Texas Preview

AJ Allmendinger
No. 43 Insignia Ford Fusion
• Allmendinger has made four NASCAR Sprint Cup Series starts at the 1.5-mile Fort Worth-area track
• The driver posted a top-10 finish in the fall race at the Texas track last year
• Allmendinger moved up three positions in the point standings after last week’s 15th-place finish

AJ Allmendinger on Texas:
“I haven’t done a ton of Sprint Cup racing at Texas Motor Speedway, but I feel like I’ve been able to improve every time I’ve been there. We had a pretty decent finish last time the Series was there, so I’m hopeful for good things with this Insignia Ford Fusion this weekend. I think we have a little bit of momentum on our side with the pole run and then a top-15 finish in Phoenix last week, so we’ll try to take advantage of that this weekend. Plus, our Roush Yates engines will give us plenty of horsepower.

“I don’t think the spoiler is going to have much of an effect on things in Texas. It’ll have more than the past couple of week on the smaller tracks, but we tested in Charlotte and compared a lot of notes, so I think we know what to expect and how to adapt the car to the change. Mike’s a pretty smart guy, and I know he and everyone involved with this Richard Petty Motorsports team has spent a good deal of time working on some different things in regards to the spoiler, so I’m not too worried about that being any kind of a problem for us.”

Crew Chief Mike Shiplett’s Thoughts on Texas Motor Speedway:
“We tested the spoiler at Charlotte (N.C.) Motor Speedway a couple of weeks ago, but this weekend will be the first time we actually get in race trim around other cars, so I think there will be some things that we’re going to have to learn pretty quickly at Texas about the attitude of the car and how we want to run with the spoiler on the back.

“It’s a big downforce track. It has a lot of speed and it doesn’t have a lot of grip so you usually fight a little loose off the corners and not turning in the middle there. We’ll concentrate on those things this weekend and see what we can do.”

Notes:
The DIRECTV NASCAR Head 2 Head Challenge begins this week at Texas Motor Speedway. 32 NASCAR Cup Series teams will compete in a bracket formation challenge to benefit charities of their choosing. Allmendinger’s crew is pitted against the No. 14 team. The team that finishes highest in the race will move on to compete in the next round next weekend at Talladega (Ala.) Superspeedway.


Credit - Richard Petty Motorsports PR