Cup Category

By Holly Cain, NASCAR Wire Service MARTINSVILLE, Va. – Kyle Larson’s Hendrick Motorsports team gambled on a late race two-tire pit stop to give him a fighting chance for the victory, and he took the opportunity and drove away to a commanding 4.142-second win in Sunday’s NOCO 400 NASCAR Cup Series race at Martinsville (Va.) Speedway. It was the 2021 Champion’s first victory at the famed half-mile track; making the pass for the win in his No. 5 Hendrick Motorsports Chevy with 30 laps remaining, but then having to holdRead More

By David Morgan, Associate Editor After playing in the dirt last weekend, it’s back to the asphalt this weekend as the NASCAR Cup Series gets set for Sunday’s running of the NOCO 400 at Martinsville A mainstay on the schedule since 1949, the historic half-mile in southern Virginia, which is also the smallest on the circuit, will test both man and machine over the course of the afternoon and is a place where bent sheet metal and hurt feelings are all but inevitable. Given that Martinsville serves as the final raceRead More

By David Morgan, Associate Editor After missing the past six weeks following a leg injury, Chase Elliott will make his return to the cockpit starting with Sunday’s NOCO 400 at Martinsville. The 2020 NASCAR Cup Series champion was snowboarding in Colorado during the week prior to the March 5 race at Las Vegas when he suffered an injury to his left leg in which he broke his tibia and forced him to the sidelines. Elliott explained that he “didn’t have a cool story” to go with the incident that caused hisRead More

By Reid Spencer, NASCAR Wire Service  BRISTOL, Tenn. – Before Sunday night’s Food City Dirt Race at Bristol Motor Speedway, Christopher Bell lamented that a “dirt guy” hadn’t won the NASCAR Cup Series’ only race on the red clay in Thunder Valley.  Bell fixed the problem—in a race that also saw hard feelings between pole winner Kyle Larson and Ryan Preece boil over.  Holding off charging Tyler Reddick in the final stage of the 250-lap race, Bell held a slim lead over Reddick when NASCAR called the 14th caution with 200Read More

By Reid Spencer, NASCAR Wire Service  BRISTOL, Tenn. – It didn’t take long for Kyle Larson to assert his superiority on the dirt track at Bristol Motor Speedway. Starting sixth in the third of four 15-lap qualifying heat races, Larson had stormed into the lead before the end of the first lap and held off charging Ryan Preece for a wire-to-wire victory. The combination of finishing position and passing points gave Larson 15 total points, good for the pole position for Sunday’s Food City Dirt Race at Thunder Valley (7Read More

By David Morgan, Associate Editor Penalties, penalties, and more penalties. Over the course of the last week, the NASCAR airwaves have been ablaze with penalty talk, with a stem of appeals being heard and the results that came afterwards only fanning the flames. Hendrick Motorsports was the first to have their appeal heard for a penalty dating back to Phoenix in which the team was alleged to have modified the hood louvers on their four team cars, which went against the rule the sanctioning body put in place for messing withRead More

By Matt Weaver, Special Contributor What a difference a week makes. Literally seven days ago, Hendrick Motorsports was still reeling from the biggest single day penalty to any organization in NASCAR Cup Series history and it was Tyler Reddick of 23XI Racing who fended off William Byron to provide a glimmer of hope for the rest of the garage. Due to the 100 championship and 10 playoff point penalty and the injury to Chase Elliott, all four Hendrick Motorsports drivers faced long odds to reach the Championship Race in November. AndRead More

By Matt Weaver, Special Contributor Jeff Gordon believes Hendrick Motorsports has reaped the benefits of a Cup Series caliber backup in Josh Berry over the past month. Sure, it’s easy to say that now given that Berry finished second to teammate Kyle Larson in the Cup Series race at Richmond on Sunday but it would have been easy to pump the brakes on that narrative in the middle of the race when he got spun in traffic due to contact from Ryan Blaney. Berry, the current Xfinity Series championship contender andRead More

By Matt Weaver, Special Contributor For all the accolades and success Kyle Larson has enjoyed over the past several seasons, even someone considered to be a generational racing talent occasionally watches himself on YouTube just to remember happier times. “I was watching just flipping through old YouTube videos this week of my 2021 season so I could remind myself that I used to be good,” Larson said in a familiar self-deprecating way in the media center following his victory on Sunday in the Toyota Owners 400 at Richmond Raceway. … butRead More

By Holly Cain, NASCAR Wire Service With the benefit of a fast final pit stop, Kyle Larson was able to put his No. 5 Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet out front at Richmond (Va.) Raceway and then hold off the field in the last 25 laps of Sunday’s Toyota Owners 400 to earn his first NASCAR Cup Series victory of the 2023 season. The 30-year old Californian had to out-duel his Hendrick Motorsports teammate Josh Berry on a pair of re-starts in the closing laps to secure the win at the firstRead More