Team Menard was an auto racing team that competed in the Indianapolis 500 , CART , Indy Racing League , NASCAR Cup Series , and NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series . The team was owned by Menards founder, John Menard Jr. Founded in 1980 to compete in CART, from 1991 to 1996 they modified their own Buick V6 engines for racing. This combination won pole for the 500 with Scott Brayton in 1995 and 1996; Tony Stewart used this combination for the first part of his 1996-1997 IRL Championship. With more stringent regulations, the team continued to shine winning the 1999 championship with Greg Ray . However, with the influx of former CART teams to the IRL in the early 2000s, Team Menard struggled to compete for wins and the team merged in 2004 with Panther Racing , although their car continued to carry Menard's colors and be driven first by Mark Taylor , who was then replaced by Townsend Bell . In 2005, Menard's was an associate sponsor for another team and the former Menard No. 2 car driven by Tomáš Enge carried no identification to its Menard lineage. For 2006, the No. 2 car was dropped by Panther and all vestiges of the once dominant Team Menard lineage disappeared until the spring of 2008 when Menards became a primary sponsor on the No. 20 Vision Racing Dallara driven by Ed Carpenter in the IndyCar Series .
50-699: The Team Menard name has also been used to refer to their sponsoring of various drivers throughout motorsports, including Paul Menard , Ryan Blaney , Austin Cindric , Brandon Jones and Matt Crafton in NASCAR , Simon Pagenaud in IndyCar and Frank Kimmel in ARCA , while TeamMenard.com was a portal to information on these drivers and their sponsor. However, Team Menard is not the name of any of their race teams and none of those cars are owned by John Menard. The URL currently redirects to
100-520: A chase spot for most of the regular season but two consecutive 18th place finishes at Atlanta and Richmond (final race of the regular season) dropped him out of contention. Menard won the Nationwide race at Michigan for his first NNS win since 2006 in June 2014. He won after Joey Logano blew a tire with 4 laps to go. In the 2015 Sprint Unlimited at Daytona, Menard won the pole for the race by drawing. He led
150-505: A contract for the 2020 season, indicating that he plans to stay with Wood Brothers. On September 10, 2019, Menard announced his retirement from full-time racing after the 2019 season. On May 17, 2021, Truck Series team ThorSport Racing announced that Menard would return to NASCAR and compete in a fifth part-time truck for the team, the No. 66, in the series' new race at Circuit of the Americas . It
200-888: A daughter, on March 18, 2014. The family later welcomed another child, a son, in November 2017. Menard is a Roman Catholic and a fan of power metal music. Paul Menard doesn't have any social media and he chooses to stay away from it because "it is nothing good and there's so much more to life than looking at other people's lives behind a screen." ( key ) ( Bold – Pole position awarded by qualifying time. Italics – Pole position earned by points standings or practice time. * – Most laps led. ) ( key ) ( Bold – Pole position awarded by qualifying time. Italics – Pole position earned by points standings or practice time. * – Most laps led. ) Season still in progress Ineligible for series points Sports Car Club of America The Sports Car Club of America ( SCCA )
250-527: A few more top 20s. After that, he fell from the Top 12 in points. At Charlotte, he finished eighth after running in the top 10 all race long. Menard also posted another top 10 in the circuit's 19th race at Chicagoland Speedway . At Dover International Speedway in September he ended up with a 7th-place finish. The following week he started from the second position at Kansas. While most publications rated him around 30th in
300-592: A pole and victory at Road America in Elkhart Lake, Wisconsin , finishing ninth in points. The 2002 season saw Menard compete in ReMax Challenge (two poles, seventh in points), SCCA Trans-Am (one front-row start, four top-10 finishes), Grand Am Cup (victories at Fontana and Phoenix) and the NASCAR Southwest Tour. He capped his season in the latter series with a last-lap pass of veteran Ken Schrader for
350-451: A program that doesn't take over the entrants entire weekend. TNiA goes to well known tracks like Road America, VIR, even Sebring and Lime Rock. There are also smaller club tracks like CMP, AMP and Pitt Race. TNiA puts on about 150 events a year, totaling nearly 10,000 entrants each year, and as of 2024 has been running for 10 years. In recent years, the SCCA has expanded and re-organized some of
400-498: A regional or a national racing license. Both modified production cars (ranging from lightly modified cars with only extra safety equipment to heavily modified cars that retain only the basic shape of the original vehicle) and designed-from-scratch " formula " and " sports racer " cars can be used in Club Racing. Most of the participants in the Club Racing program are unpaid amateurs, but some go on to professional racing careers. The club
450-550: A week winning his heat race and placing around fourth in the feature. He decided to build his own late model and raced the car three to four times per week. In an interview with Motorsports Minute, Menard said he chose stock cars over Indy Cars because there was no feeder series for Indy Car in his native Wisconsin. In 2000, he began racing a limited schedule in the NASCAR Re/Max Challenge Series , finishing 13th in points. During his rookie season in 2001, he earned
500-521: Is Jerry Hansen , (former owner of Brainerd International Raceway ), with twenty-seven national championships. The fivve national classes of the formula group are Formula Atlantic (FA), Formula Continental (FC), Formula Enterprises 2 (FE2), Formula F (FF), and Formula Vee (FV). The SCCA dropped its amateur only policy in 1962 and began sanctioning professional racing. In 1963, the United States Road Racing Championship
550-533: Is a non-profit American automobile club and sanctioning body supporting Autocross , Rallycross , HPDE , Time Trial , Road Racing , and Hill Climbs in the United States . Formed in 1944, it runs many programs for both amateur and professional racers. The SCCA traces its roots to the Automobile Racing Club of America (not to be confused with the current stock car series of the same name ). ARCA
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#1733085523580600-603: Is also the source for race workers in all specialties. The annual national championship for Club Racing is called the SCCA National Championship Runoffs and has been held at Riverside International Raceway (1964, 1966, 1968), Daytona International Speedway (1965, 1967, 1969, 2015), Road Atlanta (1970–1993), Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course (1994–2005, 2016), Heartland Park Topeka (2006–2008), Road America (2009-2013, 2020), Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca (2014), and Indianapolis Motor Speedway (2017). In 2018,
650-437: Is branded as "Solo". Up to four cars at a time run on a course laid out with traffic cones on a large paved surface, such as a parking lot or airport runway, without interfering with one another. Competitions are held at the regional, divisional, and national levels. A national champion in each class is determined at the national championship (usually referred to as "Nationals") held in September. In 2009, Solo Nationals moved to
700-590: Is his first NASCAR start in his semi-retirement, and his first Truck Series start since 2007 when he competed in the spring Martinsville race in the No. 51 for Billy Ballew Motorsports . A native of Eau Claire, Wisconsin , Menard is the son of Menards founder John Menard Jr. He attended the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire , majoring in business. He currently resides in the Charlotte, North Carolina , area with his wife Jennifer. The couple had their first child,
750-675: The 1976 SCCA/USAC Formula 5000 Championship . Current SCCA-sanctioned series include Trans Am , the GT World Challenge America for GT and touring cars , the Global MX-5 Cup , and the F1600 Championship Series , F2000 Championship Series , and Atlantic Championship Series for open-wheel racing. SCCA Pro Racing has also sanctioned professional series for some amateur classes such as Spec Racer Ford Pro and Formula Enterprises Pro. SCCA Pro Racing also sanctioned
800-636: The Bud Pole Award at Talladega also had them running up front until getting caught up in a wreck. He got his first top-10 and top-five by placing fifth at the Kentucky Speedway . From there, the team went from 20th to the top-10 in points before finishing in sixth place overall, for the season. In 2006, driving the No. 15 car part-time for DEI, Menard scored his first top-10 finish in the NASCAR Nextel Cup Series by coming in seventh place at
850-565: The Golden Corral 500 at Atlanta Motor Speedway . Menard also won his first Busch Series race on June 24 at his home track of the Milwaukee Mile by holding off a late race charge and bump from Cup regular Kevin Harvick . Harvick eventually caused a multi-car wreck attempting to bump him out of the way. Menard finished off 2006 with a sixth-place finish in the standings, tying his best finish in
900-570: The Lincoln Airpark in Lincoln, Nebraska . Individual national-level events called "Championship Tours" and "Match Tours" are held throughout the racing season. The SCCA also holds national-level events in an alternate format called "ProSolo". In ProSolo, two cars compete at the same time on mirror-image courses with drag racing -style starts, complete with reaction and 60-foot times. Class winners and other qualifiers (based on time differential against
950-584: The NASCAR Xfinity Series in the past, including running part-time with Andy Petree Racing in 2003 and 2004 , full-time with DEI in 2005 and 2006 , and full-time with Roush Fenway Racing in 2010 . He has won 1 Cup Series race (the 2011 Brickyard 400 ), 3 Xfinity Series races, and 1 ARCA Menards Series race. He is the son of entrepreneur John Menard Jr. , the founder of the Menards chain of home improvement stores. Menard's racing career began at
1000-521: The Samsung 500 at Texas Motor Speedway , and a 15th-place finish in the Southern 500 . At the second Dover race, Menard started 10th and ran in the top 10 for most of the day, only to find his car tighten up near the end of the race and come home 19th. At the end of the 2009 NASCAR Sprint Cup Series, Menard was the only driver to not score a top 10 finish who ran all of the races. Menard ended up finishing 31st in
1050-596: The Trans-Am Series , driving the No. 3 Ford Mustang for 3GT Racing . Menard is the 2024 Trans-Am Series champion in the TA class. Menard competed full-time in the NASCAR Cup Series from 2007 to 2019 , driving for Dale Earnhardt Inc. , Yates Racing , Richard Petty Motorsports , Richard Childress Racing , and Wood Brothers Racing . He retired from full-time competition after the 2019 season. He has also competed in
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#17330855235801100-635: The United States Road Racing Championship series for Group 7 sports cars to recover races that had been taken by rival USAC Road Racing Championship . Bishop was also instrumental in founding the SCCA Trans-Am Series and the SCCA/ CASC Can-Am series. In 1969, tension and infighting over Pro Racing's autonomy caused Bishop to resign and help form the International Motor Sports Association . The autocross program
1150-546: The Volkswagen Jetta TDI Cup during its time. The SCCA is organized into six conferences, nine divisions and 115 regions, each organizing events in that area to make the events more accessible to people throughout the country. The number of divisions has increased since the SCCA's foundation. Northern Pacific and Southern Pacific started as a single Pacific Coast Division until dividing in 1966. Rocky Mountain Division
1200-466: The World Rally Championship . At the end of the 2004 season SCCA dropped ProRally and ClubRally. A new organization, Rally America , picked up both series starting in 2005. Road rallies are run on open, public roads. These are not races in the sense of speed, but of precision and navigation. The object is to drive on time, arriving at checkpoints with the proper amount of elapsed time from
1250-532: The 2010 preseason, he finished 23rd in points. In early 2010, Menard drove in the No. 90 Daytona Prototype for Spirit of Daytona Racing in the Rolex 24 hours at Daytona International Speedway. In 2010 he came close to winning the Nationwide Series race at Road America in his hometown of Wisconsin. Menard was running 7th when he was spun out on the final lap by road course specialist Tony Ave . It appeared that Menard
1300-662: The 2016 Sprint Unlimited, Menard finished in a career best 3rd place, after surviving several big ones. To start of 2017, Menard survived wrecks in the Daytona 500 and brought home a 5th place finish after a few cars ran out of gas. The next week at Atlanta, he finished 25th. Menard scored his 2nd top 10 of the year in the GEICO 500 at Talladega, finishing 9th. In the Coke Zero 400, Menard ran up front late and came home 3rd, barely behind Ricky Stenhouse Jr. and Clint Bowyer . Menard survived most of
1350-744: The Busch race at Indianapolis Raceway Park and eighth in the Truck race at the Kansas Speedway . In 2004, Menard began the NASCAR Busch Series season driving the No. 33 Chevrolet. Midway through the season, he moved to Dale Earnhardt, Inc. in the No. 11 Chevy. 10 races later, Menard won his first career pole position at Kansas Speedway and finished 23rd in points despite no top-tens and missing seven races. With Dan Stillman as crew chief beginning in 2005, they started out by leading 57 laps at Daytona . Winning
1400-494: The Menards home page. Menard also had a NASCAR team running the No. 13 car. Robby Gordon ran 17 races in 2000, with P.J. Jones running an additional race. ( key ) ( key ) (Results in bold indicate pole position; results in italics indicate fastest lap) Paul Menard John Paul Christian Menard (born August 21, 1980) is an American semi-retired professional stock car racing driver who currently competes full-time in
1450-475: The Phoenix victory. In 2003, Menard joined Andy Petree Racing to compete in NASCAR Cup Series , Busch , and Truck Series events while still competing in ARCA . In his first ARCA start at Salem Speedway , he qualified second and finished fourth. Later that year, he started on the pole at Winchester, Indiana, and then scored his first ARCA victory at Talladega Superspeedway . He also had top finishes of ninth in
1500-479: The Runoffs will go back west to Sonoma Raceway . In 2019, the race will be held at Virginia International Raceway a track where the race has never been held. It was announced on 15 June 2018 that the Runoffs would go back to Road America in the year 2020. On 25 May 2019, the weekend of the 2019 Indianapolis 500 , SCCA announced they will be returning to Indianapolis Motor Speedway in 2021. The current SCCA record holder
1550-472: The SCCA's use; the SCCA relied heavily on these venues during the early and mid-1950s during the transition from street racing to permanent circuits. By 1962, the SCCA was tasked with managing the U.S. World Sportscar Championship rounds at Daytona , Sebring , Bridgehampton and Watkins Glen . The club was also involved in the Formula 1 U.S. Grand Prix . SCCA Executive Director John Bishop helped to create
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1600-755: The age of eight when he won the Briggs Junior Karting Class Championship in his native Eau Claire, Wisconsin . He later won the Briggs Medium Class Champion before working his way up to higher level racing. He began ice racing at the age of 15 and won 10 International Ice Racing Association events in his career. He continues to compete in IIRA events in and around Wisconsin . In the summers he raced legends cars on short tracks in Wisconsin. He borrowed Bryan Reffner 's Late Model for
1650-504: The carnage in the Brickyard 400 but crashed in a late big one. On July 26, 2017, Menard was announced as the replacement for Ryan Blaney in the No. 21 Wood Brothers Racing Ford starting in 2018. On June 30, 2018, almost 10 years to the day, Menard got his second ever NASCAR Cup Series Pole Award at Chicagoland Speedway for the Overton's 400 . On July 12, 2019, Menard announced he had
1700-455: The center of controversy when Menard spun in the waning laps. It was believed that his accident was intentional, intended to assist his teammate Kevin Harvick who later won the race against Jeff Gordon who would have won if the caution did not come out. In 2012, Menard did not perform well. He crashed during the Aaron's 499 at Talladega and went winless for 2012. In 2013, he slightly improved when he
1750-516: The class winner) then compete in a handicapped elimination round called the "Challenge". Points are awarded in both class and Challenge competition, and an annual champion is crowned each September at the ProSolo Finale event in Lincoln, Nebraska. The SCCA sanctions "RallyCross" events, similar to autocross, but on a non-paved course. SCCA ProRally was a national performance rally series similar to
1800-508: The event for the SCCA. In 1951, the SCCA National Sports Car Championship was formed from existing marquee events around the nation, including Watkins Glen, Pebble Beach , and Elkhart Lake . Many early SCCA events were held on disused air force bases, organized with the help of Air Force General Curtis LeMay , a renowned enthusiast of sports car racing. LeMay loaned out facilities of Strategic Air Command bases for
1850-425: The final point standings. For the 2010 season, his No. 98 team moved over to Richard Petty Motorsports , due to its merger with Yates Racing . In his first start with RPM he finished 13th in the 2010 Daytona 500 . He then went on to have Top 20s at Las Vegas and Fontana . The following race at Atlanta Motor Speedway Menard posted his second highest career Cup series finish with a fifth place showing followed by
1900-602: The first 7 laps until he was involved in a big wreck, finishing 21st. The race was later won by Matt Kenseth . Menard later finished in the top 5 in Auto Club and in Talladega and got 5 top 10s and 22 top 15s. He made the Chase for the first time in his career mostly because he had only one DNF (a blown engine in Texas), grabbing the final spot by 17 points over Aric Almirola. He was eliminated in
1950-461: The first round, but with Matt Kenseth's two-race suspension, Menard passed him and finished in a career-best of 14th in the standings. Also in August 2015, Menard took the checkers at Road America , holding off Blake Koch and Ryan Blaney for his third Xfinity Series win. Aside from the 2011 Brickyard 400, the win was Menard's biggest of his career, as Menard had grown up a few miles from the track. In
2000-533: The higher-speed events under the Time Trials banner. These include Performance Driving Experience ("PDX"), Club Trials, Track Trials, and Hill Climb events. PDX events are non-competition HPDE -type events and consist of driver-education and car control classroom learning combined with on-track instruction. The Club Racing program is a road racing division where drivers race on either dedicated race tracks or on temporary street circuits. Competitors require either
2050-456: The previous checkpoint. Competitors do not know where the checkpoints are. Track Night in America is a track experience program sanctioned by the SCCA. The program is designed to be low barrier to entry, and accepting to all skill levels. Events happen all over the country, on week evenings usually between Tuesday and Thursday. SCCA planned week night track events to keep costs down, as well as build
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2100-458: The standings last year (2005). He scored 16 top-10 finishes and 7 top-5 finishes in the Busch Series . In 2007, Menard ran his first full-time Cup season. He failed to qualify for six races that season, but after DEI's merger with Ginn Racing , the owner's points were transferred from Sterling Marlin 's No. 14 car to Menard, who was then locked into the rest of the races. His best finish of 2007
2150-481: The top 10 many times, only to later have problems. For example, he crashed at Las Vegas Motor Speedway while running very well, and was involved in a wreck with only 40 laps to go, while running 7th. These issues lead to the team being in danger of falling out of the top 35 in points standings for much of the year. Menard's best finishes included two 13th-place finishes in the Aarons 499 at Talladega Superspeedway as well as
2200-500: The top 35 in owner's points for the entire season. At Talladega in the fall, Menard had the best run of his career leading laps and coming home with a strong second-place finish. He also was up front for a good part of the day in the other. He finished up the season with $ 3,559,130 in earnings and finished 26th in points standings, a career high. For the 2009 season, Menard moved over to the No. 98 Ford Fusion operated by Yates Racing . Menard showed limited improvement in 2009, running in
2250-613: Was briefly in Chase for the Sprint Cup contention. A blown engine early in the Coke Zero 400 caused him to be knocked out of the Chase with a few races left before the Chase began. In the season-ending Ford EcoBoost 400 , Menard's tire exploded upon stopping in his pit box; Menard stated, "About a lap later, they told me I was on fire. I lost my brakes, and the damned wheel blew right off." In 2014 Menard scored 13 top tens (a career high) and held
2300-586: Was formed. In 1966 the Canadian-American Challenge Cup (Can-Am) was created for Group 7 open-top sportscars. The Trans-Am Series for pony cars also began in 1966. Today, Trans-Am uses GT-1 class regulations, giving amateur drivers a chance to race professionally. A professional series for open-wheel racing cars was introduced in 1967 as the SCCA Grand Prix Championship . This series was then held under various names through to
2350-421: Was founded in 1933 by brothers Miles and Sam Collier , and dissolved in 1941 at the outbreak of World War II . The SCCA was formed in 1944 as an enthusiast group. The SCCA began sanctioning road racing in 1948 with the inaugural Watkins Glen Grand Prix . Cameron Argetsinger , an SCCA member and local enthusiast who would later become Director of Pro Racing and Executive Director of the SCCA, helped organize
2400-602: Was in the Citizens Bank 400 where he finished 12th. In the Busch Series, he picked up 5 top-5 finishes. After the fall race at Charlotte, in which Menard and Tony Stewart made contact on pit road, a feud between the drivers ensued; Stewart had driven for John Menard in the Indy Racing League 's early years. In 2008, Menard won his first Sprint Cup Series pole at Daytona International Speedway in early July and remained in
2450-515: Was passed by Jamie McMurray . With four to go, he regained the lead and held off Jeff Gordon , the winner of the inaugural Brickyard 400 in the final laps, having enough fuel to do so. He is the first member of the Menard family to win at Indianapolis, in any event, held at the track. He also joins Trevor Bayne , Regan Smith , David Ragan , and Marcos Ambrose as first-time winners in the 2011 season. In September 2011 at Richmond, Menard and RCR became
2500-462: Was to blame, but footage captured by a fan showed that Owen Kelly was at fault. Menard moved to Richard Childress Racing in 2011, driving the No. 27. On July 31, 2011, Menard won his first and only Sprint Cup race in his 167th start, in the Brickyard 400 at the prestigious Indianapolis Motor Speedway . He did so by making his last pit stop with 36 laps to go. He led late, but with 9 laps to go, he
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