With the Kansas City Royals not taking part in the MLB postseason, Drew Butera has a lot of time on his hands.
He’ll fill some of it by being the honorary pace car driver for Sunday’s Sprint Cup race at Kansas Speedway.
The track announced that Butera, a catcher for the defending World Series champions, will drive the car during the opening pace laps of the Hollywood Casino 400.
Butera, who has been in MLB since he was drafted in 2005, was behind the plate for the final inning of the World Series, which the Royals won in five games over the New York Mets.
Martinsville Speedway will add lights next season, track officials announced Wednesday.
Construction is scheduled to begin the day after the Oct. 30 Sprint Cup race at the 0.526-mile oval. The track will be the first motorsports facility to have LED lighting. There will be 14 poles installed.
Clay Campbell, president of Martinsville Speedway, said the lights will be used as an “insurance policy” in case the race is delayed or goes later into the afternoon. In the Nov. 1, 2015 race, Jeff Gordon won as darkness enveloped the track.
“If we would have had one more delay, we wouldn’t have finished that race,” said Campbell, who estimated the project will cost $5 million and added it would be paid for by International Speedway Corp., which owns the track. “It’s important and critical we get those races finished.”
“I think it’s great for the racetrack, and it opens up a ton of possibility for the track itself,” he said. “Martinsville is one of the very best short tracks in the country. It’s awesome, and it’s been a long time coming.
“I would say I would love to have a night race here any day of the week. Short-track racing is what this sport was born on.”
The move comes as the track prepares to celebrate its 70th anniversary next year.
The 2017 race times have been set. Martinsville’s April 3 race will be at 2 p.m. ET and the Oct. 30 race will start at 1 p.m. ET
With Martinsville adding lights, tracks that host Sprint Cup races that don’t have lights are Dover International Speedway, Talladega Superspeedway, New Hampshire Motor Speedway, Pocono Raceway, Indianapolis Motor Speedway, Watkins Glen International and Sonoma Raceway.
A championship contender – possibly the early favorite — will be absent from next week’s test at Homestead-Miami Speedway, whose Nov. 20 season finale will decide the Sprint Cup title.
Furniture Row Racing won’t bring Martin Truex Jr.’s No. 78 Toyota to the Oct. 18-19 session at the 1.5-mile oval. A team spokesman said the test was removed from the team’s schedule last week and didn’t know the reason.
Homestead-Miami Speedway will play host to the last of several “organizational tests” scheduled by NASCAR during the season. In an organizational test, which isn’t mandatory, only one car per organization is permitted to participate.
As a single-car team, Furniture Row Racing wouldn’t have been in the predicament of having to choose who would test among multiple contenders, which is the case with Joe Gibbs Racing and its four Chase-eligible drivers.
Every other remaining championship contender will be represented at Homestead-Miami Speedway next week: Team Penske (Brad Keselowski), Hendrick Motorsports (Chase Elliott), Stewart-Haas Racing (Kurt Busch), Joe Gibbs Racing (Carl Edwards), Richard Childress Racing (Austin Dillon).
Truex won two of the first three races in the 2016 playoffs at Chicagoland Speedway and Dover International Speedway. He reached the championship round last season, finishing fourth among the Chase contenders (12th overall).
Here’s the list of drivers and teams that are testing at Homestead-Miami Speedway next week (current championship contenders in bold):
Alex Bowman‘s paint scheme for the Alabama 500 at Talladega Superspeedway may blend into its surroundings.
bowman-talladega-2Bowman, who will drive the No. 88 of Dale Earnhardt Jr. for the seventh time in 2016, will have a camouflage Mountain Dew paint scheme for the Oct. 23 race.
The scheme is called “Take it Outside.”
Bowman will be making his fifth Sprint Cup start at the 2.66-mile track. In his four starts, Bowman only finished once (16th) while crashing out of the other three.
The No. 88 team last won at Talladega in the 2015 spring race. It was Earnhardt’s first win at Talladega since 2004.
In his five starts in the No. 88 this season, Bowman has an average finish of 23.8 after recording his first DNF at Charlotte last weekend.
As Jimmie Johnson took the checkered flag at Charlotte Motor Speedway Sunday -- for the eighth time in his career -- he was full of emotion and adrenaline. It is his well-earned Fast Pass ticket into the next round of the championship, which amazingly will be the farthest he's advanced under NASCAR's newest title Chase format.
The victory also ended the longest winless streak in the six-time Sprint Cup champion's career -- a 25-race span. It has been six whole months since the most accomplished driver of his era hoisted a trophy in Victory Lane. The seasons are practically ready to change. Massive worry has been averted.
Please.
"Nobody ever gave up, we know what a champion Jimmie is," said team owner and 2017 NASCAR Hall of Fame inductee Rick Hendrick, adding with a smile, "I've never taken the champagne bath in 30-something years, so it was like our first race (victory) again."
This win for Johnson wasn't just another trophy, another confetti moment in his surefire Hall of Fame career. This was a concerted effort to make good on this team's own high standards.
It was the product of hard work from behind the scenes at the No. 48 Lowe's team and all of Hendrick Motorsports. And the result was verification that the sport's most celebrated champion of the time is not done yet.
"There wasn't any fist pounding per se, but what we did do was try to get together with all the heads of state, let's say," Johnson's crew chief Chad Knaus explained. "... what we were trying to do was identify where our weaknesses were, and once we started to hone in on where we thought we needed to get some gains, we started to allocate the resources to where we needed it.
"We've put responsibility in some different areas that maybe we hadn't in the past and I think that all of Hendrick Motorsports is definitely going to feel a lot of responsibility for this victory, which is great for all of us."
Johnson -- who qualified for the Chase with wins at Atlanta (in February) and California (in March) -- has led the most laps (363) of any competitor in the first four races of the Chase. Only two-time Chase winner Martin Truex Jr. is near that total (360 laps). The best of the rest hasn't even resulted in 200 laps out front.
Still pit road miscues -- speeding penalties, crew mistakes -- ultimately derailed Johnson's trophy moments no matter how many laps he has led in the Chase. His finishes of 12th, eighth and seventh, have not been indicative of how competitive he was in the opening Chase Round of 16.
He has been competitive but too often gutted with the result.
This win Sunday wasn't just the breathe-a-little-easier ticket to the Round of 8. It was a rebirth, a reminder of what this organization is capable of.
In the last two years, Johnson has famously and painfully been eliminated from the Chase in by the second round.
And now, he is six races away from a chance to tie NASCAR's all-time greatest drivers -- Richard Petty and Dale Earnhardt -- with seven Sprint Cup titles.
Some -- probably Johnson and Knaus -- would say it's much too early to start thinking in those terms. But part of the allure and amazement in earning so many championships is the work it takes to even be in position for them.
With so many changes in NASCAR's title structure throughout Johnson's career -- more so than what Petty and Earnhardt faced even -- it has been an accomplishment to even realistically contend for the big trophy. And there is no time to leave anything on the table.
"There's no way I could have dreamed about this," Johnson allowed Sunday. "To have one sponsor (Lowe's), one manufacturer (Chevrolet), one crew chief (Knaus), being at one team (Hendrick), this is fairy-tale stuff. It's been really special."
But Johnson is the first to insist those are deep thoughts reserved for November.
Right now, he's got some races to win, messages to send, trophies to hoist, and history to make.
"You know, I've always raced for the experience I've had in the car," Johnson said Sunday in Charlotte. "It hasn't been about stats or the previous trophies that I've won or what's really ahead of me. There's an experience that I have in the car that I chase and I love.
"The community that's created on a race team, the bond and friendship that you have with the crew chief and teammates, that's the stuff that keeps me going."
"And," he added. "we're doing what we need to and that brings a lot of optimism to the team. You get this machine of Hendrick Motorsports rolling and some momentum on our side, we can accomplish a lot and I think all four cars are showing that.
"We've got a lot more to show the rest of the year."
Chase Elliott's 2017 NAPA Auto Parts paint scheme for the No. 24 Chevrolet was revealed by the driver and Hendrick Motorsports on Tuesday.
The 2017 season will mark Elliott's second season in the No. 24 car. This season he has the car that he took over from sure-fire Hall of Fame driver Jeff Gordon in the Round of 12 of the Chase for the NASCAR Sprint Cup and looking to advance even further in the Chase.
Still pursuing his first win in the legendary ride, Elliott has accumulated nine top fives and 15 top 10s in his rookie Sprint Cup season. He ran well at Charlotte on Sunday leading 103 laps, but was collected in a pileup on a Lap 259 restart.
There are 40 cars featured on the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series entry list for Sunday's Hollywood Casino 400 at Kansas Speedway.
After many of the 12 Chase drivers experienced a disastrous race at Charlotte Motor Speedway, earning a good result this weekend will be critical before the final race in the Round of 12 at Talladega Superspeedway, which is sure to be a wild card.
Jimmie Johnson is locked into the Round of 8 after his win at Charlotte, while Kevin Harvick, Joey Logano, Chase Elliott and Austin Dillon are the four drivers on the outside looking in heading to Kansas.
An early look at the forecast for Sunday's race calls for mostly sunny skies and a high of 79 degrees.
