Even with reminders nearby, Michigan is a chance for Ricky Stenhouse Jr., team to move ahead

NBC Sports

a day ago

BROOKLYN, Mich. — A week after Carson Hocevar's contact wrecked Ricky Stenhouse Jr. at Nashville, they have talked, but the impact of the incident remains.
Just look in the garage this weekend at Michigan International Speedway. Their teams share a garage stall, just as they are next to each other in the points standings.
Stenhouse said Friday morning on SiriusXM NASCAR Radio that after talking with Hocevar 'I definitely see where he was thinking that he could get to the inside of me before we turned down into the corner (at Nashville). Problem was he didn't.'
Nate Ryan,
Stenhouse's crew chief, Mike Kelley, spoke with Ryan Sparks, competition director at Spire Motorsports about Hocevar early in the week. Luke Lambert, crew chief for Hocevar, called Kelley this week.
'I don't have disrespect for Carson,' Kelley told NBC Sports on Friday at Michigan. 'I know he's an upcoming talent, and I've been in the sport long enough to know that he is, he's got something special. … I told Luke this on the phone the other night when he called me was it's how you handle yourself after the fact.
'I would have been just as upset if he would have got out and said, 'Man, I'm so sorry I wrecked Ricky.' That's not what I was expecting.
'I was maybe expecting for him to say that he needed to look at it and he would get with Ricky. I would have thought he would have at least called Ricky a lot sooner than he did. But he did call Ricky and they spoke. Ricky called me and said he felt like it was sincere and felt that we could forward from here and they could race.'
Dustin Long,
As a result of the Nashville incident, Stenhouse fell from 13th to 18th in the standings — and out of a playoff spot — when he finished 39th and scored one point at Nashville.
Kyle Busch holds the final playoff spot. Stenhouse trails Busch by six points. Stenhouse is one of five drivers (including Hocevar) outside a playoff spot within 13 points of Busch.
'Our mulligan is gone,' Kelley said.
Four of the remaining 11 races in the regular season after Sunday's event at Michigan are at a road or street course. Stenhouse has two top-10 finishes in 43 career Cup road course/street course races.
Two of the remaining 11 races in the regular season are at drafting tracks. While all four of Stenhouse's career Cup wins are at such style of tracks, there's also a greater chance to be collected in an incident in those events.
That's what makes scoring only one point at Nashville hurt for Stenhouse and his team.
Since last year, Stenhouse has averaged 17 points per race at a road or street course. Compare that to the drafting tracks. Since last year, he's averaged 28.7 points at drafting tracks, which includes a win at Talladega.
Kelley acknowledges the challenges of road and street courses for the team.
'We don't race on dreams and hopes,' Kelley said. 'We look at our weakest links and try to make them better and try and get the most out of every day. We look at road course races as, 'Look, most of these guys are going to wreck the (expletive) out of each other at the end of this thing. So let's get all the stage points we can in the middle and then we'll capitalize on the finishes at the end.' That's how we look at it and that's how we race it.'
Because every point matters.
'We do look at points because the end result for our race team, the end of the season, there are point-specific items that we need to hit and targets and goals that we have,' Kelley said. 'One is top 20 and one is top 25 in (car owner) points because that where NASCAR quits paying (bonuses at the end of the season). All those things matter.
'If someone says what happened to us at Nashville doesn't matter, come see me after Phoenix (at the end of the year). We finished 25th in points by (six) points last year and I think they said that was $600,000. So, if you don't think $600,000 matters to some people, I guarantee you it does.
'But there's also a pride thing. We had done everything we felt like we could do all year long to keep ourselves in position. At weeks we've had decent enough pace to do what we need to do and other weeks Ricky's just done a really good job of managing our car and we've called good races. We were realistically 13th in points last week and had I just averaged 20 points, I'd be 13th in points today.
'Does that get me in (the playoffs)? Probably not, but it keeps me in the game. It keeps me in the thing. My wife explained it to me Tuesday morning about 5 a.m., she said, 'If you would have asked me in January that you were three or four points out of the cutoff 14 races in, would you be happy then?' I said, yeah, for sure. She goes, 'Then don't worry about where you're at now, just keep looking ahead.' So that's all we're doing.'
☎️ "After Carson called me this week, I definitely see where he was thinking."
Ricky @StenhouseJr addresses last Sunday's incident with @CarsonHocevar leading into @MISpeedway this weekend. #NASCAR
More from the @HYAKMotorsports driver → https://t.co/MKhd9eLpQA pic.twitter.com/gF42JSUgpT
.@CarsonHocevar on conversations within @SpireMotorsport about his on track actions following his incident with the No. 47 on Sunday night ⬇️
🗣️ "Have less moments of that and more moments of passing the other 25 cars without hitting any of them."
🎧: https://t.co/WGRTG5gnEd pic.twitter.com/gNwKVqcdIl