Weekly Preview: Feb. 4-10

Blow off the dust, fluff up those seat cushions, change the batteries in your remote, we’ve got racing at Daytona this week! While we may be an extra week away from the Daytona 500, Speedweeks begins this weekend with the Advance Auto Parts Clash and Daytona 500 Qualifying. The Auto Racing Club of America (ARCA) will also be on track at Daytona with their season opener, the Lucas Oil 200 Driven by General Tire. As if starting out the year with superspeedway racing wasn’t good enough, we also have short track racing in the mix with the NASCAR K&N Pro Series east racing at New Smyrna Speedway 20 minutes down the road from Daytona.  It headlines the World Series of Racing at New Smyrna that kicks off with practices and a BBQ party on Thursday followed by 9 straight days of classic short track racing with all different types of cars. You can find the full schedule for the event at the track website here.

Before we go into all of the notes and stories to watch, here is the full schedule for the week (all times ET):

Thursday, February 7
4:00-6:00p ARCA Practice

Friday, February 8
9:30-10:30a ARCA Practice
3:30p ARCA Qualifying

Saturday, February 9
10:00a-2:00p KNPSE Test (New Smyrna)
10:35-11:55a Clash Practice – FS1
1:05-1:55p Cup Practice – FS1
3:05-3:55p Cup Practice – FS1
4:45p Lucas Oil 200 Driven by General Tire (ARCA) – FS1
6:30p Clash Drawing

Sunday, February 10
12:10p Cup Qualifying – FS1
1:00-1:45p KNPSE Practice (New Smyrna)
2:45-3:30p KNPSE Practice (New Smyrna)
3:00p Advance Auto Parts Clash – FS1
5:30p KNPSE Qualifying (New Smyrna)
7:30p New Smyrna 175 (KNPSE – New Smyrna) – Fanschoice.tv

MONSTER ENERGY NASCAR CUP SERIES NOTES:

The Advance Auto Parts Clash is right around the corner and has long been the ceremonial preseason event to help fans crave the Daytona 500 even more. Sometimes it’s a mere practice race for the teams, sometimes it’s a crashfest, but no matter what it’s NASCAR racing at Daytona so what’s not to love? The field for the Clash may be limited to about half of a normal field, but the entire Cup Series field will hit the track this weekend as they all qualify for the Daytona 500.

The Clash is a 75-lap race that headlines the first of two weekends at Daytona. The drivers who won the Pole Award (fastest qualifier in a race) in 2018, past winners of the Clash, past Daytona 500 champions, past Daytona 500 polesitters, and 2018 playoff drivers, were all eligible for the race as long as they competed full-time in 2018.

Thirteen drivers won a Pole Award in 2018 and punched their ticket to the Clash. They are: Kurt Busch, Martin Truex Jr., Kevin Harvick, Kyle Busch, Denny Hamlin, Kyle Larson, Ryan Blaney, Erik Jones, Daniel Suarez, Paul Menard, Alex Bowman, Chase Elliott, and Joey Logano. Leading those drivers was Kurt Busch with 5 Poles on the year, but the “Big 3” (Ky. Busch, Harvick, Truex) weren’t far behind with 4 Poles each. Denny Hamlin, who went winless in a season for the first time in his career, also had 4 Poles. Young guns Kyle Larson and Ryan Blaney had considerable speed, each winning 3 Poles, but no other driver had more than one.

Jamie McMurray will be making one of his final starts in NASCAR competition in the Clash with a new team in Spire Motorsports. McMurray, who won the Daytona 500 in 2010, will be transitioning to a TV analyst role after the Daytona 500. He spends Speedweeks with Spire in the #40, the same number he started his Cup career with as a substitute to the injured Sterling Marlin in 2002. Ryan Newman and Austin Dillon are the other drivers who are eligible for the Clash by being a former Daytona 500 champion. Newman and Dillon won in 2008 and 2018, respectively.

7-time Cup Champion Jimmie Johnson has a new look and a new voice in his helmet. Since his rookie season in 2002, Johnson had Lowe’s on his Chevrolet and Chad Knaus making the calls on the pit box. Lowe’s ended their NASCAR sponsorship amicably and Chad Knaus was moved over to 2018 Rookie of the Year William Byron’s team. Ally Financial joins the Hendrick Motorsports #48 team as a primary sponsor with a new crew chief in Kevin Meendering. Meendering moves up from the Xfinity Series after working with veteran driver and regular championship threat Elliott Sadler. Sadler’s retirement left JR Motorsports shuffling their personnel around, and Meendering got the promotion to work with the driver tied for most championships in the sport’s history and the leader in wins among active drivers.

Johnson didn’t win a race in 2018, and hasn’t won since June 2017, and the Clash isn’t exactly his best race. For 7 straight years, as many times as he’s had championships, Jimmie Johnson has wrecked out of the Clash. Technically, he’s not credited with a DNF in last year’s race, but he was involved in a last lap crash as Brad Keselowski raced to the line for the win ahead of his two Team Penske teammates. The defending winner of the race, Keselowski, is also in the Clash along with playoff drivers and Stewart-Haas teammates Aric Almirola and Clint Bowyer.

Here’s the entry list for the Clash and the Daytona 500:

DAYTONA 500 ENTRY LIST:
* – not points eligible

ARCA NOTES:

As you can see, there are three races this weekend in Central Florida and it all starts with ARCA racing at Daytona. The 35th running of the Lucas Oil 200 takes place on Saturday, February 9 and serves as the season opener for the series. Michael Self enters the year as the defending winner of the race at Daytona and he will return with Venturini Motorsports and Sinclair Oil. Venturini is going all in for Daytona as they also have drivers Harrison Burton, Christian Eckes, and Leilani Munter piloting their Toyota’s. The 2017 K&N Pro Series East Champion Harrison Burton will run the #20 Toyota for Venturini for 5 races in 2019 in addition to running full time for Kyle Busch Motorsports in the NASCAR Gander Outdoors Truck Series. Christian Eckes, who won 3 ARCA races in 2018 and will run 7 Truck Series races with KBM, returns for a full ARCA championship campaign in 2019 . Completing the Venturini Motorsports lineup, Leilani Munter, who has made many headlines as an environmental activist and by setting several female driving records in Indy Lights, will be making her final start in racing. Last year at Daytona, Munter qualified 5th and scored a career-best 8th place finish.

Leilani Munter won’t be the only female sporting girl power, as last year’s polesitter Natalie Decker will be racing for DGR-Crosley. Decker’s year ahead with DGR-Crosley is the next big step in her young career that consists of a split schedule between ARCA, NASCAR K&N Pro Series East, and the NASCAR Gander Outdoors Truck Series. Decker ran the full ARCA season with Venturini where she scored 9 Top-10’s, 2 Top-5’s including Daytona, and a 7th place finish in the championship standings.

Of course, when going to Daytona for an ARCA race, you have to talk about the great Bobby Gerhart. The 60-year old driver will be making his 32nd straight start at Daytona and is searching for his 9th win! His most recent victory came in 2012 where he finished out his 2nd “threepeat”. Since then, he’s only had one Top-10 finish and has crashed out twice.

Some other notable entries in the race include Todd Gilliland, Riley Herbst, Tyler Dippel, and Brandon McReynolds. Here’s the full entry list as it stands, will be updated as necessary:

NASCAR K&N PRO SERIES EAST NOTES:

There’s been a lot of media attention on the Pro Series East at New Smyrna and not exactly for the right reasons. Last week, DGR-Crosley was penalized heavily for an unauthorized test. The defending championship winning team will be behind by 100 owner championship points, pending an appeal of the penalty. Tanner Gray will be the driver for the #17 DGR-Crosley Toyota and will be looking for Rookie of the Year honors and has no affiliation to the testing penalty and therefore is not behind in the points.

Coming off of a NASCAR Truck Series Championship, Hattori Racing Enterprises enters the foray in the K&N Pro Series with driver Max McLaughlin, son of former NASCAR driver Mike McLaughlin. Other standouts in the series include Hailie Deegan, who became the first woman to win a race in the K&N Pro Series last year in a West Series race, and Ruben Garcia Jr. who has 2 Mexico Series championships.

Entry List: