{"id":22121,"date":"2019-09-12T18:29:14","date_gmt":"2019-09-12T22:29:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/tireball.com\/nascar\/?p=22121"},"modified":"2019-09-12T18:29:17","modified_gmt":"2019-09-12T22:29:17","slug":"menard-ready-to-perform-in-first-race-since-retirement-announcement","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tireball.com\/nascar\/2019\/09\/12\/menard-ready-to-perform-in-first-race-since-retirement-announcement\/","title":{"rendered":"Menard ready to perform in first race since retirement announcement"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/p>\n

As Paul Menard begins to wind down his full-time Cup Series career, he and the Menards\/Monster team have one main goal in mind \u2013 to deliver the Wood Brothers their 100th <\/sup>Cup victory.<\/p>\n

That campaign kicks off this weekend as Menard and the No. 21 Menards\/Monster Mustang take on Las Vegas Motor Speedway, which statistically is Menard\u2019s best track.<\/p>\n

In 14 career starts on the 1.5-mile Vegas oval, with a best finish of third in 2014 and four other top-10 finishes including two in his past three races there, both of which were aboard the Wood\u2019s No. 21 Ford.<\/p>\n

Menard and his Greg Erwin-led team are heading to Vegas having put together two strong performances in the past two weeks \u2013 a ninth-place finish in the Southern 500 at Darlington followed by a 10th<\/sup>-place run at Indianapolis Motor Speedway, where Menard set the pace in final practice and started the Brickyard 400 from the outside pole.<\/p>\n

Eddie Wood said he has a good feeling about his race team as the Cup series heads into the final 10 races of 2019.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe past couple of weeks we\u2019ve seen things start to come together,\u201d Wood said. \u201cThe car\u2019s had a lot of speed, and the team is getting some momentum going.\u201d<\/p>\n

Wood said there will be some unknowns this weekend as a lot has changed in the Cup series since the first Vegas race of 2019 back in early March.<\/p>\n

\u201cEverybody knows a lot more about what the cars want with the new handling package,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd it\u2019s going to be a lot hotter this weekend than it was in March, so that will throw another element into it.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019ll be harder on the drivers, but Paul handles the heat really well.\u201d<\/p>\n

Qualifying for the South Point 400 is set for Saturday at 1:05 p.m. (4:05 Eastern Time), and the race is scheduled to get the green flag on Sunday just after 4 p.m. (7 p.m. Eastern Time) with TV coverage on NBCSN.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As Paul Menard begins to wind down his full-time Cup Series career, he and the Menards\/Monster team have one main goal in mind \u2013 to deliver the Wood Brothers their 100th Cup victory. That campaign kicks off this weekend as Menard and the No. 21 Menards\/Monster Mustang take on Las Vegas Motor Speedway, which statistically is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":22120,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20,788],"tags":[789,378,708,503],"coauthors":[675],"class_list":{"0":"post-22121","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-cup-series","8":"category-news","9":"tag-front","10":"tag-las-vegas-motor-speedway","11":"tag-nascar","12":"tag-paul-menard"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tireball.com\/nascar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22121","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tireball.com\/nascar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tireball.com\/nascar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tireball.com\/nascar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tireball.com\/nascar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22121"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/tireball.com\/nascar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22121\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tireball.com\/nascar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22120"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tireball.com\/nascar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22121"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tireball.com\/nascar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22121"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tireball.com\/nascar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22121"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tireball.com\/nascar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=22121"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}