With his win at Dover International Speedway, Matt Kenseth became the first driver to qualify for the Chase for the Sprint Cup in the last five races.
There have now been seven different winners through the first 12 races of the Sprint Cup season. With Denny Hamlin‘s poor performance since winning the Daytona 500, Kenseth was able to move up eight spots on the latest Chase grid to sixth, ahead of Hamlin.
Chase Elliott, who finished third Sunday for a career-best result, moved up three spots on the grid to ninth. The only driver ahead of him on the gird who hasn’t won a race is Kurt Busch. Busch is the only driver with 10 finishes in the top 10 through 12 races.
Dale Earnhardt Jr. and Austin Dillon had the biggest drops, each falling three spots to 13th and 12th, respectively.
The first four drivers out of the 16 spots that will qualify for the Chase are AJ Allmendinger, Ryan Newman, Trevor Bayne and Ricky Stenhouse Jr.
Despite having never attended a NASCAR race in his life, the Creative Director of Turn 10 Studios wanted to drive a NASCAR stock car around Watkins Glen International.
“It’s one of the NASCAR races I love watching because you mix it up so much,” Greenawalt told NBC Sports in a phone interview. “It’s just fun, it’s a great track. It’s got so much heritage, it’s one of those tracks that I love to drive classic cars on, in general. It flows really well, it’s got the heritage, it’s got a lot of different type of surfaces on it and really interesting camber from one corner to the next.”
Greenawalt doesn’t know WGI from first-hand experience. He’s describing it based on his experience from driving on the road course while developing NASCAR World Tour, the latest expansion pack for Forza Motorsports 6, which is available today on the XBox One.
“I feel like any car I jump into, the physics of the game really speak to me, because I know the track well and the track is an incredible trial,” Greenawalt said.
Greenawalt is one of the minds behind Microsoft’s Forza Motorsports 6 video game, the latest entry in the series that began in 2005 on XBox. While the above scene at WGI seems like one you could experience in any of the NASCAR simulator games that has been released over the last two decades, it’s just the surface of the many “What If?” itches one can scratch.
The expansion, which features 10 hours of additional content to the original, adds 24 Sprint Cup cars among 16 drivers and Homestead-Miami Speedway to the already existing NASCAR-sanctioned tracks on the game. The 24 cars represent Joe Gibbs Racing, Chip Ganassi Racing, Stewart-Haas Racing, Hendrick Motorsports, and Team Penske.
With those 24 cars you could run at Watkins Glen. But you could also do it in the rain, something that’s never been done in real life in the series.
Have you ever wondered how a stock car would handle “The Corkscrew” at Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca? Of course you have.
Does the thought of a stock car navigating the street course of the Grand Prix of Long Beach keep you up at night? Do your eyes glaze over when you think about Dale Earnhardt Jr. or Kevin Harvick jockeying for position at the Silverstone Circuit in the United Kingdom against V8 Supercars or an IndyCar?
Forza Motorsports 6 gives you that possibility now.
“I was racing in the rain on Silverstone and it’s such a fish out of water (experience) in a sense, but as a driver you feel like you’re incredibly challenged to take these cars, they’re so powerful, they’re so raw,” Greenawalt said. “Silverstone has such tradition with proper racing etiquette and you think of a lot of the open-wheel stuff with F1 and to go in there … and really mixing it up in the rain, when I first did that it was with a whole field of NASCAR (cars) and it just felt like a muddy, ballroom brawl.”
That brawl and your other NASCAR-related fantasies are made possible only through the cooperation of NASCAR itself its licensing division, where Blake Davidson works as a vice president.
Davidson has been with NASCAR for going on 21 years and has been working on licensed games since “NASCAR Racing” in 1994, a PC game produced by Papyrus.
“One of the challenges that we’ve always had is that it’s really difficult to experience NASCAR yourself,” Davidson told NBC Sports in phone interview. “It’s not like stick-and-ball sports where you can go out and play those sports. It’s completely different.
“Outside of a driving school, it’s the best way we can allow fans to race and experience the sport.”
The sport has to be turned into a video game someway. Greenawalt breaks it down into three components – Physics, graphics and audio.
Audio – “We tend to use Dynos, which means we put the cars on a rolling road or a dynamometer (a device for measuring force, torque, or power). We put different microphones all around the car – the intake, the exhaust, near the engine. We try to isolate the sounds so we can remix them in real-time and on the fly while the cars are driving.”
Graphics – “We’ve used a lot of different techniques. With an older car, we might laser scan it. But with a NASCAR in particular, we get CAD data, so it’s polygonal design data that’s given to us. From that data, we’re able to then photograph the cars, videotape the cars, manipulate that date to get a very accurate representation … we have to go on-site, put our hands on the car to make the CAD data really come to life in our engine.”
Says Davidson, “Microsoft and their designers, they want to be authentic in everything that they’re doing. Sometimes that makes the teams a little bit nervous. They love to take pictures of everything and scan the cars and have everything captured perfectly in the game and they get pretty darn close, but there are certainly things teams are sensitive about.”
Physics – “We’ve got thousands of data points, for every single car. We recreate them in real-time. So we measure things like the weight of the driveline, inertia. Different components like the flywheel, the engine. The unsprung mass of the suspension architecture, the brakes the wheels and tires. We measure all those components and put them into the game. What’s really unique about NASCAR in particular was the aerodynamics. We had a separate team go and start really looking into how aerodynamics is done at that level. Those cars, they’re not symmetrical, so one side is different from the other on an oval setup. That’s very atypical of the cars in our game.”
When all of that comes together, after a few years of work, you can scratch your own NASCAR itch.
It’s easy to believe that Kyle Larson will have other chances to earn a playoff spot with a win this season.
But what if Sunday was it?
What if he fails to make the Chase because he didn’t put the bumper more aggressively to Matt Kenseth late in Sunday’s race at Dover International Speedway? What if politeness and decency are trumped?
Larson showed restraint Sunday in his duel with Kenseth. Drivers say it doesn’t take talent to wreck somebody out of the lead, but it takes talent to pass them for it. While Sunday’s finish might not have pleased fans wanting to see drivers squabble, Larson showed that there can be civility in sports.
Now the question is if he’ll be penalized for it.
With 14 races left until the Chase field is set, Larson has time to put himself in a playoff position. Four of his six best tracks (based on average finish) remain with Indianapolis, Watkins Glen, Darlington and Pocono. He has an average finish between 8.0 and 9.0 at those tracks.
Yet, challenges remain.
Kenseth’s win was the seventh in the 12 races this season for Joe Gibbs Racing. Of the 14 races left before the Chase field is set, Gibbs cars won nine of those events a year ago. A question all of the garage is asking — not just Larson and his team — is how to beat the Gibbs cars? One of those Gibbs drivers, Carl Edwards, wrecked after contact with Larson with less than 50 laps left. Will that change how Edwards races Larson in the coming weeks? How could that impact things for Larson?
After Sunday’s runner-up finish at Dover, Larson is 43 points out of the final Chase spot — nearly a full race. A month ago, Larson was 24 points out of the final Chase spot. He’s fallen 19 points further behind in the last five races.
Take a closer look at his recent runs. It’s hard to imagine he’ll have any worse four-race stretch than what he did (28.5 average finish) before Dover.
Yet, that stretch was only slightly worse than his average finish (27.8) for races at Atlanta, Las Vegas, Phoenix and Auto Club Speedway earlier this year.
Challenges remain for Larson and his Chip Ganassi Racing team.
So, should Larson look back upon Sunday with regret?
Time will tell, but had he knocked Kenseth out of the way, would Larson have looked back upon his first career Cup win with greater regret?
— Sunday marked the second consecutive Sprint Cup race at Dover won by a two-tire pit stop.
In the 2015 fall race during the Chase, Kevin Harvick pitted on Lap 359 for two tires and restarted second to Matt Kenseth, who did not pit. Harvick won and Kenseth finished seventh.
Sunday, Kenseth and Jimmie Johnson were the only leaders to change two tires during a pit stop on Lap 349. Johnson never made it to the finish but Kenseth won.
“I’m surprised more guys didn’t do two tires at the end,’’ said Jason Ratcliff, crew chief for Kenseth. “But it worked out for us. Earlier we had done four and lost our track position. It was a good opportunity for us to get that back.’’
— Is Martin Truex Jr. the unluckiest driver in the Sprint Cup garage?
A week after dominating at Kansas only to see his chances to win end because of an unusual part failure, Truex seemed to be in a good spot to challenge for the win Sunday. He restarted in the second row, behind leader Jimmie Johnson on the outside lane with less than 50 laps to go.
Johnson’s car locked in gear and he didn’t get up to speed, triggering a chain-reaction accident that ended any hopes of Truex winning.
Already this year, Truex lost the Daytona 500 by inches to Denny Hamlin and Truex had been strong at Auto Club Speedway before an incident with Joey Logano sent Truex’s car into the wall there.
— Chase Elliott’s career-high third-place finish Sunday was his eighth top-10 finish of the season. He has more top-10 results this season than every Cup driver except Kurt Busch (10 top 10s), Kevin Harvick (nine) and Kyle Busch (nine).
— Joe Gibbs Racing has won 19 of the last 37 points races, dating back to last year’s Coca-Cola 600.
— Ryan Blaney scored his fifth top-10 finish of the season. It’s the most for the Wood Brothers in a season since Ricky Rudd had nine top 10s in 2005. This is the first season the Wood Brothers have run the full schedule since 2008.
The last time the Wood Brothers had double digits in top 10s was 1996 when Michael Waltrip had 11 top 10s in 31 races.
— Danica Patrick, who was two laps behind the leaders by Lap 90 on Sunday, escaped the multi-car crash late to finish a season-best 13th. Her previous best this season was 16th at Martinsville.
A NASCAR executive explained Monday why there was no SAFER barrier along the outside frontstretch wall at Dover International Speedway after multiple cars struck the concrete wall this past weekend.
Jamie McMurray and Tony Stewart each slammed into an unprotected concrete wall off Turn 4 after they ran through oil from Danica Patrick’s car during Friday’s Sprint Cup practice. Justin Marks hit the outside wall during his Xfinity heat race Saturday.
McMurray, who was sore from his hit, said it was “unacceptable” the outside wall at Dover did not have a SAFER barrier. He was not alone in speaking out. Patrick and Kevin Harvick each called for the SAFER barrier to be added in that location at Dover.
Steve O’Donnell, NASCAR executive vice president and chief racing development officer, told SiriusXM NASCAR Radio why there wasn’t a SAFER barrier along the frontstretch wall.
“When we looked at SAFER barriers all being in place for this racing season, the plan had always been at both Dover and Indianapolis on the frontstretch wall to not have that covered,’’ O’Donnell said. “There was some logistics and reasoning behind that in terms of really narrowing the frontstretch lane. SAFER barriers were potentially going to dump some of the cars back out into the frontstretch and have the potential of a T-bone of a driver and then there were some challenges in going into Turn 1.
“Obviously after we went through this weekend, we’ve got to look at what tweaks we can make and be able to install those and maybe look at how the frontstretch could work those in. It wasn’t something that the track or anyone said, ‘Hey we’re not going to do this,’ there was some reasoning behind it. Obviously, after what happened all throughout the weekend, that’s something that we’ve got to address and we’ll do that and very confident the track will work with us as well.’’
NASCAR and tracks have made a concentrated effort to add SAFER barriers after Kyle Busch was injured in an Xfinity race at Daytona International Speedway at the beginning of last season when he struck an unprotected concrete wall. Dover added 479 feet of SAFER barrier before this weekend along the inside wall at the backstretch and inside Turn 3.
INDIANAPOLIS – Kyle Larson arrived at Indianapolis Motor Speedway on Monday morning not to announce a shock participation in this year’s 100th Indianapolis 500.
And he didn’t have a win to hang his hat on either when he arrived, following arguably his near-miss of his elusive first NASCAR Sprint Cup Series victory. In Sunday’s AAA 400 Drive for Autism at Dover, he came second again after getting beat by Matt Kenseth.
Instead, Larson was in Indy to support fellow Chip Ganassi Racing Teams driver Charlie Kimball as Kimball’s Indianapolis 500 car number will change to match Larson’s No. 42, with Tresiba support.
Larson’s runner-up result was a needed one for he and his No. 42 Target Chip Ganassi Racing Chevrolet team. Larson’s best result this year had been third at Martinsville in April.
“There were a lot of people cheering for you in Indianapolis,” Kimball told Larson before Larson spoke to the room of assembled reporters.
“Man, it was fun yesterday. But I would have liked to be one spot better, and I’d be happier,” Larson replied.
Larson did admit that improvements have come to his No. 42 team lately even though the results haven’t particularly shown it.
“I definitely think we’ve made some big improvements over the last month or so,” he said. “We started out pretty poorly at the first couple mile-and-a-halfs. We made a small step.
“The last couple races we’ve made pretty big gains. We just have to keep working hard. The cars and sport changes so frequently, it’s hard to keep up with it. We have to keep up with the ever-changing garage area.
“I’m proud of everyone at the race shop. It’s starting to show in results.”
Team owner Ganassi echoed the sentiments, noting the team hasn’t “turned the corner” as he was asked but instead made the incremental steps that have made the difference.
“You know, things are so close in racing today you don’t have to be very far off on the stopwatch because it’s such a matter of tenths and hundredths,” Ganassi said.
“I wouldn’t characterize it as ‘turn the corner.’ We think we’re closer to the sweet spot right now.”
Larson may be on site at Indianapolis race morning to support Kimball and the rest of the Chip Ganassi Racing team, which has four cars entered in the Indianapolis 500 this year with Kimball joined by Scott Dixon, Tony Kanaan and Max Chilton. It is yet to be decided whether he will or not.
“It’s cool to be here to support Charlie and Novo, and see him run the 42 car. This is a special event,” Larson said.
“Yeah, it’s gonna be fun to cheer him on as well as all the other CGR teammates. My cousin is a type-one diabetic. I believe he’ll be one of the 42 names on the car, so that’s special to myself and family. He’s had good runs here in the past. Hopefully, he ends a couple spots better than last year (Kimball finished third).”
Could Larson run the Indianapolis 500? It’s an age-old question that brought the same age-old answer.
“I wish I could be a part of it. Maybe talk Chip into sending me out for rookie orientation later,” Larson quipped.
“I’d love to do it someday. But you’ll have to ask the person sitting to my left; he’d make that call.”
In a Monday morning post on NASCAR.com, aerodynamic changes were announced for Saturday’s Sprint All-Star Race at Charlotte Motor Speedway.
NASCAR senior vice president of innovation and racing development Gene Stefanyshyn told NASCAR.com that there will be tweaks in three areas: the truck trailing arm, a limit on cooling fans and the toe alignment of the rear wheels.
Sprint Cup teams have been required to weld truck trailing arm mounting brackets since the May 7 race at Kansas Speedway, and that rule will remain in effect through the rest of the 2016 season. The change limits how cars can move.
Stefanyshyn told NASCAR.com that fans were creating more downforce, and that preventing teams from having too many would reduce the aerodynamic impact and save costs.
Stefanyshyn said the toe alignment changes would prevent teams from using “skew” to slant the cars and gain sideforce. It also should cause a 3 mph decrease in Charlotte corner speeds, which some drivers have lobbied for reducing.
NASCAR reduced downforce by 900 pounds with its 2016 rules package, Stefanyshyn said. He estimated teams have regained about 100 to 200 pounds since the season began.
Stefanyshyn said a Goodyear tire test Tuesday at Michiagn International Speedway would test the new changes and also evaluate potential changes for 2017. NASCAR.com reported that Austin Dillon, Kyle Larson, Aric Almirola and Martin Truex Jr. will test at Michigan.
Matt Kenseth scored his third victory at Dover International Speedway, winning the AAA 400 Drive for Autism to secure a provisional berth in the Sprint Cup playoffs.
Kyle Larson, who led 85 laps, finished second, followed by Chase Elliott, Kasey Kahne and Kurt Busch.
Kenseth, who had several near-misses at wins this season starting with losing the lead of the Daytona 500 in the final corner, held off several furious charges by Larson for his 37th career victory in NASCAR’s premier series. It was the seventh victory in 12 races this year for Joe Gibbs Racing, which has reached victory lane with all four of its drivers (Kenseth, Kyle Busch, Denny Hamlin and Carl Edwards).
