SPRINT CUP SERIES 5/6/15

NASCAR SPRINT CUP SERIES

Gordon’s Numbers Gaudy At Kansas

This Jeff Gordon guy is pretty good.

Every week, it seems like the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series travels to a track where Gordon has posted some hefty numbers.

This week is no different.  The No. 24 Chevrolet driver’s statistics at Kansas Speedway – site of Saturday’s SpongeBob SquarePants 400 (7:30 p.m. ET on FOX Sports 1) are downright gaudy. Gordon boasts a track record with three wins. Additionally, he claims 10 top fives in 18 starts at the 1.5-mile track – a whopping 55.6 percent.

Winless this year, Gordon picked up his first victory of 2014 at Kansas to jumpstart a four-win campaign and arguably his best season since 2007 when he collected six checkered flags, 21 top fives and 30 top 10s on his way to a runner-up finish in the NSCS standings.

Dale Earnhardt Jr. Recaptures Talladega Magic

After a 10-year, 20-race winless drought at Talladega Superspeedway, Dale Earnhardt Jr. captured the checkered flag on Sunday.

Earnhardt’s winless streak was rather peculiar considering he visited Victory Lane at Talladega a track-record four consecutive times from Oct. 21, 2001 to April 6, 2003. In the two following races, he placed runner-up before winning at Talladega on Oct. 3, 2004 – his last victory before his weekend triumph.

The No. 88 Chevrolet driver is now tied with Jeff Gordon for the active lead with six wins at Talladega. He only trails his father, the late Dale Earnhardt, for the most wins at the 2.66-mile track. The elder Earnhardt racked up 10 of his 76 NASCAR Sprint Cup Series wins at Talladega.

Earnhardt will attempt to begin a winning streak in Saturday’s SpongeBob SquarePants 400 at Kansas Speedway – a place he has never reached Victory Lane. Kansas has still treated “Junior” well. The 12-time most popular driver has eight top-10 finishes (47.1%) in 17 starts at the 1.5-mile track.

Homecoming Kings: Bowyer, Edwards and McMurray Return To Their Home Track

The NASCAR Sprint Cup Series heads to the “Heart of America” for the first time this season and will showcase some of the area’s native sons in Sunday’s SpongeBob SquarePants 400 at Kansas Speedway. Hometown heroes Clint Bowyer (Emporia, Kansas), Jamie McMurray (Joplin, Missouri) and Carl Edwards (Columbia, Missouri) will try to tame the 1.5-mile track in front of friends, family and members of their communities. 

None of the three drivers have won a NSCS race at Kansas, but 12 different competitors have won the track’s 18 races since it opened in 2001, showing parity is a pattern in the Jayhawk State.

If the season ended today, only McMurray (seventh in the points standings) would make the Chase for the NASCAR Sprint Cup. Bowyer (17th) and Edwards (18th) trail Danica Patrick by four and 13 points, respectively, for the final spot.

Martin Marches Up The Standings

Martin Truex Jr. continued his sizzling hot start to the season, racking up his ninth top-10 finish of the season with a fifth-place showing at Talladega. The No. 78 Chevrolet driver jumped Joey Logano for the second spot in the standings and trails leader Kevin Harvick by 40 points.

Truex – whose nine top 10s are tied with Harvick’s total for the most in the NSCS – will attempt to continue his one-man thrill ride in Saturday’s SpongeBob SquarePants 400 at Kansas Speedway. Coincidentally, the last and only other time he was as high as second in the points standings was after the eighth race of the 2012 season … at Kansas.

Are You Ready Kid? Jones To Make First Career Start In SpongeBob SquarePants 400

At the beginning of every SpongeBob SquarePants Episode, the captain bellows, “Are you ready kids?”

Well, in Saturday’s SpongeBob SquarePants 400, 18-year-old Erik Jones will attempt to prove he’s ready for the top level of NASCAR competition when he makes his NASCAR Sprint Cup Series debut in the No. 18 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota.

Jones, a NASCAR Next alum, saw his first NSCS action at Bristol two weeks ago when he replaced Denny Hamlin in the No. 11 Toyota  following a rain delay, but the 26th-place result he piloted it to officially goes to Hamlin.

Born and raised in Michigan, Jones has experienced early success in the NASCAR XFINITY and Camping World Truck Series. He claims four NCWTS wins and one XFINITY Series victory.

Jones will be the third driver to make his Sprint Cup debut at Kansas, joining Denny Hamlin (October, 2005), Austin Dillon (October, 2011) and Ryan Blaney (May, 2014).

Big Name Drivers Near Last Chance To Land NASCAR Sprint All-Star Race Spot

Smash Mouth once bellowed, “All that glitters is gold.”

That will be the case when the stalwarts of the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series take the track at Charlotte Motor Speedway for a shot at $1 million in the NASCAR Sprint All-Star Race on Saturday, May 16 (7 p.m. ET on FOX Sports 1).

At this point in time the field is still not set. Drivers who haven’t qualified have one last chance to get into the race by winning a points race – the SponeBob SquarePants 400 at Kansas Speedway on Saturday. Otherwise, they must win a Sprint Showdown segment or the Sprint Fan Vote.

Some of the big names that need to “get their game on” or risk missing the all-star race are Clint Bowyer, Greg Biffle, Martin Truex Jr., Kyle Larson and Danica Patrick. Of the five, Biffle is the only one with a victory at Kansas. The No. 16 Roush Fenway Racing driver has two Kansas wins, but has not won there since 2010. Patrick placed seventh at Kanas last spring, while Larson and Truex finished second and fourth, respectively, at the Midwestern track in the fall. Bowyer’s last strong showing at Kansas was a fifth-place finish in spring of 2013.

History Lesson: Kansas Native Jim Roper Won Controversial First Sprint Cup Race

There were 1,948 NASCAR Sprint Cup Series races before the first was held in the state of Kansas.  However, it was a Kansan who took home top prize in the series’ very first race in June, 1949.

Jim Roper learned about the NASCAR Strictly Stock (now Sprint Cup) Series while reading a syndicated comic strip in his local newspaper. Local being a relative term, of course, as Roper hailed from Halstead, Kansas, a short 1,200 miles west of Charlotte, North Carolina, where the series’ first race was to be held.

But Roper did what any racer might do – he purchased a Lincoln Cosmopolitan and drove it straight from the showroom floor in Great Bend, Kansas, halfway across the country to Charlotte Speedway. After all, there was a $2,000 prize waiting for the winner.

Roper took his place among the biggest names in stock car racing that afternoon – Curtis Turner, brothers Bob, Fonty and Tim Flock, and reigning NASCAR modified champion Red Byron – and beat all but one of them.

Glenn Dunaway, from nearby Gastonia, North Carolina, crossed the finish line first in a 1947 Ford.  The win was short-lived, though, as a post-race inspection found modifications to the rear springs to improve the car’s handling, an old bootlegger’s trick.  This being the ‘Strictly Stock’ division, the entry blank clearly outlined 31 mechanical changes that were permitted to the cars, and modified springs did not appear on the list.

Dunaway was disqualified, and the win was awarded to the runner-up Roper, despite the fact that he only finished 197 of the race’s 200 laps.

Roper only competed in one more NASCAR race, finishing 15th at Occoneechee Speedway in Hillsboro, North Carolina, two months later.  He retired from racing in 1955 after breaking a vertabra in a sprint car accident. Since Roper, there has only been one other Jayhawk to win in the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series – Clint Bowyer.