{"id":19778,"date":"2018-06-29T17:50:45","date_gmt":"2018-06-29T22:50:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/racedaysa.com\/?p=19778"},"modified":"2018-06-30T11:47:49","modified_gmt":"2018-06-30T16:47:49","slug":"nascar-friday-chicagoland-notebook","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/2018\/06\/29\/nascar-friday-chicagoland-notebook\/","title":{"rendered":"NASCAR: Friday Chicagoland Notebook"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/b>By Reid Spencer, NASCAR Wire Service<\/em><\/p>\n

Kyle Larson says the performance gap to the top teams is small\u2014but it\u2019s there<\/b><\/p>\n

JOLIET, Ill. \u2013 Kyle Larson<\/strong> doesn\u2019t believe there\u2019s a large chasm between the drivers who have dominated the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series<\/a> this season and those who are trying to catch them.<\/p>\n

\"\"

Kyle Larson (Photo by Brian Lawdermilk\/Getty Images)<\/p><\/div>\n

But the difference in big enough to keep the chasers out of Victory Lane.<\/p>\n

Four drivers have combined to win 14 of the first 16 events of the season. Kevin Harvick has five victories, Kyle Busch four, Martin Truex Jr. three and Clint Bowyer two. With Joey Logano added to the mix, Ford drivers have won eight times and Toyota drivers seven.<\/p>\n

That leaves one triumph for Chevrolet, and that came in the season-opening Daytona 500, when Austin Dillon knocked Aric Almirola\u2019s Ford out of the way to win the Great American Race.<\/p>\n

On a consistent basis, Larson has had the fastest Chevrolet Camaro ZL1 this year. He\u2019s ninth in the series standings, having finished second three times\u2014at Fontana, Bristol and Pocono. But even though he says the gap to the prolific winners is small, he knows it\u2019s there.<\/p>\n

Kyle Larson Interview:<\/strong> <\/p>\nhttp:\/\/racedaysa.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/06\/CLS_Larson_Bell_Welch_062918.mp3<\/a><\/audio>\n

\u201cThe top three guys are fairly close,\u201d Larson said. “Any of those three can win kind of every weekend. Then I feel like there is a step to myself, (Brad) Keselowski, Clint Bowyer\u2014he might be a little better than we are\u2014but I feel like we are right there.  I have run second three times this year. I run second a lot, but, yeah, I\u2019ve been close a couple of races.<\/p>\n

\u201cTheir teams are just performing really well, and they don\u2019t make mistakes, and when they do, they can recover from them easily because their cars are really fast. Our team is making our stuff better and better every week. It seems like every time we go to a 1.5-mile track they\u2019re really excited about the car they are bringing because it\u2019s better than the last one. <\/p>\n

\u201cThat is all you can ask for is just to get your stuff running better and developed a little bit nicer, and hopefully that stuff pays off. I feel like we\u2019re close. I think other teams probably view us as being pretty close. We\u2019ve just got to get the job done.\u201d<\/p>\n

KEVIN HARVICK SAYS SONOMA FAKE-OUT DIDN\u2019T DETERMINE OUTCOME<\/b><\/p>\n

The big story in Martin Truex Jr.\u2019s Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series victory at Sonoma Raceway was a pit stop bluff that convinced Kevin Harvick\u2019s crew chief, Rodney Childers, to bring his driver to pit road earlier than planned during the final stage of the Toyota\/Save Mart 300.<\/p>\n

\"\"

(L-R) Kevin Harvick, driver of the #4 Busch Light Ford, and crew chief Rodney Childers. (Photo by Brian Lawdermilk\/Getty Images)<\/p><\/div>\n

But in a post-mortem of the event on Friday at Chicagoland Speedway, Harvick said he didn0\u2019t believe the \u201cfake-out\u201d as Childers called it, was the determining factor in the race.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t really feel like Rodney\u2019s call affected the race one way or another,\u201d Harvick said. \u201cI don\u2019t feel like, if we had waited eight laps to pit, we would have beaten the 78 (Truex) anyway. I think Martin had the best car at that particular point, and we were fighting things that nobody really knew about at that particular time, not even Rodney.<\/p>\n

\u201cI try not to talk about our weaknesses on the radio. I can always tell him afterwards. There were things going on that, after the first two stages, I felt like we were in position to be competitive with the 78, but we got a little bit worse, and I felt like he got a little bit better at the end of the race\u2014and eight laps of pitting wasn\u2019t going to change the outcome.\u201d<\/p>\n

The winner of five of the first 16 races this season, Harvick wasn\u2019t about to play the blame game.<\/p>\n

Kevin Harvick Interview:<\/strong><\/p>\nhttp:\/\/racedaysa.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/06\/CLS_MENCS_Harvick_062918.mp3<\/a><\/audio>\n

\u201cWhen you have something that is going as well as everything that we have going, there\u2019s no reason to put a chink in the armor and start to tear it down,\u201d Harvick said. \u201cThose guys (Harvick\u2019s team), when I smashed into the side of Kyle Larson and spun myself out in the middle of the straightaway at California, those guys were all there to support me.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd that is what I was there to do last week when he thought he did something wrong. The support system is really one of the things that I feel like our team has built over the past five years amongst each other. The trust and the support that each (of us gets) from each other when you feel like you did something wrong is really part of the strength of the team.\u201d<\/p>\n

JESSE IWUJI\u2019S HEROISM GOES VIRAL AFTER GOOD SAMARITAN EFFORT<\/b><\/p>\n

To Jesse Iwuji, the effort to help a family in distress was simply the natural response to a crisis.<\/p>\n

An officer in the Naval Reserve, and a driver in both the NASCAR K&N Pro and ARCA Series, Iwuji was driving home from Sunday\u2019s Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series race at Sonoma when he noticed a disabled minivan sitting in the breakdown lane on Interstate 5.<\/p>\n

\u201cUnderneath the van, I saw a lot of fluid leaking from the motor, and there was a small, little fire that began to ignite,\u201d Iwuji said. \u201cFrom my background in the military and in racing, (I knew) flammable fluids can ignite pretty quick and start a huge fire pretty quick.\u201d<\/p>\n

Iwuji stopped, and unable to move the van clear of the fire, he hustled the family of four to safety. When they were roughly 30 yards away from the vehicle, the engine exploded. Iwuji made sure the family was safe and continued on his journey. Realizing that he hadn\u2019t offered the stranded family a ride, he spent 45 minutes returning to the scene to correct the oversight, but, by then, the family was gone with the assistance of first responders, and the vehicle was being hooked up to a tow truck.<\/p>\n

\u201cEveryone says it\u2019s heroic,\u201d Iwuji said. \u201cFor me, honestly, it\u2019s just being a good person. At the end of the day, I think we can all do what happened that day. It\u2019s nothing Superman, nothing like that.\u201d<\/p>\n

But Iwuji\u2019s act of selflessness struck a chord when he posted a video of the car, engulfed in flames, on the internet. The video went viral and attracted intense interest from national news outlets.<\/p>\n

Jesse Iwuji Interview: <\/strong><\/p>\nhttp:\/\/racedaysa.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/06\/CLS_Jesse_Iwuji_062918.mp3<\/a><\/audio>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Reid Spencer, NASCAR Wire Service Kyle Larson says the performance gap to the top teams is small\u2014but it\u2019s there JOLIET, Ill. \u2013 Kyle Larson doesn\u2019t believe there\u2019s a large chasm between the drivers who have dominated the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series this season and those who are trying to catch them. But the difference […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":19622,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[11],"tags":[488,95,225,16],"class_list":["post-19778","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-nascar","tag-chicagoland-speedway","tag-kevin-harvick","tag-kyle-larson","tag-nascar"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/racedaysa.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/06\/MENCS-Dover-Larson-050518.jpg?fit=4864%2C3243","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7hzTZ-590","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19778","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19778"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19778\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19783,"href":"http:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19778\/revisions\/19783"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19622"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19778"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19778"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19778"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}