Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series Tag

By David Morgan, Associate Editor Kyle Busch seemed to be unstoppable en route to the win Sunday at ISM Raceway, but Ryan Blaney sure put up a hell of a fight in an effort to give Team Penske a victory sweep on the day. “We’ve been poised to have days like this, contend for wins and run top 5 it just hasn’t happened this year,” said Blaney.  “We haven’t gotten the finishes we deserved and this is more like it, so that was good.  This is a good place to startRead More

By Reid Spencer, NASCAR Wire Service AVONDALE, Ariz. – There was an air of inevitability to Kyle Busch’s closing run in Sunday’s TicketGuardian 500 at ISM Raceway. Busch was tracking down race leader Ryan Blaney after restarting fourth on Lap 239 of the fourth Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series race of the season. Running in Blaney’s wake for 37 laps, Busch finally made the winning pass on Lap 296 of 312 and nursed his car to the finish line. Busch’s third victory at the one-mile track and his 52nd in theRead More

By Reid Spencer, NASCAR Wire Service AVONDALE, Ariz. – Ryan Blaney ended the day the way he started it—with the fastest car at ISM Raceway. After leading opening Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series practice with the quickest lap of the day (141.716 mph), Blaney put his No. 12 Team Penske Ford on the pole for Sunday’s TicketGuardian 500 at the one-mile track. Blaney covered the distance in 25.480 seconds (141.287 mph) in the final round of knockout qualifying to outpace Chase Elliott (140.045 mph) by a comfortable .203 seconds. The BuschRead More

By David Morgan, Associate Editor The West Coast swing for the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series rolls on this weekend with a trip to Arizona and ISM Raceway in Phoenix for Sunday’s running of the TicketGuardian 500. With two races with the new aero package under their belts in two different low horsepower configurations, drivers and teams get their first crack at the high horsepower configuration that will feature 750 horsepower and the standard larger spoiler, but not the aero ducts. In addition, the Cup Series will see the new trackRead More

By David Morgan, Associate Editor It never rains in the desert, but when NASCAR comes to town, it’s almost a guarantee. For several hours prior to the 2015 running of the Quicken Loans Race for Heroes 500 at ISM Raceway in Phoenix, the rains fell, pushing the race that was scheduled for a Sunday afternoon into the night. While the 312-mile event finally got underway under the lights, the field would be racing the rain just as much as each other throughout the evening. Early on, it looked as if KevinRead More

By Reid Spencer, NASCAR Wire Service LAS VEGAS – It was a victory for Joey Logano. It was a victory for Team Penske. It was a victory for NASCAR’s new higher-downforce, lower-horsepower competition package, which debuted in full flower on Sunday at Las Vegas Motor Speedway. In a pitched battle between teammates, Logano held off Brad Keselowski on the final lap of the Pennzoil 400 to score the second straight victory for Team Penske and the second straight for the new Ford Mustang, which was introduced into the Monster Energy NASCARRead More

By Luis Torres, Staff Writer Sporting his 1999 NASCAR Southwest Series championship-winning paint scheme in front of his home crowd, Kurt Busch’s homecoming was a success after a wise pit strategy put him in front for 23 of 267 laps, and scored a fifth-place finish in Sunday’s Pennzoil 400 at Las Vegas Motor Speedway. Throughout the afternoon, Busch’s No. 1 Star Nursery Chevrolet Camaro ZL1 had his work cut out for after starting 28th and was outside the top-10 in the first two stages, with one of the adjustments made hisRead More

By Reid Spencer, NASCAR Wire Service LAS VEGAS – Kevin Harvick knew he didn’t have the fastest car for Friday’s knockout qualifying session at Las Vegas Motor Speedway. But Harvick also predicted that the fastest car wouldn’t win the pole for Sunday’s Pennzoil 400 at the 1.5-mile track (3:30 p.m. ET on FOX, PRN and SiriusXM NASCAR Radio). He was right. When the cars crossed the stripe as the seconds ticked down in the final round, it was Harvick who had the pole-winning lap at 180.517 mph (29.914 seconds), edging DaytonaRead More

By David Morgan, Associate Editor The Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series has been visiting Las Vegas Motor Speedway for more than two decades, but this weekend’s race at the track is likely one of the most anticipated at the facility in years with the introduction of the new aerodynamic package that will make its full debut on the 1.5-mile track. Though the new package was rolled out for the first time last week in Atlanta, it wasn’t the full package that includes the aero ducts in the front end of theRead More

By David Morgan, Associate Editor As the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series packs up and heads west to start the West Coast Swing at Las Vegas Motor Speedway on Sunday, we’ll take a step back in time for today’s edition of “Throwback Thursday Theater” to the 2006 UAW-DaimlerChrysler 400 and the closest finish to ever occur at the 1.5-mile track. In the final race on the original configuration of the track, it looked to be another Roush-Fenway kind of day as Greg Biffle led the field to green from the poleRead More