Latest news with #ChampionshipFour
Yahoo
14-02-2025
- Automotive
- Yahoo
Pitbull Is Leaving NASCAR's Trackhouse Racing, Effective Immediately
Just ahead of NASCAR's season opener this weekend with the Daytona 500, Armando Christian Pérez — the rapper and singer known worldwide as Pitbull — announced on the social media platform X that the partnership between him and Trackhouse Racing has ended, effective immediately. The rapper bought in as an owner in 2021, ahead of the team's debut season in 2022. Ending partnership with Trackhouse Racing. Over the past five years, we've made history by introducing NASCAR to a whole new audience and falling in love with NASCAR fans at the same time. We have made the decision to terminate the partnership with Trackhouse Racing, effective… — Pitbull (@pitbull) February 14, 2025 Together, Pitbull and co-owner Justin Marks have seen seven wins split between their two drivers, Daniel Suarez with two and Ross Chastain with the remaining five. Suarez and Chastain have made five playoff appearances, with Chastain reaching the Championship Four in 2022. Heading into the 2025 season, Trackhouse Racing grows to a three-car team, with Australian Supercar champion Shane van Gisbergen moving up from the Xfinity series to tackle his rookie year in the Cup. On top of the excitement around van Gisbergen's promotion, Trackhouse is running a fourth car through their Project 91 Program with 4-time Indianapolis 500 winner Helio Castroneves. All in all, it's a weird time to announce that you're moving on from a team. But Marks's follow-up post adds a little more clarity to the move and how he sees it beneficial to both sides. Commenting on Trackhouse Racing's goodbye post to the rapper, Marks said this separation was a "business success story" for both sides, explaining that as Trackhouse grew bigger and brought in more investors, Pitbull was rewarded. (Reading between the lines, a buyout may have been involved.) "Armando came in when we had no certainty of any material success and took a chance to help build a brand," Marks wrote. "Now that we've scaled up and have new [partners], he's been able to be rewarded for the impact he's made. A great investment on both ends." This is a great business story. Armando came in when we had no certainty of any material success and took a chance to help build a brand. Now that we've scaled up and have new parters, he's been able to be rewarded for the impact he's made. A great investment on both ends.… — Justin Marks (@JustinMarksTH) February 14, 2025 With four cars including Castroneves, who will start 41st after taking the Open Exemption Provisional, the 2025 Daytona 500 is set to be one of the biggest races for Trackhouse since Ross Chastain made it to the Championship Four in 2022 with his 'Hail Melon' move at Martinsville. While the race is meaningful for the team, it also is for Pitbull, a Florida residence who was set to perform the pre-race performance last year before a rainout moved the 500 to Monday; NASCAR invited him back to perform for this year's race, due to the scheduling conflict. You Might Also Like You Need a Torque Wrench in Your Toolbox Tested: Best Car Interior Cleaners The Man Who Signs Every Car
Yahoo
08-02-2025
- Automotive
- Yahoo
Carl Edwards Just Gave One of the Greatest NASCAR Hall of Fame Speeches of All Time
Carl Edwards left NASCAR at the height of his career, just months after finishing fourth in the 2016 Championship. In his surprise exit press conference, he told reporters that he didn't have an exit plan; he was just getting out. "I don't have a life raft I'm jumping onto; I'm just jumping," Edwards said. Eight years after leaving, Edwards was invited to and inducted into the NASCAR Hall of Fame. This Friday evening, he took his 20 minutes of stage time to clarify his decisions. "I left eight years ago, and I thought I was truly turning my back on this whole sport," Edwards said. "I thought I was making a choice between this sport and my family, and you know, every prize has its price, and for me, the prize of my family was worth that price. What you've done here, though, is you've let me win both ways because when you invited me back." Edward left the sport and descended into his own private life, not knowing if those around him would ever truly forgive him for prioritizing his family and his personal life more than the sport. In 2023, NASCAR invited the allusive driver to the Greatest Drivers event at Darlington Raceway to celebrate the sport's 75th year. Ahead of the event, Edwards told his wife Kate he was nervous about the homecoming, but the acceptance he felt from past competitors, fans, and teammates put him at ease. "I didn't give up something for my family," Edwards said. "I realized through all this that I've gained a family. I know what the NASCAR family is now; it's the craziest thing; thank you for giving me that." In 2016, Carl Edwards was 10 laps away from winning the championship when he took the green flag in first place on what was set to be the final restart. Kyle Busch, one of the championship favorites, dropped three places on pit row, falling behind Edwards and fellow Championship Four member Joey Logano. Edwards took the flag and dropped low, trying to block Logano for making a pass that could've brought the young Penske driver his first championship two years earlier. The No. 22 Penske turned the No. 19, and Edwards hit the interior wall before drifting back up the track and being hit by an oncoming car. Five competitors were out due to that crash, including Martin Truex Jr., who had to quickly exit his race car, which was engulfed in flames. "CARL EDWARDS INTO THE WALL!"Edwards' crash after blocking Joey Logano was a championship-defining moment at Homestead-Miami in 2016. #NASCARPlayoffs — NASCAR on NBC (@NASCARonNBC) October 23, 2024 In the end, Jimmie Johnson, who started the race in last after a penalty, powered through and took home his seventh and final championship with a win at Homestead. "Homestead was one of the best races I've run in my life, okay?" Edwards said. " I don't care that we don't have that championship. I knew about 20 laps to go in that race, what it felt like to have a championship team to run a championship race with Dave Rogers and those guys. That was special. That restart didn't work out." In his career-ending press conference, Edwards shared the same thought: with 40 laps, 30 laps, and 20 laps to go, he knew what it was like to race for a championship-winning team. It takes extreme fortitude to walk away with just the feeling, not the hardware. "This is something; the theme of this is gratitude," Edwards continued. This is going to sound strange, but I'm so grateful that we didn't win that championship. I'm so grateful. Because it gave me time to go home and think about a few things. I looked at, I looked at my career. It was beyond my wildest dreams. I mean, beyond my wildest dreams, I didn't know my kids, and because of brave men like Dale Earnhardt Jr and other athletes, I was keenly aware that there are real risks to hitting your head over and over." Edwards left the 2016 season healthy but had grown wary of thinking of how close every close call brought him to lives forever changed, albeit to bodily injury, CTE, or death. What started out as Edwards trying to put the 2016 season behind him ended with him hanging up his firesuit and retiring his race-winning back flips. Edwards praised his last boss in NASCAR, Joe Gibbs, for his leadership and grace when he told him his decision. Gibbs had just ended a meeting with Edwards' teammate Busch, during which Edwards joked that Busch was probably asking to race in the Indianapolis 500. Gibbs was prepared for Edwards to come with a similar demand. Gibbs immediately accepted Edwards' decision and for that and his leadership before Edwards left the sport with respect for Gibbs as a man and a father. "When I told you what I wanted to do?" Edwards spoke directly to Gibbs in the crowd. "Just like Mike Mittler had done all those years before, you jumped up from behind the desk and you said, this is important to you. I got your back, and I'm going to make this happen for you. And you didn't have to say that. You changed my family's life. You gave me permission to go do something I needed to do. And if you have ever questioned anything about how you were as a father, I want you to know you are the model father. The way you had a relationship with your sons. I saw that. I try to emulate that. We talk about it every single day in our homes." Joe Gibbs lost both of his sons since Carl Edwards left NASCAR, first J.D. to a brian condition in 2019 after a four-year battle and then unexpectedly Coy, the night after his grandson Ty Gibbs won the Xfinity Series championship in 2022. You Might Also Like You Need a Torque Wrench in Your Toolbox Tested: Best Car Interior Cleaners The Man Who Signs Every Car
Reuters
27-01-2025
- Automotive
- Reuters
NASCAR to consider playoff format changes for 2026
January 28 - As NASCAR teams prepare to kick off the new season, changes to the Cup Series playoff format could be on the horizon. NASCAR executive vice president and chief racing development officer John Probst said Monday that no changes are coming in 2025, but the playoff format will be reconsidered ahead of the 2026 season. Probst spoke at a competition briefing on Monday with the season set to begin with the Daytona 500 on Feb. 16. "I don't think we want to get in the habit of making small little tweaks every season to the playoffs," Probst said. "Where we landed was for 2025 not making any changes to the playoffs. Throughout the course of this year, we will get a working group together with some media folks, OEMs, Goodyear, drivers. ... We probably talked to most of the folks one-on-one about, 'where are we at? What are we thinking?' "Basically, we look at that as a workstream for a group of our stakeholders this year, to look at it holistically." The current playoff format sees 16 drivers qualify for a 10-race chase broken up over four rounds. The field of playoff drivers is cut between rounds from 16 to 12 to eight to the Championship Four. It's been the structure of the playoffs since 2014 and hasn't seen significant modification since 2017, when stage racing and playoff points were introduced. Probst said NASCAR has heard from stakeholders who love the playoffs as is, people who hate the current format and people who fell in between. There's no guarantee anything will be altered at all in the end. "We just didn't get to a point where we felt like we have to do it," Probst said. "But we hear the fans loud and clear and are looking at it actively." Joey Logano is the reigning Cup champion. --Field Level Media
