Rookie driver Ryan Blaney will be the most-experienced member of the Motorcraft/Quick Lane Racing team at Kentucky Speedway in Sparta this Saturday night during the Quaker State 400.
Wood Brothers Racing has never run more than practice and tire test laps at the track while Blaney has two NASCAR XFINITY Series wins (2013 and 2015) and three top-five finishes in the NASCAR Camping World Truck Series in the Bluegrass State.
Even with that experience under his belt, Blaney and all of the series’ drivers will face a newly re-paved racing surface and additional banking in two of the track’s four corners.
The Wood Brothers roll into Kentucky after a hard-fought 14th-place finish that put Blaney back into contention for the Chase for the NASCAR Sprint Cup, 15th in the driver points standings.
“Kentucky has been a good track for me in past years. With the repave I’m not sure how that will affect everything. But I think our team will be on top of it with the test we had there a few weeks back.”
RYAN BLANEY KENTUCKY FAST FACTS:
Won XFINITY races at Kentucky in 2013 and 2015.
Has four top-10 finishes in four XFINITY races at Kentucky.
Finished third twice, fifth and 11th in four Camping World Truck Series races there.
Didn’t qualify at Kentucky last season due to a rain out.
WOOD BROTHERS KENTUCKY FAST FACT:
The team has never raced at Kentucky Speedway.
CREW CHIEF JEREMY BULLINS’ FAN GUIDE TO QUAKER STATE 400:
“This will be the first race on the new surface at Kentucky. There are some new challenges we will face and a big one is the different track configuration. Banking was added to turns one and two, which also created a narrower track on that end. That should make re-starts pretty dicey as you’ll carry a lot of speed through there with less room to race than we had before. Now that the two ends of the track have different banking that also creates some setup challenges as the car needs different things on each end. It could wind up being similar to Pocono for example where you get your car good in one corner but make sacrifices on the other end of the track.”
Wood Brothers Racing
Wood Brothers Racing was formed in 1950 in Stuart, Va., by Hall of Famer Glenn Wood. Wood Brothers Racing is the oldest active team and one of the winningest teams in NASCAR history. Since its founding, the team won 98 races (including at least one race in every decade for the last seven decades) and 117 poles in NASCAR’s top-tier series. Fielding only Ford products for its entire history, the Wood Brothers own the longest association of any motorsports team with a single manufacturer. Glenn’s brother, Leonard, is known for inventing the modern pit stop. The team currently runs the Motorcraft/Quick Lane Ford Fusion driven by Ryan Blaney in the famous number 21 racecar.
TIL NEXT TIME, I AM STILL WORKING ON MY REDNECK!
