESS, I’M CURIOUS IF ANOTHER SOLUTION YOU GUYS OR THE RCR CAMP HAVE THOUGHT OF WOULD BE GETTING THE BLOOD FLOWING IN THE LOWER EXTREMETIES BEFORE A RACE? COULD THAT POSSIBLY BE A SOLUTION TO THAT TOO OR NOT REALLY?
“For the amount of time that you spend in a car, I think that could help in some sense, but I mean I was in the car for four hours in Las Vegas and to a degree it could help some, but when you are sitting in a car for a long period of time, I don’t expect that to be a fix. But I think it could be something, you know it certainly doesn’t hurt and you don’t necessarily want to get in a car for four hours and not be stretched out and have some good blood flowing anyway. You want to be ready at the start of the race, anything can happen. It certainly helps, but I think there’s some other things that we moved around that hopefully will take care of it.”

AS YOU ENTER THIS WEEKEND, CAUSE THIS IS A TRACK WHERE YOU HAVE TO USE BOTH PEDALS, IS THIS A TRACK WHERE YOU’RE REALLY CONCERNED THAT THE LEG NUMBNESS MAY BE HAPPENING ONCE AGAIN OR NOT REALLY WITH THIS ADJUSTMENT?
“Like I said a little earlier, it’s really hard to tell at the shop sitting still. You can strap yourself in, you can sit there forever. Without the car moving, you know the loads. When I sat in the car in Fontana for Vegas, I thought it was going to be ok. That does make it a little concerning, but I know that we went the right direction. It’s just hopefully we have gone enough, hopefully we didn’t go too far. Its just kind of difficult to really know if we got it right, and you know we got, well I thought we had enough time at Las Vegas to get a feel for it but we had some pretty lengthy changes, I didn’t get to stay out on the track quite long enough for that really to take into effect. You know coming in and sitting for 10 minutes while we were making some changes to the car took away from that, so we had the opportunity with that practice to get an idea for if we were going to be ok or not. We just didn’t take advantage of it. You know at Fontana, we didn’t really get to run long enough in the 15 minute practice session, or group split that we had to figure it out, so that is a cause for concern. We could probably run that whole session straight through and still may not know if it’s ok or not for the race.”

ARE YOU GETTING TO A POINT WHERE YOU’RE STARTING TO KNOW WHERE THE EDGE IS, HOW FAR YOU CAN TAKE IT OUT?
“It’s getting closer. The last two weeks have been a little more difficult to know, Vegas for sure was as well. (inaudible) You know in practice, you know just thinking we were balance wise pretty close and then figuring out as the race kind of unfolded that we were too loose and ultimately the car came around on me. There was a lot of learning left there, but it is hard to kind of get a feel for it with some of the things that we’ve been fighting. You know a place like Phoenix, when I tested there, I guess it would have been January, I actually felt like you could get away with more in this car than what we’ve ran there the last two years on short-tracks. This wider tire definitely adds a little bit different on a short-track than it does on some of the higher speed racetracks, so very interesting to see what that’s like in a lot more traffic, a lot more dirty air in full on racing versus what we were experiencing during the test. The cars definitely different, everyone’s seen that already, but I feel like we have been able to race pretty hard. It’s been kind of nice having a car that, in my opinion, doesn’t get as aero-loose when you’re on someone’s door. There’s a lot of things different about it, it’s been fun learning some characteristics early.”

YOU THINK IT’S FAIR TO SAY IT SUITS YOUR STYLE?
“I don’t know actually. I like having a car hung out and you can’t really have this car hung out anymore.”

DO YOU FEEL LIKE ITS (NEXT GEN CAR) LIVED UP TO ITS EXPECTATIONS COMING IN?
“I do. It’s definitely more difficult to drive. There’s so much to (inaudible) that you can’t rely on, your old senses or marks. I mean for me it has. It’s been a lot of fun. I really do like the things that are different about this car. As to be expected with it, you know you are going to have more difficult things than others, but I feel like everyone’s maximum potential is or starting point is with this car has kind of brought together. Throughout the field more people have more opportunities to hit it right and be able to run up with the best of the best at the front of the field. But at the same time if you miss it really bad, you’re going to have a really tough day. There’s a lot to learn and we are going to continue to learn with this car.”
Team Chevy high-resolution racing photos are available for editorial use.

About Chevrolet
Founded in 1911 in Detroit, Chevrolet is now one of the world’s largest car brands, available in 79 countries with more than 3.2 million cars and trucks sold in 2020. Chevrolet models include electric and fuel-efficient vehicles that feature engaging performance, design that makes the heart beat, passive and active safety features and easy-to-use technology, all at a value. More information on Chevrolet models can be found at www.chevrolet.com.

Roush Fenway Keselowski Weekly Advance | Phoenix

The West Coast swing comes to a close this weekend at Phoenix Raceway, where RFK Racing enters the weekend with 17 wins all-time, including seven in the NASCAR Cup Series. Brad Keselowski makes his 26th Cup start in the desert, while Chris Buescher makes his 13th on Sunday.

NASCAR Cup Series Race at Phoenix
Sunday, March 13 | 3:30 p.m. ET
FOX, MRN, SiriusXM Channel 90

· Brad Keselowski, No. 6 Violet Defense Ford Mustang
· Chris Buescher, No. 17 ITsavvy Ford Mustang

Hooked on Phoenix

Roush Fenway has 297 combined starts at Phoenix, totaling 17 wins, 75 top-five and 134 top-10 finishes. RFK Fords have nine poles and have led 4,031 laps at the 1-mile track.

Winning in the Desert

RFK has won at Phoenix in all three of NASCAR’s major divisions, with the organization’s first win coming in the fall of 1993 with NASCAR Hall of Famer and former driver Mark Martin in the NCS. RFK won the second-ever NASCAR Xfinity Series race at Phoenix in 2000 and former driver Greg Biffle claimed the organization’s 100th overall NASCAR Xfinity Series win at Phoenix in 2009.

Former driver Carl Edwards also won at the track that fall to give RFK the season sweep. All in all, six drivers have won NASCAR races for RFK at Phoenix (Martin, Biffle, Edwards, Kurt Busch, Matt Kenseth and Joe Ruttman). In addition, Edwards swept Phoenix in the fall of 2010, winning both the NXS and NCS events.

Xfinity Success

Phoenix was one of the strongest tracks for RFK’s Xfinity program. In 93 starts, the organization won eight times, earned 27 top-fives, 53 top-10s and has led 1,406 laps. RFK most recently went to victory lane with Edwards in Nov. 2010. Its eight wins rank most of any track on the circuit behind only Charlotte (12), Darlington (15), Richmond (9) and Rockingham (10).

Tale of the Tape

RFK has started 168 NCS races at Phoenix, recording a total of seven victories, 35 top-five finishes, 60 top-10 finishes, four poles and has led 2,291 laps. Edwards earned RFK’s most recent victory at Phoenix in the March 2013 event.

RFK Phoenix Wins

1993 Martin Cup

1997-2 Ruttman Truck

2000 Burton Cup

2000 Burton NXS

2001 Biffle Truck

2001 Burton Cup

2001 Biffle NXS

2002 Kenseth Cup

2005-1 Busch Cup

2005-2 Edwards NXS

2006-2 Kenseth NXS

2008-2 Edwards NXS

2009-1 Biffle NXS

2009-2 Edwards NXS

2010-2 Edwards Cup

2010-2 Edwards NXS

2013-1 Edwards Cup

MOORESVILLE, N.C. (March 9, 2022) – Arizona is home to not only NASCAR’s championship weekend, but also driver Michael McDowell. The Glendale native who cut his teeth racing competitive bicycle motocross now returns again for the first of two visits to the Phoenix track this season, with Love’s returning on his No. 34 Ford Mustang.

McDowell was a guest on this week’s Ford Zoom call and answered questions from the media.

MICHAEL MCDOWELL, No. 34 Love’s Travel Stops Ford Mustang – HOW WOULD YOU RATE THE NEXT GEN CAR VERSUS THE GEN 6 VERSION AFTER THREE RACES?
“I thought the first few races here have gone really well. When we were all at that Charlotte test we were concerned, but Charlotte is one of those racetracks that dirty air and it’s just a tough place. It’s a tough place to pass, so we felt like that was probably one of the worst-case scenarios in that test, and then also too with everybody having very limited time with these cars – the teams always do a good job of making everything better and that’s what they do, so I feel like California was a great race. You start with Daytona, Daytona was like Daytona always is. I didn’t see much change there. The car has some different characteristics, but for the most part, how the race went is pretty much how the races have gone in the past. California, I thought the cars were really competitive and they were good in traffic. You see more side-by-side racing and when I say side-by-side I actually mean just closer proximity. The air doesn’t seem to affect these cars as much like when somebody is on your outside really tight, where with the previous generation car it would kind of suck you around and almost want to spin you out. So, if you were that outside car you sort of had to give a little bit of room and if you were that inside car, you had to protect that and now I feel like you can be pretty aggressive side-by-side and the cars drive pretty well. So, all in all, I’ve thought it’s been great. I think Vegas was good. I think California was good and those were the tracks that were probably the biggest question marks, the mile-and-a-half, two-mile tracks, so coming to a short track I think it’s just gonna get better because this car lends itself more to road courses, short tracks, it’s got big brakes and a bigger tire – all those things that will help on those racetracks that you can really attack, so I’ve thought it’s gone really well. I haven’t watched the Vegas race yet as far as playing it back to see how it was, but from my seat it was pretty good.”

WHAT IS THE KEY FOR YOU TO RUN WELL AT PHOENIX?
“The key for us this week is just minimizing some mistakes and also some gremlins we’ve been fighting these last few weeks. Obviously, with this being a new car everybody is learning a lot in these first few races and we’ve had some issues that we’ve navigated through the first three weeks. Daytona wasn’t really much of an issue, but we’ve had good speed and our cars have been really fast, especially the first half of the race, so we just have to execute. We knew that there was gonna be things that sort of were not expected that with a new car you just kind of figure out and so we were having to make some adjustments, which is hard to do when you’re in the west coast swing because the cars aren’t going back and forth, so you really have a day in the shop before you load up and it has to be gone for the next one to do the swap out, so Phoenix in particular, I feel like, with the test that we had here last month, that’s gonna help a lot because most of us got an opportunity to feel things out and get our cars close and have at least some targets for simulation and all those things, so this weekend should go a little bit smoother than the last two, but for us it’s just cleaning up some of the details that we had some issues with the last two weeks.”

IS THERE MUCH YOU CAN TAKE FROM THIS FIRST PHOENIX RACE FOR THE SEASON FINALE OR DO THINGS CHANGE TOO MUCH BETWEEN NOW AND THEN? “That’s a big question mark. In general, you would say the evolution of the car is gonna be so fast and we’re gonna be learning so much that it probably won’t apply too much, but with what we’ve seen through the test and through the races that NASCAR has done a good job of developing this car in a window where the exploration hasn’t really paid off yet. We’ve tried a bunch of stuff in these tests and we’ve tried to get outside the box and nothing seems to really move the needle much as far as speed, so who knows? It could be that you run something pretty similar, but one thing that it does help for sure is pace helps the engineers back at the shop with simulation for the next time you come and tire fall off and all that, so you’re definitely gonna be building a notebook for sure, and it’ll be interesting to see once we get to the end of this summer how much the setups in cars have evolved.”

HOW COMFORTABLE HAVE YOU GOTTEN DRIVING THIS NEW CAR? “I don’t think anybody is super comfortable. The cars in general are pretty edgy. As we can see in practice and qualifying and the race, you can get behind and lose it pretty quickly, but every race that we do we’re all getting a little bit more comfortable and a little bit more confident of where that limit is, but with that short practice it is definitely a challenge firing off in kill mode and trying to be ten-tenths because each track is different with this Next Gen car. Normally, we have a pretty good notebook and have some ideas, so you ease into it a little bit throughout the weekend, but, for me, I feel really confident, especially by race time I felt like we had everything worked out. Our heights were good and everything was driving pretty nice, but you don’t let your guard down with this car, for sure. It can snap around really quickly.”

DO YOU FEEL MORE PRESSURE RACING AT HOME WITH FRIENDS AND FAMILY WATCHING? “You always want to perform well, but I don’t feel any extra pressure. More than anything, I just feel extra pressure because the last two weeks we haven’t got the results that I think we were capable of and this sport is all about momentum and it’s all about just building those results and confidence, so we need to capitalize. We’ve had the speed, so now if we can capitalize and get a result it just helps so much at the team and the morale and everything else, so the extra pressure is just wanting to run well and get that momentum going. Obviously, if you can do it at home it’s nice.”

IS THERE ANYTHING YOU’RE TRYING TO DO WITH YOUR FAMILY WHILE IN PHOENIX? “It’s been a fun week. It just worked out timing-wise. My kids are on spring break while we’re here in Phoenix. My wife and I are both from here and all of our family and friends are out here, so we haven’t really planned anything real big. We’ve just been hanging out with our family, so nothing too exciting. It’s been nice. It doesn’t always work out that way and with four kids, taking them out of school to do this would be tough, so it all worked out and aligned this year, so it was nice and just enjoying hanging out with friends and family and then obviously, like you said, the schedule is pretty easy. You get there Saturday and you have your qualifying and practice kind of all lumped together, so there’s not a whole lot of hanging out at the racetrack, so that makes it nice to be able to spend some more time, but at the same time it’s hard because you want to stay focused on what you’ve got going on and what you’ve got to do, but, right now, we’re enjoying it. I’m gonna go pick up my grandma here for lunch and just make the most of these days that we have here.”
ABOUT FRONT ROW MOTORSPORTS
Front Row Motorsports (FRM) is a winning organization in the NASCAR Cup and Camping World Truck Series and the 2021 Daytona 500 champions. The team was founded in 2004 and is owned by successful entrepreneur, Bob Jenkins. FRM fields the No. 34 and the No. 38 NASCAR Cup Series teams along with the No. 38 NASCAR Camping World Truck Series team– from its Mooresville, N.C. headquarters. Visit teamfrm.com and follow FRM on social media: Twitter at @Team_FRM, Instagram at @team_frm and Facebook at facebook.com/FrontRowMotorsports.