Kansas Speedway Friday Notebook:
NASCAR Nationwide Race Hits The Lottery: While NASCAR continues its search for a replacement title sponsor for its second-tier national division, officials from Kansas Speedway and the Kansas Lottery jointly announced Friday morning that the Kansas Lottery will extend its support of the NASCAR Nationwide Series races at Kansas Speedway for five years running through the 2019 season. The traditional fall event will continue to be dubbed as the Kansas Lottery 300.
“The Kansas Lottery has partnered with Kansas Speedway since the beginning,” said Kansas Lottery Executive Director Terry Presta. “Besides the great visibility the partnership affords us, our players really appreciate being able to win once-in-a-lifetime VIP racing experiences at Kansas Speedway in our second-chance drawings.”
Matt Kenseth is the defending winner of this year’s event, scheduled for Saturday, October 4.
A.J. Allmendinger; JTG-Daugherty Racing Continue To Climb Ladder: Furniture Row Racing with driver Kurt Busch proved to be the little engine that could last season. A one-car team with big dollar connections successfully carved a spot in the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series race for the Chase. While they didn’t compete for the championship, they still became a member of an elite class.
After 10 races this season, A.J. Allmendinger and JTG-Daugherty Racing have roared to life and enter Saturday night’s 5-hour ENERGY 400 with back-to-back top-10 finishes at Richmond (Va.) International Raceway and Talladega (Ala.) Superspeedway respectively.
A mixture of a technical alliance with Richard Childress Racing, and a deeper budget has transpired to seeing the No. 47 Kingsford Chevrolet SS a weekly competitor and spawning results that the team hasn’t been capable of in years.
“I think it is just we are starting to put the weekends together,” said Allmendinger of his team’s recent surge. “We are maximizing the practice time. We are doing just good things throughout the race, whether it’s pit stops or just making the right calls, and we are having fast race cars. The beginning of the year we had decent cars, but we just never put the weekend together. We would either struggle really bad on Friday or qualify really bad or make an uphill climb on Sunday or have to really make a lot of big changes going into Sunday and not know really what the car was going to do. I feel like the last few weekends Brian Burns (crew chief) and I we are really starting to gel (it) and this whole team.
“I’m happy with where we are at right now, but not satisfied. I know we have a lot of room to improve and a lot of steps we need to improve on.”
Tayler Malsam Returns To Truck With Stout Team: Competing in his first NASCAR Camping World Truck Series race since Darlington (S.C.) Raceway in 2011, Tayler Malsam will return to the circuit this weekend at Kansas Speedway in the first of a 12-race deal with Turner Scott Motorsports driving the No. 32 Outerwall Chevrolet Silverado.
Malsam, a former ARCA Racing Series presented by Menards driver for Cunningham Motorsports will line-up 13th for tonight’s SFP 250.
Malsam’s new backer is Outerwall, a Washington-based company with a network of movie and game rental kiosks as well as coin cashing machines. The firm’s original focus was the conversion of loose change into paper currency, donations orgift cards via coin counter kiosks. Outerwall operates Coinstar machines which deduct a fee for conversion of coins to banknotes, but not for charitable donations or gift cards. The company also owns the Redbox DVDrental service.
“It’s been a lot of fun, I’m just happy to be back in this series, it’s my favorite series outside of NASCAR,” said Malsam. “I think we can run top-five (tonight.) We had a good truck in practice, it was very consistent, just have to see how much I remember how to drive these things.”
“I’d be happy with a top-five tonight for sure, just have to see what happen.”
Following Kansas Speedway, Malsam under the direction of two-time NASCAR champion crew chief Mike Hillman Jr. will compete next week at Charlotte (N.C.) Motor Speedway for the North Carolina Education Lottery 200.
Double-Duty Flavor: Three drivers for tonight’s SFP 250 at Kansas Speedway will hope to be back in action for Saturday night’s 5 hour ENERGY 400 attempting the double-duty shuffle.
Ryan Blaney, the fastest in final practice for the NASCAR Camping World Truck Series on Thursday afternoon will attempt to make his first NASCAR Sprint Cup Series race in a third Team Penske entry.
Not only is Blaney hoping to make his NASCAR Sprint Cup Series debut, he’s also hoping to join his father Dave Blaney on the grid. Should the father-son duo successful qualify for the fourth annual race, the two would become the first pair to compete in a NASCAR Sprint Cup Series race as father and son since Bobby Hamilton Jr. and Bobby Hamilton Sr. did so in 2005 at Atlanta (Ga.) Motor Speedway.
In addition to running a full NCWTS plate for Brad Keselowski Racing, the third-generation driver will also wheel the No. 12 SKF Ford Fusion. Blaney also competed for Team Penske last Saturday in the NASCAR Nationwide Series event at Talladega (Ala.) Superspeedway, but faulted to a late-race incident which resulted in a 21st place finish.
No surprise that Kyle Busch is one of those names in the mix. The ToyotaCare back driver was fifth quickest in final NASCAR Camping World Truck Series practice. Busch, surprisingly will make just his third NASCAR Camping World Truck Series start at the 1.5-mile superspeedway. His best finish in his previous two other starts came in 20011, where he cinched sixth and last April, finishing 27. Despite his radical finishes at Kansas, Busch won his 13th career NCWTS pole.
Austin Dillon in a rare NASCAR Camping World Truck Series start will drive the NTS Motorsports No. 20 on Friday night. Dillon subbed for the ill-Brennan Newberry at Chicagoland Speedway last September and finished seventh. This weekend, he returns with the organization at Kansas Speedway hoping for the team’s first top-10 of the season. More opportunities for the 2013 NASCAR Nationwide Series champion with NTS Motorsports are possible.
Follow Chris Knight on Twitter @Knighter01.
