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By David Morgan, Associate Editor AVONDALE, Ariz — 35 races down, one to go. Sunday afternoon, the NASCAR Cup Series will hit the track at Phoenix Raceway for the 2021 season finale, bringing this season to a close and crowning a champion. After being held at Homestead-Miami Speedway from 2002 to 2019, the championship race moved to the Arizona desert starting last season, giving the four drivers competing for the title a whole new challenge in their pursuit of the Bill France Cup. Heading into this year’s championship race, it willRead More

By Reid Spencer, NASCAR Wire Service MARTINSVILLE, Va. – Denny Hamlin provided the perfect capstone to a day of banged-up stock cars, hurt feelings and crushed dreams. Alex Bowman took the checkered flag in Sunday’s Xfinity 500 at Martinsville Speedway after sliding up into Hamlin’s race-leading Toyota on Lap 494 of 501 and knocking Hamlin’s car up the track and into the outside wall. As Bowman tried to start a burnout to celebrate his fourth NASCAR Cup Series victory of the season and his first at the .526-mile short track,Read More

By David Morgan, Associate Editor Seven drivers enter Martinsville Speedway with a shot at moving on to next week’s NASCAR Cup Series championship race, but only three will leave Sunday’s Xfinity 500 with those title hopes still intact. The Round of 8 in the Cup Series Playoffs all comes down to the half-mile bullring in southern Virginia, where bent sheet metal and hurt feelings are all but inevitable. A mainstay on the schedule since 1949, the historic track, which is also the smallest on the circuit, will test both man andRead More

By David Morgan, Associate Editor Seven drivers entered Kansas Speedway looking to punch their ticket to the championship finale and after the checkered flag fell on the Hollywood Casino 400, those same seven drivers are still looking. Kyle Larson remains the only driver locked into the Championship 4 after sweeping the first two races of the Round of 8, paving the way for a showdown next weekend in Martinsville to fill the three remaining spots. Among the drivers still vying for the championship, defending Cup champion Chase Elliott and Denny HamlinRead More

By Holly Cain, NASCAR Wire Service Kyle Larson did the heavy-lifting on Sunday, leading nine different times for a race-high 130 laps, ultimately crossing the finish line a hefty 3.619-seconds ahead of the field to earn a NASCAR Cup Series-best ninth win of the season (15th of his career) in the Hollywood Casino 400 at Kansas Speedway. It is the third consecutive race win for the 29-year old Californian and the second time this season he’s won three in a row. The last time a driver won three straight racesRead More

By David Morgan, Associate Editor One race down, two to go. After Kyle Larson locked himself into the championship finale last weekend at Texas, the seven remaining drivers in the NASCAR Cup Series Playoffs move on to Kansas Speedway looking to be the next to clinch a spot in the title race by winning Sunday’s running of the Hollywood Casino 400. Among those seven other drivers still in the running for the Bill France Cup, all but one of them are previous winners at Kansas, with Kyle Busch, Joey Logano, DennyRead More

By David Morgan, Associate Editor This time of the year, there is a clear division between the drivers still alive in the NASCAR Cup Series Playoffs and those on the outside looking in. Add in the current high downforce/low horsepower package that is run on intermediate tracks and the situation is exacerbated, leading to what we saw in Sunday’s Autotrader EchoPark Automotive 500 at Texas Motor Speedway. On a number of occasions throughout the opening race in the Round of 8 in the Playoffs, the drivers fighting for a chance toRead More

By David Morgan, Associate Editor FORT WORTH, Texas – What seemed to be a run of the mill NASCAR Cup Series race Sunday at Texas Motor Speedway flipped a switch in the closing laps, wreaking havoc among some of the Playoff drivers. The trouble started on Lap 300, when smoke began billowing from underneath Joey Logano’s No. 22 Team Penske Ford, signaling an expired engine and the end of his day. Already at a points deficit entering the Autotrader EchoPark Automotive 500, Logano didn’t quite have the race he needed, finishingRead More

By David Morgan, Associate Editor The Lone Star State comes calling this weekend when the NASCAR Cup Series rolls into Texas Motor Speedway to kick off the penultimate round of the Playoffs with Sunday’s running of the Autotrader EchoPark Automotive 500 Texas first joined the circuit in 1997, but back in 2017 went through a reconfiguration, dropping the banking in Turns 1 and 2 from 24 degrees to 20 degrees, as well as widening the racing surface from 60 feet to 80 feet. Meanwhile, Turns 3 and 4 remain banked atRead More

By David Morgan, Associate Editor There are numerous adjectives that can be used to describe this weekend’s race on the Charlotte Motor Speedway road course: unpredictable, volatile, treacherous, chaotic, etc. One thing is for sure, Sunday’s Bank of America ROVAL 400 is going to be a hell of a ride, with four drivers getting cut from the NASCAR Cup Series Playoffs when the checkered flag waves. In an effort to spice things up back in 2018, Charlotte officials elected to switch from running another race on the 1.5-mile oval to creatingRead More