Jimmie Johnson Tag

By David Morgan, NASCAR Contributor For Jimmie Johnson, Dover represents both a place where he has had a lot of success over the years, but has also been his Achilles’ heel recently. With elimination from the Chase for the NASCAR Sprint Cup still a possibility on Sunday, Johnson heads into the Citizen Soldier 400 hoping luck is on his side this time around and he’ll be able to move on to the Round of 12 by the time the checkered flag flies. This time last year, Johnson looked to beRead More

By David Morgan, NASCAR Contributor After a trip to New England for the second race in the Chase, the Round of 16 comes down to this. The NASCAR Sprint Cup Series rolls into Dover International Speedway for the running of the Citizen Soldier 400, which will determine which drivers will join Martin Truex, Jr. and Kevin Harvick in the next round. As one of the only two concrete tracks on the NASCAR schedule, the one mile high banked oval that is Dover has always drawn similarities to Bristol and isRead 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 Aaron Bearden, Contributing Writer “This one is on us.” It’s rare to hear that level of candor from the sanctioning body of any sport, but those were the exact words to come from Scott Miller, NASCAR senior vice president of competition, during a Wednesday teleconference announcing a change to the sanctioning body’s penalty system for post-race laser inspection system (LIS) failures. The old rules — and I say “old” loosely, as they were just implemented last week — provided a gray area with P2 and P3 level penalties for teams thatRead More

By Aaron Bearden, Contributing Writer Race-winner Martin Truex, Jr., and Jimmie Johnson won’t be stripped of points or fined after failing post-race LIS inspection at Chicagoland Speedway. Instead, in the interest of fairness, NASCAR has elected take the blame and make changes to post-race procedures moving forward. Both Truex and Johnson appeared due for penalties after being caught with minor infractions following Sunday’s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 400, but the repercussions were stripped when NASCAR observed a clear issue with their penalty system relevant to Chase benefits. NASCAR confirmed Wednesday that both TruexRead More

By Reid Spencer, NASCAR Wire Service JOLIET, Ill. – You could see it coming from a mile-and-a-half away. On new tires, Martin Truex Jr. rocketed around the outside lane after a restart in overtime at Chicagoland Speedway and pulled away to win Sunday’s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 400, the opening race in the Chase for the NASCAR Sprint Cup. With the victory—his first at the 1.5-mile track, his third of the season and the sixth of his career—Truex also rocketed into the Chase’s Round of 12. But Truex wasn’t satisfiedRead More

By Toby Christie, NASCAR Editor After Sunday’s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 400, the cars of race-winner Martin Truex Jr. and 12th-place finisher Jimmie Johnson failed post-race LIS (laser inspection station). But according to NASCAR, the infraction will not result in the loss of Chase advancement for Truex. The penalty for both drivers should be of the P2 variety, which should result in a minimum of 10 points and a $15,000 fine. With Truex’s Chase advancement not in question, the penalty definitely will hurt Johnson much more. A 10-point deduction wouldRead More

By Seth Eggert, NASCAR Writer Entering Sunday’s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 400, Chicagoland Speedway was one of four tracks that Jimmie Johnson had yet to score a victory at. After Johnson put his No. 48 Lowe’s Chevrolet SS on top of the speed charts in the first practice, it looked like Johnson was finally going to cross Chicagoland off of his list. With qualifying canceled due to weather, Johnson lined up eighth on the starting grid for the first Chase race of the season. At the drop of the greenRead More

It’s that time of the year again. After the 16 driver field for the Chase for the NASCAR Sprint Cup was set last weekend at Richmond, the intensity of the season is about to ramp up over the final 10 weeks of the season as we’ll whittle the championship field down to four at Homestead to see which driver will walk away with the title at season’s end. As a refresher, there will be three rounds of eliminations before the Championship Four is set. The Round of 16 will includeRead More