Breaking News Category

By Seth Eggert, NASCAR Writer Four points were all that separated Cole Custer from a 2017 NASCAR Xfinity Series Championship bid. Custer fought hard throughout the Ticket Galaxy 200 at Phoenix Raceway to move into the Championship Four. He was never far from his championship rival, Daniel Hemric. In the final run to the finish, Custer and Hemric fought tooth and nail, desperately fighting for every position. At one point, it looked as if Custer’s No. 00 Haas Automation Ford Mustang had the upper hand, pulling away from Hemric. However,Read More

By Reid Spencer, NASCAR Wire Service AVONDALE, Ariz. – With a pickup pit crew, at the track that cost him a shot at the NASCAR Camping World Truck Series title last year, William Byron won Saturday’s Ticket Galaxy 200 to advance to the Championship 4 race in the NASCAR XFINITY Series. Behind him, JR Motorsports teammates Justin Allgaier and Elliott Sadler also qualified for the title race with finishes of 10th and 18th respectively. The JRM trio will join Daniel Hemric in an all-Chevrolet finale, after Hemric ran fifth andRead More

Mercedes’ Valtteri Bottas claimed his third career pole position, beating Ferrari’s Sebastian Vettel by just ovet three hundredths of a second, as newly-crowned four-time champion Lewis Hamilton dramatically crashed out in Q1. The Briton, who had taken to the track early in a bid to put in a solid time in case of rain, lost control as he exited Turn 6. The back end of his car stepped out and he slid off into the tyre barriers, wrecking the front right side of his Mercedes. The crash resulted in aRead More

Valtteri Bottas beat team-mate Lewis Hamilton by just three thousandths of a second to top of the timesheet in an extremely tight final practice for the Brazilian Grand Prix. Just six hundredths of a second covered the top four drivers with Kimi Räikkönen finishing just 0.045 behind Hamilton and Ferrari team-mate Sebastian Vettel fourth 0.013s further back. The session began under grey skies and the threat of rain, though in the end the session remained dry throughout. Räikkönen, using supersoft tyres, set the pace in the first half of theRead More

By Seth Eggert, NASCAR Writer The final race before the NASCAR Camping World Truck Series Championship race resembled a ‘no holds barred’ wrestling match. Austin Cindric emerged from the Lucas Oil 150 at Phoenix Raceway with the final spot in the Championship Four. However, it came because of a late-race incident. A restart with 20 laps to go put Cindric’s No. 19 Draw-Tite / Reese Brands Ford F-150 directly behind one of his championship rivals, Ben Rhodes. Cindric dove low, and Rhodes reacted to block. In a wreck that mirroredRead More

By Reid Spencer, NASCAR Wire Service AVONDALE, Ariz. – Three red flags told the story of Friday night’s Lucas Oil 150 at Phoenix Raceway. The third of the three gave defending NASCAR Camping World Truck Series champion Johnny Sauter the chance he needed to win the race that set the field for next Friday’s championship event at Homestead-Miami Speedway. When Kyle Busch Motorsports teammates Christopher Bell and Noah Gragson wrecked during an intense side-by-side duel with seven laps left, Sauter inherited the lead for a restart on Lap 149 ofRead More

By Reid Spencer, NASCAR Wire Service AVONDALE, Ariz. – Ryan Blaney got what he needed in Friday’s Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series knockout qualifying session—but only by a thousandth of a second. In the final round, Blaney covered the one-mile distance at Phoenix Raceway in 26.098 seconds (137.942 mph) to edge Denny Hamlin (137.936 mph) by .001 for the top starting spot in Sunday’s Can-Am 500, the final race in the Playoff’s Round of 8 (on NBC at 2:30 p.m. ET). With the Playoff field set to be trimmed fromRead More

By Reid Spencer, NASCAR Wire Service AVONDALE, Ariz. – Last year at Homestead-Miami Speedway, Jimmie Johnson won his seventh Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series championship with a serendipitous victory in the Championship 4 race. This year, Johnson will need more than serendipity. He’ll need what amounts to a miracle just to earn a shot at a record eighth title. Johnson comes to Phoenix Raceway eighth in the series standings, last among the drivers trying to survive the Playoff’s Round of 8. With one berth available in the Championship 4, theRead More

By Seth Eggert, NASCAR Writer 31 races into the NASCAR Xfinity Series season, only four of the NASCAR Xfinity Series regulars (Jeremy Clements, Ryan Reed, Justin Allgaier twice, and William Byron three times) have scored victories during the 2017 season. This weekend the NASCAR Xfinity Series travels to Phoenix Raceway for the Ticket Galaxy 200, the 32nd race of the season. After the events at Texas Motor Speedway, Elliott Sadler leads the points standings with his JR Motorsports teammate Byron five-points behind in second. The last time the Xfinity SeriesRead More

After dominating opening practice at Interlagos, Lewis Hamilton doubled up by topping the afternoon timesheets at the São Paulo circuit, edging team-mate Valtteri Bottas by just under five hundredths of a second. However, whereas Hamilton enjoyed a half second advantage over Ferrari’s third-placed Kimi Räikkönen in the morning session, afternoon practice was tighter, with Red Bull Racing’s Daniel Ricciardo finishing just 0.228 behind four-time champion Hamilton after the drivers had completed their performance runs during the 90-minute session. In the morning Hamilton had led the way early in the sessionRead More