Justin Haley, Driver of the No. 51 Walmart Health & Wellness Ford Mustang Dark Horse
● Justin Haley, driver of the No. 51 Walmart Health & Wellness Ford Mustang for Rick Ware Racing (RWR), makes his third NASCAR Cup Series start at Dover (Del.) Motor Speedway on Sunday.
● Haley made his first start at the 1-mile, concrete oval on May 2, 2022. He led 19 laps en route to an 11th-place finish, his best Cup Series result at Dover to date. In that same race, RWR earned its best result at Dover, a 25th-place finish with driver Ryan Preece.
● Outside of the Cup Series, Haley owns one top-five finish and two top-10s over four NASCAR Xfinity starts. He also competed in two NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series races at Dover with a best finish of third in May 2018.
● On September 20, 2016, Haley arrived at Dover just 200 laps away from claiming his first NASCAR championship. Leading the ARCA Menards Series East standings by 29 points, he needed only to finish 25th or better in the season finale. Until that point, the then-17-year-old had put together an astonishingly consistent season, finishing no worse than ninth in 13 starts. After leading the first 42 laps, Haley captured a fourth-place finish to clinch the championship.
● #HaleYES! On Tuesday, Haley announced his candidacy for the NASCAR All-Star Race Fan Vote in conjunction with the May 19 event at North Wilkesboro (N.C.) Speedway. The 24-year-old racer from Winamac, Indiana, promises to rip down the wall, lower inflation and fight the establishment in the 200-lap race around the .625-mile oval. And the fans enable him to prevail, Haley promises that puppies will never age, every day will be 70 degrees and sunny, and the Jibbitz charms you put on your Crocs won’t ever fall off.
Kaz Grala, Driver of the No. 15 N29 Capital Partners Ford Mustang Dark Horse
● Boston native Kaz Grala returns to the No. 15 N29 Capital Partners Ford Mustang Dark Horse to make his first Cup Series start at Dover this weekend.
● In four Xfinity Series starts at Dover, Grala has two top-five finishes, both earned in 2018. Grala also has two Truck Series starts there with a best finish of second in 2017. His current RWR teammate Haley – and GMS Racing teammate at the time – finished eighth in the same 2017 Truck Series race.
● Grala has two ARCA Menards Series East races under his belt at Dover with a runner-up finish in the 2014 season finale.
Rick Ware Racing Notes
● NHRA Top Fuel driver Clay Millican and the Mission Foods NHRA Drag Racing Series look for continued improvement at this weekend’s NHRA Four-Wide Nationals at zMAX Dragway in Charlotte, North Carolina. In the previous round two weekends ago at Las Vegas Motor Speedway, the Parts Plus driver qualified fourth, then scored the victory in the first round of eliminations to advance to the semifinals.
● The Progressive American Flat Track (AFT) tour returns to action with RWR drivers Briar Bauman, Kody Kopp and Shayna Texter-Bauman taking on the half-mile dirt track at Texas Motor Speedway in Fort Worth. Following three rounds, Kopp owns two wins and is on his way to claiming a third-straight championship. Texter-Bauman returns to Texas looking to add to her win tally at the track. The 450 rider scored victories at Fort Worth in 2017 and 2019. In the Mission SuperTwins class, Bauman looks for his first podium finish of the year after matching his season’s best result of fourth during the last round in Senoia, Georgia.
● Rick Ware has been a motorsports mainstay for more than 40 years. It began at age six when the third-generation racer began his driving career and has since spanned four wheels and two wheels on both asphalt and dirt. Competing in the SCCA Trans Am Series and other road-racing divisions led Ware to NASCAR in the early 1980s, where he finished third in his NASCAR debut – the 1983 Warner W. Hodgdon 300 NASCAR Grand American race at Riverside (Calif.) International Raceway. More than a decade later, injuries would force Ware out of the driver seat and into fulltime team ownership. In 1995, Rick Ware Racing was formed, and with wife Lisa by his side, Ware has since built his eponymous organization into an entity that fields two fulltime entries in the NASCAR Cup Series while simultaneously campaigning successful teams in the Top Fuel class of the NHRA Mission Foods Drag Racing Series, the LMP3 class of the IMSA VP Racing SportsCar Challenge, Whelen Mazda MX-5 Cup, Progressive American Flat Track and FIM World Supercross Championship (WSX), where RWR won the 2022 SX2 championship with rider Shane McElrath.
Justin Haley, Driver Q&A
The No. 51 team performed really well at Talladega. Should we expect that to continue this weekend at Dover?
“I’ve always really enjoyed racing at Dover. I feel like I’ve done well there in the past and experience has been a huge help while we work to get things moving in the right direction. We’ve had really good speed and I think we’re showing how much things have changed at RWR, we just need a little bit of luck to get the finishes that match the effort.”
Why is it so tough to find success at Dover?
“I think everything has to go right. You aren’t going to come back from being two laps down and win. It takes a lot of commitment to driving harder into the corners than you may be used to, you’re going to have a pretty big drop in elevation coming off the corner, and if your car isn’t handling great, it’s going to be a really long race. You don’t have to be perfect from the start. The track is going to change a lot as it starts to take rubber, so everyone will have some work to do, but you’ve got to be close and I think we can get close in practice.”
Kaz Grala, Driver Q&A
You’re back in the No. 15 Ford Mustang Dark Horse for Dover. Are you looking forward to taking on the Monster Mile?
“Dover has always been a really good track for me. I’ve finished well there in ARCA, Trucks and Xfinity, and I feel like we’re on the right track with the No. 15 team to come out with a good finish. This is a track where you have to do every little thing right, so if we can keep putting the pieces together, it’ll be a good day for RWR.”
What is it about Dover that suits your driving style?
“It’s a tricky track, but you have to be very precise and I feel like that’s where I do my best, but you also need to be able to commit to moving around to make something work. You carry so much speed and, if you’re off by the smallest amount, that’s when things tend to go wrong.”
RWR PR
