NASCAR Grassroots Ties Aplenty With Chase Finalists: Denny Hamlins first NASCAR championship was earned in a mini stock at Langley Speedway in his native Virginia. Seventeen years later, hes positioned to reach the pinnacle of the profession. Hamlins start in stock car racing began in the entry-level divisions of local weekly racing tracks like Langley in the late 1990s. By the early 2000s he had moved up to the feature division late model stocks and started to venture out beyond his Chesterfield, Virginia, home base. Success followed everywhere he went. Flash forward to 2014, where Hamlin is one of four contenders for the sports ultimate prize, the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series championship. Hamlin, Kevin Harvick, Joey Logano and Ryan Newman head to Sundays Ford EcoBoost 400 as the Championship 4 contenders, each with a chance to become a first-time NASCAR Sprint Cup Series titlist. While they took different routes to reach Sundays finale at Homestead-Miami Speedway as finalists, like Hamlin, each has a direct connection to NASCARs grassroots regional touring and weekly series: · Harvicks first stock car crown was earned at Mesa Marin Raceway in 1993, two years before NASCAR began sanctioning weekly competition at the track in his hometown of Bakersfield, California. But he wouldnt have to wait long to get a championship under the NASCAR banner. Following Rookie of the Year honors in the former NASCAR Southwest Tour in 1995, Harvick scored five wins in 14 races en route to the 1998 NASCAR K&N Pro Series West title as a 22-year-old. It was his only full-time season in the series, and he captured the championship while simultaneously competing full-time in the NASCAR Camping World Truck Series. · Logano ushered in a new era of K&N Pro Series competition when he dominated as a teen in 2007. The Middletown, Connecticut, natives lone regional touring series season during his meteoric rise up the NASCAR Ladder began with a win in his debut at Phoenix International Raceway in K&N Pro Series West action and included five more victories en route to the championship and Sunoco Rookie of the Year honors in the K&N Pro Series East. Loganos signature moment came in the inaugural K&N Pro Series East-West combination race at Iowa Speedway when he beat Harvick - by then well established in the Sprint Cup Series - to the checkered flag just four days shy of his 17th birthday. · Newman may not have come up through NASCARs regional touring system, but he has become a frequent fixture in the cockpit of the No. 7NY when the NASCAR Whelen Modified Tour heads to New Hampshire Motor Speedway and Bristol Motor Speedway. Over the last seven years, the South Bend, Indiana, wheelman has compiled four wins and 12 top 10s in 18 races driving as part of a team formed by crew chief Kevin Bono Manion and car chief Gary Putnam, who got their start on the tour on the way to Sprint Cup Series careers. An additional modified win came in the inaugural Whelen All-Star Shootout this past July at New Hampshire. · Hamlin was a rising star in 2003 in the late model world and the season proved to be the launching pad. Twenty-two years old at the time, Hamlin exploded with 25 wins, 30 poles and the NASCAR Whelen All-American Series track championship at Southern National Motorsports Park in North Carolina. The experience gained at those southeastern NASCAR short tracks proved to be such a solid foundation that Hamlin made his debut in the Sprint Cup Series just two years removed from that breakout 2003 late model campaign. Like Newman, Hamlins involvement at the grassroots level continues today with the annual Denny Hamlin Short Track Showdown late model event - held at South Boston in 2014 - that benefits the Denny Hamlin Foundation and pits weekly racers and up-and-coming talent against competitors from the sports upper echelon.(NASCAR)(11-15-2014)
Posted on: Mon, 17 Nov 2014 05:17:31 +0000
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