The Register Citizen (Torrington, CT)
New Texas track levels playing field for drivers
Jimmie Johnson has led more laps at Texas than any other NASCAR Cup Series driver, but all that was before the entire 1 1/2-mile track was repaved, and Turns 1 and 2 were reconfigured.
Jimmie Johnson has led more laps at Texas than any other NASCAR Cup Series driver, and won a record six times there.
But all that was before the entire 1½-mile track was repaved, and Turns 1 and 2 were reconfigured.
“It’s a clean sheet of paper. You can’t pick a favorite right now,” Johnson said Friday. “Any time there is a reconfiguration, a new asphalt, it’s a total game changer. All of past history is now out the window and it’s like we are coming here for the first time.”
Even for guys like Johnson, who will make his 28th start Sunday at the Texas track that was completely repaved earlier this year for the first time since 2001.
“Everyone is on equal playing ground,” Trevor Bayne said. “Nobody has 10 years of notebooks to go to and say, ‘I am Kevin Harvick and I run the bottom at Atlanta and I am really good at it.’ You can’t do that now. You don’t know what you need to do.”
On only the second lap of a nearly 2½-hour practice session Friday, Denny Hamlin got loose and spun through Turns 1 and 2, but was able to keep his car off the wall. Kyle Busch later made slight contact with the rear of his car against the outer wall after going too high into the wider and less-banked area on the track.
“I just missed the entry point getting into Turn 1,” Busch said, referring to the area in the track where the changes begin.
Chase Elliott wasn’t as fortunate, forced into a backup car after crashing the primary No. 24 Chevrolet coming out of Turn 2. Erik Jones also had to go to a backup car after his crash, when he went hard into the wall through Turns 3 and 4.
“It’s going to get better, but the problem is the groove itself keeps getting better and better and better as we run in it,” Martin Truex Jr. said “The faster you’re going in the groove, the faster you’re going when you get out of it.”
Johnson has 1,023 laps led in the Lone Star State, well ahead of Matt Kenseth’s 854 that is the secondmost and with one more start there. Johnson has 20 top-10 finishes, including the runner-up four times by less than a half-second.
Before last year, when Joe Gibbs Racing drivers swept the two Texas races, Johnson had won three in a row and five of the previous seven here. Busch won last April and Carl Edwards, who has since stepped away from driving, got his fourth Texas victory last fall.
Harvick earns pole
Kevin Harvick quickly got up to speed on the new pavement at Texas Motor Speedway, while some top drivers never made on the track for qualifying.
Harvick won all three rounds of Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series qualifying, earning his 19th career pole with a lap of 198.405 mph during the final segment at the 1 ½-mile track that was completely repaved this year.
Nine of the 40 cars in the race didn’t make it through inspection in time to make qualifying runs. Those included series points leader Kyle Larson, three of the four drivers for Hendrick Motorsports and defending race winner Kyle Busch after his practice crash earlier in the day.
Waterford deal over
NASCAR has severed ties with a Connecticut racetrack after its owner was charged with patronizing a prostitution ring that police say exploited young men with mental health issues by delivering them to wealthy clients for sex.
NASCAR announced that it would no longer sanction the Whelen All-American Series at New London-Waterford Speedbowl.
The track’s owner, Bruce Bemer, of Glastonbury, was charged last week with patronizing a trafficked person in connection with what authorities called a long-running human trafficking ring based in Danbury.
Court documents allege Bemer told police he had been paying “boys” for sex for more than 20 years.