 By: Tom Luttermoser Image: Ford Performance
After a fantastic first stint run by defending Craftsman Truck champion Zane Smith, Harrison Burton managed to survive a final restart and pass former Truck champ Ben Rhodes just before Elliott Skeer and his #47 Porsche Cayman rolled off track with gearbox issues. Burton took the checkered flag in the 2023 Michelin Pilot Challenge at Daytona in pairs #42 Ford Performance Mustang GT4. The Ford Performance duo ran a fantastic 4 hour long event at the famous Daytona road course with Zane Smith leading up until the last second before pit road when the 42 made their driver change. Harrison Burton passed the checkered flag by (seconds) over Spencer Pumpelly and his #83 Porsche who made a late race pass over Ben Rhodes who finished 3rd on the Podium.
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 News by: Tom Luttermoser Image Credit: Ford Performance, Hailie Deegan, Zane Smith Ford Performance once again goes with the younger NASCAR crowd in 2023 for the IMSA Michelin Pilot Challenge this upcoming Friday. Craftsman Truck Series ThorSport drivers Hailie Deegan and 2021 Series champion Ben Rhodes will field the #41 Ford Performance Ford Mustang GT4 will join teammates Zane Smith (defending Craftsman Truck champion) and Cup driver Harrison Burton fielding the #42 Ford Performance Ford Mustang GT4. The Pilot Challenge is a 4 hour endurance race the Friday before the Rolex 24 at Daytona. The 4 NASCAR drivers are receiving driver coaching from sports car champion Joey Hand and wit his help, Burton and Smith topped the speed charts following this past Friday's final practice session with Deegan and Rhodes topping out 5th fastest By Tom Luttermoser Image credit: Hailie Deegan Hailie Deegan is without a doubt the biggest driver in the Craftsman Truck Series, and has been for a couple years now. She won the Most Popular Driver award for the series in 2021 & 2022 for a reason, her fans love her and her sponsors seem to as well. Over her entire ARCA/ NASCAR career Hailie has enjoyed sponsorship from Monster Energy and has seen sponsors such as Pristine Auction and Ford Performance stay consistent as well. Since becoming a Ford Performance development driver, Hailie has seen support from Ford Motor Company's performance arm as well. For 2023, we were one of the first to break that Hailie would be moving over to ThorSport Racing after previous team DGR made the switch from Ford Performance over to TRD. What sponsors would follow or stay had not yet been released. But now we see in her Pre-Daytona Media day photos (seen below) in her IMSA Ford Performance fire suit. Absent from the suit is any sort of sponsorship. Below the Ford logo you can see a blacked out patch covering the Michelin logo. This goes to tell me either sponsors are not official, still working or simply not yet public. Now of course this doesn't mean anything, but it of course gets the speculation rolling. I have reached out to both Monster Energy as well as ThorSport for word on any sort of sponsorship for the young California native. At time of publishing I have not heard back from either. Check back for updates.   Image & Article By: Tom Luttermoser
When Gene Haas brought Tony Stewart on as co-owner of the newly rebranded Stewart-Haas Racing in 2009, they saw instant success with 4 wins in their first season. Including teammate Ryan Newman they would go on for a total of 13 victories in the first 3 years alone PLUS the teams first championship in 2011. 2014 brought in former Cup champion Kurt Busch and Kevin Harvick from RCR. Together the duo would score 6 victories and the team's second title with Kevin Harvick. Since then the team has gone on to be a major success scoring 69 Cup victories to date. Harvick has been a constant threat to win nearly every single week for several years with Kurt Busch winning in each of his seasons with the team and solid runs from Almirola as well. But over the last 2 years we have seen the team sort of... fall off. Harvick fresh off a 9 win 2020 season went winless in 2021. '21 saw a single win for the team that otherwise has been a terrifying opponent. Aero changes for the Mustang in 2021 and the NEXT Gen car in 2022 seemed to be challenges that took the team a while to overcome finally scoring 3 victories this season. Added to that, early in the 2022 season Aric Almirola announced that he would retire after the end of the season even though it was announced that he signed a new contract later into the year. With him likely would have gone longtime Almirola sponsor Smithfield Foods who came with Aric from Richard Petty Motorsports. Also going into 2023 we know that Kevin Harvick's contract is up, if he retires (which seems very likely), SHR's veteran backbone driver is gone. Possibly major sponsorship as well if he was to go. Technical alliances are also a big deal to major teams like SHR. This postseason we have seen SHR lose 2 alliances, Rick Ware Racing was first. RWR made the announcement a couple weeks ago that they would leave their technical alliance with SHR and move over to Roush Fenway Keselowski Racing for 2023. Then, just last week, Live Fast Motorsports made the change over from Ford to Chevrolet. A technical alliance is where 2 or more teams join resources to share data, parts, knowhow and sometimes shop space, for a cost of course. So that means SHR just lost 2 streams of income. This is just another issue that the team has not publicly addressed nor have I seen any of my fellow Media members look into. (Edit): As of this past week SHR and AM Racing announced an Xfinity Series technical alliance for the 2023 season. Is this a sign that something is off internally at SHR? Maybe the team just needs a bit of a refresh, you've got 2 young and hungry drivers in Chase Briscoe and now Ryan Preece. We all know Stewart hasn't been happy with the sanctioning body lately. Plus with focus going on NHRA and SRX, Stewart seems to maybe have his focus a bit more on the other 2 ventures rather than NASCAR. We reached out to the team and will share any answers or responses we get. |
