A.J. Allmendinger adds Long Beach to IndyCar Schedule to prepare for 500
This past weekend, Penske Racing announced that they have added Long Beach later this month to A.J. Allmendinger’s 2013 IndyCar schedule.
Originally, he was only scheduled to run at Barber Motorsports Park (he finished 19th) and then the Indianapolis 500 in May. However, Tim Cindric, president of Penske Racing, felt it was important to give Allmendinger more seat time before Indianapolis.
“As the emotions get into it and Roger (Penske)’s commitment to the organization, we don’t want to go into Indianapolis any less prepared than we can be,” Cindric said. “AJ has continued to gel with the team and it’s worth the investment for us to have him run at a place where he’s already run. (Barber) is a whole different place for him, and the effort you need to find that couple of tenths (of a second) is maybe different than a place like Long Beach where he’s already comfortable and it’s just a matter of learning the car. He’s learning the car here and he’s learning the track.”
Allmendinger is looking forward to racing at Long Beach as it means more time in the car practicing pit stops and all that jazz.
“It’s exciting; I’ve always missed that race since I left,” Allmendinger said. “Being a California native it was always a fun race to go to. Just to have another race under my belt at a place I’ve fairly familiar with I’m looking forward to it.”
They do not have a sp0nsor for Long Beach, however Cindric says they are open to sponsors. If no sponsor comes, it will be something Penske affiliated on the car.
Beyond Indianapolis, they may be the possibility of more races added to the schedule. Cindric says they will evaluate things after Indy.
The deal with Penske Racing came after last year’s disappointment on the NASCAR side of things. Allmendinger failed a drug test mid-season, after taking a drug that was given to him by a friend. The friend told him it was an energy supplement, but it was actually Adderall.
Once Allmendinger was cleared to return to the track, he began racing for Phoenix Racing in the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series as Roger Penske and team had already put Hornish Jr. in their Nationwide Series car with Logano plagued as Allmendinger’s replacement in Cup.
Allmendinger is still running some NASCAR races this year, though with only scheduled to run a small amount, the opportunity came about with Penske for Indy.
“Everything I’ve said about (Roger Penske) probably is the biggest understatement,” Allmendiner said. “I just feel fortunate to have a guy like that care about me so much. I’m not going to ask him why, because I don’t want him to question his own mind, but I feel very lucky.”
In his return to IndyCar racing on Sunday, Allmendinger was running just outside of the top 10 when he stalled in the pits on the final stop. As a result, he finished 19th.
“All around, I thought that day went fairly well – up until that stop,” he commented after the race. “I knew that going to two sets to those guys three would hurt us. Trying to learn how this is going. Fell like we’d finish 11thor 12th but stalled in the pits. Don’t know why. It wouldn’t rev up and as soon as I put the clutch in, it just stalled. At the end, we pitted so early that we had to save fuel that whole stint. Proud of Penske for all of their hard work. Thanks to Roger for this opportunity.”
Allmendinger has previous open wheel experience, having ran the Champ Car series from 2004 to 2006. In 40 starts, he had five wins and 14 podiums. Now, it’s all about getting reaccumulated with the open-wheel car.
“I’m still learning it,” he admitted. “I’m nowhere where I want to be when it comes to being competitive. I want to go out there and contend to win races. It’s been tough, and this series, especially in the IZOD IndyCar Series, there’s no hacks out there. The men and women that drive in this series, it is so competitive now, it’s by far ‑‑ at that point when I used to race Champ Car, obviously the two series were split, so you had some of the best drivers split amongst two series, and now that it’s one series and everybody in the series is so fast, it’s competitive.”
Allmendinger was supposed to get his first look at Indianapolis behind the wheel with rookie orientation this week, but that was postponed due to the weather forecast. There were concerns that possibly Allmendinger’s NASCAR schedule would interfere, but Allmendinger says that won’t be the case.
“The IndyCar thing, especially with everything that comes to (the) Indy 500 in general, that’s the most important thing,” he said. “The good thing is that Phoenix Racing has worked with me, and Roger and James Finch, especially, to make sure that everything kind of lined up, and James knows that the Indy car, just everything that comes along with it whatever race, not just Indy but anything that comes up on the schedule, that takes priority.”
Rookie orientation has been rescheduled for the Friday right before the start of the two weeks at Indy, which Allmendinger says maybe is a good thing. He says he can now focus solely on Indy right after that orientation instead of having orientation and then a couple Sprint Cup races in between.
When asked about what his expectations are moving forward, Allmendinger said it’s simple – he want to win races.
“As I stated many times now, I don’t want to waste Roger’s time,” he said. “I don’t want to waste IZOD’s time, I don’t want to waste anybody’s time at this organization to go out there and just go run around laps and try to learn. I want to go out there and compete right away.”
He added that getting laps in the car at Barber and now at Long Beach is all about winning at Indy.
“That’s why I’m there,” he continued. “That’s why Roger hired me is to have the expectations to win. Like I said, the good thing there is you get a lot of time to go out there and learn the racetrack and go through the days of practice and go into qualifying and then get the race setup.”
For Allmendinger, the pressure is high and there because he considers the Indianapolis 500 as the biggest race in the world.
“It’s the Indianapolis 500, and for me to get to run it first of all is just a dream come true,” he said. “I always wanted to run the race and just never got a chance to, and secondly, to be able to do that with Roger Penske and walk out of Gasoline Alley and be introduced wearing an IZOD Penske Racing suit is something special, and no matter what happens during the race obviously I want to go out there and try to win the race, but no matter what happens just to be able to say that I was there as a Penske driver at the Indianapolis 500, it’s pretty special and I’ll always hold that with me.”
Before he goes to Indy, he will run the NASCAR race at Richmond after the Indy event at Long Beach.
“For me it’s just trying to race as much as possible, whether it’s in IndyCar or a stock car or anything that goes with that, just as much as I can being inside a race car,” he said. “I feel like it just keeps helping me get better and better no matter what car I’m in.”
NASCAR Says No Pit Crew Challenge This Year
If you were planning to take in the Pit Crew Challenge this year while attending the races at Charlotte Motor Speedway in May, you will have to wait another year and hope that NASCAR is able to get things back on track for 2014.
The only competition based around the crews, not the drivers, the Pit Crew Challenge was used to highlight the best performing crews and set the pit box assignment for the NASCAR All-Star Race at CMS. This year, those box selections may be set by qualifying times, because NASCAR has said there will be no Pit Crew Challenge in conjunction with the All-Star race.
“While we remain committed to the continuation of the unique competition that the pit crew challenge offers our teams and our fans, it will not be held this year,” NASCAR spokesperson Kerry Tharp said. He added that the sanctioning body is hopeful that a “more sustainable model” for the program can be found in 2014.
It is a loss to the fans and the teams that would be competing, but with any luck at all, NASCAR will get the event back on track for next season. Will the format be the same? Well, I think that remains to be seen. The event has had many different formats and names since its inception in 1976 at Rockingham Speedway, where it remained until 2003. That year also saw a break in the event, but it was revived again in 2005, so maybe this year off will result in a new and improved event for 2014.
Surprising and Not Surprising: Martinsville STP Gas Booster 500
Refreshed from an off-weekend and ready to go short track racing, here is what was surprising and not surprising when the Cup drivers returned to racing in the STP Gas Booster 500 at Martinsville Speedway.
Surprising: With all the talk of paybacks from feuding drivers, it was surprising just how uneventful the last restart and final laps of the race were, especially since the trio competing at the end included Jimmie Johnson, Jeff Gordon and Clint Bowyer, all of whom have history together.
In fact, at last year’s Martinsville race, the three drivers tangled in the final laps, with Bowyer on new tires and the Hendrick teammates on old tires, sending them all spinning and handing the race win to Ryan Newman.
Gordon and Bowyer also have history and unsettled scores from last season that even carried over through the end-of-year banquet in Las Vegas. Yet, in spite of a few nudges here and there, they raced each other cleanly and respectfully, which was more than surprising given the rhetoric and hostility between the two.
“Well, we just didn’t need those cautions there at the end,” Gordon, who finished third in the No. 24 Drive to End Hunger Chevrolet, said. “We just needed more laps there at the end.”
“Well, last year I had the upper hand with tires and it just didn’t work out,” Bowyer, driver of the No. 15 RK Motors Toyota and race runner up, said. “It’s just disappointing.”
“Just wish I’d had that clock.”
Not Surprising: With Jimmie Johnson’s stats at Martinsville, including multiple wins and the best driver rating of 122.3, it was not surprising at all to see him in Victory Lane, collecting his eighth grandfather’s clock.
And while Johnson winning at Martinsville was not surprising in the least, the depth of bittersweet emotion in victory lane was also not surprising, given the history of loss for team owner Rick Hendrick and his family at that rack.
With caps turned backwards in memory of Ricky Hendrick and the other members of the HMS team lost in the plane crash at Martinsville nine years ago, Rick Hendrick shared that the track holds so many mixed emotions for him, including the joy of winning and the agony of loss.
Yet in spite of the bittersweet memories, Hendrick was also incredibly proud of the accomplishment of winning 20 races at that track, the most of any organization in the sport.
“I was looking at that scoreboard over there, the first time I ever came to a Cup race was here with my dad,” Hendrick said. “We’ve been fortunate to have some great drivers and this track has been awful good to us.
Surprising: While it was surprising enough that Danica Patrick, behind the wheel of the No. 10 GoDaddy.com Chevrolet, finished 12th, it was even more surprising that she beat out her Stewart Haas Racing teammates Tony Stewart and Ryan Newman, who finished 17th and 31st respectively.
This was Patrick’s first time at Martinsville Speedway in a Cup car and, in spite of an early spin, she rallied back to the checkered flag as the highest finishing rookie in the race.
“Yeah, well never being at Martinsville, I didn’t know what to expect,” Patrick said. “I felt like I made a lot of passes.”
“I’m most proud about coming back from two laps down and being on the lead lap,” Patrick continued. “Then grabbing a 12th place finish in the end was good.”
Not Surprising: One of the biggest complaints after Martinsville was, not surprisingly, the lack of a second groove in the track and how much track position was lost because of it.
Although finishing top-ten, Marcos Ambrose, driver of the No. 9 Stanley Ford, had quite a bit to say about the battle for the preferred inside line.
“You had to fight like a dog to try to get to the inside,” Ambrose said. “If you got hung out there, there’s just nothing you could do – you’re just along for the ride.”
Surprising: With all the attention on and rhetoric about Joey Logano, it was a bit surprising that he was pretty much a non-factor at Martinsville.
In fact, going into the short track race weekend, Logano said that he would not seek conflict but he also vowed not to lay down for anyone.
“There’s a fine line of how you’re going to earn that respect,” Logano said. “I’m not a guy that’s going to look for trouble, but I’m also the guy that’s not going to get walked on.”
Logano experience neither being in trouble or getting walked on at Martinsville, finishing 23rd in his No. 22 Shell Pennzoil Ford. And with that non-stellar finish, he fell two spots in the point standings to 11th.
Not Surprising: Any racer out of the car would find it difficult being at the track. So, it was not surprising just how tough Denny Hamlin took sitting out and watching another driver behind the wheel of his race machine.
“The start of the race was nothing like I thought it was,” Hamlin said. “The start of the race absolutely killed me.”
“That was very, very tough to watch,” Hamlin continued. “I didn’t’ realize the physical toll that coming out here was going to take on me.”
Surprising: With Roush Fenway Racing traditionally struggling at Martinsville, it was surprising to see one of their drivers finish top ten. Greg Biffle, behind the wheel of the No. 16 3M Ford, brought his car to the checkered flag in the ninth position.
“It was a hard fought day,” Biffle said. “Our car was way too tight and I had to keep working on it.”
“There was no outside groove whatsoever and everyone really wanted the bottom,” Biffle continued. “But we still finished in the top-10 so I’m pretty happy about that.”
Not Surprising: There were several bounce back finishes amongst drivers who struggled and then came back strong at the finish of the race. One of the most notable was Brad Keselowski, who overcame a questionable pit road penalty to finish sixth in his Blue Deuce.
“That was a hard-fought finish,” Keselowski said. “We wanted to be able to win here and just haven’t been strong enough to do it.”
“But I’m proud of where we are right here today.”
Another amazing performance was given by Iron Man Mark Martin, who was involved in a multi-car crash on lap 180 and then rallied to finish tenth. To boot, this stellar finish was in an unfamiliar car in which he was subbing for the injured Denny Hamlin.
Yet not surprisingly, Martin once again downplayed his accomplishment.
“It wasn’t that great of a result; we were capable of a little bit better,” Martin said in his usual humble style. “I did not fill Denny Hamlin’s shoes, I can tell you that much.”
“He is the master.”
Surprising: Another pleasant surprise for Earnhardt Ganassi Racing was the good finish for once of one of its drivers. Jamie McMurray, behind the wheel of the No. 1 Novo Nordisk Chevrolet for EGR, finished seventh.
“We had a really good car,” McMurray said. “Made a good pit call at the end and got a couple of extra spots.”
“That was a really good day for us.”
Not Surprising: Although working with a relatively new team in Furniture Row Racing, it was not surprising that veteran driver Kurt Busch had the presence of mind to not only angle the car before hitting the wall after his brakes failed, but also had the wherewithal to utilize his fire suppression system when his car went up in flames.
“Something let go in the brakes,” Busch said. “I had to turn the car to the right otherwise I was going to hit harder than what we did.”
“It was a bummer day.”
Unfortunately, that bummer day resulted in Busch falling from 13th to 19th in the driver point standings. The driver of the No. 78 Furniture Row/Serta Chevrolet, along with all of his Cup competitors, will have a chance at redemption as the elite series heads into Texas Motor Speedway.
NASCAR Top-10 Power Rankings: Martinsville
Note: The quotes in this article are fictional.
1. Jimmie Johnson: Johnson won from the pole at Martinsville, leading 347 of 500 laps to win the STP Gas Booster 500, his eighth win at the Virginia half-mile track. Johnson claimed the points lead, and now leads Brad Keselowski by six.
“Eight wins at Martinsville is amazing,” Johnson said. “So is the number of grandfather clocks I’ve amassed. Those clocks really come in handy at Martinsville, mostly to measure my margin of victory.”
2. Brad Keselowski: Keselowski finished sixth at Martinsville, posting his fourth top-10 result of the year. He is second in the point standings, six behind Jimmie Johnson.
“I support the actions of my Penske teammate Joey Logano,” Keselowski said. “Despite his age, diminutive frame, and general goofiness, he is one tough customer, and not afraid to assert himself. With the NRA 500 coming up, I think it’s a good time to say that Joey is a lot like NASCAR—he’s not gun-shy.”
3. Dale Earnhardt, Jr.: Earnhardt’s day ended on a sour note as a late spin left him two laps down and in 24th place in the STP Gas Booster 500. He tumbled from the top of the Sprint Cup point standings, and is now third, 12 behind Jimmie Johnson.
“It was a good, albeit short, week on top,” Earnhardt said. “For all the problems my car experienced Sunday at Martinsville, gear box trouble was not one of them, because I was definitely not stuck in ‘first.’”
4. Kasey Kahne: Kahne finished fourth at Martinsville as Hendrick Motorsports claimed three of the top 4 spots in the STP Gas Booster 500. He is fifth in the point standings, 32 out of first.
“I won at Texas in 2006,” Kahne said, “and I proudly hoisted the ceremonial six-shooters in Victory Lane. On Sunday, I don’t plan on letting anyone infringe on my right to again bear arms.”
5. Clint Bowyer: Bowyer recovered from early damage to take the runner-up spot at Martinsville, holding off Jeff Gordon on a late restart. Bowyer is now eighth in the point standings, 52 out of first.
“It was quite a turnabout from last year at Phoenix,” Bowyer said “This time, Gordon was chasing me. And, just like last year, nothing would have happened had he caught me.
“As you may have heard, I landed sponsorship from Gander Mountain for next week’s NRA 500 at Texas. So our team we’ll be well-heeled, while the race itself will be well-armed.”
6. Kyle Busch: Busch led 56 laps and finished fifth at Martinsville, posting his fourth top 5 of the season. He is fourth in the point standings, 28 out of first.
“That’s four consecutive top 5’s,” Busch said. “So, when you say ‘Busch is on fire,’ you’ll have to be more specific. It’s certainly not the first time Kurt’s been fired. But let’s hand it to Kurt—he’s usually starting fires; this time, he put one out.”
7. Greg Biffle: Biffle was the top finisher for Roush Fenway Racing, registering a ninth in the STP Gas Booster 500. He is now fifth in the point standings, 32 out of first.
“Luckily,” Biffle said, “there was no controversy involving Joey Logano at Martinsville. He may be the most-watched driver right now. All eyes, particularly Denny Hamlin’s evil one, were on Logano.
8. Carl Edwards: Edwards finished a disappointing 15th at Martinsville after electing to pit for fresh tires on a late pit stop. He dropped three places in the point standings to seventh, and now trails Jimmie Johnson by 38.
“It would be a dream come true to win the NRA 500 next week in Texas,” Edwards said. “Then, I could perform my signature back flip and land in open ‘arms.’”
9. Jeff Gordon: Gordon joined Hendrick teammates Jimmie Johnson and Kasey Kahne in the top 5 with a third at Martinsville. Gordon chased Clint Bowyer after the final restart with eight laps to go, but could never overtake him.
“I tried my hardest to put Bowyer ‘behind’ me,” Gordon said. “But try as I might, someone always ends up asking me about the incident in Phoenix.”
10. Mark Martin: Martin, driving for the injured Denny Hamlin, took the No. 11 FedEx Toyota to a 10th-place finish at Martinsville, joining Joe Gibbs Racing teammate Kyle Busch, who finished fifth, in the top 10.
“I was two laps down at one point, ” Martin said. “In the No. 11 car, that’s called ‘back’ trouble.”
