All posts by Motorsports Tribune

By Reid Spencer, NASCAR Wire Service KANSAS CITY, Kan. – Kyle Busch didn’t do a celebratory burnout when he won Friday night’s Toyota Tundra 250 at Kansas Speedway. He didn’t do his customary bow after notching his 47th victory in the NASCAR Camping World Truck Series. Heartbreak for Ben Rhodes, who was leading by more than a second when his engine expired with eight laps left, provided the stroke of serendipity that launched Busch into Victory Lane. And Busch knew it. “That’s one of the worst ones to swallow rightRead More

By Reid Spencer, NASCAR Wire Service KANSAS CITY, Kan. – Improving in each round of knockout qualifying in relation to other cars, Ryan Blaney won the pole for Saturday night’s Go Bowling 400 at Kansas Speedway (7:30 p.m. ET on FS1), claiming his first career pole by a mere .009 seconds over Joey Logano. During a Friday qualifying session in which 11 cars failed to make it to the grid because of inspection issues, Blaney toured the 1.5-mile speedway in 28.481 seconds (189.600 mph) in the final round to earnRead More

By INDYCAR Team Penske reached a milestone at the INDYCAR Grand Prix today, earning its 250th pole position in Indy car history as well as extending its Verizon P1 Award domination on the Indianapolis Motor Speedway road course and for the 2017 Verizon IndyCar Series season. Will Power, driving the No. 12 Verizon Team Penske Chevrolet, broke his own track record with a lap of 1 minute, 7.7044 seconds (129.687 mph) in the Firestone Fast Six, the last of three knockout qualifying rounds to determine the Verizon P1 Award winner.Read More

Lewis Hamilton went quickest in Friday’s afternoon practice session in Barcelona with the Briton finishing just under a tenth of a second ahead of team-mate Valtteri Bottas to hand Mercedes its second one-two of the day. In the morning session, the Silver Arrows finished almost a second clear of Ferrari’s Kimi Raikkonen but while Hamilton and Bottas again outpaced their main rivals in the afternoon the gap was much smaller, with Kimi Räikkönen again quickest for the Italian outfit, 0.310s behind Hamilton and Sebastian Vettel a further tenth of aRead More

Mercedes set the pace in the opening session of practice for the Spanish Grand Prix, with the three-time champion finishing almost a second clear of third-placed Kimi Räikkönen of Ferrari. Defending Constructors’ champions Mercedes have brought a heavily revised car to the first of the 2017 season’s traditional European races and at the end of the first session the gap to the team’s rivals at the end of the first session was significant, with Räikkönen finishing 0.935s adrift of second-placed Valtteri Bottas. Sebastian Vettel was fourth for Ferrari, just overRead More

By Nico Jamin, Driver Columnist Providing an inside look for the fans, Nico Jamin will be contributing to Motorsports Tribune selectively throughout the 2017 Indy Lights presented by Cooper Tires season. For his opening column, the 21-year-old Frenchman goes into his maiden series win with Andretti Autosport, taking to sports cars and readying for a busy month of May at Indianapolis Motor Speedway. Being a rookie and getting my first Indy Lights win in Race 1 at Barber Motorsports Park was amazing and following it up with a podium the nextRead More

By Reid Spencer, NASCAR Wire Service TALLADEGA, Ala. – There’s no longer a goose egg in the win column next to Ricky Stenhouse Jr.’s name. With a last-lap pass in Sunday’s GEICO 500 at Talladega Superspeedway, Stenhouse collected his first Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series victory in his 158th start and delivered the first win for Roush Fenway Racing since Carl Edwards triumphed at Sonoma in June 2014. “This is for all the guys at the shop–we’ve been terrible for a long time,” an exuberant Stenhouse said of the Roush renaissance.Read More

By Reid Spencer, NASCAR Wire Service   TALLADEGA, Ala. – Aric Almirola charged into the lead with four laps left in Saturday’s Sparks Energy 300 at Talladega Superspeedway and held off Elliott Sadler at the finish to win the third NASCAR XFINITY Series race of his career.   With the Ford of Darrell Wallace Jr. plowing into the inside backstretch wall behind him on the final lap, Almirola held the top spot to the finish, beating Sadler, the series leader, to the finish line by .142 seconds.   The win wasRead More

By Road to Indy Royal Purple Synthetic Oil – the Official Oil of the Mazda Road to Indy Presented by Cooper Tires – will take its partnership with the driver development ladder system one step further. The world’s leading lubricant company will title all six rounds of competition at Indianapolis Motor Speedway on May 12 and 13. All races will be in support of the Lupus Foundation of America. Royal Purple Synthetic Oil continues to expand its role within the Mazda Road to Indy. Last year the company debuted theRead More

By Brian Eberly, Contributing Writer A quick Google search on the name Spencer Davis yields results primarily for the musician who founded the 1960s rock band The Spencer Davis Group. The 18-year-old race car driver of the same name looks to change that and this season will compete in several series, including seven ARCA Racing Series events with Venturini Motorsports. “I had wanted to run some ARCA stuff this year. Billy (Venturini) got wind of it and he gave me a call. I was actually Go-Kart racing down in DaytonaRead More