RACE: GoBowling 400
DATE: Saturday, May 7, 2016
TRACK: Kansas Speedway
LENGTH: 1.5-mile tri-oval
TV: FS1, 7:30 p.m. ET
RADIO: MRN/SIRIUSXM
Notes
KANSAS STATS: While Dale Earnhardt Jr. has yet to win a race at Kansas Speedway, he has earned solid stats at the 1.5-mile track. The driver of the No. 88 Axalta/CARSTAR Chevrolet SS has one pole (2002) at the speedway, and scored a third-place finish in the spring race last year. He’s earned top-five finishes in two of the last four races at Kansas, and in the other two he encountered issues unrelated to the speed of the car. According to NASCAR’s loop data statistics, Earnhardt ranks second among active drivers in the “closers” category, which represents the number of positions that a driver improves over the last 10 percent of the race. He has improved 24 positions, gaining an average of 1.6 spots in the last 10 races. He also ranks fourth on average speed late in a run at 167.819 mph.
SUCCESS ON INTERMEDIATES: The Kannapolis, North Carolina, native has finished well in every race on intermediate tracks this season. Earnhardt has recorded two second-place finishes (Atlanta and Texas), and was eighth at Las Vegas and 11th in Fontana, California, giving him an average finish of 5.75 through those four races. His stats for the same four races in 2015 were also impressive, as he had an average finish of 4.0.
AXALTA AND CARSTAR: CARSTAR North America, the continent’s largest network of collision repair shops and a member of the Charlotte-headquartered Driven Brands family, will make its debut in the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series at Kansas Speedway thanks to a joint promotion with Axalta. Annually, CARSTAR repairs more than 100,000 cars at its 450 locations in 30 states and 10 Canadian provinces. Many of those vehicles are now restored to pre-accident condition with Axalta paint. On April 14, Earnhardt unveiled the No. 88 Axalta/CARSTAR Chevrolet SS with a press conference in Charlotte and a lap around uptown. To see photos from the unveil, click here.
FOLLOW TO POCONO: Axalta is currently running a Twitter promotion, #FollowUsToPocono, on its @AxaltaRacing handle. The Axalta “We Paint Winners” 400 at Pocono on June 5 is the next of Axalta’s 13 total primary races on Earnhardt’s Chevy. If @AxaltaRacing reaches 20,000 followers on Twitter by May 13 and Earnhardt wins the Pocono event, Axalta will give away $88,000 to one lucky fan in conjunction with Pocono Raceway.
GM AWARDS AXALTA: Axalta Coating Systems, a leading global supplier of liquid and powder coatings for 150 years, was named a GM Supplier of the Year by General Motors during its 24th annual Supplier of the Year awards ceremony held Thursday, March 10, in Detroit. GM recognized 110 of its best suppliers from 17 countries that consistently exceeded GM’s expectations, created outstanding value or brought new innovations to the company. It marks the fifth time Axalta has received the award.
Quotes
Dale Earnhardt Jr. on racing at Kansas: “Our Axalta/CARSTAR Chevy is a great-looking race car … so we’re going to try to put it in Victory Lane at Kansas. Kansas is a great racetrack for me. That place has widened out pretty good and you can run against the fence there, which is a line that I like to run. It’s a very fast racetrack and very smooth – a lot of fun, so we should have a good time. We ran well there on the last several trips, so I anticipate us being very competitive. We’ve had good, fast cars all year, and a little more speed than we had last year. We keep improving every year, so I’m looking forward to going to every racetrack this season.”