NASCAR Category

By Brian Eberly, Contributing Writer SPARTA, Ky. – Heading into Kentucky Speedway and the first race in the inaugural NASCAR XFINITY Series Chase, Erik Jones and the powerhouse Joe Gibbs Racing organization were a title favorite. Jones recorded four wins and 13 top-five finishes in the 26-race regular season and entered the weekend with a six-point advantage in the championship standings. Jones had a dominant car on Saturday night at Kentucky Speedway, leading a race-high 100 laps before a late-race wreck ended his night in the garage instead of inRead More

By Brian Eberly, Contributing Writer SPARTA, Ky. – Justin Allgaier enters the inaugural NASCAR XFINITY Series Chase in the fifth position in the championship standings as he seeks the title in his sixth season in the series. Allgaier competed full-time in the XFINITY Series for five seasons before making the jump to the Sprint Cup level with HScott Motorsports in 2014. The two-year stint at the top level of NASCAR competition yielded just one top-10 result – an eight-place finish at Bristol Motor Speedway. For the 2016 season, Allgaier returnedRead More

By Brian Eberly, Contributing Writer SPARTA, Ky. – Erik Jones turned a lap at 182.207 mph in the final round of knockout qualifying to earn the 21 Means 21 Pole Award for Saturday night’s VisitMyrtleBeach.com 300 at Kentucky Speedway. Jones edged teammate Daniel Suarez for the top spot as the front-row will be all Joe Gibbs Racing. The pole was the eighth of the season for Jones and his 26th top-10 start. Elliott Sadler, Ty Dillon, Sam Hornish Jr, Matt Tifft, Brendan Gaughan, Ryan Blaney, Darrell Wallace, Justin Allgaier, BrennanRead More

By Reid Spencer, NASCAR Wire Service LOUDON, N. H. – William Byron stole a page from his mentor and team owner, Kyle Busch. Leading 161 of 175 laps in Saturday’s UNOH 175 at New Hampshire Motor Speedway – the first race in the inaugural NASCAR Camping World Truck Series Chase – Byron cruised to victory, the way Busch has done so many times before, and punched his ticket into the Chase’s Round of 6. Not that runner-up Christopher Bell, Byron’s stablemate at Kyle Busch Motorsports, didn’t make it interesting inRead More

By Brian Eberly, Contributing Writer SPARTA, Ky. – Matt Tifft was originally scheduled to compete in over thirty races this season between the NASCAR Camping World Truck and XFINITY Series and the ARCA Racing Series. That planned changed in June when the 20-year-old driver went in for an MRI as a result of a back condition. Doctors discovered a low-grade glioma in his brain that would require surgery and keep Tifft out of competition as he recovered. After almost three months of rehabilitation, Tifft returned to competition last weekend atRead More

By Reid Spencer, NASCAR Wire Service LOUDON, N.H. – Carl Edwards never had the reputation as a spectacular qualifier – until this year. On Friday at New Hampshire Motor Speedway, Edwards ran 135.453 mph (28.119 seconds) in the money round of knockout qualifying to earn the top start spot in Sunday’s Bad Boy Off Road 300 (2 p.m. ET on NBCSN), the second race in the Chase for the NASCAR Sprint Cup. The Coors Light Pole Award was Edwards sixth of the year, doubling his previous single-season best. It wasRead More

By Reid Spencer, NASCAR Wire Service LOUDON, N.H. – A wreck in practice at New Hampshire Motor Speedway was the last thing Austin Dillon needed. After a 14th-place finish last Sunday at Chicagoland Speedway in the first race of the 2016 Chase for the NASCAR Sprint Cup, Dillon needs a strong run at New Hampshire to escape the bottom four in the standings. But with the Round of 16 elimination race looming Oct. 1 at Dover, Dillon had his weekend start catastrophically at the Magic Mile, site of Sunday’s BadRead More

By Aaron Bearden, Contributing Writer The first race of the 2016 Chase for the NASCAR Sprint Cup has come and gone, and with it a plethora of storylines have unfolded in the paddock. Teams that laid dormant throughout the summer have suddenly come to life, while drivers that entered as favorites to hoist the Sprint Cup at the end of the season have suddenly found themselves in a hole after facing unexpected issues. Martin Truex, Jr., stamped his name into the second round of the Chase with a victory inRead More

By David Morgan, NASCAR Contributor After taking on Chicagoland Speedway to kick off the Chase for the NASCAR Sprint Cup, NASCAR’s premier division heads to New England for the second time in 2016 to take on the flat one mile oval that is the New Hampshire Motor Speedway in this weekend’s Bad Boy Off Road 300. First joining the Cup Series circuit in 1993, the 1.058 mile oval that has progressively banked turns from two to seven degrees is one of the more difficult tracks on the schedule as theRead More

By David Morgan, NASCAR Contributor With NASCAR invading New England for the second race of the Chase for the Sprint Cup at New Hampshire Motor Speedway, another edition of “Throwback Thursday Theater” is upon us. As we look back at races from New Hampshire’s past, this week’s focus is on the 2001 New Hampshire 300, a race that featured a great battle for the win between two Gordons, Jeff Gordon and Robby Gordon, leaving one ecstatic with the win and the other fuming at what might have been. The raceRead More