Photo – Tyler Barrick/Getty Images
The NASCAR Nationwide Series (NNS) makes a stop at the 4.048 mile Road America for the fifth straight year this weekend. The race is a stand-alone event as the Sprint Cup Series is off racing at Sonoma Raceway.
No defending winners are in the race at Road America this weekend. The track has produced two first-time winners (Nelson Piquet, Jr. and A.J. Allmendinger) in the last two years.
Road-course ringers aren’t as prevalent as there are only a few entries for this event. Alex Tagliani will drive the No. 22 Ford for Penske Racing, the same team that won the race last year with Allmendinger.
Other notable road-course specialists entered are Andy Lally in the No. 55 for Viva Motorsports, Carlos Contreras in the No. 44 for TriStar Motorsports and Kenny Habul in the No. 20 Sun Energy 1 Toyota for Joe Gibbs Racing (JGR).
Habul has driven the NNS race at Road America each of the last two years with his own team, picking up a best finish of 16th in his début in 2012.
His teammate Sam Hornish Jr. is making the most out of his opportunity at JGR this season. Hornish finished second last weekend at Michigan and has three top-fives on the season including a win at Iowa Speedway in May.
The Defiance, Ohio native’s worst finish on a road course since 2012 is fifth, which has come at Road America the last two years.
A few potential dark-horses this weekend are rookies Chase Elliott and Chris Buescher. Elliott has flourished on road courses in the ARCA and Camping World Truck Series. He won last year’s truck race at Mosport in a last-lap battle with fellow NNS rookie Ty Dillon. Elliott’s worst road-course finish in three ARCA starts was a fourth in the only series race held at Road America last season.
The driver who came out on top in the ARCA race there was Buescher. The 2012 ARCA champ wasn’t even in the hunt toward the end of the race. He was running fifth saving brakes before a late caution bunched up the field and wiped out Austin Dillon’s big lead.
After some hard-nosed racing, Andrew Ranger took the lead and battled with Elliott up front. In turn five, the two made contact on the last lap allowing Buescher to slip by for the top spot.
He never looked back and became the eighth driver in ARCA history to win on all types of tracks, including a paved short track, a dirt track, a superspeedway and a road course.
“The guys got to racing real hard up front and they made a mistake there in the closing laps and we did it,” Buescher said about the victory on the Speedy Digest show Wednesday night. “It was cool getting our first win on a road course with me with the Roulo Brothers.”
Buescher will look to find victory lane at Road America for the second straight year in his No. 60 Ford for Roush-Fenway Racing. He and Alex Tagliani are the only drivers to have won at the 4.048 mile road course, with Tagliani grabbing his only Championship Auto Racing Teams (CART) Series win there in 2004.
The state of Wisconsin has held 23 NNS races, four at Road America in Elkhart Lake and 19 at the Milwaukee Mile in West Allis.
Eau Claire, Wisconsin native Paul Menard won last weekend’s NNS race at the Michigan International Speedway, his first since his first win at the Milwaukee Mile in 2006.
The Gardner Denver 200 Fired Up at Johnsonville will air live on Saturday at 2:30 p.m. ET on ABC, with qualifying happening at 11:30 a.m. ET on ESPN2 earlier in the day.