Catchfence

2009 NSCS Casey Mears - (Photo Credit: Sam Greenwood/Getty Images for NASCAR)

* This Week’s Choctaw Casino Resort Chevrolet at Texas Motor Speedway … Casey Mears will pilot Chassis No. 248 from the Richard Childress Racing NASCAR Sprint Cup Series stable in this weekend’s Dickies 500. This chassis previously raced this year at both New Hampshire Motor Speedway events finishing 11th in June and 13th in Sept., Pocono Raceway in June finishing 14th, Richmond International Raceway finishing 30th in September and Auto Club Speedway finishing 11th in October. This Impala SS was upgraded prior to the ACS race last month.

* Texas Totals … In 11 Sprint Cup races at the 1.5-mile, Ft. Worth track, Mears has earned two top-five and four top-10 finishes, which includes career best back-to-back, fourth-place finishes in 2005. Through those 11 starts, the Bakersfield, Calif., native has achieved a 23.4 starting average and a respectable 15.8 average finish. He has led two races for 38 laps completing 3,643 of 3,684 (98.7 percent) of the laps contested.

* Mears Makes a Milestone … Mears will make his 250th-career NASCAR Sprint Cup Series start this weekend in Texas, a mark that started with a 21st-place start and 27th-place finish in the 2003 Daytona 500. Since then, the 31-year old driver has earned one victory (Coca Cola 600 at Charlotte, May 2007) 12 top-five and 46 top-10 finishes, along with three pole awards.

* Choctaw Comes on Board … For the first time, the No. 07 Chevrolet Impala will have Choctaw Casino Resort on board as the primary sponsor this weekend. Located in Durant, Okla., this is Choctaw’s first venture into NASCAR Sprint Cup Series racing. Chad Tigert, gear and transmission specialist on the No. 07 Chevrolet, is part Choctaw and was instrumental in introducing them to RCR.

* Vegas Stop En Route to Texas … Mears, team owner Childress and fellow RCR driver Kevin Harvick will take part in a ride-along event at Las Vegas Motor Speedway on Wednesday night for Shell-Pennzoil during the annual AAPEX SEMA show.

* RC on PARADE … Richard Childress was ranked fourth in the “Celebrities Who Give Big” article in the November 1, 2009 issue of Parade Magazine. Childress and his family donated $5 million in July 2008 to start the Childress Institute for Pediatric Trauma at Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center in Winston-Salem, N.C. Other celebrities included the late Paul Newman, Brad Pitt and Angelia Jolie, Mel Gibson, Oprah Winfrey, Oscar De La Hoya, Barbra Streisand and Leonardo DiCaprio.

* RCR at TMS … In 47 starts at TMS dating back to 1997, RCR has recorded one win, five top-five and 17 top-10 finishes with drivers Jeff Burton, Bowyer, Dale Earnhardt, Harvick and Jeff Green. Prior to TMS’s inaugural season, Childress, a former driver in NASCAR’s top division, earned a pair of top 10s while he was still behind the wheel at the now defunct Texas World Speedway in College Station.

* The Collective RCR … In 33 races this season, RCR’s four NASCAR Sprint Cup Series entries have notched 10 top-five and 32 top-10 finishes. The No. 29 team kicked off the 2009 season with a win in the Budweiser Shootout at Daytona. RCR-prepared cars have also completed 37,457 laps with four different drivers including Burton, Bowyer, Harvick and Mears. RCR teams have led 244 laps and all four teams have earned just shy of $19 million combined purse money in 2009.

* Come See Casey … Mears is signing autographs and meeting fans on Thursday, Nov. 5 from 6 to 7 p.m. at the Liquorama at 2400 Meacham Blvd. in Ft. Worth, Texas. He will also be heading up to the Choctaw Casino/Resort in Durant, Okla. on Friday, Nov. 6 from 7 to 9 p.m. to meet and greet fans.

* Tune in for the Win … ABC’s live television coverage of the Dickies 500 from Texas Motor Speedway will begin Sunday, Nov. 8 at 2:30 p.m. Eastern Standard Time. The event will also be broadcast live on the Performance Racing Network and Sirius XM Satellite Radio. Qualifying for the 34th points-paying race on the 36-race tour is scheduled to take the green flag on Friday, Nov. 6 at 4:30 p.m. EST and will be telecast live on SPEED. PRN and Sirius XM Satellite Radio will carry live qualifying updates

CASEY MEARS QUOTES

By the time the Sprint Cup Series got to Texas Motor Speedway in April, you had already run Las Vegas and Atlanta. Did you have a sense by then that your 1.5-mile track program was having some difficulties?

“Yeah, that was a struggle. The weird thing was we would have one run – at each track – that was really good. The speeds would be good, the car would handle great and you’d start to feel good about things. So, we’ve always had a light at the end of the tunnel, but we just didn’t capture it on a consistent basis. The biggest thing, I think, this year is that if you’re off, it isn’t by more than a 10th or two 10ths of a second and you’re running 25th or 30th place. You start thinking you need to cut up cars, rebuild and such because you’re running so bad. In reality, once we focused on what the issues really were, we just needed to start making small changes in our bodies, chassis, set ups and overall areas to get better. The last time we came to Texas, we knew we needed to figure something out. And, I can honestly say we’ve been doing that all year long and getting better.”

You did well at Lowe’s Motor Speedway last month after starting 42nd to finish seventh. Does that give you confidence coming into Texas?

“Absolutely, we ran well at Kansas (15th) and had a good car at California (11th) and did well in Charlotte. So, it’s make you excited to come back to places like Texas knowing you did well the past few races. We led a bunch of laps at Talladega last week, and that always helps. I’m looking forward to continuing this string of runs we’ve put together lately.”

What makes Texas such a unique race track?

“Even though Texas, Charlotte and Atlanta are all basically the same, the way you drive them all is totally different. One of the things that makes Texas different is the huge bump when you get into Turn 1. That really dictates the speed you have off the corner. Also, the banking really falls off in Turn 2 and if you’re running too close to the wall when the banking falls off, it can kind of suck you into the wall. And, if you’re tight off Turn 4, it just won’t turn through there and it ends up making it difficult. You see people spin off Turn 4 because they try and loosen their cars up too much.”

- Richard Childress Racing, Press Release