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MOORESVILLE
Drydene Partners With Go Fas, LaJoie, for NASCAR’s Return at Darlington
The No. 32 Ford Mustang of Corey LaJoie will sport a new look when the NASCAR Cup Series returns this weekend at Darlington Raceway for the first race since early March. Drydene Performance Products will be on board LaJoie’s Ford, debuting an all-new red and white scheme for the 400-mile event. Drydene offers a complete line of automotive, commercial and industrial lubricants, including engine oils, racing and break-in oils, DRF diesel exhaust fluid (DEF), transmission fluids, grease, and hydraulic & gear oils. Drydene products are built with ALL Technology®, Advanced Lubricity Life chemistry, to meet and exceed today’s modern automotive, heavy duty and industrial needs. “I’m glad we were able to take Drydene from virtual North Wilkesboro Speedway to another classic real track in Darlington Raceway,” said driver Corey LaJoie. “I’ve gotten to know Drydene as a group and a brand over the last couple of years and I love representing them. We’re all really excited to get back to the track after a few months off and I’m ready to get back after it!” The company has sponsored LaJoie and the Go Fas Racing team in the past at Dover International Speedway and most recently on the virtual No. 32 in the iRacing Pro Invitational Series. “Drydene is proud to expand our support of Corey LaJoie and the Go Fas team,” said Dave Klinger, President of Drydene Performance Products. “Corey is always an exciting driver to watch and he’s a huge asset to Team Drydene. Like the rest of America, we can’t wait to see Corey and the sport of NASCAR make a safe return to the track at Darlington.” Through the first four events of the season, LaJoie has one top-10 and sits 23rd in the standings. For more information on Drydene Performance Products, visit www.Drydene.com or follow on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram @TeamDrydene. Tune in to FOX at 3:30 p.m. ET on Sunday, May 17 for NCS action from the historic Darlington Raceway. —————————— About Our Team About Drydene Performance Products For over a century Drydene lubricants have been made in America and made to last, paving the way on our highways, in our fields and on the production line. And we’re still right here today doing what we do best; helping America Get the Job Done. Drydene products are built with ALL Technology®, Advanced Lubricity Life chemistry, to meet and exceed today’s modern automotive, heavy duty and industrial needs. Drydene offers a complete line of automotive, commercial and industrial lubricants, including engine oils, racing and break-in oils, DRF diesel exhaust fluid (DEF), transmission fluids, grease, and hydraulic & gear oils. For more information, visit www.drydene.com or follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram @TeamDrydene. About Go Fas Racing: Go Fas Racing (GFR) currently fields Ford Mustangs in the NASCAR Cup Series for driver Corey LaJoie. Located in Mooresville, North Carolina, GFR has competed in the NASCAR’s premier series since 2014; fielding cars for some of NASCAR’s top drivers, including past champions. To find out more information about our team please visit www.GoFasRacing.com. Stay up-to-date on Corey LaJoie: To get live updates during the race weekends follow @coreylajoie on Instagram and Twitter. Make sure to give Corey a “like” on Facebook – “@CoreyLaJoieRacing”. For a detailed bio and updated in-season statistics, please visit www.coreylajoieracing.com. |
McDowell to Race with CarParts.com at Darlington
New Front Row Motorsports Partner Helps Navigate NASCAR’s Return to Racing |
MOORESVILLE, N.C. (May 13, 2020) – CarParts.com, an e-commerce auto parts retailer specializing in collision, repair, and maintenance parts, has teamed up with Front Row Motorsports (FRM) for the 2020 NASCAR Cup Series season. The California-based company will be the primary partner of veteran driver Michael McDowell in the NASCAR Cup Series’ return to racing at Darlington Raceway on May 17 and 20. FRM, McDowell and Sunoco Rookie of The Year candidate John Hunter Nemechek are all excited for the partnership and will be representing CarParts.com through social media and other marketing assets throughout the season. ![]() The events at Darlington will serve as the much-anticipated return to racing and one of the first live sporting events on FOX in several weeks. The NASCAR Cup Series has not competed on track since March 8, due to the impact of the novel coronavirus. Getting drivers back on the road, especially when we need essential workers to get back to work, is a driving force that has naturally fueled CarParts.com’s partnership with FRM. Established in 1999, CarParts.com has helped millions of drivers across the United States fix their cars and keep their vehicles running. With an easy-to-navigate, mobile-friendly website and vehicle selector, CarParts.com offers customers guaranteed fitment and an ultimately convenient online shopping experience. To date, the online retailer has delivered over 50 million parts straight to customers’ doors all across America. “NASCAR fans understand the value of performance and they understand the importance of good-skilled competition even in difficult times,” said Lev Peker, CEO of CarParts.com and its parent company, US Auto Parts. “We are grateful for the opportunity to align with Front Row Motorsports and Michael McDowell to do our part and help reintroduce NASCAR back to fans who have been eagerly anticipating its return.” “I’m looking forward to getting back on track this weekend with CarParts.com,” said McDowell. “Being one of the first live sporting events to return is not something any of us are taking lightly. We’re doing everything we can from both the team side and the sanctioning body to put on a good show while making sure that all participants and their families are staying safe. Our No. 34 Ford Mustang is going to look and run great on the track, and we’re ready to work hard.” The No. 34 CarParts.com Ford Mustang will make its debut at Darlington Raceway on Sunday, May 17. The NASCAR Cup Series race will air at 3:30 p.m. ET on FOX and MRN. For more information, visit CarParts.com. About CarParts.com Established in 1999, CarParts.com is an e-commerce auto parts retailer that specializes in OE replacement collision, repair, and maintenance parts. With over 50 million parts delivered, we’ve helped millions of drivers across the United States find the right parts to fix their cars and keep their vehicles on the road. Our vehicle selector and easy-to-navigate, mobile-friendly website offer customers guaranteed fitment and a convenient online shopping experience. Paired with our 90-day return policy and satisfaction guarantee, CarParts.com makes it easier than ever to get the parts you need delivered straight to your door. About Front Row Motorsports Front Row Motorsports (FRM) is a winning organization in the NASCAR Cup Series. The team was founded in 2004 and is owned by successful entrepreneur, Bob Jenkins. FRM fields two full-time entries – the No. 34 of Michael McDowell and the No. 38 of John Hunter Nemechek – from its Mooresville, N.C., headquarters just outside of Charlotte. In 2020, the team announced an expansion to include the No. 38 Ford F-150 in the NASCAR Gander RV and Outdoors Truck Series, driven by Todd Gilliland. Visit teamfrm.com and follow FRM on social media: Twitter at @Team_FRM, Instagram at @team_frm and Facebook at facebook.com/ |
Scag Power Equipment Joins Front Row Motorsports at Darlington
For more information about Scag Power Equipment, visit Scag.com.
Gaunt Brothers Racing Hires Nick Ollila as Technical Director
Motorsports Veteran Joins NASCAR Team from Virgin Australia Supercars Championship
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| MOORESVILLE, N.C. (May 11, 2020) – Gaunt Brothers Racing, which fields the No. 96 Toyota Camry for driver Daniel Suárez in the NASCAR Cup Series, has hired Nick Ollila (pronounced Oh-li-lah) as its technical director, with the motorsports veteran overseeing the team’s engineering department. Ollila comes to Gaunt Brothers Racing after a three-year stint as the technical director for Kelly Racing in the Virgin Australia Supercars Championship. The Warren, Michigan-native returned to the United States late last week in time for the resumption of the 2020 NASCAR Cup Series schedule, which begins May 17 at Darlington (S.C.) Raceway as NASCAR becomes one of the first major North American sports to return to action since the COVID-19 pandemic.
“Nick brings considerable insight into what we’re doing with our current inventory of racecars and what we’ll be doing with our NextGen car in 2022,” said Marty Gaunt, president and CEO, Gaunt Brothers Racing. “He has deep experience in all forms of motorsports, specifically in embracing technology and managing people. Nick also has a strong rapport with our partner Toyota, as many of the people he worked with when he was at Red Bull are the same people there today. He’ll be able to hit the ground running, which is good, because with two to three races a week, we’re all going to be running.”
Gaunt first worked with Ollila in 1997 when the two were at Kranefuss-Haas Racing. Gaunt was the general manager of the NASCAR Cup Series team and Ollila was its chief engineer. Their NASCAR paths crossed again 10 years later when both worked at Red Bull Racing – Gaunt as general manager and Ollila as chief aerodynamicist.
“It’s the people who make the cars go, and Nick has been making cars go since the early ‘70s,” Gaunt said. “We’re lucky to have a lot of long-term employees who have been with us for 10 years, but scaling up from running a part-time schedule to a full schedule meant bringing in more people. Coming up with the recipe of having all the right people in all the right places isn’t easy, but Nick is a good chef.”
NASCAR is where Ollila has spent the bulk of his career, which includes being the drivetrain specialist at Rod Osterlund Racing in 1980 when Dale Earnhardt won the first of his seven NASCAR Cup Series championships.
“Motorsports is my passion, and I’m proud to have turned it into a career,” Ollila said. “I’ve spent time in a variety of racing series, but NASCAR is the one that intrigues me the most. The level of competition is unmatched, so success is very satisfying. I’ve known and worked with Marty Gaunt and many of the people at Gaunt Brothers Racing for years. They’ve got a great foundation and they’re building for the future, and I’m very happy to be a part of shaping that future.”
Ollila’s racing career began at Team Penske in 1972 as a mechanic. He prepared cars for each of the series in which the organization competed, a lineup that included INDYCAR, NASCAR, Can-Am, Formula 5000, sports cars and Formula One.
NASCAR became Ollila’s focus in late 1976. He joined DiGard Racing as the team’s drivetrain specialist, working with NASCAR Hall of Famer Darrell Waltrip until the end of the 1978 season, whereupon he went to work for Osterlund.
INDYCAR and Penske beckoned in 1982, and Ollila returned as the team’s engine builder, enjoying four championships (1982, 1983, 1985 and 1988) and four Indianapolis 500 victories (1984, 1985, 1987 and 1988).
That Penske connection led Ollila back to NASCAR in 1990, where he became the lead engineer for Hall of Fame driver Rusty Wallace. It was the beginning of a 20-year stint in NASCAR.
Ollila worked at Kranefuss-Haas Racing from 1995-1997 where he established and led the engineering and aerodynamics departments. He then went on to an eight-year career at Roush-Fenway Racing as its chief engineer and director of aerodynamics. In 2005, Ollila moved to Richard Childress Racing as its director of aerodynamics where he implemented Indoor GPS, a laser-based measuring system for large-scale metrology that was a first for the industry.
In September 2007, Ollila joined nascent Red Bull Racing as chief aerodynamicist. His efforts greatly aided the team’s development, a point punctuated by driver Brian Vickers scoring the outfit’s maiden victory in August 2009 at Michigan International Speedway in Brooklyn and qualifying for the NASCAR Playoffs.
Ollila served as a consultant specializing in computational fluid dynamics (CFD) and computer-aided design (CAD) from 2010-2016 before heading overseas to Australia, where his first stint was at Arise Racing. There, he was the operations manager and technical director, which segued to his role with Kelly Racing in the Virgin Australia Supercars Championship in late 2017.
About Gaunt Brothers Racing: Gaunt Brothers Racing (GBR) fields the No. 96 Toyota Camry for driver Daniel Suárez in the NASCAR Cup Series. The Mooresville, North Carolina-based team is owned by Marty Gaunt, the CEO of Triad Racing Technologies. Gaunt founded GBR in 2010, with his eponymous team starting out in the Canada-based NASCAR Pinty’s Series and the U.S.-based NASCAR K&N Pro Series. Its first driver, Jason Bowles, scored GBR’s maiden victory in the 2011 Toyota All-Star Showdown at Irwindale Speedway in California, with the precursor to that win being the pole position in track-record time at the 2011 Streets of Toronto 100. After seven years competing in NASCAR’s development divisions, Gaunt stepped up to the NASCAR Cup Series in 2017, entering the Daytona 500 with driver D.J. Kennington. After running a part-time NASCAR Cup Series schedule in 2018 and 2019 where GBR made a total of 37 starts with a handful of drivers, GBR committed to a full schedule in 2020. For more information, please visit us online at www.GauntBrothersRacing.com, on Facebook at www.Facebook.com/ |
Talladega Invitational Advance – Daniel Suárez Taking CommScope Toyota to ‘Dega
| Details: |
| • Race: GEICO 70 (Round 5) • Series: eNASCAR iRacing Pro Invitational Series • Time/Date: 1 p.m. EDT on Sunday, April 26 • Location: Virtual Talladega Superspeedway (2.66-mile oval) • Distance: 70 laps (186.2 miles)
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| Where to Watch: |
| • FOX network • Announcers: Jeff Gordon, Mike Joy and Larry McReynolds, with in-race commentary from Clint Bowyer. • FS1 (DIRECTV Channel 219 and Dish Channel 150) • FOX Sports Racing for fans in Canada
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| DYK?: |
| • We Need a Bigger Podium: Last Sunday’s eNASCAR iRacing Pro Invitational Series race from virtual Richmond Raceway had 971,000 viewers tune in to the simulcast on FOX and FS1, making it the third-most watched esports event in U.S. television history. The March 29 eNASCAR iRacing Pro Invitational Series race from virtual Texas Motor Speedway remains on the podium’s top step with 1.34 million viewers. The April 5 eNASCAR iRacing Pro Invitational Series race from virtual Bristol Motor Speedway takes the second step with 1.179 million viewers. The first eNASCAR iRacing Pro Invitational Series race March 22 at virtual Homestead-Miami Speedway earned 903,000 viewers on FS1 alone. And while the Texas race dwarfed that number by 47 percent, the Homestead race was, for at least one week, the most watched esports event in U.S. television history, having bested the previous record of 770,000 viewers when Mortal Kombat aired on The CW in 2016.
• iRacing’s Real-World Context: Last Sunday’s eNASCAR iRacing Pro Invitational Series race from Richmond was the second-most watched sports event of the weekend. The most-watched sports event? Michael Jordan ‘The Last Dance’ documentary on ESPN.
• New Viewers Assimilate to Sim Racing: According to Nielsen, one million unique viewers who did not watch any of the four real-life NASCAR Cup Series races prior to the sports industry’s necessary hiatus to combat the spread of the coronavirus did tune in to one of the four eNASCAR iRacing Pro Invitational Series races held thus far.
• Kind of a Big Deal: A total of 5.4 million unique viewers have watched at least one eNASCAR iRacing Pro Invitational Series race via FOX, FS1 and the FOX Sports app.
• Bet On It: The eNASCAR iRacing Pro Invitational Series has been cleared and approved by the Nevada Gaming Control Board for wagering. Two types of bets are allowed for the eNASCAR iRacing Pro Invitational Series: winner of the race and head-to-head winner between drivers. Provisions for licensing the event includes a posting of the official rules for the tournament organizer and that all bets must cease once a race has started. Additionally, each bookmaker is allowed to create its own odds.
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| Daniel Suárez, Driver of the No. 96 CommScope Toyota Camry: |
| “It’s our first race on a superspeedway after racing on the short tracks the last two weeks. I have no idea what to expect, to be honest. I don’t know if there’s anything different we can do to prepare for this one. The real races on the superspeedways are already unpredictable. I think you can say, for sure, that this one will be even more unpredictable after some of the crazy things we have seen happen on the short tracks the last few weeks. The key to winning on the superspeedway is always about being smart and patient, so that will need to happen this week, for sure. It would be great to have a really good finish with our CommScope Toyota.”
• This is Suárez’s fourth eNASCAR iRacing Pro Invitational Series race.
• Suárez started sixth and finished 18th in the previous eNASCAR iRacing Pro Invitational Series race – the Toyota Owners 150 at Richmond.
• In actual NASCAR Cup Series racing at Talladega, Suárez has six career starts with a best finish of 10th (April 2018).
• Outside of the NASCAR Cup Series at Talladega, Suárez has three NASCAR Xfinity Series starts (best finish is seventh in April 2016) and one NASCAR Gander Outdoors & RV Truck Series start (finished 15th in October 2014).
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| Background: |
| • The eNASCAR iRacing Pro Invitational Series is an exhibition esports series featuring a collection of past and present racecar drivers from the NASCAR Cup Series.
• The eNASCAR iRacing Pro Invitational Series is a multi-week series emulating the original 2020 NASCAR Cup Series schedule.
• With the sports world on hiatus due to the coronavirus, the eNASCAR iRacing Pro Invitational Series exists in place of actual NASCAR events.
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| About Gaunt Brothers Racing: |
| Gaunt Brothers Racing (GBR) fields the No. 96 Toyota Camry for driver Daniel Suárez in the NASCAR Cup Series. The Mooresville, North Carolina-based team is owned by Marty Gaunt, the CEO of Triad Racing Technologies. Gaunt founded GBR in 2010, with his eponymous team starting out in the Canada-based NASCAR Pinty’s Series and the U.S.-based NASCAR K&N Pro Series. Its first driver, Jason Bowles, scored GBR’s maiden victory in the 2011 Toyota All-Star Showdown at Irwindale Speedway in California, with the precursor to that win being the pole position in track-record time at the 2011 Streets of Toronto 100. After seven years competing in NASCAR’s development divisions, Gaunt stepped up to the NASCAR Cup Series in 2017, entering the Daytona 500 with driver D.J. Kennington. After running a part-time NASCAR Cup Series schedule in 2018 and 2019 where GBR made a total of 37 starts with a handful of drivers, GBR committed to a full schedule in 2020. For more information, please visit us online at www.GauntBrothersRacing.com, on Facebook at www.Facebook.com/ |
Speedco Partners with Todd Gilliland for iRacing Event Tuesday Night – The Replacements 100 Streamed Live on Twitch

About Front Row Motorsports
No. 41 Haas Automation Ford Mustang: Cole Custer Folds of Honor 500 Race Advance
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Brandon Jones Returning to KBM for Four Races in the No. 51 Tundra
Cherry Vanilla Coke Racing: Daniel Suárez Folds of Honor QuickTrip 500 at Atlanta Preview
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Cherry Vanilla Coke may be the newest addition to the company’s product lineup, but research shows it’s a pair of flavors its fans have combined on their own using the already existing Cherry Coke and Vanilla Coke products – the equivalent of more than 105 million cans of “Cherry Vanilla Coke” since 2017. That’s nearly a can a minute over a three-year span, and the research shows the combination has proven to be most popular on Christmas Day and the month of April.
This weekend, they’ll take to the track where, in his three previous Cup Series appearances, Suárez has a best start of fourth in 2018 with Joe Gibbs Racing and a best finish of 10th from the fifth starting position last season with Stewart-Haas Racing. In two Xfinity Series outings at Atlanta, both with the Gibbs team, he has a best start of third and best finish of seventh, both en route to the series title in 2016. In a pair of NASCAR Gander RV & Outdoors Truck Series races at Atlanta, he has a best start and finish of fourth in 2015 driving for Kyle Busch Motorsports.