Cup Category

By Reid Spencer, NASCAR Wire Service SONOMA, Calif. – Score another sweep for Kyle Larson, who dominated an action-filled Toyota/Save Mart 350 NASCAR Cup Series race on Sunday at Sonoma Raceway. Through a spate of late accidents and restarts, Larson held off Hendrick Motorsports teammate Chase Elliott and three-time Sonoma winner Martin Truex Jr. to claim a second-straight race in which he also swept both the first and second stages. The victory was Larson’s first at the 2.52-mile road course, his third of the season and the ninth of hisRead More

By David Morgan, Associate Editor After missing out on a trip to California wine country last season due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the NASCAR Cup Series heads back to Sonoma Raceway this weekend for Sunday’s running of the Toyota/Save Mart 350. A 12-turn technical road course situated about 30 miles north of San Francisco, Sonoma is one of seven road courses on the 2021 schedule, with Sonoma first joining the circuit back in 1989. Over the years, the course at Sonoma Raceway has gone through a few configuration changes. When theRead More

By David Morgan, Associate Editor Of all the wins Jimmie Johnson was able to accrue during his illustrious NASCAR Cup Series career, one type of track eluded him for so long – road courses. Despite his impressive resume, winning a road course race would take some help to finally make the long-awaited trip to victory lane. Enter the 2010 running of the Toyota/Save Mart 350 at Sonoma Raceway. Johnson would start on the outside of the front row and led 48 of the first 57 laps, but as the race playedRead More

By David Morgan, Associate Editor Hendrick Motorsports’ sprawling campus sits in the shadows of Charlotte Motor Speedway, so it was only fitting that Sunday’s Coca-Cola 600 was the place that the four-car juggernaut surpassed Petty Enterprises to be the winningest team in NASCAR Cup Series history. Petty Enterprises had been the gold standard in the Cup Series, with 268 wins over the course of a 50-year span from 1949 to 1999, including 10 championships, but the torch now passes to Hendrick Motorsports to be the standard bearer from now into theRead More

By Reid Spencer, NASCAR Wire Service CONCORD, N.C. – In dominating fashion, Kyle Larson won NASCAR’s longest race on Sunday night and in the process gave team owner Rick Hendrick a record 269th victory, most in NASCAR Cup Series history. Larson’s win in the Coca-Cola 600 at Charlotte Motor Speedway was the eighth of his career and his second of the season, guaranteeing the driver of the No. 5 Chevrolet a spot in the postseason Playoffs. By the time he crossed the finish line at the end of 400 laps,Read More

By David Morgan, Associate Editor After a soggy debut at Circuit of The Americas last weekend, the NASCAR Cup Series heads back to home base at Charlotte Motor Speedway for its traditional Memorial Day Weekend date and Sunday’s 62nd running of the Coca-Cola 600. While the usual Memorial Day Weekend slate features Formula 1, IndyCar, and NASCAR, a quirk in the schedule this year means only the Indianapolis 500 will precede NASCAR’s longest race. While some races may seem like a quick knockout, Sunday’s daylight to dusk to darkness marathon isRead More

By Reid Spencer, NASCAR Wire Service You can’t call a Chase Elliott victory on a road course “unexpected,” but little else was predictable in the inaugural NASCAR Cup Series race at the Circuit of the Americas road course in Austin, Texas. After all, Elliott came to COTA having won five of the previous 10 road races, and on Sunday the EchoPark Texas Grand Prix became No. 6 after NASCAR called the race 14 laps short of the scheduled finish because of excessive standing water on the track and potential dangerRead More

By David Morgan, Associate Editor When the rain started to fall Sunday at Circuit of the Americas, the racing that came in the early laps of the EchoPark Automotive Texas Grand Prix was entertaining, but quickly devolved into chaos. A number of cars had made off-track excursions during the first stage, but as the second stage began, things took a turn for the worst as the rain piled up and visibility was reduced to nearly zero. The high-speed backstretch at COTA leading into the breaking zone at Turn 12 became calamityRead More

By David Morgan, Associate Editor Serving as the United States home for Formula 1 since opening in 2012, the Circuit of The Americas plays host to some good ol’ American Muscle this weekend when the NASCAR Cup Series comes to town for the inaugural running of the EchoPark Texas Grand Prix. The 20-turn, 3.41-mile road course sitting just outside of Austin, Texas is one of a handful of new tracks for the Cup Series to visit in 2021 and the first of five road course races that will take place throughRead More

By Luis Torres, Staff Writer It’s common in some forms of motorsports to see one multi-car team completely dominate the competition. What about on a single race day when every car were at their peak? For Hendrick Motorsports, they’ve done it already in the 1997 Daytona 500 with a podium sweep. Everyone knows the story about Jeff Gordon, Terry Labonte and Ricky Craven finishing in that order. They did it for Rick, who gave Gordon a phone call after winning his first of three Daytona 500s. However, HMS accomplished somethingRead More