John Hunter Nemechek Tag

By Reid Spencer, NASCAR Wire Service LAS VEGAS — Chandler Smith won the battle. John Hunter Nemechek won the war.  The Joe Gibbs Racing teammates spent most of Saturday afternoon racing each other for the top spot in The LiUNA!, a 300-mile NASCAR Xfinity Series race at Las Vegas Motor Speedway. It was Nemechek who proved superior in the long run.  After Smith won the first two stages of the race—the second with a deft last-lap pass of Nemechek’s No. 20 Toyota—Nemechek asserted his dominance.  By the time Nemechek crossedRead More

By Reid Spencer, NASCAR Wire Service HAMPTON, Ga. – Michael McDowell and Joey Logano performed their own version of “Trading Places” during NASCAR Cup Series time trials on Saturday at Atlanta Motor Speedway. After finishing second to Logano in qualifying for the season-opening DAYTONA 500, McDowell will start his 467th Cup race from a position he has never occupied before—first on the grid—with Logano beside him in second. Having won the first Busch Light Pole Award of his career, McDowell will lead the field to green in Sunday’s Ambetter HealthRead More

By Reid Spencer, NASCAR Wire Service DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. — While other NASCAR Xfinity Series drivers were competing, and crashing, in Monday night’s United Rentals 300 at Daytona International Speedway, Austin Hill was playing a different game — Monopoly. At the 2.5-mile superspeedway roughly two miles away from Atlantic Avenue, Hill beat former teammate Sheldon Creed to the finish line by 0.591 seconds to earn his third straight victory in the Xfinity season opener at the World Center of Racing. The third win came on Monday because of weekend-long rainRead More

By David Morgan, Associate Editor It had been a long wait for Hendrick Motorsports to return to Daytona 500 victory lane, but at the end of Monday’s rain-delayed running of the Great American Race, it was a 1-2 finish for one of the winningest organizations in NASCAR Cup Series history. Not since Dale Earnhardt Jr’s 2014 victory had a Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet captured a win in the season opening spectacle, but 26-year-old William Byron was the driver to get it done at the World Center of Racing – capturing his firstRead More

By Luis Torres, Staff Writer It’s never an ideal way to kick off a NASCAR season when a driver’s Daytona 500 ends in less than 10 laps. The case was proven on Monday when a Lap 5 crash collected seven drivers in the tri-oval, ending a few of their days and their dream of hoisting the Harley J. Earl Trophy. Of those involved were former Daytona 500 winners Jimmie Johnson and Austin Dillon, as well as Daytona 500 rookie Carson Hocevar. Also involved were Ryan Preece, Kaz Grala, John Hunter Nemechek,Read More

By David Morgan, Associate Editor DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. – Rain, rain, go away. The 66th running of the Daytona 500 will have to wait 24 hours after inclement weather that has had a stranglehold on the Daytona Beach are for the majority of the weekend will not be relenting anytime soon, forcing NASCAR to postpone the race to a 4:00 pm ET start on Monday. The Daytona 500 postponement joins the NASCAR Xfinity Series race that had already been moved from Saturday to Monday, setting up a doubleheader to kick offRead More

By David Morgan, Associate Editor DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. – If the Toyota teams had any doubts about its new NASCAR Cup Series body for the 2024 season, those fears appear to have been put to rest over the past two days at Daytona International Speedway. After an abysmal showing in qualifying Wednesday night that Toyota officials described as “disturbing,” things turned around in a big way once its teams got into the draft on Thursday night, sweeping both of the Bluegreen Duels qualifying races and then claiming the top eight spotsRead More

By David Morgan, Associate Editor DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. –The start of the 2024 NASCAR Cup Series is officially here and with it comes the biggest race of the season – the Daytona 500. For 66 years, drivers have been making the pilgrimage to the Daytona high banks to win the sport’s most prestigious race and write themselves into the record book as Daytona 500 champion. Many have attempted it, but only a select few have been able to hoist the Harley J. Earl trophy in victory lane at the end ofRead More

By David Morgan, Associate Editor AVONDALE, Ariz. – Day two at Phoenix Raceway will be highlighted by NASCAR’s second highest division, as the NASCAR Xfinity Series wraps up its 2023 campaign by crowning its newest champion – all of which would be a first-time champion. Twelve championship hopefuls started the six-week march to the Valley of the Sun, with only four drivers left standing to duel it out in the Arizona desert on Saturday night. It all comes down to a battle between the JR Motorsports duo of Justin Allgaier andRead More

By Holly Cain, NASCAR Wire Service HOMESTEAD, Fla. – Sam Mayer claimed his first career NASCAR Xfinity Series oval-race victory in the second half of a NASCAR double-header at Homestead-Miami Speedway on Saturday in the Contender Boats 300 after holding off last week’s race winner Riley Herbst by a mere .227-second. It marks the JR Motorsports driver Mayer’s fourth series victory of the season – and his career – most important for Mayer – who joked he didn’t breath the final four laps – it is his ticket into the Championship 4 finale that will decideRead More