Cup Category

By Reid Spencer, NASCAR Wire Service AVONDALE, Ariz. – The middle-aged man without a ride for 2018 drove a dagger through the heart of the youngster expected to shine in the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series for years to come. With nine laps left in Sunday’s Can-Am 500 at Phoenix Raceway, 45-year-old Matt Kenseth passed 21-year-old Chase Elliott for the lead and pulled away to win for the first time since the July 2016 New Hampshire race, breaking a 51-event winless string. Kenseth’s victory, the 39th of his career, deprived ElliottRead More

By Seth Eggert, NASCAR Writer Sometimes, it’s better to be lucky than it is to be good. For Team Penske’s Brad Keselowski, he found out just how lucky he can be as his rivals faltered. Now, Keselowski will advance into the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series Championship Four at Homestead-Miami Speedway. Keselowski bounced from being inside the Championship Four to being outside throughout the Can-Am 500 at Phoenix Raceway. His No. 2 Miller Lite Ford Fusion never competed for the victory, but stayed the course as other Playoff drivers experiencedRead More

By David Morgan, NASCAR Editor Runner-up finishes have been the storyline of Chase Elliott’s sophomore season in the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series, with the 21-year old Georgia native coming close to victory time and time again. On Sunday at Phoenix, Elliott would fall just short of both the win and being able to advance to the championship race on a must-win day for him and his No. 24 team. “We were so close to having another shot next week,” said Elliott. “But man, I can’t say enough for ourRead More

By David Morgan, NASCAR Editor An eighth Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series championship will have to wait until 2018 for Jimmie Johnson and the No. 48 team. Entering the day in a must-win situation to be able to claim the final spot in the Championship 4 and advance on to Homestead, Johnson qualified 12th and was holding steady just outside the top-10 on lap 149 when he blew a tire entering Turn 3, sending his Chevrolet hard into the outside wall. The damage was enough to send him to theRead 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 David Morgan, NASCAR Editor The Round of Eight all comes down to this. After last week’s race at Texas, the stage is set for the final race of the round in Phoenix to determine which drivers will move onto Homestead and which drivers will see their championship hopes vanish in the Arizona desert. Phoenix has resided on the Cup Series schedule since 1988, but the track looks completely different than it did 29 years ago, having undergone a reconfiguration back in 2011. The reconfiguration added progressive banking to theRead More

By David Morgan, NASCAR Editor It takes a lot to get Jeff Gordon riled up, but when the Cup Series visited Phoenix in November 2012, the four-time series champion had decided he’d had enough. Gordon and Clint Bowyer had been embroiled in a feud stemming from contact at Martinsville earlier in the year and with the season winding to a close, contact between the two at Phoenix just sent the Hendrick Motorsports driver over the edge. As the two were battling for a spot in the top-five with less thanRead More

By Seth Eggert, NASCAR Writer Athletes in their final events before moving from one team to another are often considered a ‘lame duck.’ Current Richard Petty Motorsports driver Aric Almirola does not want that label. Almirola has just two Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series races left with the team before departing for Stewart Haas Racing next year. Almirola’s tenure at RPM started at the 2010 Martinsville Playoff race. Since then he has earned one victory (Daytona 2014), 11 top-fives, 30 top-10s, and one pole position for the team. Almirola’s bestRead More

By Seth Eggert, NASCAR Writer Friendship can be a very strong bond. Two people that know that very well are Stewart Haas Racing’s co-owner Tony Stewart, and the team’s newest acquisition starting in 2018, Aric Almirola. Almirola and Stewart have been competing together for years. However, their careers have taken very different paths. Stewart won two championships with Joe Gibbs Racing before becoming an owner himself and winning a third Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series Championship in 2011. Almirola, who was once a Joe Gibbs Racing development driver spent timeRead More