Race 21 of 26 regular-season races
By Roy J. Akers — www.skyviewsports.net
North Wilkesboro Speedway is hosting their first CUP points race in 30 years. It races closest to Richmond with the short speedway, tire wear, and abrasive racetrack. Drivers give us their take on North Wilkesboro and other timely racing matters.
They Said It… Video (Print Quotes Below Video)
Elliott on long green runs at North Wilkesboro Hocevar on being one of the 100 most influential people in sports
 RYAN BLANEY: “I know when they brought [North] Wilkesboro for the All-Star Race a handful of years ago, everyone was extremely excited. Not only in that area but I think the whole garage was excited. A lot of people in this garage area, my car chief for example, he raced at North Wilkesboro and was part of a team that raced there for a while. I think they’ve done a great job with that place of keeping a lot of history, but also revitalizing it to kind of keep up with the times. I think they’ve done a good combination of that stuff. I would never have thought five years ago we’d have a point race there, but now we are, and I think it’s great for the series, it’s great for that racetrack obviously, but it’s just good to be racing around there. I think it puts on a great show, and it’s going to be a fun one.  JOEY LOGANO: “I don’t think much will change [from the previous All Star races]. Obviously, there will be more cars on the track and the rubber build-up may be a little bit different than what we’ve had there, just because there are more cars pounding the rubber into the racetrack, so it might change the lines over time, but I don’t think it will be much different. I don’t think it’s a make-or-break race, but when you have opportunity tracks like that where you typically run well, you just have to make sure you capitalize on the opportunities that are sitting there.” |
Chase Elliott on long green flag runs at Wilkesboro
Historically, races at North Wilkesboro Speedway, and even in the All-Star Race, there’s been long green flag runs, so I’m curious if you guys had any conversations about maybe going to have to make some green flag pit stops and what that’s going to be like here because that’s not something you guys have done here…
“Yeah, I think we will, for sure, at some point in time. I mean, it’s 450 laps, right? That’s a lot of laps, so I would have to imagine at some point in time, you’re going to have to have a green flag stop in there. Might not, but I could see it. I mean, we have them at Martinsville, and that’s a 500 lap race. It’s doesn’t happen a lot, but it does happen from time to time. And on a racetrack like this too where, again, you kind of get that outside lane motoring, you get some momentum rolling and we get strung out a little bit; I could see some green flag stops coming into play. I kind of hope it does. I feel like it ends up being a pretty good race when you have that and you’re taking the risk. It seems like the risk is always higher at short tracks to come and stop and be one of the first guys to put on tires because you’re exposed for so long, right? And I think that’s why you see people avoid that for a longer period of time because you’re going to go two laps, maybe more, down if you’re doing a four tire green flag stop. And if a caution flies during that period of time, you’re up the creek pretty bad, right? A wave around doesn’t fix that, where at a lot of mile-and-a-halves, a wave around would fix your problem because you’re only one lap down versus being more than one.”
Carson Hocevar on North Wilkesboro
You’ve been North Wilkesboro Speedway a couple times now. Last week, you kind of talked about the nostalgia. What do you like about the racing here?
“I like that the track seems like it moves around a lot. You can run like right against the fence or you can run the bottom and move around. This place tends to rubber up too, so I just enjoy that there’s so many different ways to go about it. If your car is not very good, there’s probably about four or five different options you can try to go find to make your stuff at least a little bit better because there’s just so many ways to attack the track. It goes downhill and uphill. Part of it is more banked than the other. It just does a lot of weird things that allows us to do different things.”
Roy J. Akers covers NASCAR for www.skyviewsports.net and is the host of High Banked Fury the podcast. Subscibe to both, they are free and out Skyview Sports YouTube Channel has plenty of coverage and YouTube shorts.
