2016 Quaker State 400
| Race details | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Race 18 of 36 in the 2016 NASCAR Sprint Cup Series | |||
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| Date | July 9, 2016 | ||
| Location | Kentucky Speedway in Sparta, Kentucky | ||
| Course | Permanent racing facility 1.5 mi (2.4 km) |
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| Distance | 267 laps, 400.5 mi (640.8 km) | ||
| Average speed | 128.580 mph (206.929 km/h) | ||
| Pole position | |||
| Driver | Stewart-Haas Racing | ||
| Time | No time trials; set by owners' points | ||
| Most laps led | |||
| Driver | Kevin Harvick | Stewart-Haas Racing | |
| Laps | 128 | ||
| Winner | |||
| No. 2 | Brad Keselowski | Team Penske | |
| Television in the United States | |||
| Network | NBCSN | ||
| Announcers | Rick Allen, Jeff Burton, Steve Letarte | ||
| Nielsen Ratings | 1.8/3 (Overnight) 1.9/3 (Final) 3.2 million viewers |
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| Radio in the United States | |||
| Radio | PRN | ||
| Booth Announcers | Doug Rice, Mark Garrow and Wendy Venturini | ||
| Turn Announcers | Rob Albright (1 & 2) and Pat Patterson (3 & 4) | ||
The 2016 Quaker State 400 presented by Advance Auto Parts was a NASCAR Sprint Cup Series stock car race held on July 9, 2016 at Kentucky Speedway in Sparta, Kentucky. Contested over 267 laps on the 1.5-mile (2.4 km) speedway, it was the 18th race of the 2016 NASCAR Sprint Cup Series.
The race had 16 lead changes among 9 different drivers and eleven cautions for 53 laps.
The sixth running of the Quaker State 400 was held in Sparta, Kentucky at Kentucky Speedway on July 9, 2016. The track is a 1.5-mile (2.4 km) tri-oval speedway owned by Speedway Motorsports, Inc.. Kentucky Speedway, which has also hosted the ARCA Racing Series, NASCAR Camping World Truck Series, NASCAR Xfinity Series, and the Indy Racing League, has a grandstand seating capacity of 107,000.
During Coca-Cola 600 race weekend, NASCAR announced they would test changes to the aero package at Michigan and Kentucky. In addition to the aero changes used in the 2016 NASCAR Sprint All-Star Race, there will be a reduction in spoiler size from 3.5 inches (8.9 cm) to 2.5 inches (6.4 cm), a two-inch (5.1 cm) reduction of the splitter and resizing the deck fin.
NASCAR Executive Vice-President and Chief Racing Development Officer Steve O'Donnell said that NASCAR looks "at it as a never-ending journey; if we can improve we're going to do that. We wanted to go the direction of low downforce, see how that worked, not kind of go all the way in and hope that we are directionally right. And we are seeing that play out. We've seen some great racing at the beginning of the year. But we also knew that we had some more levers that we could pull if the direction kind of proved out, so we've tried some of those things. We've tested it and what we've also wanted to do is lower some of the corner speeds to allow for even more passing. That was one of the areas where we've seen minimal change, but there are some levers we can pull to really drive that down."
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