AJ Allmendinger Tag

By David Morgan, NASCAR Contributor As the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series gets back to work after taking Father’s Day weekend off, they head to the west coast for the first road course race of the season, the Toyota Save Mart 350 at Sonoma Raceway. The 1.990 mile Sonoma Raceway, a 12 turn technical road course situated about 30 miles north of San Francisco, has played host to the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series since 1989 and has gone through a series of changes since opening its doors 27 years ago. WhenRead More

By Toby Christie, NASCAR Editor It’s been an odd season for Dale Earnhardt Jr. Usually, if you’re an Earnhardt fan, you circle the restrictor plate races and Michigan on the schedule as places where the No. 88 is expected to contend for victory. At Daytona and Talladega earlier this year, Earnhardt just lost control of his car and crashed out of the events. Sunday on lap 60 at Michigan Earnhardt suffered a similar fate as he slammed into the outside retaining wall at the exit of turn two. This crashRead More

By Toby Christie, NASCAR Editor There is a brand-spankin’ new format for this weekend’s Sprint All-Star race, and one of the big changes is how many drivers will advance from the preliminary Showdown. The race before the big race will consist of three 20-lap segments, the leader at the end of each segment will advance to the All-Star race. There will also be two more drivers who will make it into the big show by way of the fan vote. Conventional wisdom would tell you that drivers like Chase Elliott, KyleRead More

By Toby Christie, NASCAR Editor On most weeks in the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series, only the super teams (such as Hendrick Motorsports, Team Penske, Joe Gibbs Racing and a few others) should really expect to end their day in victory lane. In order to win at intermediate 1.5-mile speedways it takes teams of engineers, and millions of dollars just to finish inside the top-10. Talladega though, is a different animal. Instead of gobs of resources, it just takes an unrelenting will to win and incredible intestinal fortitude to conquer the day atRead More

By Toby Christie, NASCAR Editor AJ Allmendinger is in the midst of a hot streak. The driver of the No. 47 Chevrolet overcame numerous obstacles to finish eighth at Auto Club Speedway a couple of races ago, and then this past week he was battling Kyle Busch for the win en route to a second-place finish at one of NASCAR’s toughest tracks — Martinsville Speedway. Following his best effort of the season, Allmendinger was ecstatic. “It was a lot of fun.  I passed Jimmie Johnson like five times at Martinsville. ThatRead More

By Joey Barnes, Editor-in-Chief An eventful STP 500 from Martinsville Speedway has been settled and Kyle Busch is the man that grabbed the traditional grandfather clock after holding off AJ Allmendinger in the closing stages. Here are the key topics coming from Sunday’s race at NASCAR’s oldest track. 1) Impatience from start to finish The common theme is patience early and then to take everything late. That certainly wasn’t the case on Sunday, from the drop of the green flag bumpers found each other with drivers more than willing toRead More

By Reid Spencer, NASCAR Wire Service MARTINSVILLE, Va. – Kyle Busch came to Martinsville Speedway this weekend with no grandfather clock trophies from the shortest and tightest of the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series short tracks. He left with two clocks after completing an unprecedented Martinsville sweep in Sunday’s STP 500, and, appropriately, the first question he radioed to his crew after his celebratory burnouts dealt with telling time. “What time is it?” crowed the reigning series champion, who a day earlier had won the NASCAR Camping World Truck Series raceRead More

By Toby Christie, NASCAR Editor A.J. Allmendinger had a tough road ahead of him in Sunday’s Auto Club 400. Allmendinger recorded the 11th-fastest speed in qualifying, but before the race his team noticed a issue with a rear-end gear. “It was a good catch by our crew to see the burnt gear, from the sound of it; it wasn’t something you really notice, the detail they put into building these race cars and going over them was big. They caught it and saved our day,” Allmendinger said. The No. 47Read More

By David Morgan, NASCAR Writer After last Sunday’s barn burner of a finish in the Daytona 500, the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series packs up and heads to Georgia for this weekend’s running of the Folds of Honor QuikTrip 500 at Atlanta Motor Speedway. As we head to Atlanta, we’ll take a statistical look at the track and which drivers should perform the best based on their past finishes in this edition of “Crunching the Numbers.” Track Facts Track Size: 1.54-mile quad-oval Banking/Turn 1 & 2: 24 degrees Banking/Turn 3 & 4:Read More

By Reid Spencer, NASCAR Wire Service DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. – Most of the time, when an athlete talks about a “team victory,” it’s nothing more than a sports cliché. But Denny Hamlin’s win in Sunday’s Daytona 500 at Daytona International Speedway—by the closest margin in the history of the Great American Race—was a testament to the strength and solidarity of the Toyota teams of Joe Gibbs Racing and Furniture Row Racing, a JGR affiliate. In a wild last lap at the 2.5-mile superspeedway, Hamlin moved into the outside lane inRead More