One for the Road … Max McLaughlin will get his first dose of road course racing on Friday afternoon at Watkins Glen International (WGI). The driver of the No. 1 Mohawk Northeast Toyota Camry has seven races under his belt in his first season of asphalt racing, and encounters another “first” for him: turning right. The 19-year old NASCAR K&N Pro Series East (NKNPSE) rookie turned laps during an SCDA event to get acclimated to WGI’s layout. He’ll look to give team owner Shige Hattori and HRE a second-straight win at “The Glen” after Brett Moffitt drove the No. 1 Camry to victory lane last season.
Summer Streakin’ … As the temperatures have heated up, so has “Mad Max”. McLaughlin is riding a streak of five-consecutive top-10 finishes dating back to a pair of third-place results at South Boston Speedway in May. On top of finishing up front, he has a string of five straight top-five qualifying efforts to boot. McLaughlin is aiming to continue those trends and take home the checkered flag to match his father, Mike, who won at WGI in the NASCAR Xfinity Series in 1997.
Season To Date … Through seven of 12 NKNPSE events, McLaughlin has positioned himself fifth in the series championship standings. He’s notched three top-five and five top-10 finishes, earned one pole award, and has led 109 laps.
Chassis Selection … Crew chief Robert Huffman and the Mohawk Northeast team have prepared the only road course car in the fleet for McLaughlin to race at WGI. Chassis No. 008 will make it’s first appearance since Moffitt drove it to victory last August. Ryan Truex also ran this chassis at WGI in 2017 when he won the pole and led 26 laps.
Tune In … FansChoice.TV’s live coverage of the Great Outdoors RV 100 will begin just prior to the green flag at 4:45 p.m. ET. NBC Sports Network will air tape delayed coverage on Wednesday, August 7th at 6:00 p.m. ET.
Max McLaughlin Quote:On getting his first taste of road course racing:“I’m ready to go. It’s going to be a lot of fun and obviously something completely different. I was able to get some laps a few weeks ago up there, so that definitely helped even though we ran the boot section. We struggled last week at Iowa, but we all know how good our road course car has been the last few years up there. Hopefully we’ll have the same speed in the Mohawk Northeast Camry this weekend as it’s had the last few races there and be in contention. There’s a lot of aggression in road course racing, so we’ll try to minimize our mistakes and find a good pace to where we can hopefully stay up front all race long.”
HRE PR
