Edwards, who was also anxious about fuel, had closed the gap on the slow-going Keselowski. “When they walk in here, they truly think they’re the ones to beat”. He thought other cars were better.
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As he smoked the entire way down the track, Johnson would have to bring the auto into the garage.
Keselowski, Logano and Team Penske have now won all three of this year’s experimental low, low downforce or less sideforce races.
“When you have racing that is capable of side-by-side that is a really good sign”, said Harvick, who ran eighth here last July. “But, it’s just a bad combination for the new surface and how conservative that tire is”.
Rookie William Byron continued his hot streak in Thursday night’s Buckle up in Your Truck 225, claiming his fourth victory in 10 starts this season. You can’t save fuel at 180 miles an hour without a keen sense for conservation and a pit crew capable of making calculations down to the last drop of fuel. The event will serve as the third and final race in the Round of Eight for the NASCAR Camping World Truck Series Chase in which the field of title contenders will be reduced from eight to six at the race’s conclusion.
IndyCar: Simon Pagenaud will start on the pole for the fifth time this season at Sunday’s IndyCar series race at Iowa Speedway in Newton. These cars were tough to drive today, but a good tough. “He’s really intelligent and thinks a lot about what’s going on and is able to react and stay calm”.
“Those moments are when I am most excited”, Hamilton said.
To hear Keselowski tell it, though, you would think he had lucked out. With 11 cautions, the race narrowly avoided setting a new record for most cautions at the track.
Edwards got close to Keselowski on the final lap, but Keselowski sped away. Harvick crew chief Rodney Childers voiced his displeasure with the change Thursday with a tweet that said, We will never ever go test for 2 days on an off week again, on the wrong tires..
“We’ve got Loudon coming up, which has been good to me, and then a few weeks here to go back to my home track”. Johnson also spun out while practicing on the track, so he was already using his back up vehicle. “It became obvious we had to save fuel at the end, but it’s a testament to my guys to have the fuel mileage we did”.
The headache-inducing bumps have been smoothed down, while increased banking in turns 1 and 2 sets cars up for higher speeds entering turns 3 and 4 that remain at 14 degrees.
Numerous wrecks came in Turn 3, where the track’s grading had been increased. So if turns 3 and 4 were the same as before, why were there so many issues? “Just wasn’t my night on that deal, which is frustrating, because I think we had the vehicle to beat”.
“There were certainly moves you could make today that you couldn’t make before with respect to getting behind somebody and being able to alter the way that their vehicle drove, and that’s a part of being a race auto driver”. It shouldn’t be easy.
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“We’ve known as an industry that the repaves are very, very hard historically”, said Scott Miller, NASCAR Senior Vice-President of Competition. “There’s been some talk of Michigan going back, but at this point our plan has always been, you know, the first Michigan, Kentucky, regroup, and really dial things in for ’17 and get the teams focused on the remainder of this season and getting ready for the Chase”.
