FANTASY NASCAR Racin

BOB LEAVINE - ?/?/? -
Founded as Leavine Fenton Racing by Bob Leavine and Lance Fenton in early 2011, the team planned to compete on a limited basis in the Cup Series and Camping World Truck Series, with David Starr competing in the former for six events and Fenton driving in the latter for three. Based in Tyler, Texas but with its race shop in Concord, North Carolina, the team made its debut in the Cup Series at Texas Motor Speedway in April of that year; Starr qualified for the race, his first in Cup competition, and finished 38th following an accident. Following competing in the Sprint Showdown and Coca-Cola 600 at Charlotte Motor Speedway, the team announced that Fenton's share in the team had been acquired by Leavine and his wife, Sharon; the team was renamed as Leavine Family Racing. After failing to qualify at Kentucky Speedway, the team next raced at Bristol Motor Speedway in August, scoring its best finish and Starr's career best in the series, 27th; LFR and Starr would fail to qualify for events at Chicagoland Speedway, Kansas Speedway and in the fall at Texas Motor Speedway over the remainder of the year, only making one further race, at Atlanta Motor Speedway where they posted a 29th-place finish. The organization race shop was badly damaged by fire in May of 2011. Four race cars were destroyed in the fire at the LFR shop along with a 3,000 square-foot room full of parts and equipment. No one was injured in the blaze, and the team’s primary cars were located in another part of the race shop, allowing McDowell to continue to race. The team worked out of an unoccupied shop

alarm monitoring companies. Monitronics will outfit the refurbished Leavine facility with a new, state-of-the-art security and fire monitoring system. In addition, Monitronics was an associate sponsor on LFR driver Michael McDowell’s #95 Ford Fusion in races at Chicago, Charlotte and Texas later that year. Starr left Leavine Family Racing following the 2011 season; for 2012, Leavine hired Scott Speed to drive the team's #95 Fords in the Sprint Cup Series, with Wally Rogers as crew chief; a 15-race schedule in NASCAR's premier series was planned for the season. The team qualified for races with Speed at Richmond International Raceway and Charlotte

Motor Speedway with Speed, starting and parking, before finishing 25th at Sonoma Raceway. In August 2012 LFR announced that it had re-signed Speed for the 2013 Sprint Cup Series season, intending to run 28 events on the 36 race schedule. The team had its best finish at the 2013 Aaron's 499 with a ninth-place finish, however they started and parked most other events. Speed left the team after the Atlanta race, citing his frustration with the team's starting and parking and hinting that the plan had been to run more full races. He was replaced on an interim basis by Reed Sorenson. In October 2013, Leavine Family Racing announced that Michael McDowell would drive the team's #95 Ford Fusion Cup Series entry in 2014. They ran 20 of the 36 races. On January 28, 2014,

Leavine announced that KLOVE, Thrivent Financial, and several other sponsors would sponsor all 20 scheduled races in the 2014 Sprint Cup season. The sponsorship meant the team would be able to run full races, and enabled it to form an alliance with Team Penske. At the 2014 Coke Zero 400, McDowell and Leavine Family Racing finished their career-best with a 7th-place finish in the rain-shortened event. The team's performance was much improved with the Penske alliance, and additional sponsorship allowed the team to run seven of the final eight events, and 22 in total. The team

finished 43rd in owners points. McDowell returned in 2015, as did K-LOVE and Thrivent. The team once again planned to run at least 20 races, and maintained its Penske alliance. McDowell was able to make the Daytona 500, a race he had failed to qualify for in 2014. The team posted four DNQs in 2015, three of which were due to rain-outs and an increase in full-time entries. In early summer, the team made the news in unfortunate fashion after part of their shop burned down. This forced them to take refuge on the Team Penske campus, inside their former sports car shop, until their own facility was repaired enough for them to return. The team ultimately slipped slightly to 44th in

owner points, but did finish ahead of the #62, a team that attempted all 36 races. In January 2016, longtime NASCAR team owner Joe Falk became an investor in LFR and the team switched to Chevrolet. Falk brought a charter granted to him, to the #95 team, guaranteeing the 95 its first full season of racing. The team formed an alliance with Richard Childress Racing. The #95 attempted all 36 races, with McDowell returning to run 31 events with sponsorship from K-Love and Thrivent, and Ty Dillon driving in seven races. In a few races both drivers were entered driving a team car #59. McDowell posted two tenth place finishes in 2016 and ten top 20 results.

McDowell returned to LFR in 2017 with Thrivent Financial as the sponsor. Thrivent Financial is a Christian based financial advisory group. You can see the logo contains both a heart and a cross. He had a solid season posting 15 finishes inside the Top 20. He also gave the team their best ever finish (and first Top 5), by placing fourth in the Coke 400 at Daytona. As 2018 dawns McDowell is leaving the team to go drive for Front Row Motorsports; LFR was left to find someone to fill that seat. They came up with Kasey Kahne. LFR is a single car team, and counts on some

support from Hendrick Motorsports to try and be competitive. They got their first Top 5 finish in 2017 with McDowell driving. 2018 saw Kahne get their second top five result at Daytona in July. Kahne pretty much kept the car in the middle of the pack. Posting 18 finishes inside the top 25 in his 25 starts. Unfortunately, Kahne had health issues and had to step out of the car. Ever since his win at Indianapolis in 2017, he had been having issues with getting severely dehydrated during the Cup events. It had progressed to the points he was having to visit the infield care center after the race to get I V fluids. His doctor advised him not to drive until a cause could be found. And after many weeks of searching the doctors were still unable to find the cause. Kahne had announced earlier in the

season he was going to retire from full time racing; and this ended up causing that to happen sooner. Kahne's last race was the Southern 500 at Darlington where he finished 24th. Regan Smith would step in and finish out the final eleven races of the season for LFR. He posted a season best of 10th at Talladega; and had four finishes inside the top 20. For 2019 LFR is making wholesale changes. With Furniture Row closing down; Joe Gibbs Racing lost it's satellite team. LFR switched from racing Chevrolets to Toyotas (the same make as Joe Gibbs Racing). JGR brought in LFR under it's wing and gave them technical support. Also Matt DiBenedetto was hired to drive the #32 car for 2019. LFR made a nice improvement after they put Matt DiBenedetto behind the wheel. It took the first half of the season for everything to gel together. But from race #18 (Daytona) all through the end of the season;

DiBenedetto only posted one finish worse than 20th. During that span he almost won Bristol. Ryan Newman made contact with DiBenedetto while Matt was leading late in the race. It messed up the handle on the car and Denny Hamlin was able to bypass DiBenedetto with only a hand full of laps to go to take the win. During the late season run Matt was able to have two Top 5; six Top 10 and 11 Top 15 finishes. With about two months to go in the season it was announced that DiBenedetto was going to be let go at the end of the season. This move was to make room for Christopher Bell who would be moving up from the Xfinity series to the Cup Series. LFR gets technical assistance from

Joe Gibbs Racing and Bell drove for Joe Gibbs in the Xfinity series. The combination of LFR getting assistance from Gibbs, and the need for Bell to have a Cup ride proved to be the ticket to move Bell up. DiBenedetto worked hard to try and get LFR it's first win; but did manage to show he had a lot of talent. Near the end of the season Paul Menard had announced that he would retire from full time racing at the end of the season. Menard lobbied the Wood Brother to put DiBenedetto into the #21 car that he was departing; and that's what happened. So in 2020 Matt will drive the #21 for Wood Brothers racing. Leavine Family Racing continued it's partner ship with Joe Gibbs Racing in 2020 and had Christopher Bell as their driver. Bell posted a

best finish of third at Texas in the Fall and added a fourth place finish at Pocono in the Spring. This was his only two Top 5 finishes. For the season he had seven Top 10 results. Mid-way through the season JGR announced they would release Erik Jones at the end of the year and put Bell into their #20 Cup car. This left Leavine without a driver for 2021; although there was still plenty of time to acquire a driver and several good drivers like Clint Bowyer looking for a ride. However Leavine took another route and sold his Charter to Spire Motorsports and announced that at the end of 2020 he was getting out of NASCAR racing. He had been fielding the car out his own pocket for many races and stated "he wasn't going to put his business