How to watch NASCAR Sunday in Texas
Kyle Busch is a two-time winner of the O’Reilly Auto Parts 500, and he’ll be on the pole on Sunday as NASCAR shifts its 2018 season to Fort Worth, Texas.
Busch, who won in Texas in 2013 and 2016, had the top qualifying speed of 197.368 mph on Friday, and he’ll be joined at the front of the pack by his Stewart-Haas Racing teammates Kevin Harvick and Clint Bowyer, who will start second and third, respectively on Sunday.
Harvick and Bowyer combined to win four of the last five races, with Bowyer winning in Martinsville and Harvick winning three straight, including two checkered flags on the west coast swing.
“It is neat to have our Fords at Stewart-Haas hauling the mail like this,” Busch said Friday. “When you attack the track and stand on the gas hard it is a great feeling to know it is going to stick. Stewart-Haas Racing has been on fire recently.”
Mike Joy will call play-by-play of the race on Fox Sports 1, joined by analysts Darrell Waltrip, Jeff Gordon and Larry McReynolds. Online streaming is available through Fox Sports Go.
O’Reilly Auto Parts 500 info
Location: Texas Motor Speedway, Fort Worth, TX
Race coverage: 2 p.m. ET
Green flag: 2:10 p.m.
TV: FS1
Radio: SiriusXM channel 90, and Performance Racing Network
Online streaming: Fox Sports Go
NASCAR news & notes
Harvick is going for his third consecutive victory on a 1.5-mile track with Sunday’s race at Fort Worth:
“I think once the playoffs started last year you really saw where the cars were and the increase in performance, especially on the 1.5 mile race tracks,” Harvick said. “It just took us some time. When you see what Stewart-Haas Racing has done with Ford, we still haven’t reached the potential of where we can be, in my opinion. I think that is the biggest reason we made the switch, the potential of the resources and things that come with the partnership with Ford.”
The now-retired Dale Earnhardt Jr. is still bothered by comments from Harvick in 2017 that Earnhardt contributed to the declining popularity of NASCAR in recent years:
“The thing that Harvick said about me, that stuff will stick, I think, for a really long time,” Earnhardt said. “That bothered me pretty bad.”