Biffle gets first win of season at Michigan

 
He took the lead for good on a late restart and ran away from the field in the closing laps to win Sunday's Quicken Loans 400. The No. 16 Ford driver won his second straight race here and the 19th of his career. Four of those victories have come at MIS.
 
"It's definitely a special day," Biffle said after delivering Ford Motor Company its 1,000th victory in NASCAR's three national series. "Just super-excited for Ford and sure excited to be No. 1,000."
 
The win secured Biffle a berth in the 2014 NASCAR Sprint All-Star Race and moved him up a spot to eighth in the standings.

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Second a week ago at Pocono, Biffle led the pack to the restart on lap 173 and outran Martin Truex Jr. to stay out front. He led a race-best 48 laps.
 
Owner Jack Roush's operations center is in suburban Detroit and he considers MIS his home track. He was beaming almost as broadly as his driver.
 
"We expect to be at our best when we come to MIS and I am glad we could pull it off," Roush said. "I was a little nervous for a minute there, but I am glad it worked out and glad we could give Ford its 1,000th win."
 
Sprint Cup Series points leader Jimmie Johnson was gaining on Biffle in the final laps but a cut right-front tire took him off the track with two laps to go.
 
Kevin Harvick finished second and Truex, Kyle Buschand Tony Stewart rounded out the top five.
 
Johnson took second a few laps before his misfortune and Harvick backed out of the throttle to hold on to at least a third-place finish.
 
"It was the third set of tires we had and they felt a little wobbly," he said. "We just wanted to hold our track position."
 
Biffle still was impressed with Johnson, whom he finished second to a week ago at Pocono.
 
"The guy was 10 (on the restart) and was catching me with 10 to go," Biffle said. "That's a fast race car.
 
"We beat the 48 today and that says a lot. He was really, really fast."
 
Johnson ended the day 28th to wrap up a tough day for Hendrick Motorsports. None of the racing giant's four entries cracked the top 25.
 
Pole winner Carl Edwards, who trailed Johnson by 51 points at the start of the race, cut 20 points off the deficit by finishing eighth.
 
Dale Earnhardt Jr. took the lead near the halfway point and appeared strong, but a blown engine ended his race on lap 131.
 
"It made a lot of damage there when it broke," he said after leading 34 laps at the track where he ended his 143-race dry spell a year ago. "I'm not sure they're going to be able to figure out what happened."
 
Jamie McMurray led 21 laps but fell out of contention when he blew a right-front tire on lap 167.
 
The day's worst-looking wreck came shortly after the midway point when Kasey Kahne struck the wall near turn 2. The car caught fire as Kahne was getting out, but he stuck his arm back inside to trigger the fire-suppression system. He was not hurt.
 
Kurt Busch started on the outside of the front row and led the first 21 laps but spun and smacked the turn 2 wall two laps later.
 
Stewart ran his streak of top-seven finishes to four straight races and jumped from 13th to 10th in the standings.
 
There were showers after Saturday's Nationwide Series race and NASCAR gave crews a competition caution 20 laps in to assess tire wear on the clean surface.
 
The Sprint Cup Series continues next Sunday when drivers run the first road course of the season in the Toyota/Save Mart 350 at Sonoma Raceway in California.

R.I.P Jason Leffler

Despite rising to the NASCAR national level, Leffler never forgot his roots on dirt tracks

Jason Leffler competed in the Daytona 500 and the Indianapolis 500, and all three national levels of NASCAR. But he never forgot where he came from -- the dirt tracks and open-wheel cars where he first made his name.

So when a ride in NASCAR didn’t materialize for the 2013 campaign, Leffler knew right where to look. The affable Southern Californian retuned to his roots for this season, signing with Tom Buch Racing to pilot a No. 13 winged sprint car on dirt circuits primarily in Pennsylvania and the northeast.

"He was one of the most versatile race drivers in America."

--Doug Boles, COO Indianapolis Motor Speedway

Which is why Leffler was driving Wednesday in the “Night of Wings” event at Bridgeport Speedway, a five-eighths mile high-banked dirt track in Swedesboro, N.J. It was there where Leffler’s car crashed during a heat race. He was extricated from the vehicle and transported by ambulance to a local trauma center, where according to the Associated Press he was pronounced dead shortly after 9 p.m. Eastern time.

Leffler, a 37-year-old native of Long Beach who leaves behind young son Charlie Dean, was well-liked in a NASCAR community where he had been a fixture since 1999. His death hit many hard, particularly those with their own backgrounds in the U.S. Auto Club, where Leffler was a star before moving into stock cars.

“Can’t believe it,” Brad Sweet, a former USAC driver who now competes on the Nationwide Series, wrote on Twitter. “Things just won’t be the same without you Lefty. You were an awesome friend and a great dad.”

The return to open-wheel cars was something Leffler seemed to embrace, although he had never before driven winged sprint cars. But he had piloted just about everything else, starting over 400 events across NASCAR’s three national divisions, racing in the Indianapolis 500 in 2000, and winning a combined four titles in USAC’s midget and silver crown ranks.

“He was one of the most versatile race drivers in America,” said Doug Boles, chief operating officer of Indianapolis Motor Speedway. Taking to the winged sprint cars, it seemed, was only a matter of time.

“I’ve got a lot of learning to do,” Leffler said before this season. “It’s cool to be able to race three times a week and figure things out. I’m really looking forward to racing at the historic places in Pennsylvania, and racing some of the best sprint-car drivers out there.”

The plan was to race between 50 and 60 times this season in the No. 13 car, beginning with events in February at Volusia County and Ocala speedways in Florida, which coincided with NASCAR Speedweeks activities at Daytona. The learning curve was evident -- competing primarily in the World of Outlaws and the All-Star Circuit of Champions, Leffler recorded his first two top-10 finishes of the season in April.

“Getting in the ball game now!” he tweeted after a top-five finish in May.

Wednesday night’s sprint-car event at Bridgeport was to be another step in that progression. According to the Patriot-News of Harrisburg, Pa., Leffler hit the wall head-on in a heat race after something broke on his car. The rest of the evening’s racing program was canceled, and New Jersey state police were investigating the incident.

Leffler scored two Nationwide victories, including the first NASCAR win for Toyota with Braun Racing at Lucas Oil Raceway in 2007 at Indianapolis. He also won in 2004 at Nashville for Haas-CNC Racing, and earned a Camping World Truck Series event for Jim Smith’s Ultra Racing team in 2003 at Dover. Leffler drove on the Sprint Cup tour for Joe Gibbs and Chip Ganassi, and piloted a Truck Series entry forKyle Busch for the first half of last season before being released.

Sunday’s Sprint Cup race at Pocono Raceway, where Leffler finished 43rd driving for Humphrey Smith Racing, was his first NASCAR event of this season. But his dirt-track roots were never far behind -- Leffler flew to the race with Hendrick Motorsports driver Kasey Kahne, another former star in the USAC ranks.

“We talked sprint cars, Cup cars, and Charlie Dean,” Kahne wrote on Twitter. “He loved racing & he loved his son!”

And those who came from dirt-track backgrounds loved him.

“Makes you sick to your stomach when you hear about something like this,” Truck Series driver Ryan Blaney, son of sprint-car legend Dave Blaney, wrote on Twitter. “Unbelievable. Praying for his family.”

Stewart nicks victory from JPM at Dover

Tony Stewart admits he would never have predicted the resurgence that brought his Stewart-Haas team victory in the Dover NASCAR Sprint Cup race.
The three-time Cup champion has been struggling for form in the early stages of this year's campaign, and between the fourth round at Bristol and the 11th at Darlington never came home higher than 15th.
Charlotte brought some light with seventh from 25th on the grid, then last weekend at Dover he surged up the order and ultimately into the lead just three laps from the end.
"Last week was a step in the right direction, and a bigger step than I possibly could have imagined," Stewart said of Charlotte.
"This week [Dover] is a step in the right direction; it gives us hope.
"I'll be 100 per cent perfectly honest, I was preparing for a very long day.
"But I'm proud to be sitting here saying that I was very wrong, because this was not a little bit of tweak here, a little bit of tweak there.
"This was going and really sitting down and saying, OK, we may have to abort everything that we are doing to try to come up with a new package."
NOT FIXATED ON CHASE QUALIFICATION
Although he now sits 16th in the championship, Stewart's Dover win means he currently qualifies for a wildcard entry into this year's Chase.
He insists however that properly rectifying his team's issues is far more important than a token offering across the final races.
"I've done this enough and been in the Chase enough that being in [it] is not a novelty for me," he explained.
"To me it's a bigger deal to me to get our programme turned around. Our goal is not just to make the Chase; our goal is to be contenders.
"I would rather miss the Chase and the effort to be in the process of building our programme to where we have an opportunity to not just be in the Chase, but have an opportunity to win it.
"I want to get this whole programme turned around to where all three drivers go to the racetrack every week and feel like they have an opportunity to have a good result.
"As much as this is a great win and a great victory for us, and great momentum builder for our organisation, one win won't change our direction."