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Riley Herbst has seven top-five finishes in 13 NASCAR K&N Pro Series West races.

“I just wanted to try something different,” Herbst said. “I wanted to try to make a career out of stock car racing. They were very surprised, but they are very supportive.”

Herbst is third in the NASCAR K&N Pro Series West rookie standings with one race to go. The season ends at All-American Speedway in Roseville, California, the home track for his team, Bill McAnally Racing. Herbst put together a string of top-five finishes late in the season. He snapped that streak with a 19th-place finish at Meridian Speedway in Idaho in September. But he said his team showed great improvement in the second half of the season.

“I feel like in the beginning of the year we were a little bit behind the goals,” Herbst said. “From Iowa on, we started to click. I set my goals at top fives and top threes each and every week. We were starting to hit it. We just got some bad luck in Meridian. But I feel like we can end on a good note in Roseville.”

Herbst finished in the top five in more than half of the NASCAR K&N Pro Series West races. He has seven top fives in 13 races. He posted a couple of podium finishes at Douglas County Speedway in Oregon and Evergreen Speedway in Washington.

“That was a pretty hard race,” Herbst said about the race at Douglas County where he finished third. “It reminded me a little like Meridian. We could never catch a good caution that would put us on the inside. When we were in third with three to go, we were really hoping for a caution to come up with a win there.”

Riley Herbst is third in the NASCAR K&N Pro Series West rookies standings after 13 races.

“We just had a good car,” Herbst said. “I feel like BMR was the class of the field that day. I was just happy to get a 1-2-3 finish.”

Herbst continued his streak of top fives during the doubleheader weekend at the Utah Motorsports Campus road course event in September. He was fourth in the first race and fifth in the second race.

“I am very comfortable on the road courses,” Herbst said. “I knew that if we stayed on the track, we would be right up there in contention. We were leading laps in the second race. We just needed the race to be a little bit shorter. I think we would have been able to come out of there with a win.”

The NASCAR K&N Pro Series West race at Meridian Speedway proved challenging for Herbst. He was collected in a couple of crashes and was knocked out of contention early in the race. There were 13 cautions for 92 laps in the NAPA Auto Parts/Idaho 208.

“We were running strong. We were top of the board in practice,” Herbst said about the race at Meridan. “We were just riding in third and somebody took us out in the first 30 laps. We worked our way all the way back up into the top five and then we got wrecked again which put us out of the race.

Riley Herbst is sixth in the NASCAR K&N Pro Series West standings after 13 races.

With one race remaining in the K&N Pro Series West schedule, Herbst is sixth in the series standings. He is looking to end the season on a high note.

“We were just hitting on all cylinders, not all cylinders, but we were doing good and we were just hitting our stride,” Herbst said. “We had a little hiccup in Meridian. I felt like we were going to add to our stride a little bit longer.

“I wish we were higher than that, but we had a couple of instances, like in Meridian. Orange Show really killed us. We only got like five laps in at Orange Show. That really hurt us in points.”

On the verge of completing his first season in the NASCAR K&N Pro Series West, Herbst said he is grateful for the opportunities K&N has provided.

“It’s huge to have K&N on board to support our young NASCAR careers,” Herbst said. “Without them, I don’t think this series would be around. They are substantial to everything. They let us race, which is the most important part of it. They sponsor our series to let us go out and do what we love.”

The Tekno Autosport 5.0 L Holden coming down through the Esses

This past weekend was the Bathurst 1000, which is the Indy 500 and Daytona 500 combined for Australia. They call it “The Great Race.” K&N supported Tekno Autosports team owner Jonathan Webb described it this way "It's something, when you're involved with motorsport, the go-karts, the Formula Ford, or whatever you've done in your career to get to where we are, this is the one you want to win here in Australia."

The 1000 has been held on the Mount Panorama Circuit since 1963, a road which was funded and built during the Great Depression as a tourist attraction, but always intended to be a race track. So on non-race days the road is a scenic highway. But every year in early October access is blocked, the teams cram into the pits, and spectators flock to the hillside seeking the best vantage point.

Tekno Autosport’s sponsor is the Australian maker of chocolate-filled licorice

The race itself was a thriller, and not just for those at the track. Television ratings for the event set records, not just for motorsports, but for all types of sporting events across the country.

With collisions and time penalties taking some of the top cars out of contention, the race came down to two cars. In front was the Holden of Tekno Autosports driven by Will Davison. Right behind him was Shane Van Gisbergen, who was one of Webb’s Tekno Autosports co-drivers when they won the 12 Hours at Bathurst in a McLaren earlier this year. Webb knew just how good Van Gisbergen was, and how little fuel Davison had left. In fact, Webb hid behind the garages, away from the TV and scoring monitors for the last few laps as he couldn’t stand the suspense.

The one place drivers want to be at the end of a race. Davison and Webb enjoy the spoils of victory

“Unbelievable – we were so close in '14,” Webb said, knowing the fuel situation. “I was out the back just playing with my kid trying to ignore what was going on – it’s unbelievable, it’s just amazing.”

To make victory that much sweeter for K&N, two of its long-time partners in Australia, Harrop, an automotive engineering firm, and XForce, a performance exhaust manufacturer were also sponsors of the winning car.

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Kyle Benjamin won the NASCAR K&N Pro Series East race at Dover International Speedway

Benjamin won his third K&N Pro Series East race of the season. He won at Iowa Speedway, the highest finishing driver from the East Series, and at Greenville Pickens Speedway in South Carolina. He won three of the final five races of the K&N Pro Series East season.

“Really cool to get a win at Dover,” Benjamin said. “It’s a place you always want to win at, especially, this is probably the coolest track on the K&N schedule. Real neat to win here.”

Rain washed out qualifying, putting Justin Haley, the leader in the K&N Pro Series East standings entering the Dover 125, on the pole. He led the first 42 laps of the race.

Kyle Benjamin celebrates after winning the NASCAR K&N Pro Series East race in Dover, Delaware

Benjamin, who started on the front row with Haley, passed for the lead on lap 43. Benjamin stayed out front for the remainder of the race, including the final restart on lap 123. A crash brought out the sixth caution flag of the race and extended it an extra lap.

“It’s nerve-racking because you don’t know what they’re planning to do behind you,” Benjamin said. “They could jack you up. I’ve had a restart at one of these places where I got wrecked at the start-finish line. I didn’t even get going. That was in the back of my mind too. Anything can happen, so you’re always looking out for it.”

Justin Haley leads the field in the NASCAR K&N Pro Series East race at Dover International Speedway

“We’ve had a great year,” Benjamin said. “It’s had its ups and downs. We had a lot of good races and a lot of bad races on the races that were good races. I wouldn’t change any of it at this point. We’ve had a great season, a lot of consistent cars.”

Benjamin and his team used the same car throughout the K&N Pro Series East season. He said after the race that the team will probably continue to use the car in the 2017 K&N Pro Series East season.

Kyle Benjamin does a burn out after winning the NASCAR K&N Pro Series East race at Dover Speedway

Jesse Little was second in the race at Dover, followed by Dominique Van Wieringen in third. Haley was fourth and rookie Ruben Garcia came in fifth place. It was Van Wieringen’s third top-five finish in a row.

Haley, Benjamin and other top drivers in the K&N Pro Series East will be celebrated at the NASCAR Night of Champions Touring Awards ceremony in Charlotte, N.C., on Dec. 10.

Julia Landauer was runner-up in the NASCAR K&N Pro Series West race at Meridian Speedway in Idaho.

Landauer, a driver for Bill McAnally Racing and the only women in the NASCAR Next program, posted her best result of her rookie season at Meridian Speedway. She benefited from some late crashes in the race, but was able to maneuver around the mayhem and work her way to second place.

The significance of having Behar finish behind her did not escape Landauer. She and Behar are in a select group of women drivers in the NASCAR K&N Pro Series West. Landauer is the only woman driver in the NASCAR Next program. Behar is a NASCAR Next alum, one of the few women to be selected for that program.

“It’s really showing. You’re seeing more women in the developmental series who are being supported by their parents – that’s the big thing right? – your parents let you do it or not,” Landauer said. “Seeing more women do that, it’s just so cool. I don’t race the women any differently. My job and my goal is to beat everybody. It doesn’t matter. But it is just really, it’s encouraging to see that women are being competitive.”

Landauer is in an even more select group than NASCAR women drivers. She has a degree from Stanford in science technology and put her NASCAR career on hold until she finished college. The 24-year-old is back in a race car and resuming her climb up the NASCAR ladder.

“My story is a little different,” Landauer said. “I’m from New York City. I don’t come from a racing family. But my parents always liked racing. They really wanted to find an activity that their two girls could compete against boys in. They got us started in go-karts. I fell in love with it right away. It told them, ‘Whether or not you like it I really want to be a race car driver when I grow up.’”

She switched from go-karts to stock cars and oval racing when she was 16. After she graduated from Stanford, she won the Limited Late Models championship at Motor Mile Speedway in Virginia, the first woman to accomplish that feat, and started racing in the K&N Pro Series West.

“Regardless of how you view women racers, it’s a question of who’s the best,” Landauer said. “There are so few of us. Now we can safely say we are as good if not better than the competition out there.”

Julia Landauer is one of the NASCAR Next drivers and currently fifth in the standings.

“I really didn’t know what to expect going into K&N,” Landauer said. “It’s such a big jump up from what I raced last year. The number of races, the races are three times the distance. It’s a heavier car, it’s a faster car. The competition was definitely more stout than last year. I didn’t quite know what to expect. I wanted to finish in the top 10 as much as I can, get a few podiums and I really wanted to get a win. I definitely thought I was capable of getting top five.

“For the season we’ve been back and forth. I think we’re right on the cusp of doing what we set out to do this year. Obviously, I really want to win. I am going to do everything in my power come Roseville to get that last goal checked off.”

The K&N Pro Series West season ends at All-American Speedway in Roseville on Oct. 15. Meridian Speedway is similar to All-American Speedway in that they are both short track ovals with not a lot of space to pass. Landauer said she expects her team to be just as strong in Roseville as it was at Meridian.

“My crew chief and I, we’ve been communicating a lot all year, trying to figure out what we really need to be the best, what he needs to be the best, what I need,” Landauer said. “We just went in strong, had a good practice. All season, we have been struggling a little bit with qualifying. At Meridian, I qualified eighth.

“We just started picking off drivers one-by-one. I got into a real comfortable position in third or fourth. It was really great to better our best finish. It’s always really cool to tie for history.”

One of the things Landauer says she has been working on this season is her aggressiveness on the race track. At the beginning of the year, she said she played it safe. But as the season wore on, she learned how to work her way through the field and put herself in position to win races.

“Something I have been working on all season is aggression,” Landauer said. “In the beginning of the season I think I was probably not aggressive enough. Finding out how to really muscle my way to the front, I felt like at Roseburg, that was a really good showing of being an aggressive driver. Our road course at Utah was really good, showed really strong racing to get fourth.”

Landauer has taken advantage of being a NASCAR Next driver. She has met with some people in NASCAR who have been helpful in furthering her career. She said she is grateful for making those connections.

Julia Landauer is second in the NASCAR K&N Pro Series Rookie of the Year standings.

Having K&N as a sponsor in the Pro Series West has also been helpful. Landauer said being able to race at tracks on the same weekends as Sprint Cup and Xfinity Series races puts her team and other K&N Pro Series West teams and drivers in contact with NASCAR supporters.

“K&N has been with the series for a long time now,” Landauer said. “The fact that we got such a dependable, established program supporting our series is really cool. To be able to have such an admirable company really invest in the grassroots level of racing and us younger racers who really want to put on a good show for a good series, it really helps provide that. They really put on a good show for a development series. It helps us get a sense of what it’s like to go racing big time. The fact they have faith in us to make it worth their while, it says a lot. It seems like a really great relationship.”