All posts by Motorsports Tribune

By Reid Spencer, NASCAR Wire Service JOLIET, Ill. – You could see it coming from a mile-and-a-half away. On new tires, Martin Truex Jr. rocketed around the outside lane after a restart in overtime at Chicagoland Speedway and pulled away to win Sunday’s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 400, the opening race in the Chase for the NASCAR Sprint Cup. With the victory—his first at the 1.5-mile track, his third of the season and the sixth of his career—Truex also rocketed into the Chase’s Round of 12. But Truex wasn’t satisfiedRead More

Nico Rosberg once again took control of the F1 Drivers’ Championship standings as he sealed his eighth win of the 2016 season just half a second clear of Red Bull’s Daniel Riccirado who almost overhauled the German in the final stages of the race. Lewis Hamilton was third. The race got off to a dramatic start as a hard charging Nico Hulkenberg powered forward from eighth on the grid. Toro Rosso’s Carlos Sainz was also trying to get ahead, however, and as the Spaniard moved across the pair collided. HulkenbergRead More

By Reid Spencer, NASCAR Wire Service JOLIET, Ill. – Kyle Busch opened the door, and that was all the invitation Erik Jones needed. When Busch, the polesitter for Saturday’s The Drive for Safety 300 at Chicagoland Speedway, spun with a tire down while leading on Lap 182 of 200, Jones took full advantage of his Joe Gibbs Racing teammate’s misfortune. The driver of the No. 20 JGR Toyota restarted sixth on Lap 187 after Busch brought out the eighth caution of the afternoon and quickly closed the gap on ElliottRead More

Team Penske announced today that it has reached a partnership extension with industry-leading home improvement store company Menards for the 2017 Verizon IndyCar Series season and beyond.  The easily-identifiable bright yellow paint scheme of Menards will continue to shine on track with 2016 Verizon IndyCar Series championship contender Simon Pagenaud and the No. 22 Dallara/Chevrolet for 10 races in 2017, including the 101st running of the Indianapolis 500 on Sunday, May 28. “Partnering Menards with our Verizon IndyCar Series program just makes sense. The company’s deep Midwest roots are aRead More

Nico Rosberg set a blistering pace to claim pole position for the Singapore Grand Prix finishing half a second clear of Red Bull Racing’s Daniel Ricciardo and seven tenths ahead of championship-leading team-mate Lewis Hamilton. FP1 got underway with Mercedes making the first move, both Hamilton and Rosberg taking to the track early on ultrasofts. Rosberg drew first blood with a time of 1:45. 316, but that was quickly bettered by Hamilton who went 1500ths of a second quicker. Kimi Raikkonen then took over at the top of the orderRead More

Mercedes’ Nico Rosberg claimed top spot in final practice for the Singapore Grand Prix, beating Red Bull Racing’s Max Verstappen by just five hundredths of a second. After spending the bulk of the session in P1 with a lap set on supersoft tyres Rosberg was the first to make the switch to the quicker ultrasoft tyres, with 18 minutes left on the clock. He quickly lowered his own benchmark by over a second from 1:45.544 to 1:44.352, a gain more than tallying with Pirelli’s Friday assessment of there being 0.9sRead More

By Reid Spencer, NASCAR Wire Service JOLIET, Ill. – In a race punctuated by a record 10 cautions, Kyle Busch streaked away from Chase hopeful Cameron Hayley in overtime and won Friday night’s American Ethanol e15 225 NASCAR Camping World Truck Series race at Chicagoland Speedway. With Busch’s victory over runner-up Daniel Hemric, who passed Hayley after the final restart on Lap 150, Hemric and Timothy Peters locked up the final two of eight spots in the inaugural NASCAR Camping World Truck Series Chase, which starts Sept. 24 at NewRead More

By Reid Spencer, NASCAR Wire Service CHICAGO, Ill. – All it took was a sly smile and an exaggerated wink to understand what Tony Stewart was really saying. “I’m wasting a spot here,” Stewart quipped, echoing the sentiment he expressed before the 2011 Chase for the NASCAR Sprint Cup. After downplaying his chances five years ago, however, Stewart proceeded to win the first two Chase races and ultimately beat Carl Edwards in a tiebreaker for his third Cup title. On Thursday afternoon in the Ready.Set.Chase Launch Event at the BridgeportRead More

By Reid Spencer, NASCAR Wire Service JOLIET, Ill. – When rain forced cancellation of Friday’s knockout qualifying session for Sunday’s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 400 at Chicagoland Speedway (2:30 p.m. ET on NBCSN), Kyle Busch was the primary beneficiary. As the top seed in Chase for the NASCAR Sprint Cup, and with his No. 18 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota seeded first in the corresponding owners’ standings, Busch will start on the pole at the 1.5-mile track for the first of the 10 playoff races that will decide the 2016 champion.Read More

After crashing out of the first practice session in Singapore, Mercedes’ Nico Rosberg recovered to post the quickest time of the second 90-minute session. Team-mate Lewis Hamilton was forced out of the session with a hydraulics problem. In the opening session both Mercedes drivers had sampled the ultrasoft tyres early on and went on to set their fastest laps on the soft tyre, before Rosberg crashed out with 15 minutes remaining in the session. However in his repaired Mercedes Rosberg fared better on the purple-banded Pirelli rubber in the lateRead More