Welcome to “Fuel It Up”! The racing world is chock full of intriguing stories, but sifting through them to get a good general sense of the landscape can be challenging. In Fuel It Up, I take the biggest, more interesting storylines and present them to you in a quick, compact 300-words-or-less format.
The winner of this week’s paint scheme award goes to Greg Biffle in the #16 Scotch Ford. Honorable mention goes out to Rickey Stenhouse Jr. in the #17 RFR Driven Ford…………… With his dominating performance at Texas, Jimmie Johnson leads Matt Kenseth by 7 points heading to Phoenix. You can forget about the rest. It’s a two team race folks……………. Dale Earnhardt Jr. is having himself a pretty good Chase. Texas was his third 2nd place finish of the Chase. The engine failure at the Chase’s first race in Chicago was his undoing…………… Jimmie Johnson awarded $470,000 to nine different schools this week. Johnson along with his wife Chandra, have been donating to schools through the Jimmie Johnson Foundation/Lowe’s Toolbox for Education Grants. The Johnson’s have donated over $3 million dollars to schools in Cajon, California, Muskogee, Oklahoma, and Charlotte, North Carolina…………… Juan Pablo Montoya has been notified by the IRS that he owes $2.7 million in back taxes and penalties for tax years 2007 and 2008. Montoya has disputed the claim and has taken his case to the United States Tax Court……………. Last season at this race we saw a Jeff Gordon versus Clint Bowyer war. This week Gordon spoke to reporters about the relationship with Bowyer still being strained. “Still reliving that moment. I was not proud of it,” Gordon said. He went on to describe the relationship as “frosty”…………… After seeing thousands of empty seats at Texas International Speedway, Phoenix International Raceway announced this week that all Grandstand seats have been sold. General admission tickets along with the famous seats on the hill overlooking the track are still available.…………… United States Marine Corp veteran and country music star Stephan Cochran will perform the National Anthem prior to the AdvoCare 500 on Sunday at Phoenix International Raceway…………… The weather forecast for Sunday afternoon for Phoenix calls for partly sunny skies with temperatures around 85f (29c)…………… The AdvoCare 500 will be televised in the US on ESPN and in Canada on TSN2 beginning at 3:00 pm (ET).
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