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Alex Bowman, driver of the #88 Axalta Chevrolet, celebrates in Victory Lane after winning the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series Camping World 400 at Chicagoland Speedway on June 30, 2019 in Joliet, Illinois. Photo by Matt Sullivan/Getty Images

By Eric Young

JOLIET, Ill. — After several second-place finishes, Alex Bowman is now a Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series winner. 

Bowman held off a late-race charge by Kyle Larson to earn his first-career Cup Series victory in the Camping World 400 June 30 at Chicagoland Speedway. 

“I’m pretty speechless,” Bowman said. “I feel like I just want to get home and enjoy it with my friends. It’s all I’ve wanted my whole life and now that we’ve went and won a race, I don’t really know what to do with myself a little bit.”

“I don’t come from a racing family,” Bowman said. “I don’t have a big resume. I kind of went from running in the back every week to doing this. Still, not quite sure how that all happened, but it’s been a heck of a ride. Just very thankful for the opportunity. Thankful for getting to work with people like Greg Ives and this 88 team.”

Bowman, ironically, led 88 laps — the same number as his car — on the way to the victory. Most importantly, after Kyle Larson passed Bowman at lap 160, Bowman was able to battle back and regain the lead on lap 262 and hold off Larson for the final five laps. 

“I’m just kind of tired of running second,” Bowman said. “I felt like we had a car capable of winning and we got help up there for a while. I got super frustrated with some lapped cars, just because, not helping us. Which they don’t have to help us, but that’s just part of it.”

“We lost a big lead there,” Bowman continued. “I got pretty frustrated, burnt the right rear tire off trying to get around some lapped cars and when Kyle got around me, I was going to tear the right side off it trying to run the fence or get back around him. Glad we kept it out of the fence, and I was kind of surprised that he left the top open like he did and left clean air up there and surprised it worked.”

For the second year in a row, Larson earned a second-place finish in a late-race battle with the eventual winner. 

“We had a good battle there,” Larson said after the race. “Me and Alex battled it seemed like most of the race there. I was surprised I was able to get to him. When we left the green flag stops, my balance was kind of free and I figured he was just going to take off and I was really focused on Joey in my mirror and trying to hold him off and all of the sudden I was like, oh wow, we’re catching him.”

“Caught him pretty quickly too, and was able to get by him pretty quickly too, and thought I could pull away, but he was able to get some big runs on me and get to my inside and then side-draft me down the backstretch and get by and then do a good job of hitting his marks and getting the balance back underneath him to hold me off,” Larson said. 

Larson said he expected it to be tougher to pass Bowman for the lead. 

“He’s really aggressive and we always race each other really hard,” Larson said. “But I was able to get by him and like I said, when I got out in front of him — when I was behind him, I could see he was struggling. He was really loose off of four, a little bit off of two. I felt like my balance was really good at that point. You’d have through if I could stretch out to a four- or five-car-length gap I could win. But he got a big enough run off of four to get a good tow off the front stretch and get to my inside.”

For a while it looked like Logano might be the one to have a chance at Bowman, as he and Larson battled for second. But Logano ended up with a third-place finish. 

“I was hoping to make a run at him there after that last green flag cycle,” Logano said. “We had a great pit stop and caught the 42 and were racing with him and the car just got tight there at the end and they drove away.”

Logano said he wasn’t surprised to see the Hendrick cars run as good as they did at Chicagoland. 

“They’ve been slowly but surely picking up speed the last six weeks,” he said. “You knew it was just a matter of time before one of them was going to win. It seemed like certain things were happening, execution issues, things like that, but their speed has been close. I think today it showed.”

Jimmie Johnson led a chunk of laps at the beginning of the race on the way to a fourth-place finish. He said he hopes to use that to propel the team further as the season continues. 

“Take a deep breath, enjoy it,” Johnson said. “Celebrate it some and then Monday, we get back to work and try to get better. It gives us a nice direction. Helps us build confidence in the areas that we’ve been working and hopefully we can continue to build on this.”

The race was stopped after 11 laps for rain and resumed almost three-and-a-half hours later. The race had 23 lead changes among 13 drivers. Kevin Harvick led the most laps with 132, but hit the wall in the middle of the race and was only able to rally to a 14th-place finish. 

There were five cautions for 25 laps.

Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series driver Ty Dillon poses for a portrait during the NASCAR Production Photo Days at Charlotte Convention Center on January 29, 2019 in Charlotte, North Carolina. Photo by Chris Graythen/Getty Images

By Eric Young

JOLIET, Ill. — Ty Dillon has some ideas to make NASCAR appeal to the younger fan, and while many of those ideas might be met with resistance from long-time, diehard NASCAR fans, Dillon said no good ideas will come without criticism. 

Dillon met with members of the media Saturday at Chicagoland Speedway where he was asked about recent ideas. He suggested there that he thinks NASCAR should consider throwing a caution each week with 15 laps to go to bunch up the field and give fans one more restart to enjoy. 

“I think this package has done one of two things,” Dillon said. “Restarts are amazing. They’re great to watch and when we provide them in the race, we’re having some of the best races that NASCAR’s seen. But on the other hand, we’re having less cautions. People aren’t spinning these cars out. So maybe we need to have talks of having a third stage implemented — or we have three stages (now) — maybe a fourth stage would be the correct way. Or every weekend, 15 to go, we have a caution. And maybe you pay extra points to win the third stage, but look at something as far as adding a fourth stage where you know there’s going to be a 15-lap shootout, or 20-lap shootout.”

He said the points could be set up so that there wouldn’t be a driver dominating all day and then falling victim to the late shootout and losing a ton of points. 

“There’s something there that we can do,” Dillon said. “We need another caution at the end of these races at least 15 to go, to get us where every single week we’re going to have that action.”

Dillon has been throwing out ideas for ways to get younger people to the track each week, saying NASCAR has these huge stadiums every week and could do more to utilize them. He said he has gotten some response from NASCAR as a result of his comments. 

“I haven’t gotten the ‘come work for us’ response yet, but maybe one day,” he said. “NASCAR has definitely reached out since some of my comments and they seem somewhat interested. I haven’t heard anything from them recently, but before we went to Sonoma, we talked about some things and it led to us running a live 360 cam inside the car to get some of these things in motion.” 

“I think there are a lot of things that they just need to stay open minded and honest about in regards to where we are at as a sport and focus on what we can do to keep it rolling,” Dillon continued. “I know it takes a lot of people pulling in the same direction, but there are some clear obvious things that we can do that I feel like we can enhance our sport to take it to the next level. Sometimes it just needs to be said to get the ball rolling.”

Dillon said he would like to see each car have a live stream camera in it during each race. 

“We can afford that in this sport, and whoever wants to do it can do it,” he said. “THat way, we can maybe live stream from each driver’s personal account, team’s account or it can vary week to week. This is to drive fan engagement to certain sponsors, teams and add value that way.” 

“Drivers, owners, race teams, TV providers all have to understand the importance that we have to open our minds to the fact that between these stages is just as important to the future of the sport to communicate to our fans as it is to get in the right call of information,” Dillon said. “Yes, you have to get the right information into our crew chief first, but we can maybe take an extra pace lap under caution for a social media lap. Maybe that is something NASCAR can take a look at. Maybe have a PR representative, a third person in the pit box, or a second radio that only they can contact you on to answer questions from fans really quick. The driver then could interact with our fans live during the race.”

Dillon said it won’t take much to get a person hooked on the sport. 

“Once people get here to our sport, all it takes is watching one lap and they find a driver that did something cool or they walk by a driver or a driver’s at a concert that’s going on at the track, or they interact one time, then they might turn the TV on the next week and follow that driver,” Dillon said. “Then they might buy their gear, then they’re definitely coming back, whether they’re coming back for the race or the thing that got them there in the first place, the entertainment level. There’s so much more that we can do and be multiple facet. We have huge stadiums at these racetracks. We have so much land and we have so much opportunity to provide multiple facets of entertainment, and if we’re going to grow the sport, we need to do that. We need to use everything we have.”

Dillon said he’s OK with people who might think his ideas won’t work. 

“Every great thing that’s happened in this world has had a lot of naysayers,” he said.

Cole Custer, driver of the #00 Haas Automation Ford, celebrates in Victory Lane after winning the NASCAR Xfinity Series Camping World 300 at Chicagoland Speedway on June 29, 2019 in Joliet, Illinois. Photo by Jared C. Tilton/Getty Images

By Eric Young

JOLIET, Ill. — Cole Custer led more than three quarters of Saturday’s Camping World 300 Xfinity Series race at Chicagoland Speedway on the way to a dominating victory and his fourth victory of the 2019 campaign. 

“Our car was pretty good all day,” Custer said after the race. “The problem is it is never going to be absolutely perfect here. The track is so slick and everything. You have to have it the way you want and manageable. It changed a lot through a run and I really worked the brake bias a lot today trying to help the handling a little bit, and that helped us a lot. We had a great car. I don’t think anybody had anything for us. We made little to no adjustments all day.”

One of the few drivers who did have something for Custer during the day was defending Cup Series Champion Joey Logano, who led 20 laps on the way to a second-place finish. Logano praised Custer’s performance during the 300-miler. 

“Cole did really good,” Logano said with a laugh. “I got to race around him a lot. He executed the restarts perfectly. He had the fastest car and he made the most of that. I thought he did good.”

“I was impressed with what Cole was able to do up next to the wall,” Logano said. “As aggressively as he was entering and being able to keep it off and run a smart race. That’s hard to do when you’re young.”

Custer said later that he appreciated the compliments from Logano. 

“That is huge,” he said. “Joey is a series champion and it was fun racing with him today. I think we had the better car and that was a huge part of it. I think it is fun racing against those Cup guys. They set the bar high. It’s good now how they have it. I think we put on better racing when we are by ourselves, but you still get that benchmark for when the Cup guys come down to know where you’re really at.”

One of the biggest moves of the day was made by the teams of Michael Annett and Noah Gragson. Both drivers stayed out until the end of a fuel run late in hopes of a caution, which came out just before the two would come to pit road, allowing them to lead the field to the pits and come out ahead. 

Annett called the strategy amazing and said the caution fell perfect for him.

“(Crew Chief Travis Mack) was about to call me in that lap, then it came,” Annett said. “So it fell perfect for us and got those tires and got the lead, and knew it was going to be hard to hold off those guys that led the whole race. They were on the top of the board all weekend, so you try not to get down when they get around you on those restarts, knowing that they’ve been faster than you all day and there’s no magic switch. A couple of them got by me, but then we were able to hold off the guys that we should have and got a top five.”

Annett finished fourth on the track, though he was moved up to third when the No. 20 car of Christopher Bell was disqualified for failing post-race tech. 

Gragson fell back to seventh after getting into the wall late. 

“We just struggled with front grip there at the end of the race and it was an up-and-down day all day,” Gragson said. “Just got to keep digging and we’re not going to quit. We’re going to keep on pushing until we get to Homestead making baby steps.”

As for how close he was on fuel before the final pit stop, he said he wasn’t sure. 

“I didn’t run out,” he said. “So I don’t know. Not close I guess.”

Brandon Jones finished fourth and Austin Cindric came home fifth. There were 10 lead changes among five drivers and six cautions for 30 laps.

Brett Moffitt, driver of the #24 GMS Chevrolet, celebrates in Victory Lane after winning the NASCAR Gander Outdoors Truck Series Camping World 225 at Chicagoland Speedway on June 28, 2019 in Joliet, Illinois. Photo by Matt Sullivan/Getty Images

By Eric Young

JOLIET, Ill. — A fast pit stop on the last yellow flag stop of the race helped propel Brett Moffitt to his second win in three weeks in the Gander Outdoors Truck Series Camping World 225 Friday night at Chicagoland Speedway. 

Moffitt beat the rest of the field off pit road at the end of Stage 2 to take the lead. He led throughout the final stage and retained the lead after green flag pit stops to take his ninth-career victory and repeat his victory last year at Chicagoland. 

But Moffitt said the win was more than just the pit stop. 

“It was the whole team,” he said after the race. “It’s one thing to have speed. It’s one thing to be able to move top to bottom and have speed everywhere you go.”

“So pit stops, if you can make up ground, it’s always a big plus,” Moffitt said. “But I felt like we had a truck capable of passing trucks, especially on the long run. We didn’t really fall off much. I could get up to the fence and be able to have good speed. I’ll always take coming off pit road first, but I feel like a hell of a lot more than that went into winning this race.”

Moffitt led 72 laps on the way to the victory. 

Starting 19th, Brandon Jones was able to race to first at the end of the first stage to take the win. He would finish second in the next stage, battling with Grant Enfinger, before claiming a second-place finish at the end of the race. Jones said because Moffitt was able to pit earlier, it made it too difficult to catch him at the end of the race, despite having a faster truck. 

“They just pitted a little bit earlier than us and got back on the track quicker,” Jones said. “That entire run there at the end we were about a tenth better lap time the entire run. So kind of heartbreaking to listen to that coming over the radio all night long. But I told these guys that’s how the 51 should run every time it comes to the race track — be in contention for the win.”

Jones’ next start for KBM in the 51 truck will be at Kentucky in two weeks. He said he hasn’t started to prepare for that race yet, but he hopes for another strong performance. 

“I’ll have to go back and watch some races,” he said. “It’s kind of what I do to prep, I try to go back and see what the average lap was doing. If we can move around there, that will be great too. But you’ve got to stay out of the air in these trucks. I think I learned that tonight for sure, and being able to run here, you can run everywhere, so that helped us a bunch.”

Stewart Friesen, Harrison Burton and Austin Hill rounded out the top-five. 

Matt Crafton was running sixth during a caution late in the race when his truck stalled, forcing him to fall to the rear before it restarted. 

“We were overheating really, really bad,” he said. “I tried to cycle the motor to try to keep it cool, and there was something wrong with the idle. It was stuck at like 4500 to 5000 RPM and they’re thinking the throttle position thought it had too much throttle on to start it, so it wouldn’t… I had to mess with the throttle and finally got it fired back up at that point, but just too late.”

Crafton would make a dive-bomb move into the first turn on the restart, taking to the apron to try and make up some ground. 

“I had to make hay at that point,” he said. “They said we were four-wide and I figured I’d better get down there and see if I could clear them all before I got there.”

There were five cautions for 27 laps and 12 lead changes among seven drivers. Moffitt led the most laps, with Enginger leading the second-most before falling to 16th at the end due to damage sustained in an accident late in the race.