Paul Menard’s third-place finish in today’s Kobalt 400 at Las Vegas Motor Speedway will no doubt earn him a tidy bit of prize money.
And there’s likely no doubt some of that moolah is going toward a steady supply of diapers.
Menard and his wife are awaiting the birth of their first child, which caused Richard Childress Racing to have Camping World Truck Series champion Matt Crafton on standby to take over the No. 27 Chevrolet in case its regular driver had to book it back to North Carolina.
Crafton finished 12th in yesterday’s Nationwide Series event but was not needed for today’s main event as Menard stayed in town. The Wisconsin native then drove like, well, a guy trying to get to the hospital for the birth of his kid, and earned his best result since a third-place finish at Kansas in October of 2012.
“The due date is Tuesday,” Menard said after the race. “My phone is back at the hauler so she might have called, but I told her to call. Matt Crafton is my backup and he really wants to get in the car, so I told Jennifer if it’s important, call Matt because he’s sure as hell going to tell me.
“I didn’t get the call, though, so I guess everything is good.”
And for this week at least, everything was good on track as well for Menard and the No. 27 team. The group knew it had a strong car in race trim during Thursday’s test session, but lacked the pace in qualifying trim and had to start in mid-pack.
Still, the team tinkered away.
“We did a few adjustments from yesterday, felt like we ended [final practice] good, did a few adjustments overnight, anticipating the track was going to be a little bit hotter, slicker, [and it] kind of played into our favor, and really had a solid car from the green flag,” he said.
“We tightened it up a little bit the first couple runs, then we freed it back up and kind of bounced back and forth. [We] felt like we had definitely a top 3 car and at times, the best car.
Menard even got a turn at the lead, managing to get past defending Sprint Cup champion Jimmie Johnson with around 70 laps to go and staying at P1 before pitting under green with 62 laps left.
“It was cool going up and passing Jimmie for the lead and passing him for a few laps, but [I’m] just proud of my guys,” he said. “We’re clicking really well, we got a couple new engineers and of course [crew chief] Slugger [Labbe]…So, a good group of guys. Our pit crew’s pit stops were awesome.”
As for whether he thought RCR could contend across the board at this point of the year, Menard said it was too early to tell.
“Our short track program, I feel like is where we need to focus on,” he said. “Intermediate track – I think Ryan [Newman] finished 7th and Austin [Dillon, finished 16th] had a good car all day. We just need to – we’ve got a good baseline for intermediate stuff, we’ve just got to work on our short track stuff more.”
