{"id":26324,"date":"2019-06-01T16:30:15","date_gmt":"2019-06-01T21:30:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/racedaysa.com\/?p=26324"},"modified":"2019-06-02T14:45:36","modified_gmt":"2019-06-02T19:45:36","slug":"nascar-saturday-pocono-notebook-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/2019\/06\/01\/nascar-saturday-pocono-notebook-2\/","title":{"rendered":"NASCAR: Saturday Pocono Notebook"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

 <\/p>\n

No pressure for Ryan Blaney to get first win\u2014just to eliminate mistakes<\/b><\/p>\n

Two years ago, in the June event at Pocono Raceway, Ryan Blaney scored a breakthrough victory in the Pocono 400, holding off Kevin Harvick to take the checkered flag in the No. 21 Wood Brothers Ford.<\/p>\n

That win, however, hasn\u2019t opened the floodgates for Blaney, who moved to the No. 12 Team Penske Ford last year and picked up a second career victory on the Charlotte Roval after two drivers ahead of him\u2014Martin Truex Jr. and Jimmie Johnson\u2014wrecked in the chicane coming to the finish line.<\/p>\n

Blaney\u2019s teammates, Brad Keselowski and Joey Logano, already have visited Victory Lane this season\u2014Keselowski three times and Logano once. Blaney\u2019s car has shown speed, but a spate of mistakes has led to disappointing finishes. The No. 12 car posted its best result in the last five races last Sunday\u2014a 13th at Charlotte.<\/p>\n

But that doesn\u2019t mean Blaney is feeling any particular pressure to match the performances of his teammates.<\/p>\n

\u201cNot really,\u201d said Blaney, who qualified 17th for Sunday\u2019s Pocono 400 (2 p.m. ET on FS1, MRN and SiriusXM NASCAR Radio). \u201cAny given week, I feel like any team can with the race\u2013us, Gibbs, Hendrick, Haas\u2013there are a couple others in there that have moments. But I don\u2019t feel pressure. You just go out and do your best. That\u2019s kind of the last thing I worry about.\u201d<\/p>\n

What does concern Blaney is the team\u2019s inability to put together a mistake-free performance.<\/p>\n

\u201cI just worry about not having problems at the race,\u201d said Blaney. \u201cWe\u2019ve had so many weeks where we\u2019ve had problems throughout the race, and promising runs just go down the drain. We\u2019ve got to fix some issues and try to clean up some things. That\u2019s the main focus, and then the other stuff will come.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe wins will come, if you clean up that side of it. The speed is there, and the team potential is there. It\u2019s just a matter of kind of sorting some things out that we need to and just having some smooth races. Once you get that fixed up, then everything seems to come together. Nothing is coming together right now. We\u2019ve got most of it, but the last little quarter is just not working.\u201d<\/p>\n

KYLE LARSON DOESN\u2019T MIND ABBREVIATED SATURDAY SCHEDULE<\/b><\/p>\n

Saturday\u2019s schedule for Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series drivers was something akin to bankers\u2019 hours.<\/p>\n

With Sunday\u2019s Pocono 400 being an impound race, drivers showed to qualify their cars and had no further on-track obligations.<\/p>\n

Not that Larson had any objections after qualifying seventh for Sunday\u2019s race (2 p.m. ET on FS1, MRN and SiriusXM NASCAR Radio).<\/p>\n

\u201cWell, we could go play golf,\u201d quipped Larson, who has developed a real affinity for the game. \u201cThere are some really nice courses around here.\u201d<\/p>\n

But there\u2019s also a practical benefit to holding two practice sessions on Friday and impounding the cars after qualifying on Saturday. That schedule eliminates one practice session versus a typical weekend that features practice before qualifying on Friday and two more sessions a day later.<\/p>\n

\u201cSaturday is always a tough practice, because the first practice is always so early in the morning that you don\u2019t really learn a whole lot until the last few minutes of it anyway,\u201d Larson said. \u201cNot that it\u2019s a waste of time, because you always learn something.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut this is a way for the teams to save a lot of money. If we can sacrifice a practice session, I think it\u2019s good for the health of the teams.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Christopher Bell, driver of the #20 Rheem Toyota, leads a pack of cars during the NASCAR Xfinity Series Pocono Green 250 at Pocono Raceway on June 01, 2019 in Long Pond, Pennsylvania. (Photo by Jonathan Ferrey\/Getty Images)<\/p><\/div>\n

CHRISTOPHER BELL CAN SEE SILVER LINING IN FIFTH-PLACE RUN AT POCONO<\/b><\/p>\n

No, Saturday\u2019s Pocono Green 250 NASCAR Xfinity Series race didn\u2019t go the way Christopher Bell would have liked.<\/p>\n

On Lap 17, Bell spun near the exit from Turn 1 and brushed the outside wall with the rear of his No. 20 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota.<\/p>\n

But Bell recovered. On Lap 66, he passed Justin Allgaier for third place, and after an exchange of green-flag pit stops, he was running second to eventual race winner Cole Custer, albeit more than 13 seconds in arrears.<\/p>\n

But two cautions\u2014the second of which sent the race into overtime\u2014likely cost Bell a runner-up finish. He lined up third for the overtime restart and could make progress on the bottom lane, eventually finishing fifth.<\/p>\n

But that was far better than last week\u2019s 31st-place result at Charlotte, where Bell crashed out after 90 of 200 laps.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe were just kind of slow all day,\u201d Bell lamented after the Pocono race. \u201cWe didn\u2019t get the finish we wanted. I thought we were going to run second there if the yellow didn\u2019t come out, and, unfortunately, the yellow came out.<\/p>\n

\u201cI started on the bottom and just could never\u2013just wasn\u2019t fast enough to get up there. Bummer, but it was a much-needed momentum for after how Charlotte went.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Reid Spencer, NASCAR Wire Service   No pressure for Ryan Blaney to get first win\u2014just to eliminate mistakes Two years ago, in the June event at Pocono Raceway, Ryan Blaney scored a breakthrough victory in the Pocono 400, holding off Kevin Harvick to take the checkered flag in the No. 21 Wood Brothers Ford. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":676,"featured_media":26326,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"_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},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[11],"tags":[16,605,252],"class_list":["post-26324","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-nascar","tag-nascar","tag-pocono-400","tag-pocono-raceway"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/racedaysa.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/NXS_PR1_Bell_Race_060119.jpg?fit=4481%2C2937","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7hzTZ-6QA","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26324","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\/676"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26324"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26324\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26327,"href":"http:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26324\/revisions\/26327"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/26326"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26324"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26324"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26324"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}