All posts by David Morgan

By David Morgan, Associate Editor After a long six-month offseason, the NTT IndyCar Series is back in action for the 2024 campaign, beginning with Sunday’s running of the Firestone Grand Prix of St. Petersburg. As the home of the IndyCar season opener, the 1.8-mile, 14-turn street circuit along the waterfront in St. Petersburg, Florida, including the runway of the Albert Whitted Airport has provided an exciting venue to kick off the season and the 2024 edition should be another action-packed chapter. The on-track activity begins with practice on Friday afternoon atRead More

By David Morgan, Associate Editor Atlanta Motor Speedway is back. In the early 2000’s, the 1.5-mile quad-oval earned a reputation for delivering photo finishes with three of the closest finishes in NASCAR Cup Series coming over a span from 2000 to 2005. However, as the pavement aged, the track’s tendency for those types of finishes faded with it. Enter the 2022 season and a reconfiguration masterminded by Speedway Motorsports CEO Marcus Smith, which ramped up the banking in the turns and narrowed the racing surface to transform the track into aRead More

By David Morgan, Associate Editor After a drenching weekend in Daytona, the NASCAR Cup Series sticks around on the East Coast as it heads to Atlanta Motor Speedway for the second superspeedway race of the season – Sunday’s Ambetter Health 400. Atlanta’s aging racing surface, which had been in place since 1997, held together as long as possible, but the 260 laps around the 1.5-mile track in July 2021 were the last on that particular surface as the track underwent a repave and reconfiguration for the 2022 season. The 24-degree bankingRead More

By David Morgan, Associate Editor It had been a long wait for Hendrick Motorsports to return to Daytona 500 victory lane, but at the end of Monday’s rain-delayed running of the Great American Race, it was a 1-2 finish for one of the winningest organizations in NASCAR Cup Series history. Not since Dale Earnhardt Jr’s 2014 victory had a Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet captured a win in the season opening spectacle, but 26-year-old William Byron was the driver to get it done at the World Center of Racing – capturing his firstRead More

By David Morgan, Associate Editor DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. – Rain, rain, go away. The 66th running of the Daytona 500 will have to wait 24 hours after inclement weather that has had a stranglehold on the Daytona Beach are for the majority of the weekend will not be relenting anytime soon, forcing NASCAR to postpone the race to a 4:00 pm ET start on Monday. The Daytona 500 postponement joins the NASCAR Xfinity Series race that had already been moved from Saturday to Monday, setting up a doubleheader to kick offRead More

By David Morgan, Associate Editor DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. – Their names are synonymous with reaching the pinnacle of NASCAR Cup Series racing as champions, but all of them have one glaring hole in their resume – a win in the Daytona 500. Like so many that have come before them in search of capturing a victory in the biggest race in all of stock car racing, it has been a journey for each and every one of them, with near misses and heartbreak all along the way in the search forRead More

By David Morgan, Associate Editor DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. – As has become tradition in the NASCAR Truck Series season opener at Daytona, yellow was the primary color of the evening, with a record 12 cautions and an overtime finish that ended with a melee on the backstretch and an airborne truck. In the end, it was Nick Sanchez, the 22-year-old from Miami that was out front when it mattered the most, capturing his first career win in NASCAR’s third-tier series. “It was definitely a pretty wild race, obviously, what happened toRead More

By David Morgan, Associate Editor DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. – If the Toyota teams had any doubts about its new NASCAR Cup Series body for the 2024 season, those fears appear to have been put to rest over the past two days at Daytona International Speedway. After an abysmal showing in qualifying Wednesday night that Toyota officials described as “disturbing,” things turned around in a big way once its teams got into the draft on Thursday night, sweeping both of the Bluegreen Duels qualifying races and then claiming the top eight spotsRead More

By David Morgan, Associate Editor DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. –The start of the 2024 NASCAR Cup Series is officially here and with it comes the biggest race of the season – the Daytona 500. For 66 years, drivers have been making the pilgrimage to the Daytona high banks to win the sport’s most prestigious race and write themselves into the record book as Daytona 500 champion. Many have attempted it, but only a select few have been able to hoist the Harley J. Earl trophy in victory lane at the end ofRead More

By David Morgan, Associate Editor DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. – Throughout the majority of the first Duel race Thursday night at Daytona, it appeared everything was going the way of seven-time NASCAR Cup Series champion Jimmie Johnson in his bid to make it into the field for the 66th running of the Daytona 500. Barring something unfortunate, it seemed Johnson was on easy street, running near the front of the field in the early going and playing it safe near the back after a round of green flag pit stops, but withRead More