NASCAR is entering its 18th regular-season event on Sunday. The drivers return to the road course as they will compete at Road America in Plymouth, Wisconsin. The KwikTrip 250 will start at 3 p.m. ET and air on the USA Network and the NBC Sports App.
Chase Elliott has been on top of the NASCAR Cup Series standings for nearly the entire season, but he is probably at his best right now. Last week, the 26-year-old won the Ally 400 at Nashville Superspeedway and won two of his last seven races. Additionally, Elliott is returning to a place he loves as he won at Road America last year.
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“I’m excited to get back to Road America. I thought last year’s event was really good,” Elliott said this past week, per NASCAR.com. “For me, I was always partial to having the Fourth (of July) race at Daytona, but the crowd was really good and the energy was super high, and I think we need to have an energetic race on the Fourth.
“That’s a big weekend for our country. It’s a race inside our sport that I think is deserving of a lot of energy too, because we are a sport that’s going on this time of year and that needs to be a big event. I felt like the people up there welcomed us with open arms and brought a lot of energy. Anytime you have energy at the track, it makes it fun for everybody involved – whether you’re working inside the sport, you’re a driver, you’re another a fan there, it just makes for a better event, better environment.”
While Elliott is heating up, Martin Truex Jr. is cooling off. After finishing in the top 10 in three of his last six races, the 42-year-old finished outside the top 20 in the last two weeks. The good news is Truex has had success at Road America as he finished ninth in the track last season.
“It’s a great track,” Truex said. It’s obviously a very long track, so you get a lot of different types of corners and some elevation changes. We’re definitely looking at this weekend as being very important. We weren’t where we need to be at Sonoma and our guys have been working really hard since then to figure out why and hopefully come to Road America this weekend with a better shot at running up front like we know we’re capable of.”
