Ryan Blaney, seen here from an earlier race weekend, will start 10th in Sunday’s Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series race at Auto Club Speedway. Photo by Sean Gardner/Getty Images
The Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series tour is on its West Coast Swing, where the oldest Major League Baseball park (Dodger Stadium) dates to 1962.
Nevertheless, the Green Monster reared its head during driver media sessions at Auto Club Speedway on Friday, when the subject of Kyle Busch’s career milestone came up.
And, no, we’re not talking about Fenway Park. We’re talking about the Green Monster in the colloquial sense.
“It almost makes me mad how good he is,” Blaney said of Busch, who has two chances this weekend to reach a combined 200 victories across NASCAR’s three national series. “As a competitor, I don’t like seeing him win. It frustrates me how he is able to find a way to be better than everybody else a lot of weekends.”
It also makes Blaney jealous.
“He’s very smart at knowing what his car needs, and you see him (often) get so much better throughout the race. He knows what he needs as the race progresses, and that’s a hard thing to do. He has figured it out — him and (crew chief) Adam Stevens — and it’s really impressive.
“You have to admire it. Even though I’m jealous of it. You have to admire it. He’s definitely up there with one of the greats, for sure, as race car drivers that will go down in history. So it’s pretty neat to watch him do it, even though I would like to be in the same spot.”
With 52 wins in the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series, 94 in the NASCAR Xfinity Series and 53 in the NASCAR Gander Outdoors Truck Series — the latter two of which are series records — Busch comes to Fontana with 199 combined victories.
Blaney has finished second to Busch five times, twice in the Xfinity Series and three times in the Gander Outdoors Truck Series. In particular, one of those second places sticks in Blaney’s craw.
“Yeah, Indianapolis 2015 in the Xfinity car,” Blaney said. “I passed him on the restart. Led the last, I think it was 23 to go … I led the last 22-and-a-half laps, and it was my mistake how he beat me. Yeah, that one I will always think about.”
Jimmie Johnson Says Enforcing Pit Road Speed In Qualifying Is “Logical”
With NASCAR announcing the enforcement of pit road speed limits during qualifying, a couple of things are certain: pit road will be safer and less chaotic, and strategies will become more complicated.
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Precise communication between drivers and spotters may be at an even bigger premium than it already is.
“It’s a logical rule change,” seven-time Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series champion Jimmie Johnson said Friday morning at Auto Club Speedway, site of Sunday’s Auto Club 400.
“It’s just kind of weird timing in my opinion. We’re packing our bags and getting ready to head to Fontana and we’re five races into the year and the rule comes. I’m like what? Why didn’t we start the year like this? Again, it’s a logical rule.”
And Johnson already has come up with a solution to potential speeding when he’s trying to work the No. 48 Chevrolet into an advantageous qualifying position on the track.
“It’s just going to be silly if you’re at the end of pit road trying to get into a hole, and your time isn’t going to count because you went over the speed limit,” Johnson said. “I think the way I’m going to prevent doing that is I‘m going to go down past the last orange line (at the end of pit road) and sit.
“Well, at Martinsville, you’re sitting on the race track. At different tracks, that line is at a different spot. Understanding the intentions of this rule is going to be beneficial for everybody, and we can adjust to it.”
Johnson says he’ll also have to change his mind-set, because there are clear reasons to try to push the speed limit on pit road during qualifying.
“In most circumstances, the spotters are trying to put us into holes on the track, and you don’t want to impede somebody that’s on a run,” Johnson said. “So spotters have visual marks, the drivers are used to seeing something in the mirror, and when they’re told which car to follow, we start rolling off of pit road and try to get up to speed to fill that gap.
“The other piece to it is that we need every foot of race track to get these cars up to speed to do our qualifying in one lap. So, if you can leave pit road as hard as you can, that also helps. You have those two elements that you’re trying to play.”
Johnson is a six-time winner at Auto Club with an average finish of 7.2 at the track closest to his El Cajon, California, home. He earned the first of his 83 career victories at the two-mile track in 2002 and won most recently here in 2016, his record-tying seventh championship season.
In qualifying trim, Johnson was fastest in opening Cup practice on Friday, posting a top speed of 179.386 mph on the first of his five laps in the session.
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