All posts by Motorsports Tribune

By Seth Livingstone, NASCAR Wire Service HOMESTEAD, Fla. – Team owner Joe Gibbs sees Daniel Suárez as a big part of the future – not only for NASCAR but for his team. Part of the equation is about the 23-year-old’s talents as the driver who just earned Sunoco Rookie of the Year honors in the NASCAR XFINITY Series. Suárez moved up to fifth in the final series standings with his sixth-place effort in Saturday’s Ford EcoBoost 300 season finale at Homestead-Miami Speedway. But a lot of it is about howRead More

By Reid Spencer, NASCAR Wire Service HOMESTEAD, Fla. – As it turned out, the final step in Chris Buescher’s march to the NASCAR XFINITY Series championship was almost pedestrian. None of his closest pursuers could mount a serious challenge for the victory in Saturday’s Ford EcoBoost 300 at Homestead-Miami Speedway. In fact, Buescher, title runner-up Chase Elliott and fellow contenders Ty Dillon and Regan Smith all went a lap down to race winner Kyle Larson during a long green-flag run in the middle of the race. Ultimately, Buescher got aRead More

By Seth Livingstone, NASCAR Wire Service HOMESTEAD, Fla.—Kyle Larson took out a season of frustration on the NASCAR XFINITY Series field Saturday in the season finale, tracking down Austin Dillon in the closing laps to win the Ford EcoBoost 300 at Homestead-Miami Speedway by slightly less than a second. Despite Larson’s dominance in leading 118 of 200 laps, Chris Buescher ran a clean race, finishing 11th to clinch his first XFINITY Series title. Buescher came into the race needing to finish 13th or better to guarantee himself the championship. AfterRead More

Driving the No.17 Porsche 919 Hybrid, the trio finished in fifth position after recovering from technical problems which saw them lose nine laps to the leaders for visits to the pits. With the sister No.18 Porsche 919 Hybrid of Neel Jani, Marc Lieb and Romain Dumas winning the race ahead of the No.7 Audi Sport Team Joest car of André Lotterer, Marcel Fässler and Benoit Tréluyer, it ensured that the No.17 Porsche drivers enjoyed a five point advantage in the final provisional championship standings. After four straight victories at Nürburgring,Read More

By IMSA Wire Service HOMESTEAD, Florida – Continuing its trend of making major announcements on the biggest stages, officials from Ford Motor Company and Ford Chip Ganassi Racing unveiled the driver lineup for the highly anticipated Ford GT program to debut in the 2016 IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship in a packed media center at Homestead-Miami Speedway as part of Ford Championship Weekend. The two-car team will compete in the GT Le Mans class beginning with the Rolex 24 At Daytona on Jan. 30-31, 2016. The full-time WeatherTech Championship lineup willRead More

By Reid Spencer, NASCAR Wire Service HOMESTEAD, Fla. – With the 2015 NASCAR Camping World Truck Series title now in Erik Jones’ rear-view mirror, the immediate question becomes “What’s next for the 19-year-old prodigy?” With a relatively nondescript, problem-free sixth-place finish in Friday night’s Ford EcoBoost 200 at Homestead-Miami Speedway, Jones secured the series driver’s championship, as well as the owner’s title for Kyle Busch Motorsports. Discovered by Busch when he beat his future car owner as a 16-year-old in the Snowball Derby for Super Late Models, Jones delivered theRead More

By Seth Livingstone, NASCAR Wire Service HOMESTEAD, Fla.—As strong as he was in winning Friday night’s Ford EcoBoost 200, Matt Crafton was already looking ahead to 2016. Crafton, whose hopes for a third consecutive NASCAR Camping World Truck Series championship were dashed by a crash at Phoenix last week, won his sixth race of the season, holding off John Hunter Nemechek and Tyler Reddick in the season finale. Although Crafton’s No. 88 Toyota Tundra finished 2.9 seconds ahead of Nemechek and more than six seconds ahead of Reddick, the 39-year-oldRead More

By Reid Spencer, NASCAR Wire Service HOMESTEAD, Fla.—Denny Hamlin stole the thunder from the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series’ four Championship Round drivers, winning the pole for Sunday’s Ford EcoBoost 400 at Homestead-Miami Speedway (3 p.m. ET on NBC). Outrunning Joey Logano and championship-eligible teammate Kyle Busch for the top starting spot, Hamlin toured the 1.5-mile speedway in 30.568 seconds (176.655 mph) in the third and final round of Friday’s knockout time trials. Logano (176.263 mph) will start beside Hamlin in the season finale, followed by Busch, the highest qualifier amongRead More

By Reid Spencer, NASCAR Wire Service HOMESTEAD, Fla. – Though the line that separates acceptable racing practices from on-track over-the-line aggression may not be defined in bold paint like the line that marks the start and finish of a race, NASCAR Chairman & CEO Brian France contends that drivers know exactly where it is. “Do you know how many drivers have come to see (NASCAR Sprint Cup Series Director) Richard Buck in the last two weeks, three weeks, four weeks?,” France asked rhetorically during his annual “State of the Sport”Read More

By Seth Livingstone, NASCAR Wire Service Homestead, Fla. – When you’re a single-car team, competing for NASCAR’s biggest prize, you have to work smart and do things a bit differently. That’s where Furniture Row’s Cole Pearn comes in. The first Canadian NASCAR Sprint Cup Series crew chief graduated with a mechanical engineering degree from the University of Waterloo (Ontario). A former late model driver and three-time Canadian go-kart champion, his preferred participation sport is beer league hockey. It meshes perfectly with the Rocky Mountain lifestyle of his Denver-based race team.Read More