NASCAR Pole Position | October-November 2024

SINCE

DRIVERS POSTERIZED

Celebrates 20 Years of Serious Fun

The Spirited Story of Stock Car Racing and Down-Home Distilling

Discover North Carolina’s NEW Moonshine and Motorsports Trail and experience our state’s history of perseverance and innovation like never before.

- Victory Junction Camper Victory Junction is my It makes me feel like I can do anything!! happy

At Victory Junction, we believe that every child, regardless of their diagnosis or condition, should have the chance to just be a kid. Your support helps to provide life-changing camp experiences for kids with complex medical conditions, at no cost to their families. Spread happiness, laughter, and hope at Victory Junction by making a gift today and empowering every child to dream big! Together, we can unleash joy and create moments that last a lifetime!

DATE

Feb. 2

Feb. 16

March 2

March

March

March

March

April 6

April 13

April

May 4

June

June

July 20

July

Aug. 3

Aug. 10

Aug. 16 (Sat.)

Aug. 23 (Sat.)

Aug. 31

Sept. 7

Sept. 13 (Sat.)

Sept. 21

Sept. 28

Oct. 5

Oct. 12

Oct. 19

Oct. 26

Nov. 2

NASCAR POLE POSITION

AN OFFICIALLY LICENSED

PUBLICATION OF NASCAR 23110 STATE ROAD 54, SUITE 293 LUTZ, FL 33549

EMAIL: INFO@AE-ENGINE.COM

WEB: POLEPOSITIONMAG.COM; AE-ENGINE.COM

THE CREW

PUBLISHER: CRAIG BARONCELLI

COMMERCIAL

VICE PRESIDENT: DAVID WATSON

DIRECTORS: WILL OVERTON, MATT SMITH, ROWLAND GEORGE, ARNOUT KOK CONTENT

CREATIVE DIRECTOR: JOE RABUCK

DIGITAL MEDIA DIRECTOR: NICOLE COOPER

DIGITAL CONTENT DIRECTOR: JOSH MULL

EXECUTIVE EDITOR: ERIC ESTEPP

COPY EDITOR: KEITH WALTZ

EDITORIAL: JOSHUA LIPOWSKI

CONTRIBUTORS: RICK HOUSTON, JARED TURNER, DUSTIN ALBINO

STAFF ASSISTANTS: AIDAN ANDERSEN, ETHAN ANDERSEN, SHOGUN & WINNIE

SPECIAL THANKS TO: ANDREW ENGEL (NASCAR)

A.E. ENGINE SPECIFIES THAT POST-PRESS CHANGES MAY OCCUR TO ANY INFORMATION PRESENTED IN THIS PUBLICATION AND TAKES NO RESPONSIBILITY FOR GOODS OR SERVICES ADVERTISED.

NASCAR® IS A REGISTERED TRADEMARK OF THE NATIONAL ASSOCIATION FOR STOCK CAR AUTO RACING, INC.

MAIL ORDER: TO RECEIVE A SUBSCRIPTION TO NASCAR POLE POSITION MAGAZINE, SEND A CHECK OR MONEY ORDER FOR $30.95 TO: A.E. ENGINE, 23110 STATE ROAD 54, SUITE 293, LUTZ, FL 33549. PLEASE INCLUDE YOUR RETURN MAILING ADDRESS AND AN EMAIL ADDRESS AND MAKE THE CHECK PAYABLE TO A.E. ENGINE.

ONLINE ORDER: SUBSCRIPTIONS AND INDIVIDUAL COPIES CAN BE ORDERED ONLINE AT POLEPOSITIONMAG.COM.

DISTRIBUTION: IF YOU ARE A BUSINESS OR AN ORGANIZATION INTERESTED IN DISTRIBUTING COPIES OF NASCAR POLE POSITION MAGAZINE, PLEASE CONTACT CRAIG BARONCELLI AT CB@ AE-ENGINE.COM.

SALES INQUIRIES: IF YOU ARE INTERESTED IN ADVERTISING OR WOULD LIKE TO BECOME A FIELD REPRESENTATIVE, PLEASE CONTACT DAVID WATSON AT DKW@AE-ENGINE.COM.

MY FAVORITE WITH KYLE Weatherman

In his sixth year as a NASCAR Xfinity Series driver, Kyle Weatherman has largely flown under the radar despite logging more than 130 starts and recording no fewer than five top-10 finishes in NASCAR’s No. 2 division.

Weatherman, who’s running the full Xfinity Series season in DGM Racing’s No. 91 Chevrolet, hails from the St. Louis suburb of Wentzville, Missouri, and recently celebrated his 27th birthday.

Get to know him a lot better next:

BY JARED TURNER

WHAT’S YOUR FAVORITE BOOK?

I’VE BEEN READING A couple of Tim Tebow books. I like anything that has to do with Tim. He’s one of my favorite athletes in a lot of directions. I follow him on social media and really enjoy his outlook on life and what that looks like and how he was a professional athlete but then his faith was stronger than anything that mattered in the world. I just kind of really look up to him in that aspect and, as a professional athlete myself, really appreciate that outlook and definitely strive to kind of pursue that in my life, as well.

WHERE’S YOUR FAVORITE PLACE TO VACATION?

WHEN I LIVED IN Missouri, we’d go to Lake of the Ozarks a lot. When I was growing up, I loved being on the lake and the water, and I still do. So whether it’s a Lake Norman trip or a beach trip, anything around water or being on a boat, I just enjoy it. We’ve actually ventured off into the cruise side of things. Our honeymoon was on a cruise, and we just did an Alaskan cruise. So, yeah, just being on a boat, being on the water, having my feet in the sand is definitely my type of vacation.

WHO WAS YOUR

FAVORITE

DRIVER GROWING UP?

I’VE GOT TWO. CHRIS Buescher and David Ragan are two of the drivers I’ve always looked up to and that have helped me a tremendous amount. My dad’s best friend is related to David Ragan, and David is how we got started in racing, really. At that time, Ken Ragan – David’s father – was running U.S. Legend Cars, and when we were ready, we moved to Bandoleros and Legend Cars and stuff like that. So that’s how that relationship with David was created. David was helping Chris, but after Chris moved from Legend Cars to the ARCA Series, I took over all of Chris’ Legend Car stuff.

WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE DAY OF THE WEEK?

WELL, OBVIOUSLY, Saturday for racing, but if it’s not that, I enjoy Sundays – getting back home and kind of just chilling with my wife, not doing a whole lot, just kind of hanging out and recouping from Saturday. I like cutting my grass; I enjoy that. I’m a lawn dad, but if I had to pick one day, it’s Saturday, because of

WHAT’S YOUR FAVORITE TYPE OF MUSIC?

MAN, I’M ALL OVER THE board. It really just depends on my mood. I find myself definitely listening to Morgan Wallen a decent amount. Whether it’s that or Christian music or rock, it’s all over the place. If I had to specifically say one genre, it’s pretty difficult. I just don’t like the slow type of music. That’s not my style. I’m normally either chill or superfast-paced. So kind of in the middle of one of those two.

NASCARCOLLECTIBLES

Collecting Builds Deeper Connection to the Sport

Collecting has long been an outlet for NASCAR fans to form a deeper connection with their favorite sport. For some, it started at a young age, with bins full of 1:64-scale diecast cars and evolved into well-lit shelves lined with rows of colorful cars of all eras. Collectors are pillars of the NASCAR community and, fortunately, they enjoy sharing their passion. So here’s a peek at a handful of collectors’ fan caves, display cases and pieces of history:

Daniel collects both 1:64- and 1:24-scale cars. Having been around die-casts for the majority of his life, Daniel’s collection really took off after Christopher Bell’s win last year in The Food City Dirt Race at Bristol. Bell is Daniel’s favorite driver, and since that race, he has added more than 150 1:24 die-cast cars.

Steven Davis has collected NASCAR memorabilia since 1996, and he was a die-hard fan of Jeff Gordon at the time. His collection took a break from 2010 to 2020, but Steven got back into NASCAR thanks to Eric Estepp’s YouTube videos. Seeing that his favorite driver had retired, Steven began collecting Chase Elliott’s items.

RICHIE MARTIN IS A LIFELONG NASCAR FAN AND dedicated collector. His collection spans decades, though he only started going to races in 2007. A large portion of Richie’s collection is comprised of Jeff Gordon, Dale Earnhardt, Dale Earnhardt Jr. and Bill Elliott memorabilia.

Conor has been acquiring NASCAR die-casts since 1992, with his collection of 1:24-scale cars picking up around 2007. Meticulously stowed in multiple cases, Conor’s collection has roughly 1,200 cars, several of which showcase Kaulig Racing driver A.J. Allmendinger.

Lloyd Jones and his wife began assembling a NASCAR collection in the early 1990s. It features black-window banks, along with traditional NASCAR die-cast cars and numerous NHRA collectibles. Lloyd describes himself as an “old-school” fan and supports anyone who drives the No. 43 car.

Q&A WITH KADEN HONEYCUTT

Young Texan Turning Heads in Niece Truck

BY KAUY OSTIEN

Kaden Honeycutt, a 21-year-old racer from Aledo, Texas, is often mentioned among the hardest-working drivers currently navigating stock car racing’s ladder system.

This season, Honeycutt has raced with the CARS Tour, the ARCA Menards Series, the eNASCAR Coca-Cola iRacing Series, the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series and the NASCAR Xfinity Series. He’s even spent time slinging clay in a Dirt Late Model.

At press time, Honeycutt’s best results were in the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series where he had four top-10 finishes in eight starts aboard the No. 45 Chevrolet fielded by Niece Motorsports.

Wise beyond his years, Honeycutt carries himself like a veteran and he recently sat down with NASCAR Pole Position to talk about his career – past, present and future.

WHAT HAVE YOU DONE TO GET TO WHERE YOU ARE NOW?

When I’m not racing, I always try to work on finding sponsorship, finding the money that we need to move on to the next level and to do more at the next level instead of doing one or two races.

And this opportunity this year at Niece Motorsports is probably the best I’ve ever had in the Truck Series. And it just all came together. It took a whole year to make it happen, but we got everything together to make it work. I just needed to trust the process of everyone at Niece and I was able to make it happen.

UNLEASH TAILGATE PERFECTION with the TG Series Grill!

Experience the ultimate in tailgating versatility with the American-made TG Series Grill, your compact, durable solution for grilling, griddling, and more. Transform your race day with ease and enjoy a variety of foods, from morning pancakes to wood-fired pizzas, all with one robust, portable grill.

DON’T JUST HOST A TAILGATE—DOMINATE IT WITH THE TG SERIES GRILL. Made to move and built to last, the TG says goodbye to bulky grills and hello to space-saving solutions and motion control technology.

WHAT WAS THE RACE THAT TOLD YOU THAT YOU COULD MAKE IT TO THE NEXT LEVEL?

The race that I knew I could do it was when I ran a Super Late Model at Five Flags Speedway in Pensacola, Florida, for Donnie Wilson. That was my first time running someone else’s car. We sat on the pole and led 65 of the 75 laps. I lost to Bubba Pollard, but then turned around and went to the Snowball Derby and ran fifth at the Derby – to all those guys, Majeski, Chandler and I think two others I can’t remember. Oh, Derek Thorn. At that point, I knew I could actually do it.

WHAT TRACK ARE YOU EXCITED TO GO BACK TO?

I’m looking forward to returning to Homestead this year in the Truck Series because I feel like Homestead was a good track for me when I ran there two years ago. I just love how worn out that track is, and I love being able to run up next to the wall. The trucks are a little bit different just because we have to have side force and, we can’t run right on the wall. But I’m really looking forward to Homestead this year with the Niece group.

WHAT HAS IT BEEN LIKE ADDING THE ENASCAR COCA-COLA IRACING SERIES TO YOUR SCHEDULE?

Honestly, the Coke Series on iRacing is the hardest thing I’ve ever done. It’s kind of weird to say, but it just is, like, I have a really hard time being able to win these Coke races because they’re just difficult. And I think that is extremely awesome to transfer to real life. To be honest with you, just getting used to the standpoint of the competition. So, this was just going and being competitive in both series, and anything you can get in is good. And that’s what I try to focus on: To win in every series that I compete in and just be different.

My goal this year was to win a race. We’re still looking forward to that, and we are definitely on track.

WHAT DOES A SUCCESSFUL 2025 LOOK LIKE FOR KADEN HONEYCUTT?

I’d love to run for a title in the Truck Series next year. My goal this year was to win a race. We’re still looking forward to that, and we are definitely on track. It is not from lack of team or effort, from Phil Gould and everyone. Still, it’s just stuff we’ve got to execute, but yeah, we’ll definitely get there for this year. But for next year I would really like to do that if we can put everything together.

HOW TO GET STARTED WITH iRacing

iRacing has gone from a cult favorite game rooted in the PCs of the early 2000s to a legitimate step for any driver working his or her way up the motorsports ladder.

It features head-to-head racing action on hundreds of digitized race tracks while driving highly accurate models of actual race cars. iRacing not only gives fans an outlet to scratch their competitive itch, it also allows fans to compete against their favorite drivers in a virtual setting.

The realism of iRacing is unbeatable. Dale Earnhardt Jr., an executive director at iRacing, is among the drivers who used the platform both during and after their careers to keep their skills race-ready.

Other drivers have used it as a stepping stone in their careers. Current NASCAR regulars like William Byron and Rajah Caruth became known for their exploits on iRacing prior to their on-track success in NASCAR.

NASCAR even sanctions the eNASCAR Coca-Cola iRacing Series. It’s a 15-year-old series that features drivers racing virtually for teams like Hendrick Motorsports, 23XI Racing and JR Motorsports.

iRacing has, in its time, ascended what was once thought of as online gaming and has evolved into a community of online racers of all ages, backgrounds and skill levels.

So, what do you need to get into iRacing?

iRacing is software that requires a download and a membership to use. Signing up for iRacing is the first step for anyone setting out on this adventure.

BY KAUY OSTLIEN

Most modern PCs can run iRacing. However, the iRacing website suggests that some older computers may need an upgraded graphics card to run iRacing.

If you worry about whether your system can run iRacing and how well it will perform, iRacing has a system requirements checker on its website that will automatically check your hardware.

At the very least, iRacing also sells an iRacing starter pack in its store featuring a PC that will run iRacing, a one-year subscription and a much-needed combination of the steering wheel and pedals.

The membership cost for iRacing is similar to that of many online subscription services. It starts at $13 for a one-month annual subscription, then $33 for a three-month subscription, $110 for a one-year subscription and $199 for two years. They also offer occasional discounts for first-time members.

After ensuring your PC is up to par with what is required by iRacing, the next step will be finding how you will control your car in the game.

You may have seen amazing rigs online that many drivers have in their homes. These range from rigs that give accurate feedback to drivers and race teams getting ready to head to the track to some fan-made simulators inside the sheet metal of an old stock car or the body of an old open-wheel car.

These are by no means necessary for casual racers nor even those who compete professionally in leagues.

Steering wheel and pedal sets are also not necessary. If you cannot afford the wheel and pedals, you

can use a controller to race in iRacing. However, controllers can limit your experience.

The iRacing website states that almost any USB-based gaming controller should do the job: Even your PlayStation DualShock controller or Xbox gamepad can guide your virtual race craft around the track.

A steering wheel and pedal set enhance the iRacing experience by allowing the user to make split-second on-track decisions.

Most wheel and pedal boxes are reasonably priced. However, much like some of the previously stated “rigs,” they can cost thousands of dollars. Regardless, it is unnecessary to buy such complex setups when starting your amateur iRacing career.

You can find pedal and steering wheel combinations online for under $175. While not the best, they add an extra amount of realism to the experience.

If you are willing to spend a little more, Logitech, a sponsor of Denny Hamlin, is used by many real-life racers, iRacing professionals and streamers. Logitech offers options from $300 to $400.

If you want to take it up a step, you can even buy shifters, though most wheels come equipped with paddle shifters.

Now, you’ve got your wheel and pedals. You’ve also got your subscription to iRacing and your PC is up to par. What’s next?

After setting up your equipment, you need to download the iRacing software. The download is on the member site, which you gain access to upon subscribing to iRacing.

The downloader even features a quick start guide to assist you downloading the software, setting it up and configuring your accessories.

iRacing offers more cars and tracks for purchase. Cars cost $11.95 and tracks can cost upward of $14.95. However, track costs can vary, and iRacing offers occasional discounts on cars.

The store offers various NASCAR options, featuring all NASCAR series and different generations of select NASCAR series. However, to compete at a ranked level in certain series, you will need to advance your license in the game.

You begin with the four base Rookie Class licenses, covering the rookie levels of iRacing’s differing disciplines. The rookie level is mostly beginners, creating a learning environment for new drivers.

Depending on what discipline you want to enter, be that Oval, Dirt Road, Dirt Oval or Road, this is a good time to plan where you want to focus most of your efforts, as each discipline license advances at an independent rate.

If you’ve made it this far, you’ve purchased a membership, but what comes with that membership?

Right off the bat, you have 23 cars and 30 free tracks.

Out of these free options, NASCAR fans may be familiar with the 2008 Truck Series Chevrolet Silverado and the Legend Car, a developmental level of racing for young drivers.

Tracks familiar to NASCAR fans include two versions of Charlotte Motor Speedway, an older and new scan, and an older scan of Phoenix Raceway. Notable tracks for those familiar with shorttrack racing are Thompson Speedway Motorsports Park and South Boston Speedway.

For example, if you progress past the Rookie Class on Ovals but have not focused on Dirt Ovals nearly as much, your Dirt Oval License will remain in the Rookie Class.

Advancing past Rookie class, you can ascend to D, C, B and A classes while unlocking more series in which to race.

A key aspect of advancing is your Safety Rating, which is a little self-explanatory. Your Safety Rating is on the line in all ranked races you enter in iRacing. This number shows that you are a respectful and responsible racer.

The Safety Rating system is known as one of the best aspects of iRacing, as it can not only promote you, but for those who make unwise decisions on track or just aren’t ready for the next level, it can demote you as well.

While Safety Rating is important for advancement, it is not the only factor that affects your licenses. Fortunately, iRacing lets you know what other requirements you must meet to advance.

Some well-known sim racing content creators, like DJ Yee-J, suggest one hour a day or a race a day as a good starting point for Rookies to advance not only their license but also their skills.

When you finally get on track, don’t worry if setting up your car or learning a track is difficult. iRacing is a close, family-like community full of knowledgeable peers who make great online resources for setups, track guides and general information.

While iRacing can be intimidating, it is a fun hobby that not only grows your racing knowledge, but your racing community.

Wear a Totally Different Hat

HUTCH GAMES OFFERS NASCAR MANAGER MOBILE APP

BY JARED TURNER

Want to go virtual racing like never before?

You can thanks to a relatively new mobile app, dubbed the “NASCAR Manager,” from popular gaming company Hutch Games Ltd.

While the free app gives users the opportunity to play an officially licensed NASCAR mobile game that debuted in November 2023, this isn’t in any way the typical racing game. Instead of you being the driver – as has traditionally been the case with virtual NASCAR games created in the past – participants wear a totally different hat.

“You should play NASCAR Manager because it’s fun to get your head into playing the role of a crew chief and team owner,” said Josie Austen, the game’s product manager. “I love unlocking new drivers and upgrading them. I love giving them a shiny new paint scheme and putting them out on track. I love dunking on my opponents by outplaying them with good strategy.

“There’s a lot of fun in watching my favorite driver win the race because I put them there.”

If you’ve ever aspired to build and manage your own racing team or be the mastermind behind in-race strategy, NASCAR Manager is the place to live out those dreams.

Along with getting to handpick their driver roster, gamers decide on their drivers’ pit strategy and coach them throughout the race on ways to advance their position and ultimately emerge victorious. You’ll do battle with real players, in hopes of working your way up through ranks of NASCAR and reaching the premier level.

“You should play the game if you’ve ever wished you could be in the shoes of a NASCAR crew chief,” Austen said. “Building up a collection of drivers and assembling the perfect team is very satisfying.”

Along with being free of charge, NASCAR Manager is easy to download on any mobile device. It’s available on the Apple App Store and on the Google Play Store by simply searching “NASCAR Manager.”

Although a year old, NASCAR Manager continues to evolve with the addition of various enhancements designed to make it even more user friendly and akin to real-life racing.

“We get loads of feedback from our fans,” Austen said. “It’s very hard to do everything that people have asked for, especially because some folks’ feedback often is the opposite of others. We are still listening to players and are always thinking about how

Scan Here to Get Racing!

we can make improvements to the game.”

One recent change, which the creators of NASCAR Manager made to help new players easily adapt, involved how drivers communicate with their crew chief during the race.

“We are looking at how to adapt our solution to suit everybody,” Austen said. “We also want to create more varied content so that players have more to aim for and more stuff to do across the week.”

While NASCAR Manager features 11 Cup Series tracks past or present that include a mix of road courses and ovals such as fan-favorites Daytona International Speedway, Darlington Raceway and Richmond Raceway, the app initially didn’t have any real-world Cup Series drivers.

That changed in July when Hutch Games added Hendrick Motorsports teammates Kyle Larson, Chase Elliott, Alex Bowman and William Byron to the mix. Richard Childress Racing teammates Kyle Busch and Austin Dillon have since joined the fray, and the makers of NASCAR Manager plan to bring the drivers from Spire Motorsports, Team Penske and Wood Brothers Racing on board soon.

“Adding Hendrick Motorsports and Richard Childress Racing has been fantastic,” Austen said. “Both teams have been really great to work with, and I think having real drivers and teams is instrumental to making the game really ‘feel NASCAR.’

“It’s great to have a combination of youthful energy, historical prowess and massive success all represented across the next few teams we are adding.”

Along with giving users the unique opportunity to be a crew chief or a team owner, NASCAR Manager offers the chance to build community by teaming up and taking on the competition together while earning prizes along the way.

“I think that the thing that sets NASCAR Manager apart is the detailed simulation of races,” Austen said. “Drivers all have their own attributes, strengths and weaknesses. It’s up to you to give them the best chance of victory by utilizing pit stops, the draft and boosters.

“My favorite thing to do at the moment is do what the real teams do sometimes: make a pit stop for fuel but keep my old tires in order to jump the field. It doesn’t always work, and you will have to swap your tires later, but it definitely works as a good strategy if you’re a few steps behind and need to catch up.”

WITH NASCAR INSIDER JOE DAN BAILEY

‘I’m the Forrest Gump of NASCAR’

Bailey Reflects on a 40-Year Career

BY RICK HOUSTON, HOST OF THE SCENE VAULT PODCAST

Joe Dan Bailey is the son of legendary NASCAR independent team owner and driver H.B. Bailey. Joe Dan won the 1990 Daytona 500 with Whitcomb Racing and driver Derrike Cope and the 1993 and 1994 NASCAR Cup Series championships with Dale Earnhardt and Richard Childress Racing.

Now with Toyota Racing Development, Bailey has worked in the sport for more than 40 years. He recently shared highlights of his career and memories of his father with Rick Houston, host of The Scene Vault Podcast.

FIRST OF ALL, DO YOU GO BY JOE DAN OR BAILEY?

I’ve battled to go by Joe Dan my entire life, and there’s a story about that. We had a local race track called Myers Speedway. I’m walking up to the stands one day as a little kid going up to see my mom in the in the scoring stand, and the PA announcer comes over the speaker, and he goes, “Here comes the only person I know that was named after a motel.”

Come to find out later, we’re racing in Shreveport, Louisiana, and as you pull out the back straightaway, you look across the way there, and it says one mile to the Joe Dan Motel. So my entire life, I battled to keep it as Joe Dan.

YOUR DAD IS H.B. BAILEY, LONGTIME INDEPENDENT DRIVER. WHAT IS YOUR EARLIEST MEMORY OF HIM BEING INVOLVED IN RACING?

I remember sitting in his car as a little kid.

I climbed up in the car. You climb up over the door, the car’s still on the trailer, and sitting there and reading the comics inside the race car. I don’t know how old I was, but it was way, way young. That was first time I ever remember being in a race car.

Other than that, my parents divorced when I was younger. My dad got custody. I lived with my dad, so every evening I would go to my dad’s shop. I started out sweeping the floors and then cleaning bearings, packing bearings and just worked my way up.

I think 1977 or ’79 – with the big car, the 115-inch wheelbase car at Michigan –. was the first time I went across a wall for a pit stop. We were short-handed, and I had to actually carry my own tire and my gun and went across and changed tires there. So that was the first time I remember going across the wall.

It wasn’t like today. I mean, I was wearing jeans, bike knee pads and Saranac gloves.

You just went over the wall and did it.

In school, I played football and ran track and stuff like that. I was in good shape so I could do it.

YOU PLAYED TEXAS HIGH SCHOOL FOOTBALL? THAT’S SERIOUS.

I didn’t get to play in high school. I played in junior high but in high school, I was racing. Every day after school, I drove over to the shop.

We were very fortunate. He’d run Michigan, he’d run Atlanta, he’d run Texas World, Charlotte, naturally. Darlington ... he loved. So during the summertime, I would go over to Houston Intercontinental, get on an airplane, fly to the track, work the weekends with him and then come back.

That’s what I did. I didn’t play football after junior high. I was gone racing. DID YOUR DAD RACE FULL TIME?

Back then – 1971, ’72, ’73 – NASCAR had a series called Grand American and he ran the Grand American series in 1973 full time, or enough where he finished third in points. I think that’s about the only time he ever ran a full schedule.

He’d run 10, 12 Cup races a year. He had a big wrecking yard there on the south side of Houston and between dad’s place and (another company) in Houston, they had most of the dealerships in Houston locked

up, as far as body parts and stuff like that. His racing was his hunting and fishing. He would tell you … that’s his hobby. And it was, but it was enough to get me into it where, whenever he wasn’t there, if I went to the track, people would ask me to come change tires for them.

1984 Firecracker 400 (at Daytona) ... we’re walking around. Jimmy Means sees me, and he goes, “Hey, what are you doing?” I said, “I’m just over here visiting, dropping a car off.” And he goes, “You wanna change tires today?”

I said, “All right, Jimmy, who’s driving the car today?”

And he said, “Well, Ned’s son is getting his start today, Dale.” Dale Jarrett drove Jimmy’s car that day and I changed tires for him. I can’t remember if they paid me or not, and it didn’t matter at that point. You know, it was experience back then.

If we picked up $100, $50 for changing tires for the day, that was great money.

We ran that day, and, you know, Doug Heveron crashes down into one. Cale Yarborough comes down pit lane a lap early after losing the race. Air Force One landed that day. It was a cool day.

AND SOME NO-NAME WON THE RACE. WHAT WAS HIS NAME? Editor’s Note: Rick was JUST kidding, folks. Richard Pettywontheevent,the200thNASCARvictoryofhiscareer.

Yeah, seeing The King win his 200th race – you know –.it was really a neat deal. That’s my ongoing joke. Because of being in it so long, and still being in it and falling into situations like that, I tell people I’m the Forrest Gump of NASCAR.

JOE DAN BAILEY

■ Mechanic for Richard Childress Racing during Dale Earnhardt’s 1993 and 1994 championship seasons.

■ Currently works with Toyota Racing Development.

YOU SEE PICTURES OF YOUR DAD, RIGHT? AND HE SEEMED TO BE AN INTERESTING CHARACTER, JUST FROM THE PICTURES. TELL ME ABOUT YOUR DAD. WHAT KIND OF PERSONALITY DID HE HAVE?

My dad was old-school. My dad would yell at you. My dad would correct you. My dad would help you out any way he could. It was like, “I’m going to help this guy. He doesn’t know I’m helping him, but I’m going to help this

guy every way I can, until I see he’s beyond it.” And that was kind of the way my dad was.

He helped a lot of people up here get started, helped them out in many different ways, loaned them money, sold them stuff. He used that wrecking yard as a business, but also as a link to stay in racing.

He made me use my manners, and if you didn’t do it, he was on your butt. He was a caring father. He was somebody that wanted to make sure that I was a good person.

He loved to watch people have a good time. He’d come to Charlotte, and he’d bring what he called a big fajita wagon – a barbecue pit type thing. And he would come in and cook fajitas for the whole garage area for free. He wanted to share with people and make sure other people had a good time.

He was probably just the most straightforward, kind person that I’ve ever met.

He helped out so many people. Benny Parsons told a story about dad and my mom getting him in the garage area. Tim Brewer started running around with my dad. There were a lot of people that dad helped out to get in the garage area. And that’s why I worked with Brewer. I liked Brewer because the simple fact he was the same way as dad. He was very straightforward. If he had a problem, you never had to guess he had a problem.

Dad was a huge influence and helped me understand how to be, to try to be a good person. I’m not saying I’m a good person, but I’m the person I am today because of him.

My dad passed in 2003. You talk to your dad after a race, and you tell him about this and you tell him about that, and he would tell you the way it really was. You would sit there in the back of your head, you wouldn’t listen, because you were like, he don’t know. He hadn’t been doing this for a long time.

Now, having those phone calls after a race on Monday or whatever with them is something that everybody should value, because one day you don’t have them.

XFINITY SERIES FINDS NEW HOME

All 33 Xfinity Series Races Available for Free on The CW

As the NASCAR Xfinity Series races through the playoffs en route to crowning its 2024 champion, anticipation is already building for the 2025 NASCAR Xfinity Series season, which kicks off Saturday, Feb. 15, at Daytona International Speedway in Daytona Beach, Florida.

That race marks the beginning of a new relationship between the NASCAR Xfinity Series and The CW, where for the first time all 33 series races will be available for free on broadcast television with additional content accessible through The CW’s digital platforms.

The full 2025 NASCAR Xfinity Series schedule and all ancillary content will be produced by the Emmy® Awardwinning NASCAR Productions, in close collaboration with The CW.

“We can’t wait to show racing fans all the exciting action the NASCAR Xfinity Series has to offer on The CW,” said Dennis Miller, president, The CW Network. “We look forward to establishing the network as a new destination for live motorsports.”

In addition to the season-opening race at Daytona, The CW will visit most of NASCAR’s iconic tracks next year, including a return to historic Rockingham Speedway on Saturday, April 19. The Xfinity Series has not raced at the Rockingham, North Carolina, facility since 2004.

Other highlights of the 2025 schedule include Talladega Superspeedway on Saturday, April 26, and the fan-favorite Chicago Street Race on Saturday, July 5.

The Xfinity Series will also return to Mexico City for a milestone race from the world-class Autódromo Hermanos Rodríguez road course on Saturday, June 14. The 2.674-mile road course previously hosted the Xfinity Series from 2005 to 2008.

Additionally, Bristol Motor Speedway will be the opening race in the Xfinity Series playoffs. The post-season kicks off Friday, Sept. 12, and concludes with the crowning of a series champion Nov. 1 at Phoenix Raceway.

THE CW 2025 BROADCAST HIGHLIGHTS

SATURDAY, FEB. 15

SATURDAY, MARCH 15

SATURDAY, APRIL 19

SATURDAY, APRIL 26

SATURDAY, JUNE 14

SATURDAY, JULY 5

FRIDAY, SEPT. 12

SATURDAY. NOV. 1

Daytona International Speedway

Las Vegas Motor Speedway

Rockingham Speedway

Talladega Superspeedway

Autódromo Hermanos Rodriguez (Mexico City)

Chicago Street Race

Bristol Motor Speedway (Playoff Opener)

Phoenix Raceway (Championship Race)

TOP10 WELDING SAFETY TIPS EVERY WELDER SHOULD KNOW

At Forney Industries, safety is our top priority. Whether you’re a seasoned welder or just starting out, it’s crucial to prioritize safety measures to protect yourself and those around you. Here are the top 10 welding safety tips recommended by Forney’s Expert Tech Services:

1

Wear Proper Protective Clothing

When it comes to welding, what you wear matters. Opt for cotton clothing as opposed to polyester. Cotton burns, whereas polyester melts and can stick to your skin, causing severe burns. Forney’s flame-retardant jackets are a musthave for welding professionals. Trust in the superior quality and functionality of Forney’s® welding jacket to keep you safe and comfortable on the job.

2

Cover All Exposed Skin

Welding exposes you to intense UV radiation similar to the sun, but without the Earth’s atmosphere to filter it. Protect your skin by covering all exposed areas to avoid sunburn-like effects.

3

Ensure a Good Grounding Path

Electricity follows the path of least resistance, so ensure your welding setup has a solid grounding path to prevent electric shocks. To achieve this, find clean metal that is not painted, primed, or rusty, and place the actual clamp as close to the weld as possible. Additionally, check all connections for tightness.

4

Avoid Creases & Folds in Clothing

Sparks and slag can easily get trapped in folds or creases of clothing, leading to smoldering and potential fire hazards. Wear fitted clothing without creases to minimize this risk.

5

Maintain Your Equipment

Regularly clean and maintain your welding equipment to keep it in good working condition. This practice enhances safety and improves the quality of your welds. For instance, use Forney’s nozzle gel to eliminate erratic operation with a film that won’t clog the orifices and threads on MIG nozzles and contact tips. Additionally, blow out the internals with compressed air using the Forney 2.5 CFM Air Compressor.

6

Ensure Sufficient Ventilation

Welding produces harmful smoke and fumes that can damage your lungs. Work in well-ventilated areas or use respiratory protection like a respirator or fume extractor.

7

Clear the Work Area

Remove flammable materials such as wood, cardboard, or dry leaves from your work area. Keep a fire extinguisher nearby in case of emergencies.

8

Test Auto Darkening Helmets

Auto darkening welding helmets are convenient but require proper maintenance. Test them periodically using a flashlight or exposure to natural light to ensure the batteries are functional and will darken appropriately during welding.

9

Store Helmets Correctly Store auto darkening welding helmets in a location where the solar charge panel is exposed to ambient light. This helps maintain battery life and ensures the helmet is always ready for use.

10 Stay Informed and Educated Lastly, never stop learning about welding safety. Stay updated on the latest safety protocols, techniques, and equipment to ensure you’re always working as safely as possible.

By following these welding safety tips from Forney’s Expert Tech Services, you can protect yourself from potential hazards and enjoy a safer, more productive welding experience. Your safety is paramount, and investing in proper safety practices is investing in your well-being. For more information and to explore our range of welding safety products, visit https://www.forneyind.com.

Stay safe and weld on!

Disclaimer: Remember, these tips are general guidelines. Always consult specific safety guidelines and regulations for your welding processes and equipment.

Nozzle Gel, 16 Ounce ITEM #: 37031 Fornair®

WELDING MADE EASY ®

Durable. Reliable. Versatile.

New to welding or a career welder? The Forney Easy Weld line has affordable and portable welders you need.

The Forney Easy Weld line offers a range of processes including MIG, Flux-Core, Stick, TIG, and Plasma Cutting, all backed by a 1-year warranty.

NASCAR Licensee Carrera Fuels a Slot Car Racing Rebound

Slot car racing, once thought to be on life support due to the emergence of newer technology, never really went away, but it’s being resurrected better than ever this fall. And for that fans can thank the new NASCAR product line from Carrera, a longtime maker of slot car racing toys for children of many ages.

In business for more than 60 years, Carrera had a brief stint in the world of NASCAR during the early 2010s before turning its focus to product lines featuring other types of motorsports. All that changed in the fall of 2023, however, when the company – which is headquartered in Austria but has offices in the United States – entered into a licensing agreement with NASCAR.

Frank Tiessen, who became the CEO of Carrera Revell of Americas Inc. in May 2021 and has also been the company’s president since April 2019, considered the move a no-brainer.

“For a U.S. company that’s in racing, it doesn’t make sense not to have NASCAR,” Tiessen said. “We can do as much Formula 1 and DTM and GT cars as we want to, but we see from our pre-orders that

we’ve had on the books since we made it public that we have NASCAR, NASCAR is outselling – by far –everything else that we have. We have never seen numbers like these.”

Miniature vehicles that are powered by a small electric motor and perfectly fitted to navigate a custom-designed toy race track, slot cars of various shapes and sizes have been around since the early 1900s. At the height of its popularity, slot car racing was so prominent in the United States that even latenight talk show host Johnny Carson took notice.

“At one point there were over 23,000 slot car racing venues in the U.S.,” Tiessen said. “One of my favorite stories is always that actually the slot car racing national championship was on the Johnny Carson Show in 1963 and the winner got a real-life Ford Thunderbird, and the winner was a 13-year-old

Talladega Competition 16.08 ft race track

Darlington Showdown 17.4 ft race track

duced them to slot car racing. I think that is a beautiful thing.”

In a world where people old, young and in-between typically spend hours a day looking at a screen, slot car racing offers an opportunity for more interaction and community-building.

“Playing video games is a very solitary experience,” Tiessen said. “Slot car racing brings people together, and you have something physical you can touch. It’s bringing families and friends together. People are coming together again and playing together.”

Carrera, the world’s leading slot car racing brand, has always been on the cutting edge of innovation and technology, and its new NASCAR product line, now available for purchase, is no exception.

The company has a diverse range of

NASCAR offerings, which you can explore in-depth at carrera-revell-toys.com. Car rera’s toy vehicles are suitable for children of various ages and skill sets, and they come at different price points. While the NASCAR slot cars available from Carrera this year are highly detailed miniature rep licas of the Hendrick Motorsports vehicles driven in the NASCAR Cup Series by team mates Chase Elliott, William Byron, Alex Bowman and Kyle Larson, the racing sets that come with the cars aren’t patterned after any particular NASCAR track or style of track.

“We tried that in the past with what we called ‘vintage’ NASCAR cars,” Tiessen said. “We tried that and offered that, and the feedback from the consumers was always, ‘Yeah, it looks nice and we know what you’re trying to do … but no.’”

No matter the configuration of the sets, the slot car racing experience can be as educational as it is fun and entertaining.

“You learn the basics of physics about speed, about downforce, about gravity,” Tiessen said. “These are things you take with you out of slot car racing. So kids will learn how to handle a controller. It’s a little bit about hand-eye coordination also: ‘I have to slow down, I have to speed up, I cannot go that fast through a turn.’

“With slot car racing, you get something out of it.”

NASCAR Darlington Showdown, Evolution 1/32 Set

NASCAR Daytona Challenge, with Wireless, Digital 1/32 Set

Alex Bowman, Evolution 1/32

Kyle Larson, Evolution 1/32

William Byron, Evolution 1/32

Chase Elliott, Evolution 1/32

Daytona Challenge 23.95 ft race track

FEATUREDCHARITY

RONALD MCDONALD HOUSE

CHARITIES OF THE CENTRAL VALLEY

A Home Away From Home

BY JARED TURNER

Strategically located on the same property as Valley Children’s Hospital in Madera, California, the Ronald McDonald House Charities of the Central Valley positions itself as a “Home Away from Home” for families of children being treated at the hospital for serious medical conditions.

“Home Away from Home” is more than just a catchy moniker, though. For those who visit the Ronald McDonald House of the Central Valley, it’s a reality.

Serving up to 18 families at a time that need to stay overnight, the Ronald McDonald House of the Central Valley provides free lodging and meals to parents of children facing an extended visit in the Valley Children’s Hospital NICU or PICU. Each bedroom is equipped with two beds, a private bathroom, and TV.

“It’s basically a really nice hotel room, for lack of a better term or description. Plus guests have access to fully stocked kitchens, pantries, laundry facilities and other common living areas,” said David Ashjian, director of promotions for the Ronald McDonald House Charities of the Central Valley, a nonprofit organization funded 100 percent by the monetary contributions of generous donors.

One of more than 185 Ronald McDonald Houses nationwide, RMHC Central Valley offers guests easy access to Valley Children’s Hospital, along with a significant savings they wouldn’t be able to find elsewhere. The majority of families that use the Ronald McDonald House Central Valley live an hour or more away from the hospital. The average length of stay is 15 nights, but some families need to stay for six months or even longer.

“The alternative is spending hundreds of dollars a night at a hotel, plus money for food and transportation,” Ashjian said. “Most people don’t have the money for that. Even if you’re fairly well-off, if you need to be by the hospital for a month, that’s a lot of money. Without the Ronald McDonald House, staying close to their child would be cost prohibitive for most families, especially for the longer stays. Maybe they could visit on on the weekend if they can afford it, but otherwise the child would be all alone at the hospital. Children need their family, especially going through a severe medical issue. Doing my part to help provide this Home Away

from Home is extremely rewarding.”

While the Ronald McDonald House of the Central Valley – which often has a waiting list due to limited space – gives preference to families that live 25 minutes or more away from the hospital and that have children dealing with a major medical condition, the house is available to others.

For example, a family in town for just one day to have their child’s broken bone examined at the hospital can take advantage of the Ronald McDonald House for a few hours. A family like this will have access to an area of the house known as The Day Room, which features a living room, kitchen and bedroom.

“This is for people who want to get away from the hospital for a few hours, or need to take a nap, or maybe all you have are the clothes on your back,” Ashjian said. “You can come to the Ronald McDonald House, check in and hang out in The Day Room. We have extra clothes we give out to people that need it. But maybe they want to just do a load of laundry and wash what they have. They can do that. They want to take a nap for an hour, they can do that.

“If they just want to sit and lounge and talk to their spouse or family members or whatever in the living room, they can do that. It’s nice to get away from all the beeping and the noise and the medical jargon that can be overwhelming, and just escape for a few hours. That’s really what The Day Room is for.”

Ronald McDonald House Charities of the Central Valley also offers a program known as Hotels From the Heart, which allows families to stay free of charge in a nearby hotel if their child is having an outpatient procedure at the hospital. This helps relieve some stress on families that live out of town by allowing them to arrive in town a day early and have quick access to the hospital on the day of their child’s appointment.

Whether it’s through Hotels From the Heart, The Day Room or overnight accommodations and free meals, Ronald McDonald House Charities of the Central Valley is making a huge difference in the lives of people that need a helping hand.

“The true heroes are the donors, not me,” Ashjian said. “Donors will tell me, ‘Thank you for what you do,’ and I tell them, ‘We can’t do anything without your support – and your money or your volunteer hours.’ It’s the donors that really make it all possible. They are the real heroes of the organization.”

One of the organization’s biggest fundraisers is a series of Collector Car Drawings. Details and entry information are on the next page.

5 PROMOTERS WHO PUT FANS IN THE STANDS

Old-School Tactics Built the Foundation

BY KAUY OSTLIEN

for Today’s NASCAR

Promoters have been a driving force behind NASCAR racing since the organization sanctioned its first event in 1948.

While early promoters saw the sport’s potential, the next generation understood how to entice casual viewers to attend their races year after year. Though some were more successful than others, they are all remembered for their contributions toward growing the sport.

Here are five old-school promoters who left their mark on NASCAR racing:

H.A. “HUMPY” WHEELER

For many race fans, H.A. “Humpy” Wheeler was the definitive NASCAR promoter. Under his day-to-day leadership, Charlotte Motor Speedway set the standard for motorsports entertainment during an era in which NASCAR racing emerged as a mainstream sport.

Bruton Smith, a co-founder of Charlotte Motor Speedway who had recently regained a majority stake in the track, hired Wheeler in 1975. He was promoted to president the following year, beginning a tenure that lasted until 2008.

Wheeler had a flair for the dramatic and some of his promotions are legendary. For example, one year a three-ring circus provided the pre-race entertainment. Another time, taxi drivers gathered from across the country to race their bright yellow sedans, while a simulated military invasion annually highlights the Coca-Cola 600 pre-race show.

What about Robosaurus, the 40-foot-tall,

robotic fire-breathing dinosaur that destroyed small cars? What if you wanted to see a bus, ice cream truck or garbage truck jump over rows of cars? What if the bus jumped over balls of fire and explosions? These were commonplace prior to NASCAR races at Charlotte Motor Speedway.

Wheeler’s multi-decade run as president of Charlotte Motor Speedway is a shining example of how to grow the sport through fan amenities and experiences.

EDDIE GOSSAGE

During Speedway Motorsports’ westward expansion, Dallas-Fort Worth was one of the most coveted markets.

Eddie Gossage grew up in Tennessee and, like “Humpy” Wheeler, had a background in journalism and public relations. In 1989, Wheeler hired Gossage to manage Charlotte Motor Speedway’s public relations department.

Gossage soon became known for his bold, creative ideas and his unwavering

passion for all types of racing.

When Texas Motor Speedway was being built, Gossage was a natural fit for promoting and managing the north Texas track. The similarities between Gossage’s promotional style and Wheeler’s were uncanny; and Gossage was always thinking outside the box.

The Interstate Batteries 500 – the inaugural NASCAR Cup Series race at Texas Motor Speedway – was run in April 6, 1997, and attracted more than 150,000 fans.

Pre-race pageantry during early Texas races included seven horses and riders carrying the traditional racing flags just before the call to fire the engines. Before the first IndyCar Seres race at TMS, true to his fashion, Gossage had the green flag delivered via a trapeze artist hanging off the bottom of a helicopter.

Through the years, Gossage’s methods became even more innovative, creating a laundry list of eye-catching spectacles. There were cowboy hats and six-shooters for the race winners and a Victory Lane that lit up the sky with fire.

And have you heard about Big Hoss, the world’s largest video board that can be seen crystal clear during the brightest Texas sunshine?

Gossage retired in 2021 and passed away in May 2024 at the age of 65.

HAROLD BRASINGTON

Most NASCAR fans don’t know the name Harold Brasington. However, both casual and die-hard followers of the sport are familiar with the story of Darlington Raceway, the egg-shaped oval Brasington carved from South Carolina farmland.

Like the later promoters who would help grow the sport during the 1990s, Brasington saw the future of stock car racing. While many questioned his choice of location, Brasington believed a high-banked, paved race track in the heart of the southern coastal states would be a success.

Brasington was inspired to build NASCAR’s original superspeedway after attending the Indianapolis 500 and being awed by its massive crowd. He planned to construct his track on a plot of farmland adjacent to Highway 151 west of Darlington.

Sherman Ramsey sold the land to Brasington. Many know this transaction

Permanently Fix Leaks in the:

• Radiator

• Water Pump Casing

• Heater Core

• Freeze Plug

• Block / Head

• Head Gasket

Also Seals Cracked Heads & Cracked Porous Blocks

• Can be added to a hot or cold engine*

• NOT liquid glass / sodium silicate

• Can be added to the overflow tank

• Safe for use in all water cooled engines

• Mixes with all types of antifreeze

included a clause that Ramsey’s minnow pond would remain undisturbed by the speedway, giving Darlington Raceway its familiar egg shape.

Brasington’s gamble paid off. The inaugural Southern 500 in 1950 attracted 75 entries, with Johnny Mantz leading 351 laps of the scheduled 400 on his way to victory. While Brasington sold his stake in the track soon after, his impact on the sport has not been forgotten.

In a world without Daytona, Charlotte or Talladega, Brasington’s dream supplied the young sport with a cathedral of speed that caught the public’s attention That same track continues to provide fans with memories of NASCAR Throwback Nights and close, fender-banging finishes.

On Sept. 1, every grandstand and suite seat was sold as Chase Briscoe won the 75th running of the Southern 500.

While not as flamboyant as many of his peers, Brasington set the standard for taking a risk and making it pay off. His work is recognized in the NASCAR Hall of Fame as the 2016 recipient of the Landmark Award.

LARRY CARRIER

Today, fans know Bristol Motor Speedway as a crown jewel of Speedway Motorsports’ roster of race tracks. However, before the late Bruton Smith’s company purchased the .533-mile oval, a different man ruled racing in the hills of east Tennessee.

Larry Carrier grew up in Bristol and was a wellknown area contractor. Along with being a businessman, Carrier had an affinity for auto racing and wanted to build a race track capable of attracting NASCAR’s top drivers to his hometown.

Working in partnership with Carl Moore and R.G. Pope, Carrier spent $600,000 (approximately $6.42 million today) to build the track originally known as Bristol International Speedway. Its first NASCAR Cup Series race on July 30, 1961, was won by Jack Smith in a Pontiac.

Carrier’s success led him to sell his shares of the Bristol oval track in 1977. Prior to the sale, Carrier

• Humpy Wheeler

R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co. into drag racing, a promotional relationship that lasted until 2001.

Bristol Motor Speedway found itself in hard times during the early 1980s, and Carrier bought his way back in by early 1985.

This would be the prime of Carrier’s promotional career. Many credit him for believing in the idea that if fans enjoy watching racing on television, they will want to see it in person.

Sold-out crowds and Darrell Waltrip victories were the headlines during Carrier’s second stint as track owner. In 1996, he sold Bristol to Speedway Motorsports, which continued building on the foundation Carrier left behind.

“BIG BILL” FRANCE

The patriarch of NASCAR’s first family, “Big Bill” France not only understood how to promote stock car racing, he brought professionalism to a sport with a rather shady reputation.

A car owner, driver and gas station operator in Daytona Beach, Florida, France was best known for organizing and promoting the annual stock car races on the Daytona Beach and Road Course. The unique track ran south on Highway A1A and came back north on the hard-backed sand formerly used for land-speedrecord attempts.

When the popularity of spectator sports soared following World War II, France saw an opportunity. In late 1947, at the now-legendary Streamline Hotel, a meeting led to a joint effort among the stakeholders of the National Championship Stock Car Circuit. That effort resulted in the National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing, with France, ever the visionary, at the helm.

The Daytona Beach and Road Course races continued after NASCAR was formed, but France saw the need for a proper track, and he went to work.

The result was Daytona International Speedway, a 2.5-mile high-banked ribbon of asphalt that forever changed the sport when it opened in February 1959.

With Daytona complete, France targeted a retired Air Force base in Alabama as the site for his next superspeedway, which he promised would be bigger and better. The 2.66-mile track now known as Talladega Superspeedway hosted its first Cup Series race on Sept. 14, 1969.

Once again, France knew how to thrill the fans. Compared to its sister track in Daytona Beach, Talladega has steeper banking, a wider racing surface and a longer frontstretch with the start-finish line beyond the tri-oval.

“Big Bill” France handed the reins of NASCAR to Bill France Jr. in 1972, and he took the sport to new heights before stepping down in 2000. Today, the company is still family owned and operated with Jim France, Big Bill’s youngest son, serving as CEO.

brought

• Eddie Gossage

TRUSTED ON SOME PRETTY IMPORTANT PAVEMENT...

Whether sweeping some of the most well known race tracks in America or cleaning the streets in your neighborhood – Elgin sweepers have a reputation for performance, reliability, durability. With over 100 years of experience, a full line of sweepers for every application, and industry-leading green technology –Elgin can always be trusted to get the job done, and take care of the environment along the way.

Scan to learn more about Elgin’s trusted performance – or tune into any NASCAR® - sanctioned race to witness it for yourself.

Cleaning Up Since 1963

NASCAR, TEAMS AND TRACKS USE SAFETYKLEEN’S SERVICES

BY JARED TURNER

The largest re-refiner of used oil and provider of parts-cleaning services in North America, Safety-Kleen has been involved in NAS CAR since the company’s formal inception in 1963.

From within the walls of many teams’ race shops to the garage stalls and pit boxes at each track on the NASCAR schedule, fluids of multiple varieties are inevitably going to be spilled.

When this happens, Safety-Kleen – one of NASCAR’s Silent Superstars and a NASCAR Official Partner for 18 years – is tasked with the unenviable but incredibly important job of cleaning up the mess left behind. And, in many cases, the mess starts with oil.

“Our main thing, the reason we’re at the NASCAR events, is race cars go out and come in, and the teams will drain the oil. That has to go somewhere,” said Buddy Judy, Safety-Kleen’s marketing director and a longtime employee of the Norwell, Massachusetts-headquartered company. “We collect that and recycle all that oil again. It goes into one of our recycle centers, it’ll be made into new oil, or it will be used as a fuel. But it is 100 percent recycled.

“None of it finds its way anywhere it shouldn’t be or anything like that. That’s something we stand behind with all of our customers – whether they’re a race track, a race team or just a garage or a dealership down the street. That’s what we do.”

rode along with them for that.”

Later, beginning in the late 1980s, Safety-Kleen began partnering with race tracks – the first two being North Carolina’s Charlotte Motor Speedway and Rockingham Speedway, the latter of which was part of the Cup Series schedule from 1965 to 2004. Today, Safety-Kleen has a relationship with more than 65 motorsports venues.

“The tracks all talk to each other,” Judy said. “They ask, ‘What do you do with a mess? Who do you call to clean up a spill? Who can collect your used oils, used paints, fuels, solvents, filters and things like that?’

“That’s because all this stuff is on TV. You’re seeing it. Everybody knows when a track has a spill. … So, we were there to help folks out with those types of things. That’s kind of how our program with the race tracks got started.”

NASCAR is the top level of stock-car racing. If these mechanics use our products and services, then why wouldn’t you in your repair shop?

Along with its role as a NASCAR Official Partner, Safety-Kleen is an official partner of 145 professional race teams spanning multiple genres of motorsports that include but aren’t limited to NASCAR, IndyCar and NHRA.

Safety-Kleen’s relationship with the Petty family and seventime NASCAR Cup Series champion Richard Petty, aka “The King,” goes back to 1974 – the year Safety-Kleen opened its first North Carolina facility.

“Fifty of their 75 years in racing, they’ve used us in some form or fashion at the shop, and we’ve been a sponsor of theirs the last 30 years,” Judy said. “That means we trade out some of our product with them, and we get endorsement from ‘The King,’ we’re involved in everything they do from race teams to Petty’s Garage, etc.

“The first two teams we ever did anything with were the Pettys and the Earnhardts, so we were pretty lucky, I guess, to team up with both of those as they got to the high championship levels. We

While Safety-Kleen’s NASCAR program “at its core … is all about recycling the fluids for the teams and the tracks,” the product serves additional purposes.

“Oil is the one that jumps out at everybody, but there is parts cleaning there at the track,” Judy said. “Spill cleanup materials is another big thing we do at the events. We supply every NASCAR event with spill cleanup materials, and we collect those at the end of the event, and those are used as fuel, too. They can be used for energy recovery, so they’re not just getting thrown in a landfill somewhere. We collect oil filters. We do break fluids, too, and any of the automotive fluids that come up. Back at the shops and back at all the race tracks, which do their own painting, we take care of paints and solvents and cleaners.

“But our big thing is those automotive fluids and recycling those. If they hit the ground, we provide what the tracks clean it up with. That way, when the teams leave, the track should be as clean or cleaner than when the teams rolled into an event.”

Safety-Kleen’s relationship with NASCAR and so many stakeholders throughout the sport speaks volumes about the company’s offerings, which along with being outstanding cleaning and oil solutions are known for their eco-friendliness.

“NASCAR is the top level of stock-car racing,” Judy said. “If these mechanics use our products and services, then why wouldn’t you in your repair shop?”

AUTOVENTIVE AND PRECISION VEHICLE LOGISTICS

Driving Success with Bayley Currey and Niece Motorsports

In the fast-paced world of NASCAR, strategic partnerships often fuel success on and off the track. The collaboration between sister companies AutoVentive and Precision Vehicle Logistics with Niece Motorsports exemplifies how innovation and logistics drive performance to new heights.

AutoVentive specializes in advanced automotive technology solutions, focusing on real-time tracking and asset management through their AV Shadow platform and YMS technology solutions. This technology provides seamless visibility for vehicles and assets, ensuring efficient operations in the automotive industry. Precision Vehicle Logistics is a leader in vehicle transportation and logistics, managing the complex processes involved in moving vehicles from manufacturers to dealers with accuracy and reliability. Together, these sister companies form a powerful alliance that combines technology and logistics expertise to create a comprehensive solution for the automotive sector.

Chevrolet, is half way through his first full-time season in the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series. Currey is enthusiastic about the upcoming season, with the support from Precision Vehicle Logistics and AutoVentive. “We can’t do what we love without the support of great partners, so it means a lot that they’ve returned to Niece Motorsports with the 41 team,” Currey said.

This partnership is rooted in a shared commitment to excellence. Jason Wilson, vice president of Precision Vehicle Logistics, emphasizes the importance of collaboration as it applies to partnerships on and off the track. “This partnership is about more than just brand exposure. It’s a way to honor the hard work of our 1200+ employees and to showcase the innovative spirit that drives both AutoVentive and Precision Vehicle Logistics.”

Bayley Currey, the rising star behind the wheel of the No. 41

The relationship began during a nonNASCAR-sanctioned race last year, where AutoVentive showcased its AV Shadow track and trace technology. This event not only highlighted cutting-edge tech but also celebrated the company’s success in securing the General Motors Supplier of the Year award in 2022. AV Shadow, which provides real-time tracking for vehicles and assets, is already making waves in the automotive industry, and this partnership aims to further elevate its impact in the automotive logistics industry. Learn more at AutoVentive.com and PrecisionVehicleHolding.com.

RC RACE CAR

GET IN THE RACE

Put yourself in the driver’s seat with the Losi NASCAR® RC Race Car. This rugged, ready-to-run, hobby-grade RC stock car offers 20+ mph speeds and realism you won’t believe. Drive it. Tune it. Race it. Add option parts and make it yours. Choose your favorite livery and build your own NASCAR legend! Learn more at Losi.com

ALASKA

Anchorage House of Hobbies, 803 Spenard Rd, Anchorage, AK 99503

ARIZONA

AZ Turn and Burn RC, 12851 W Bell Rd Suite 112, Surprise, AZ 85378

CALIFORNIA

Cen Cal Hobbies, 401 Bangs Ave suite C, Modesto, CA 95356

Dynamic Hobbies, 811 E Florida Ave, Hemet, CA 92543

Fast Track Hobbies, 4420 Granite Dr STE 400, Rocklin, CA 95677

HobbyTown, 340 N McKinley St #107, Corona, CA 92879

HobbyTown, 9747 Mission Gorge Rd, Santee, CA 92071

Pacific Coast Hobbies, 1747 Pacific Coast Hwy, Lomita, CA 90717

Pegasus Hobbies, 1458 W 7th St, Upland, CA 91786

RC Visions, 15071 Goldenwest St, Huntington Beach, CA 92647

COLORADO

Colpar’s HobbyTown, 687 N Academy Blvd, Colorado Springs, CO 80909

HobbyTown, 9120 Wadsworth Pkwy, Westminster, CO 80021

FLORIDA

K & K Hobby Shop, 3835 Tamiami Trl, Port Charlotte, FL 33952

My Tobbies - Toys & Hobbies, 2218 University Square Mall, Tampa, FL 33612

GEORGIA

HobbyTown, 840 Ernest W Barrett Pkwy NW Suite 650, Kennesaw, GA 30144

IDAHO

Action Hobbies LLC, 2483 E. Fairview Ave., Ste. 103, Meridian, ID 83646

ILLINOIS

HobbyTown, 15601 S 94th Ave, Orland Park, IL 60462

Leisure Hours Hobbies, 16300 S Lincoln Hwy #30, Plainfield, IL 60586

INDIANA

Asylum Xtreme, 531 Eastern Blvd, Clarksville, IN 47129

Phil's Hobby Shop, 3938 W Jefferson Blvd, Fort Wayne, IN 46804

Singer Hobbies, LLC, 2072 Burton Ln, Martinsville, IN 46151

KANSAS

Dee & Mee Hobbies, 5331 SW 22nd Pl, Topeka, KS 66614

KENTUCKY

Scale Reproductions, Inc., 3073 Breckenridge Ln, Louisville, KY 40220

LOUISIANA

Big Boy Toys & Hobbies, 2930 Johnston St, Lafayette, LA 70503

MASSACHUSETTS

Hobby Quarters, Commercial St, Foxborough, MA 02035

MICHIGAN

Larry's Performance RC, 48825 Van Dyke Ave, Shelby Twp, MI 48317

Nankin Hobby Southgate, 12020 Fort St #1005, Southgate, MI 48195

Nankin Hobby Farmington, 33350 W 9 Mile Rd, Farmington, MI 48336

Nankin Hobby Ypsilanti, 1480 Washtenaw Ave, Ypsilanti, MI 48197

MISSOURI

Mark Twain Hobby Center, 2793 W Clay St, St Charles, MO 63301

NORTH CAROLINA

Anderson R/C, 1101 Mendenhall St, Thomasville, NC 27360

Hangar 18 Hobbies, 112 Kilmayne Dr, Cary, NC 27511

NEBRASKA

HobbyTown, 4107 Pioneer Woods Dr #108, Lincoln, NE 68506

NEW JERSEY

HobbyTown, 1256 Indian Head Rd Unit 29, Toms River, NJ 08755

NEW YORK

Bayshore Hobbies and Toys, 2056 Sunrise Hwy, Bay Shore, NY 11706

Field's Hobby Center, 3523 Union Rd, Cheektowaga, NY 14225

Performance Hobbies, 15 W Main St, Webster, NY 14580

Small Addictions RC, 1250 Upper, Front St, Binghamton, NY 13901

Willis Hobbies Inc., 300 Willis Ave, Mineola, NY 11501

OHIO

HobbyTown, 12108 Montgomery Rd, Cincinnati, OH 45249

The Hobby Shop, 153 N Springboro Pike # A, Dayton, OH 45449

OREGON

D's Hobbies, 61545 S Hwy 97, Bend, OR 97702

PENNSYLVANIA

Shaffer’s Train Shed, 630 N 4th Ave, Altoona, PA 16601

Sports Zone Toys & Comics, 359 Market St, Sunbury, PA 17801

SOUTH CAROLINA

The Hobby Connection, 4148 Calhoun Memorial Hwy, Easley, SC 29640

TENNESSEE

HobbyTown, 11145 Turkey Dr, Knoxville, TN 37934

TEXAS

Performance RC LLC, 3609 Business Center Dr Suite 116, Pearland, TX 77584

Radio Control Headquarters, 14910 Nacogdoches Rd. Ste 110. San Antonio, TX 78247

VIRGINIA

HobbyTown Richmond, 9900 W Broad St Ste B, Glen Allen, VA 23060

UTAH

West Valley Hobbies, 1765 W 5400 S, Taylorsville, UT 84129

WISCONSIN

HobbyTown West Allis, 1708 S 108th St, West Allis, WI 53214

WEST VIRGINIA

Nitro Hobby & Craft Center, 104 21st St, Nitro, WV 25143

CANADA

Eliminator-RC, 120 Higgins Ave, Winnipeg, MB R3B 0B4, Canada

Great Hobbies, Mississauga, ON L5N 8E1, Canada

ABOUT VICTORY JUNCTION

Victory Junction is a year-round camp facility for children with serious illnesses and chronic medical conditions in Randleman, North Carolina. The camp provides life-changing camp experiences that are exciting, fun, and empowering, in a medically-safe environment, always free of charge. Kids can participate in activities at Victory Junction, free of barriers they may face in their daily lives. The camp’s fully accessible and adaptive programs are designed to provide endless possibilities for campers. Victory Junction’s on-site programming includes summer camp, family weekends, day camps, and animal-assisted programs. The camp can accommodate hundreds of medical diagnoses and is available to children ages 6 to 16 for summer camp and ages 3 to 16 for family weekends.

community partner sites throughout North Carolina, South Carolina, and Virginia.

Learn More Refer a Camper Be a Volunteer Make a Gift

In addition to on-site programming, Victory Junction’s outreach program, known as REACH, takes camp experiences to children and their families in hospitals and other

Creating memorable experiences is the camp’s top priority, but Victory Junction’s intentional programs are also designed to have a measurable, life-changing impact on campers. Children and adolescents living with serious medical conditions experience challenges related to illness and treatment that can lead to serious stress and psychosocial difficulties. When kids come to Victory Junction, they laugh, make friends, and have lots of fun, but the benefits of their experience extend well beyond great memories of their time at camp. Since opening in 2004, Victory Junction has delivered more than 126,000 camp experiences and has served children from all 50 states, Washington D.C., and Puerto Rico, as well as four countries. Victory Junction is a member of the SeriousFun Children’s Network of camps founded by Paul Newman and is accredited by the American Camp Association.

Located in the hills of Randleman, North Carolina, Victory Junction is spread across 84 acres, allowing children to do what they do best— be kids, play, imagine, make friends and enjoy the adventures and experiences of camp life.

Adaptive programming empowers campers of any ability level to participate in activities, like Archery.

Campers can take on the challenge of the 55 ft. climbing tower and discover new abilities.

The camp’s animal-assisted program is equipped with everything needed to ensure that any camper can ride a horse.

Honoring Adam Petty’s Memory

Victory Junction was the dream of Adam Petty, son of NASCAR driver Kyle Petty and grandson of racing legend Richard Petty. Although Adam was still a teenager, the fourth-generation driver quickly became a rising star in the sport. But Adam was wise beyond his years. Passion drove him both on the track and in his desire to help others. Between races, he often visited children in pediatric hospitals, and in 1999, Adam and his father, Kyle, visited Camp Boggy Creek, a camp in Florida that serves children with serious medical conditions. The experience inspired Adam to dream of building a similar camp to serve kids in North Carolina.

In 2000, Adam Petty tragically lost his life in a racing accident at New Hampshire Motor Speedway. He was only 19

years old. To honor Adam’s memory, the Petty family gathered their strength and challenged themselves, their friends, and the NASCAR community to make his inspired dream a reality — to build a place where children with serious illnesses would be able to experience the joys of childhood and forget about being sick for a while. With land donated by Richard and Lynda Petty, the Petty family spearheaded a capital campaign in 2002, and dollar by dollar, received donations from corporations, individuals, and foundations to build what would become Victory Junction, a NASCAR-themed camp located in Randleman, N.C. Adam’s legacy of love was realized when Victory Junction first opened its gates to campers in June of 2004.

Camp comes alive during NASCARnival nights at Victory Junction.

Campers can soar on the pendulum swing in the Adventure program area.

Campers and counselors can relax and enjoy an evening block party at their cabins.

Floating in

Campers can experience the thrill of soaring on the zipline.

Campers and counselors form a special bond during their time at Victory

Campers and counselors alike get a thrill from Victory Junction’s Adventure program.

Camp dance parties always get the good times rocking.

Junction.

the water park’s lazy river is a great way to beat the heat.

Adaptive programming empowers campers of any ability level to participate in sports and recreation activities.

Campers can try their hand at changing a tire on a race car with the help of NASCAR pit crew teams.

Campers can experience the thrill of a tethered hot air balloon ride during summer camp weeks.

NASCAR Mavericks THE REBELS AND RACERS WHO REVOLUTIONIZED STOCK CAR RACING

BY H.A. BRANHAM AND HOLLY CAIN

THE PLYMOUTH SUPERBIRD

The Plymouth Superbird must be the most significant one-anddone deal in NASCAR history. The year was 1970 and the cars were exotic—and fast. And destined to be obsoleted from competition via the NASCAR rulebook.

Superbirds were inspired by the Dodge Charger Daytonas, along with the need to lure Richard Petty back to the Plymouth fold. Petty, a longtime Plymouth standard-bearer, had wanted a more exotic car, preferably with a wing attached, to race in NASCAR’s top series. Plymouth didn’t have one ready, so Petty jumped to Ford for the ’69 season and drove fastback-style Torinos.

Dodge Daytonas rolled out that year, featuring a 23-inch (58 cm) rear wing and wedgeshaped nose. They were different. They looked fast. They debuted at brand-new Talladega Superspeedway in September. That was the race where drivers protested, boycotting due to safety concerns, at the 2.66-mile monster tri-oval. Bill France Sr. assembled a make-do field of second-tier drivers. Richard Brickhouse drove a Daytona to the win.

seconds. Gary Romberg, a NASA engineer who helped design the Saturn 1B booster that carried astronauts to the moon, was hired by Chrysler to work on the Superbird project.

“Richard’s heart was really with Chrysler,” said NASCAR historian Buz McKim, “and when he had a chance to go back with Chrysler, he just jumped at it. And those Superbirds, man, as cool as the Chargers were, the Superbirds were even cooler. They just had a special look. A little leaner and just a beautiful, beautiful race car.”

In 1970, Petty came back home to drive the new Superbirds, modified Roadrunners remembered mainly for those exotic wings and sleek bodies that made “Petty Blue” look better than ever. There was more to the machines than aerodynamics, like a big-block 426 Hemi V8 engine producing 425 horsepower. Zero to 60 in 5½

Superbirds and Daytonas combined to win 33 of the season’s 48 races, sometimes with the wing attached, sometimes not. During the season, Buddy Baker became the first NASCAR driver to exceed 200 mph posting laps of 200.096 mph and 200.030 mph during test runs at Talladega, in his Daytona.

The most surprising thing about that season wasn’t the 33 victories, but the fact that Pete Hamilton, not Richard Petty in his familiar No. 43, won the Daytona 500 and both Talladega races. Hamilton, Petty’s teammate, drove No. 40.

Fans loved it. NASCAR, not so much. The old “stinking up the show” rationale resurfaced. NASCAR came down with the hammer on the “winged warriors.” For the 1971 season, the “aero cars” (a grouping that included the Ford Torino Talladega and the Mercury Cyclone Spoiler in addition to the Superbird and Daytona), as they were called, were limited to either a 305-cubic-inch (5 L) engine displacement or mandated extra weight. That ended the cars’ competitiveness on the racetrack. It also ended the Superbird’s days on the production line. The “win on Sunday, sell on Monday” slogan no longer applied.

With the aerodynamic aviary shuttered, the Superbird was history.

■ Pete Hamilton achieved one of NASCAR’s most memorable upsets by winning the 1970 Daytona 500, driving the No. 40 Plymouth Superbird. The No. 43 car of teammate Richard Petty was out with engine problems after only seven laps. Just in case anyone needed convincing, the relatively unknown Hamilton then won both of the season’s races at Talladega Superspeedway.

Hendrick Motorsports 40 Years

NASCAR RACING’S GREATEST TEAM CELEBRATES FOUR DECADES

BY BEN WHITE

NO. 24 TEAM’S FOURTH CHAMPIONSHIP CEMENTS PLACE IN HISTORY

When the green flag waved over the 2001 Daytona 500, there was great optimism that the season would be one of NASCAR’s greatest. Some three hours later, the weight of seven-time champion Dale Earnhardt’s death during the race’s final lap was felt to its depths, and in some ways, it remains heavy to this day.

Every team competing within NASCAR’s Cup Series division that year, including those at Hendrick Motorsports, pledged to continue on in the spirit of Earnhardt’s success and determination. Each gave their all with every lap completed to honor their lost close friend and competitor.

“I had seen Dale go through some pretty horrific crashes during his career, and he

walked away,” Gordon said. “If he was injured, he would show up at the race track the next weekend. He was just one of those guys that you just thought would always be there until the day he walked away on his own terms.

“That was really tough for all of us when we lost him at Daytona that day in February of 2001. All of us had our own relationship with him. He took me under his wing and helped me a lot on and off the race track. I appreciated that. He didn’t have to do that, but he did. He saw the bigger picture. It wasn’t necessarily wanting to help Jeff Gordon. He just wanted to see what he could do to help the sport continue to grow and saw the potential that was there. No one could do it like Dale could. There was a lot of responsibility on all of us as competitors to fill those shoes the best that we could. I had a lot more to learn from him, and that certainly stands out to me.

“I did feel like it was important to step up. I think we had FOX Sports and NBC that year, and I think that was the first year of the new TV rights deal with NASCAR. There were a lot of eyeballs on the sport and they [the networks] were going to help the sport as well.”

Gordon certainly did step up. He enjoyed an amazing 2001 season, one that was the culmination of a couple years of changes for the No. 24 team. Ray Evernham had been Gordon’s crew chief since joining Hendrick Motorsports in 1992 for the final race of that season. Together, they amassed forty-seven victories and three Cup Series championships. Then in late 1999, Evernham had been given the opportunity of a lifetime to form his own team, Evernham Motorsports, with backing from Dodge. The automaker was returning to NASCAR after a lengthy absence; it had previously backed Richard Petty and Petty Enterprises for nine of their ten championships (Petty had won his final championship in 1979 with Chevrolet). Gordon gave Evernham his blessing and began thinking of a new crew chief. The list of replacements was short, as there was really only one particular crew chief Gordon had in

■ Gordon (24) leads Robby Gordon (Lowe’s) and Kevin Harvick (white Chevrolet) on the road course at Watkins Glen International on August 12, 2001. Gordon went on to record the victory, his fourth and final win on the 2.4-mile track.

mind. His name was Robbie Loomis.

Loomis had worked with Petty for many years and proved he was not only smart but very efficient and calm, running his team with an organized game plan. After several phone calls and a few secret meetings, Loomis agreed to take the job. In their first season together, Gordon and Loomis put together a ninth-place finish in points in 2000, with three wins, eleven top-fives, and twenty-two top-tens. From their first meeting, their bond and ability to communicate was obvious. Success came at Talladega, Sonoma, and Richmond. Their start was impressive with the hope of much more to come.

Then came 2001, when Gordon collected his fourth and final NASCAR Cup Series championship with six race victories along the way. All told, Gordon amassed eighteen top-fives finishes and twenty-four top-tens, with an average finish of eleventh over thirty-six races.

five starts. At the conclusion of 2001, he had fifty-eight victories in 293 races.

“Robbie was such a great addition to the team,” Gordon said. “I hated to see Ray leave, but I understood why with such a great opportunity. Robbie fit in well with our team. Our entire team welcomed him and rallied around him. The veteran guys wanted him, and so did the new guys.

Gordon clinched the 2001 NASCAR Cup Series title at Atlanta Motor Speedway one week before the final race with his sixth-place finish, joining Richard Petty and Dale Earnhardt as winners of four or more NASCAR Cup Series Championships. As the 2001 season came to an end, Gordon’s winning average was 20 percent, winning one race of every

“There was something magical between 2000 and 2001. We had made some huge gains between those seasons, statistics wise. The team worked hard between 2000 and 2001 to get us back into championship form. We proved it from the win at Las Vegas at the start of the year, and I knew then we were going to have a great year.

“I think what makes you a championship team is to go through changes and still be able to adapt to them and run like a championship team and remain successful. The way we came together motivated me to work hard and help win that championship. The year started out tough losing Dale Earnhardt at Daytona, and then 9/11 happened in September, and that was the other major challenge for our sport and our nation. But we held it together as a team and as a sport and prevailed in the end.”

MAXIMIZING OUTDOOR FUN DURING A NASCAR WEEKEND

Whether you’re a die-hard NASCAR fan or just someone looking to experience the excitement of high-octane racing, a NASCAR weekend offers a multitude of opportunities for outdoor fun. Even with the roar of engines in the background and the camaraderie of fellow fans, the race itself is just one aspect of the experience. There’s so much more to do to make your NASCAR weekend memorable.

In this guide, we’ll explore all the fun and creative ways to enjoy your time outdoors during a NASCAR weekend:

TAILGATING LIKE A PRO

Arrive Early for the Best Spot: Tailgating is a NASCAR tradition, and it’s one of the best ways to immerse yourself in the race-day atmosphere. To make the most of it, arrive at the track early – at least a few hours before the race starts. This secures you a prime parking spot and gives you ample time to set up your tailgating area. Bring a canopy for shade, foldable chairs and tables to create a comfortable hangout spot.

Grill & Chill: No tailgate is complete without good food, and NASCAR tailgates are known for their hearty, grill-friendly fare. Pack a portable grill and stock it with classic tailgating foods like burgers, hot dogs, sausages and BBQ ribs. Don’t forget the sides, such as coleslaw, potato salad, baked beans and chips. If you want to get creative, prepare NASCAR-themed snacks like checkered flag cookies, tire-shaped donuts or driver-inspired dishes.

Drinks for Everyone: Keep a cooler stocked with a variety of beverages, including water, soft drinks and adult beverages like beer and cocktails. Consider making a signature drink for your group – something that reflects the spirit of the event, like a “Pit Stop Punch” or a “Victory Lane Lemonade.”

Games & Activities to Keep the Energy High: Tailgating is all about fun, so bring some games to keep the energy up. Popular tailgate games include cornhole, ladder toss and ring toss. If you have a larger group, consider organizing a mini-tournament with prizes for the winners. For those who enjoy crafts, bring along supplies to make signs to cheer on your favorite driver.

Music & Entertainment: A good soundtrack can elevate your tailgating experience. Create a playlist of classic rock, country hits and your favorite NASCAR anthems to play throughout the day. Portable speakers are a must to keep the vibes going. For added entertainment, consider bringing a portable TV or radio to catch pre-race coverage, interviews and race analysis.

CAPTURE THE MOMENT

Documenting Your Experience: A NASCAR weekend is full of photo opportunities, from the colorful cars and vibrant crowd to the scenic landscapes around the track. Bring a good camera or use your smartphone to capture the moments. Focus on getting shots of the action on the track, but also take time to capture the atmosphere of the tailgate, the excitement of the fan zone and the beauty of the surrounding area. Don’t forget to take some candid shots of your friends and family enjoying the experience.

Scrapbooking: After the weekend is over, consider creating a scrapbook to preserve your memories. Include photos, race tickets, wristbands and other memorabilia from the event. You can also create an online photo album or a social media post to showcase your best moments from the weekend.

EXPLORE THE TRACK AREA

Fan Zone: These are a hub of activity and excitement. Here, you can find interactive exhibits, merchandise stands, food vendors and, often, autograph opportunities with drivers. Spend some time exploring the fan zone to soak in the atmosphere and pick up some souvenirs. You might also find simulators where you can test your racing skills.

Pit Road & Garage Tours: If you’re looking for a unique experience, check if the track offers tours of the pit road and garage area. These tours give you a behind-the-scenes look at the inner workings of a NASCAR event, including how the teams prepare for

the race and the intricate details of the cars. You might even catch a glimpse of the teams working on the cars or see drivers up-close. Some tracks offer pre-race pit passes, which allow you to walk the pit road and get a closer look at the cars before the race begins.

Experience the Local Sights: If you have some downtime before or after the race, take the opportunity to explore the area around the track. Many NASCAR tracks are located in picturesque settings, with nearby parks, hiking trails or lakes offering a chance to enjoy nature. Pack a picnic basket and enjoy a leisurely afternoon at a nearby park, or go for a hike to take in the views.

GET ACTIVE

Biking – Explore on Two Wheels: If you’re an avid cyclist, bring your bike and explore the surrounding areas on two wheels. Some tracks have designated areas for biking, or you can venture out to nearby trails for a scenic ride. Biking is a great way to see more of the area and get some exercise before the race. Make sure to bring a map or download a trail app to guide you through the best routes.

Game On: If you’re attending the event with a group of friends or family, bring along some sports equipment for group games. A frisbee, soccer ball or football can provide hours of fun in an open area. Set up a casual game and invite other fans to join in.

CAMPING AT THE TRACK

Comfort Essentials: Camping at the track allows you to fully immerse yourself in the NASCAR experience. Whether you’re in an RV or a tent, it’s essential to bring

TAKE FUN ANYWHERE!

everything you need for a comfortable stay. Pack sleeping bags, pillows, a cooler for food and drinks, lanterns and camping chairs. Don’t forget to bring extra blankets or sleeping pads to ensure a good night’s sleep.

Campfires & BBQs: Many NASCAR campgrounds allow campfires or provide fire pits, so bring some firewood and marshmallows for a classic campfire experience. Roast marshmallows and make s’mores while swapping stories with fellow fans. BBQ grills are a must-have for cooking some delicious meals right at your campsite, and it’s a great way to meet new people and share the experience.

Meet Your Fellow NASCAR Fans: One of the best parts of camping at a NASCAR event is the opportunity to socialize with fellow fans. NASCAR campgrounds are known for their friendly and lively atmosphere. Take a stroll around the campground, introduce yourself to your neighbors, and join in on campsite parties or gatherings. Many fans bring their own decorations, flags and banners to personalize their camping spot, creating a vibrant and festive environment.

Whether you’re looking for utility, recreation or fun, Aluma has the perfect trailer for you! Aluma offers a complete line of durable, lightweight and maintenance free aluminum trailers.

Aluminum Trailers

Carson Hocevar Moving Goalpostthe

CUP SERIES ROOKIE ABLE TO RAMP UP EXPECTATIONS

BY DUSTIN ALBINO

The first time Carson Hocevar went to a race track – Michigan’s Kalamazoo Speedway – he was hit with sensory overload. From the brilliance of the paint schemes, to the roar of the engines, to the smell of burnt rubber and gasoline, Hocevar was hooked and knew what he wanted to do with his life.

Growing up in Portage, Michigan, the youngster first climbed behind the wheel of a Quarter Midget at age 6, and he later advanced through the various Late Model divisions at the local short tracks.

Next, Hocevar hit the highway, traveling to many of the nation’s premier Late Model events.

His natural ability eventually caught the eye of retired NASCAR driver Johhny Benson. The 2008 Craftsman Truck Series champion and Michigan native provided career advice and helped open doors across the industry.

As a result, Hocevar was only 15 years old in 2018 when he made his ARCA Menards Series debut, running three races for KBR Development. He was impressive out of the gate, earning a pair of top-five finishes before competing in 12 ARCA events during the 2019 season. Though he didn’t reach Victory Lane, Hocevar notched 10 top-10 finishes, with a best effort of third at Indiana’s Salem Speedway.

“That’s what put me in a spot,” Hocevar said. “If they didn’t go ARCA racing or didn’t want to do that, it was going to be difficult for me to get to that point.”

In addition to his slate of ARCA events, the 16-year-old racer tagged a pair of Truck Series starts to his résumé in 2019. His debut came on the dirt at Ohio’s Eldora Speedway for Jordan Anderson Racing. He also ran the penultimate race of the year at Phoenix Raceway for Hill Motorsports.

Being paired with NASCAR journeyman Jordan Anderson was a blessing for Hocevar. At the time, Anderson leased space for his team at the Niece Motorsports facility.

Casual conversations between Hocevar and team owner Al

Niece led to seven Truck Series starts during the 2020 season, and they evolved into a full schedule for the following year.

“I was able to meet and talk with Niece Motorsports and they took a liking to me a little bit and wanted to see how I could run a few times,” Hocevar recalled. “It all worked out that I was at the right spot at the right time with the right people wanting to grow and move and had a seat open.”

It was clear Hocevar had speed, but his race craft needed work. His rookie season was highlighted by a trio of top-five finishes, including a runner-up effort to John Hunter Nemechek at Charlotte Motor Speedway.

Hocevar qualified for the postseason but finished second to Chandler Smith for rookie-of-the-year honors.

Back with Niece Motorsports for 2022, Hocevar came excruciatingly close to Victory Lane on multiple occasions and qualified for the postseason for a second consecutive year. Near-misses at the Bristol Motor Speedway dirt race and Darlington Raceway resulted in runner-up finishes. He led 57 laps at Charlotte but tangled with Ryan Preece late. The No. 42 truck also led the opening 65 laps at Knoxville Raceway before the engine expired.

Hocevar settled for 10th in points for the second consecutive season.

From a young age, Hocevar believed he had the skills to compete at NASCAR’s highest level.

“I almost thought that in Quarter Midgets at like 12 – that I can achieve that and do that,” Hocevar shared. “It’s what I lived and breathed, so I felt like even just watching at a young age that I understood the moves people should have made. I was a really good Monday (morning) quarterback, backseat driver. I was the biggest critic watching these races, like, ‘Ah, I wouldn’t have done that’ or ‘Why did you do this?’ My heroes raced and I was critical of them. When I got into Late Models, I always felt like I could do it and I was going to get there.

INVEST IN SOUTH AFRICA –THE HOME OF OPPORTUNITY!

South Africa is not just a country – it’s your strategic trade partner with a vibrant and diversified economy. The country is not only the biggest economy in the African continent, but also a champion of the African Continental Free Trade Area (AFCTA). South Africa connects businesses to growing markets across the continent, unlocking new trade opportunities. Positioned as a premier market access hub, South Africa connects business with a rapidly growing African market of over 1.3 billion consumers and a combined GDP of $3.4 trillion.

This beautiful country on the Southern tip of the continent and the US share strong economic ties, with trade exceeding $21 billion annually. South African companies are expanding into the US market, and we welcome US businesses looking to establish operations in South Africa. Our nations are connected by shared values, innovation, and a commitment to the betterment of our people.

“I’m very thankful that it worked out just fine. I stuck with it through all the hard days and tough races. It’s been a long journey, but also a quick one.”

Hocevar finally found Victory Lane in the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series, winning four times during a tumultuous 2023 season in which he angered several of his competitors and incurred the wrath of NASCAR officials.

Hocevar overcame the controversy and put together a playoff run that saw him advance to the Championship 4. Then, during the waning laps of the Phoenix finale, he had a run-in with fellow championship contender Corey Heim. Heim retaliated after being spun out and Hocevar’s title hopes ended on a wrecker.

It wasn’t a championship or bust situation for Hocevar, though. His immediate future was secure as he had already signed to drive the No. 77 Spire Motorsports Chevrolet in the Cup Series.

In addition to his efforts in the Truck Series during 2023, Hocevar served as a substitute driver in nine Cup Series events.

He made his series debut at World Wide Technology Raceway at Gateway for Spire Motorsports, driving the No. 7 car, after Corey LaJoie replaced a suspended Chase Elliott at Hendrick Motorsports. Then, following Noah Gragson’s suspension and his departure from Legacy Motor Club, Hocevar was hired to drive that team’s No. 42 car in eight races.

Hocevar was impressive at Gateway in the No. 7 Chevrolet, driving well into the mid-teens before a brake rotor failed.

“Without Gateway, I doubt I’m driving a Cup Series car right now,” Hocevar admitted.

With Ty Dillon at the wheel, the No. 77 car finished 33rd in the 2023 owner standings. Hocevar knew expectations were low, but he challenged himself. He wanted to crack the top 20 in the owner standings and win rookie of the year in a stout class that includes short-track ace Josh Berry and 2022 Truck Series champion and Spire teammate Zane Smith.

The season started with a last-place finish in the Daytona 500

after Hocevar was involved in an early wreck. However, the No. 77 team bounced back with three straight top-20 finishes before earning its first top-10 result at Texas Motor Speedway. When Hocevar returned to Gateway, he finished solidly in eighth. That led to a snowball effect as he posted 10 top-20 finishes over an 11-race span.

The goalposts have now shifted.

“We started just trying to stay on the lead lap,” Hocevar said. “It’s gone from top 25s to top 20s to top 15s. Now, it almost feels regular to be on the edge of the top 10 or running inside the top 10.

“It’s been a lot of fun to be able to ramp up our expectations and goals. Every few weeks, we have the next goal in line. Once you get in the top 10, it gets a lot harder to run in the top five and win races.”

To outpace Berry and Smith and be named rookie of the year would be a feather in Hocevar’s cap. Being a student of the sport, he understands the significance of winning the award.

He also knows Spire Motorsports isn’t resting on its laurels. The team has already added Michael McDowell to its driver lineup for next season and bolstered its crew chief lineup by signing arguably the leading free agent in the garage, Rodney Childers. The team also acquired Travis Peterson from Front Row Motorsports to continue working with McDowell. This is all good news for Hocevar.

“The faster the other two cars are, the faster we’re going to be because we will have better data, more data and better ideas,” he explained. “If we’re all close, we’re all going to be able to develop each other. Selfishly, I want the 77 to outrun the other two every week. If we can always make each other better and do that while we’re up front, that’s the key.

“I think (with Childers), McDowell and his crew chief (Peterson), we will be able to add a lot of value and bring a lot of depth and experience to the organization. As (team owner) Jeff Dickerson would say, ‘That we’re for real.’”

HIGH PERFORMANCE

ON THE RACE TRACK, AND IN YOUR HOME

State Water Heaters is excited to partner with Jeb Burton on the race track and the whole Burton family on their outdoor TV show Crossroads with the Burtons. Just like Jeb Burton knows the value of high performing equipment on the track, we know the importance of high performing equipment in your home. Our ProLine® water heaters are designed to provide tough, commercialgrade performance that your family can rely on.

Jeb Burton

No. 27 State Water Heaters Chevrolet Camaro

Pooling ResourcesHis

Brennan Poole Has Experienced a Career Resurgence in 2024

BY JARED TURNER

Brennan Poole has spent much of his life driving in circles, but the 33-year-old NASCAR Xfinity Series driver’s time in racing’s big leagues has mostly been a story of ups and downs.

Since making his NASCAR national series debut in 2015, Poole has enjoyed some standout moments but has struggled to put himself in a stable situation with a top-performing team. The closest Poole ever came to being in this position was in 2016 and 2017 when he drove full seasons in the Xfinity Series for Chip Ganassi Racing with primary sponsorship from DC Solar, a company that has since ceased operations. Over those two seasons, Poole recorded 34 top-10 finishes – including eight top-five results – on the way to finishing sixth and eighth in points, respectively.

By 2018, however, Poole found himself out of a job when Ganassi – which, like the sponsor, has since ceased operations – surprisingly moved Poole’s sponsorship elsewhere within the organization.

“In the moment, I was frustrated and mad and thought, ‘What do I need to do here? I’ve won in literally every single car I’ve ever sat down in my career, and I’ve yet to win a top three NASCAR series race,’” Poole said in an exclusive interview with NASCAR Pole Position. “That was frustrating to me.

I think in a lot of ways that’s kept me pushing and kept me in this fight. I’ve won a lot of races and I’ve won a lot of championships – touring Late Model championships and ARCA races and all kinds of stuff – and I’ve been racing a lot of the same guys that race on Sundays now.

“We’ve all been racing each other since we were kids. So I think with the right people around me, and the right budget and the right pieces in place, that I can definitely win races and fight for championships on a regular basis.”

I think with the right people around me, and the right budget and the right pieces in place, that I can definitely win races and fight for championships on a regular basis.

Brennan Poole hosts the Circle B Diecast Power Hour Podcast every month alongside YouTuber Eric Estepp.

Although Poole made a pair of NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series starts in 2018, he was largely absent from NASCAR’s top three divisions that season as well as 2019. In 2020, he ran the full NASCAR Cup Series schedule while competing for two back marker teams that lacked the funding and resources for him to be remotely competitive. Even so, Poole finished 16th in the Daytona 500 for Jay Robinson Racing and ninth at Talladega for Rick Ware Racing – both solid outcomes for his equipment.

Between 2021 and 2023, and before agreeing to compete full time for Alpha Prime Racing in the 2024 Xfinity Series season, Poole bounced around among multiple rides with lower-tier teams across multiple NASCAR divisions and also endured a personal tragedy when his mother passed away unexpectedly on Feb. 9, 2022.

That event is the reason Poole started bleaching his hair blond and continues to do so more than two years later.

“When I was a kid, we would always bleach my hair over the summer,” he recalled. “My mom would do it with the box bleach at home, and then I’d have blond hair for the summer. I went to a Christian school, and we weren’t really allowed to do anything like that. You wore a uniform and all that kind of stuff. It was always something fun that we got to do. The second school let out, we would do that.

“I’d been kind of wanting to bleach my hair again, and when she passed away, it really just kind made it like, ‘I’m going to do it and it’s going to be something to remember my mom.’ Since I first did it again in April 2022, I haven’t been able to not do it. It’s just something I’ve kept doing, and it’s just something to just remember my mom by.”

Only in its third season and lacking in sponsorship dollars compared to the majority of full-time Xfinity Series teams, Alpha Prime Racing is hardly a destination team for Poole. However, Poole couldn’t be more thankful for the opportunity to race every weekend with a team that’s proving capable of making the most out of the limited resources at its disposal.

“I really felt like this year with Alpha Prime could be an opportunity for me to put my name and put myself back in front of more of the bigger team owners and sponsorship eyes and more dollars that might be able to come our way so we could continue to build the program. And I think it’s done that.”

The best moment of Poole’s season, as of press time, came in the spring Xfinity Series race at Talladega Superspeedway where he led the field exiting the final turn on the final lap before ultimately crossing the finish line in fifth.

“Leading the race off of Turn 4 at Talladega and almost winning that thing was pretty wild and certainly was a big highlight of our season,” Poole said. “But there’s been a lot of things about the year that I think have just been strong.”

Off the track, Poole is also having fun, having joined

forces with social media influencer and YouTube extraordinaire Eric Estepp in co-hosting a weekly NASCAR podcast called the “Power Hour.”

Poole, who spent much of his childhood in the Houston area that Estepp calls home, first connected with Estepp in 2020 and the two had an instant rapport.

“I always kind of wanted to do my own show, and Eric has such a great platform and such a great fan base and does so much great reporting on things happening in the sport and getting it out in a way that’s digestible for a lot of fans,” Poole said. “So when we started talking about doing the podcast, I just really wanted to do it. So we came up with a plan for the show, and we have a driver on every episode, and it’s been fun to interview guys that I’m on the grid with. It’s just so fun to chat with them, and it gives Eric and I an outlet to discuss our feelings about things happening in the sport.

“I feel like it’s just a way to connect with everybody a little bit more. On a Monday or Tuesday after the race is set and I’ve done my work at the shop and ridden my bike and done all the stuff I need to do, it’s great to sit down and just have a conversation with Eric and do an interview with a fellow competitor and create some of that content.”

Poole is hopeful that his communication skills in combination with his performance this year on the race track, where he’s amassed numerous top-20 finishes and outperformed drivers on a far bigger budget, can ultimately land him back in the Cup Series full time – but with a team capable of running near the front all the time.

“I know how to keep my head down and grind it out and stay focused and continue to get results regardless of the circumstances, and that’s just hard to find with someone that’s 20. They don’t know. I know that because I was 20. At the end of the day, it’s just going to come down to finding the funding and having enough behind me to get the seat where the team owner can take that chance on me.”

Despite the roller-coaster ride he’s been on for much of the last decade, Poole has continued to persevere while refusing to throw in the proverbial towel on achieving his goals in the upper echelon of racing.

“You can’t ever give up. That’s the biggest thing, right?” he said. “If you give up, you’re never going to get there, and I always just wanted to drive the race car and compete. So no matter what was thrown at me, I’ve just kind of put that aside and put my ego aside and anything else, and I just was going to drive whatever I could get in. I’ve just looked at it as an opportunity that God was opening this door for me to drive this car and that’s led to me meeting a sponsor or another team owner who would want to give me a different opportunity to drive their car.

“If you don’t have the opportunity to be on the track, it’s really difficult to sell, and that’s a difficult thing to overcome. So no matter what, I’ve just been like, ‘I have to be in the garage area, I have to be in a car to sort of sell.’ I’ve done that, and it’s continued to work for me.”

• Master craftsmanship meets cutting-edge technology with the debut of the Okuma LB3000 EX III

• Newly designed horizontal lathe with open-architecture Okuma OSP-P500 control

• Improved machining quality, speed, power, and torque

• Built with a rigid slant-bed box construction and thermal stability for extreme accuracy

• Ballscrew-driven tailstock with X and Z rapid traverse rates increase productivity

• Automation-friendly integration

Imagine what the LB3000 EX III will do in your shop.

COOL STUFF FOR

Slime Licker 2.0

SLIME LICKERS ARE BACK AND better than ever! Building upon the success of its predecessor, Slime Licker 2.0 promises an enhanced and immersive experience, taking candy enthusiasts on a journey of confectionery delight like never before. Following months of research and development, the 2 oz. patentpending bottle design eliminates the roller ball of the previous iteration while keeping the same delicious flavors: Strawberry and Blue Raspberry. Having garnered over 365 million views for #SlimeLicker(s) on TikTok, it is safe to say Slime Lickers are one of the internet’s favorite candies! Fans of the candy have been eagerly awaiting the return of Slime Lickers and we are happy to say they have returned to store shelves!

WWW.TOXICWASTECANDY.COM

Across the Board NASCAR Car Racing Game

The Across the Board NASCAR Car Racing Game will have your adrenaline pumping as your race car makes its way around a beautifully handcrafted oval race track! To play the NASCAR Car Racing Game, line up the race cars at the starting gate, deal the cards and begin rolling the dice to disqualify your cars and start building your “pot.” The remaining cars race to the finish line. Hold the winning car’s card and you win!

DAILYDOWNFORCE.COM/SHOP

Aluma gets you to the show!

THE EXECUTIVE SERIES 8220LP TILT TANDEM AXLE TRAILER IS PERFECT FOR HAULING YOUR CLASSIC CAR! THE 8200LP PROVIDES PLENTY OF room with an 81” x 246” bed. A 40-inch axle spread and removable fenders help protect your classic car or truck. Executive Series trailers from Aluma have great features such as longer ramps for better loading angles. Plus, the trailers look great with black aluminum wheels. The Executive Series 8200LP trailer also features an LED GLO lighting package, cargo storage box and much more. Aluma offers the most complete aluminum utility and recreational trailer line available, including utility trailers, ATV trailers, car haulers, motorcycle and snowmobile trailers and more. Aluma trailers are built in the USA and sold through a nationwide network of dealers.

LEARN MORE AT WWW.ALUMAKLM.COM

RACE FANS

Leaking Coolant System?

K-Seal is a multi-purpose, one step, permanent coolant leak repair with more than 10 million bottles sold worldwide to date. It permanently seals leaks in the head gasket, block, radiator, heater core, freeze plug and water-pump casing.

Trusted by professional mechan ics, technicians and motorists alike, K-Seal is suitable for use with all water-cooled engines, including cars, motorcycles, commercial ve hicles and heavy machinery.

No need to drain or flush the sys tem or worry about what type of an tifreeze is in the cooling system; just shake, pour and get back on the road!

LEARN MORE AT KSEAL.COM

Come Ride with Lectric eBike

Escape the ordinary with the Lectric XPeak. It’s an all-terrain eBike equipped to take you off-road and encourage you into the unknown. This ride has been tested to the most aggressive safety standard for mountain eBikes (eMTB) - meaning that it’s durable and well-able to take on even the

most rugged of terrains. Explore beyond your neighborhood with 26” fat tires, a 1310W peak motor, and a trail-ready RST Renegade suspension front fork to smooth out the ride ahead. lectricebikes.com

SHOP LECTRICEBIKES.COM

THIS IS JOE’S ALL-PURPOSE

Hand Cleaner, and it’s the cleaner you should have in your shop or garage. This industrial-strength waterless hand cleaner removes some of the toughest grease, grime and oils from your skin. It contains lanolin and petroleum jelly to help combat the drying and cracking effects from the overuse of water, and its gentle formula means you can use it multiple times a day. Just apply it to dry skin and then wipe it off with a cloth or towel. With its pleasant banana smell, you’ll be amazed at the way your hands look and feel after use: clean, conditioned, and without the greasy or dry feeling associated with most hand cleaners.

NASCAR’S GREATEST DRIVERS

NASCAR’SGREATESTDRIVERS

Randy LaJoie never made it to the NASCAR Cup Series as a full-time driver, but he’s one of the best to ever sit behind the wheel of a stock car in the NASCAR Xfinity Series.

74 Randy lajoie

LaJoie was born into a racing family on Aug. 28, 1961. His father, Don, was a top competitor at local short tracks near the family home in Norwalk, Connecticut.

The younger LaJoie began racing go-karts at age 12 and eventually enjoyed great success as he advanced through the various stock car divisions in the Northeast.

LaJoie earned an opportunity to compete in what is now the ARCA Menards Series East beginning in 1983 – and compete he did, collecting 10 wins over three seasons to go along with the series championship in 1985.

The following year LaJoie made his Xfinity Series debut with a four-race stint in NASCAR’s No. 2 division and earned his first top-10 finish in just his third outing.

He drove the full Xfinity Series schedule for the first time in 1996 and promptly went out and captured the championship on the strength of five victories. After another five-win championship season in 1997, LaJoie reached Victory Lane once in each of the next three seasons and then twice in 2001 — his penultimate year as a full-time Xfinity Series driver.

With 15 wins and a pair of Xfinity Series championships, LaJoie was named one of NASCAR’s 75 Greatest Drivers in 2023.

LaJoie, who learned of the news during an appearance on the Stacking Pennies podcast hosted by son and Cup Series driver Corey LaJoie, couldn’t help but turn emotional when Corey informed him of his inclusion in such an elite club.

“Damn, that’s cool,” Randy LaJoie said. “That’s way cool. You don’t wake up when you’re 10 years old and racing go-karts and think you’re going to get something like this.”

Even though he never landed the full-time Cup Series ride, LaJoie finished his career in 2006 feeling satisfied.

“I had some chances to go Cup racing full time, but I always wanted to spend more time with my family and I just didn’t want to be away from home as much as I would have been,” he said. “I was able to compete to win races and championships in the (Xfinity) Series, and I was happy.”

I did whatever I had to do to pay the bills there for a while after I got married. I always worked on cars, so I thought I could use my skills to make a living while I still chased my dream to drive full time.

BEST SEASON

SIMILAR IN MANY WAYS, LaJoie’s back-to-back championship seasons in the NASCAR Xfinity Series were equally remarkable. LaJoie won five races in both the 1996 and 1997 season, and although he recorded more top-10 finishes in the latter campaign, the difference was likely a result of the 1997 schedule featuring an additional four races.

RECORD SETTER

IN REPEATING AS A champion of the NASCAR Xfinity Series, LaJoie became the first driver to ever go back-to-back in the sport’s No. 2 division. Since LaJoie accomplished this feat, four others – beginning with Dale Earnhardt Jr. – have followed suit. But LaJoie will always hold the distinction of being the first.

PASSIONATE DEVOTED INNOVATIVE MOTIVATED CONFIDENT

THE NO. 74 CAR

KNOWN FOR LAJOIE’S CONTRIBUTIONS to auto racing go beyond his accomplishments on the race track. Around 28 years ago, LaJoie started a company – The Joie of Seating – dedicated to improving driver safety, especially for those who compete at the grassroots levels. The company specializes in building molded, aluminum racing seats.

joe weatherly

Anybody who ever knew two-time NASCAR Cup Series champion Joe Weatherly, affectionately known as the clown prince of stock car racing, had a story about him – and some were even true.

Born May 29, 1922, in Norfolk, Virginia, Weatherly would come to be known as much for his anything-goes, devil-may-care personality as he was for his epic talent behind the wheel of a race car.

Weatherly and fellow NASCAR legend Curtis Turner were friends off the track, but that did not mean they cut each other any slack whatsoever on it.

“You couldn’t have met a finer feller than Joe Weatherly,” said car owner Bud Moore on The Scene Vault Podcast. “He was a heck of a race driver. He loved to run against Curtis Turner. Him and Turner beat and banged on each other quite a bit. They run around together, too, quite a bit. When he got to outrun Turner, he’d walk over to him and say, ‘Pops, I’ll tell ya what. I believe I done tore you up today.’ He was something else.”

Moore was only getting started.

“He had this one box … it was about a foot-and-a-half long and had a piece of screen wire over top of it and a fox tail in it,” Moore continued. “He called it a mongoose. He had everybody believing it. He said, ‘That’s the meanest thing in the world. It’d snap a snake’s head off so quick it’d make your head spin.”

8

Just as Weatherly would get bystanders good and curious – and more importantly – peering close into the box, he’d trip the springloaded furry tail and cause it to leap out of the box.

Weatherly wasn’t particular in who he pranked, either. No one was immune, not even the time at Darlington Raceway when he showed the “mongoose” to the wives of the track president and several major manufacturers.

“These were the big-wheel ladies,” Moore said with a smile – and then an outright laugh. “He ran and got that mongoose. He’s got these ladies standing right around there. He started all that bull, talking about that mongoose. He got ’em all bent down over that thing … and I’m telling you right now … he turned that thing loose on ’em … and there was five wet spots right there on pit road.”

Weatherly died Jan. 19, 1964, as the result of a racing accident at California’s Riverside International Raceway.

Joe and Curtis (Turner) put a mule in a hotel room down at Daytona. I was there when that happened, but they paid for room damages. I never knew of Joe getting in any serious trouble.

- FORMER RICHMOND RACEWAY TRACK OWNER PAUL SAWYER

BEST SEASON

WEATHERLY CAPTURED HIS second consecutive NASCAR Cup Series championship in 1963 despite making starts for no less than eight different team owners. The 41-year-old racer won three times and had 35 top-10 finishes that season in 53 starts.

RECORD-SETTER

BEFORE TURNING HIS attention to stock car racing, Weatherly was a professional motorcycle racer. During a brief, five-year pro career on two wheels, he won three AMA national events, including the prestigious Laconia Classic 100-mile road race in 1948 and ’49.

THE NO. 8 CAR

PRANKSTER TALENTED ENTERTAINING TOUGH FAN-FAVORITE

KNOWN FOR

WEATHERLY USED NO. 8 while driving for car owner Bud Moore. “That way,” he claimed, “the fans can always tell where I am, even if I’m upside down.” He was posthumously inducted into the NASCAR Hall of Fame (2015) and the AMA Motorcycle Hall of Fame (1998).

ernie irvin

Nicknamed “Swervin’ Irvan” for his notoriously aggressive driving style, Ernie Irvan was one of the NASCAR Cup Series’ most exciting drivers of the early- to mid-1990s when he seemed to almost always be in the mix for the win.

28

Born in Salinas, California, on Jan. 13, 1959, Irvan ascended the racing ranks and arrived in NASCAR’s premier division when some of the sport’s greatest drivers – among them Dale Earnhardt, Rusty Wallace, Jeff Gordon and Mark Martin – were in their heyday.

In the middle of the 1993 season, Irvan took over Robert Yates Racing’s beloved No. 28 car after Davey Allison was killed in a helicopter crash.

Irvan had firmly established himself as one of the drivers to beat week in and week out when a violent crash during a practice session at Michigan International Speedway in August 1994 changed both his life and his career.

Given only a 10 percent chance to live after suffering critical head injuries and being placed on life support, Irvan defied all odds and returned to NASCAR’s top series in the fall of 1995. But it wasn’t until the summer of 1996 that Irvan’s comeback was truly complete.

Driving RYR’s familiar black and red No. 28 Texaco-Havoline Ford, Irvan ran competitively in his first full season back but needed half a year to return to Victory Lane.

The big day finally came at New Hampshire Motor Speedway on July 14 when Irvan skated away to a more than five-second win over RYR teammate Dale Jarrett.

“It was unbelievable. I get tears in my eyes just talking about it just because of how rewarding it felt,” Irvan said in 2020. “The thing is it seems like you never appreciate things as much at the time, as you do later. I’m never going to have another Cup victory, so now it’s like, ‘Oh, OK, this is history.’ So these are the things I always think about.”

Irvan went on to claim two more victories at the Cup Series level before hanging up his helmet in the middle of the 1999 season while dealing with another head injury – which he also suffered in a crash at Michigan.

He retired with 15 career Cup Series victories, the biggest of them coming in the 1991 Daytona 500 with long since disbanded MorganMcClure Motorsports.

I don’t want to retire, but I know the smartest thing for me to do is retire, because I don’t know if I’m going to be able to survive another wreck like I had at Michigan. Two of them at Michigan.

BEST SEASON

IRVAN WAS ENJOYING THE best season of his career and was in a close fight with Dale Earnhardt for the 1994 Cup Series championship when a wreck at Michigan in August sidelined him for the rest of the season. Entering only 20 of 31 races, Irvan matched his career-high for victories with three.

RECORD SETTER

IN 1996, HIS FIRST FULL season after returning from his injuries, Irvan captured the pole for the Daytona 500, edging seven-time champion Dale Earnhardt for the top starting spot. Although Irvan didn’t win the 500 that year, he went to Victory Lane twice – an amazing accomplishment for a driver who had overcome so much.

AGGRESSIVE RESILIENT

KNOWN FOR

ONE OF THE GREATEST comeback stories in NASCAR history took place when Irvan, just over 13 months removed from an accident that nearly claimed his life, returned to competition at North Wilkesboro Speedway on Oct. 1, 1995. Wearing an eye patch to prevent double vision, Irvan led 31 laps and finished sixth.

THE NO. 28 CAR

NASCAR’SGREATESTDRIVERS

ron hornaday jr.

The only four-time champion in the 29-year history of the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series, Ron Hornaday Jr. is the most accomplished driver to run a full season in NASCAR’s No. 3 division without dabbling in other divisions.

16

Born in Palmdale, California, on June 20, 1958, Hornaday made a name for himself competing at short tracks on the West Coast before getting a call ahead of the 1995 NASCAR season that would ultimately change his life.

That came call came from the legendary Dale Earnhardt, a seven-time Cup Series champion who wanted Hornaday to drive the No. 16 Chevrolet truck for Dale Earnhardt Inc. during the inaugural season of the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series.

Hornaday agreed to the arrangement and quickly solidified himself as one of the series’ top stars, winning six of 20 races and finishing third in points in the first truck season.

The following year, Hornaday captured his first truck title on the strength of four victories and then went to Victory Lane a career-high seven times on the way to a fifth-place points finish in 1997.

In 1998, Hornaday won six times and became the series’ first two-time champion when he edged archrival Jack Sprague for the championship by a mere three points. After going to Victory Lane only twice and finishing a career-worst seventh in the standings in 1999, Hornaday went NASCAR Xfinity Series racing with DEI in 2000.

But after four full seasons and one partial season in NASCAR’s No. 2 division where he won a total of four races and competed for multiple teams, Hornaday returned to the truck ranks and joined forces with Kevin Harvick Inc.

Over seven seasons with KHI — the organization owned by Cup Series superstar Kevin Harvick and Harvick’s wife, DeLana — Hornaday collected 25 wins and two more championships to become the series’ first four-time champion. But when KHI ceased operations at the end of 2011, Hornaday’s days as a top contender were over.

He never won again over two full seasons and one partial season with lower-caliber teams, calling it quits at the end of 2014. Hornaday, whose lone full season at the Cup Series level in 2001 proved to be largely unproductive, became the first predominantly Truck Series driver to be inducted into the NASCAR Hall of Fame when he was enshrined as part of the Class of 2018.

I MIGHT BE GETTING A LITTLE GRUMPY IN MY OLD AGE, BUT I STILL ENJOY LIFE. I STILL HAVE A LOT OF FUN. I JUST ENJOY PEOPLE.

BEST SEASON

HORNADAY ENJOYED many amazing seasons, finishing in the top five of the Truck Series standings on nine occasions. In two of Hornaday’s four championship seasons, he scored six wins. His overall stats from those two years, 1998 and 2009, were also remarkably similar, so let’s call it a tie.

RECORD SETTER

HORNADAY IS THE ONLY four-time Truck Series champion and the only series driver to win multiple championships with multiple teams. His 51 Truck Series victories are second only to Kyle Busch – a Cup Series regular who has never run a full Truck Series season. In 2009, Hornaday ripped off five consecutive truck victories –another record.

DETERMINED

HOSPITABLE HARD-NOSED

THE NO. 16 TRUCK

KNOWN FOR

ABOVE ALL, HORNADAY IS known for his hospitality, which he and his wife, Lindy, have shown to numerous racers by inviting them to take temporary residence at their Mooresville, North Carolina, home. Among those who’ve slept on the Hornadays’ couch before making it big are Cup Series champions Jimmie Johnson and Kevin Harvick.

Jeff Gordon Wins 13 Races 98

Jeff Gordon, driver of the No. 24 Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet, recorded 13 victories, 28 top-10 finishes and seven pole positions en route to his third Cup Series championship and the fourth straight for Hendrick Motorsports.

If the 1997 NASCAR Cup Series season was magical and a bit lucky for Jeff Gordon and the Ray Evernham-led No. 24 Hendrick Motorsports team, the 1998 campaign was nothing short of phenomenal.

The chemistry between Gordon and Evernham was at an alltime high and their 13 victories throughout the season forced the motorsports media to scramble for new and creative things to say in headlines and news stories about how well they were performing.

Fans began showing up at tracks with signs and T-shirts that read, “Anybody But Gordon.” They were tired of seeing his Rainbow-colored Chevrolet roll into Victory Lane virtually everywhere it raced.

Gordon’s 13 wins in a single season were third best behind Richard Petty’s incredible season when he won 27 of 48 races. including 10 consecutively, and Tim Flock’s 1955 effort in which he won 18 of 39 races.

Mark Martin, driver of the No. 6 Roush Racing Ford, was Gordon’s closest rival in points but notched only seven wins during the season and was 364 markers back when the schedule ended at Atlanta Motor Speedway in November.

Only two DNFs – at Texas in April for handling issues and a crash at Richmond in June – were the No. 24 team’s only blemishes. With his convincing victory at California’s Sonoma Raceway on June 28, Gordon took the points lead and never relinquished it for the remaining 17 races.

It was truly the best season of Gordon’s NASCAR Cup Series career, which began in 1992 and ended in 2016.

BEST

DRIVER

DRIVING THE NO. 24

HENDRICK Motorsports Chevrolet, Jeff Gordon won 13 NASCAR Cup Series races in 1998 and amazingly, all of them were on superspeedways or road courses. His biggest wins of the season came with six in a seven-week stretch at Pocono, Indianapolis, Watkins Glen, Michigan, New Hampshire and Darlington. The one race in that stretch that he did not win was at Bristol, where he finished fifth. Gordon’s average finish that season was 5.7.

BEST RACE

IN THE SEASON-OPENING DAYTONA 500, Dale Earnhardt, driving the No. 3 Richard Childress Racing Chevrolet, finally won NASCAR’s most prestigious race. The second-generation driver from Kannapolis, North Carolina, had come close to winning the Daytona 500 on many occasions over the previous 19 years but couldn’t seal the deal. After leading 107 of 200 laps, the race was finally his. It is known as one of the most memorable races in NASCAR’s storied history.

SEASON RECAP

DATE LOCATION WINNER

Feb. 15 Daytona International Speedway Dale Earnhardt

Feb. 22 Rockingham Speedway Jeff Gordon

March 1 Las Vegas Motor Speedway Mark Martin

March 9 Atlanta Motor Speedway Bobby Labonte

March 22 Darlington Raceway Dale Jarrett

March 29 Bristol Motor Speedway Jeff Gordon

April 5 Texas Motor Speedway Mark Martin

April 20 Martinsville Speedway Bobby Hamilton

April 26 Talladega Superspeedway Bobby Labonte

May 3 Auto Club Speedway Mark Martin

May 24

Charlotte Motor Speedway Jeff Gordon

May 31 Dover Motor Speedway Dale Jarrett

June 6 Richmond Raceway Terry Labonte

June 14

Michigan International Speedway Mark Martin

June 21 Pocono Raceway Jeremy Mayfield

June 28 Sonoma Raceway Jeff Gordon

July 12 New Hampshire Motor Speedway Jeff Burton

July 26 Pocono Raceway Jeff Gordon

Aug. 1

Indianapolis Motor Speedway Jeff Gordon

Aug. 9 Watkins Glen International Jeff Gordon

Aug. 16 Michigan International Speedway Jeff Gordon

Aug. 22 Bristol Motor Speedway Mark Martin

Aug. 30

New Hampshire Motor Speedway Jeff Gordon

Sept. 6 Darlington Raceway Jeff Gordon

Sept.12 Richmond Raceway Jeff Burton

Sept. 20 Dover Motor Speedway Mark Martin

Sept. 27

Oct. 4

Oct. 11

Oct. 17

Oct. 25

Nov. 1

Nov. 8

Martinsville Speedway Ricky Rudd

Charlotte Motor Speedway Mark Martin

Talladega Superspeedway Dale Jarrett

Daytona International Speedway Jeff Gordon

Phoenix Raceway Rusty Wallace

Rockingham Speedway Jeff Gordon

Atlanta Motor Speedway Jeff Gordon

TOP CARS

JEFF GORDON’S NO. 24

Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet won 13 times and recorded 28 top-10 finishes in 33 Cup Series starts.

Mark Martin drove the No. 6 Roush Racing Ford to seven victories and 26 top-10 results during the 1998 season.

PRESIDENT: BILL CLINTON NO. 1 SONG: “TOO CLOSE” BY NEXT NO. 1 AT THE BOX OFFICE: TITANIC GALLON OF GAS: $1.06 POP CULTURE: INTERNET SEARCH ENGINE GOOGLE WAS

Honorably discharged Veterans can shop the best brands tax-free for life at ShopMyExchange.com. Disabled Veterans can shop in-store. Visit ShopMyExchange.com/vets to learn more.

FUELED BY A HISTORY OF SERVICE

» Serving those who serve since 1895

» Department of Defense’s largest retailer

» Quality-of-Life force multiplier

» Military-exclusive pricing

» Tax-free savings

THE MILITARY STAR CARD - A WINNING CREDIT OPTION

» Lowest APR among all unsecured store credit options, regardless of credit score

» 10% off first-day’s purchases for new cardmembers

» 5 cents off every gallon of gas at Express fuel locations

» Free standard shipping on ShopMyExchange.com orders

» Unlimited 2% rewards everywhere the card is accepted