Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series Tag

By David Morgan, NASCAR Editor An eighth Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series championship will have to wait until 2018 for Jimmie Johnson and the No. 48 team. Entering the day in a must-win situation to be able to claim the final spot in the Championship 4 and advance on to Homestead, Johnson qualified 12th and was holding steady just outside the top-10 on lap 149 when he blew a tire entering Turn 3, sending his Chevrolet hard into the outside wall. The damage was enough to send him to theRead More

By David Morgan, NASCAR Editor The Round of Eight all comes down to this. After last week’s race at Texas, the stage is set for the final race of the round in Phoenix to determine which drivers will move onto Homestead and which drivers will see their championship hopes vanish in the Arizona desert. Phoenix has resided on the Cup Series schedule since 1988, but the track looks completely different than it did 29 years ago, having undergone a reconfiguration back in 2011. The reconfiguration added progressive banking to theRead More

By David Morgan, NASCAR Editor It takes a lot to get Jeff Gordon riled up, but when the Cup Series visited Phoenix in November 2012, the four-time series champion had decided he’d had enough. Gordon and Clint Bowyer had been embroiled in a feud stemming from contact at Martinsville earlier in the year and with the season winding to a close, contact between the two at Phoenix just sent the Hendrick Motorsports driver over the edge. As the two were battling for a spot in the top-five with less thanRead More

By David Morgan, NASCAR Editor Each week, NASCAR Editor David Morgan will break down who’s hot and who’s not after the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series race weekend. Today, we break down the AAA Texas 500 at Texas Motor Speedway. WINNERS Kevin Harvick – Harvick served notice to the rest of the field on Sunday that he wouldn’t be going quietly into the night in this year’s championship battle. Entering Texas with just a three point lead over the elimination cut-off and never having won at the 1.5 mile track,Read More

By David Morgan, NASCAR Editor The list of veteran drivers that won’t be behind the wheel in the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series next season has grown by one as Matt Kenseth, who has been looking for a ride since mid-summer, announced that he would be stepping away from the sport at the conclusion of the 2017 season. “I’ll just take some time off, whatever that means,” said Kenseth. “I don’t know if that’s a year, two years, three months, four months, I mean you never know what happens. MaybeRead More

By David Morgan, NASCAR Editor After a barn burner of a finish at Martinsville last weekend, the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series heads to the Lone Star State and Texas Motor Speedway for Sunday’s running of the AAA Texas 500 and the second race of the playoff semi-finals. First joining the circuit in 1997, the 1.5 mile Texas track has provided some great racing over the years as the surface wore down as each season passed. For the second time the season, drivers will get a crack at the trackRead More

By David Morgan, NASCAR Editor As the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup and Xfinity Series drivers get back to work this weekend at Texas Motor Speedway, it’s time once again for “Throwback Thursday Theater”. In this week’s edition and in honor of his final trip to the Lone Star State, we look back at the first wins for Dale Earnhardt, Jr. in both series, which both came at Texas in 1998 and 2000. Through the first six races of Earnhardt’s rookie season in the Xfinity Series in 1998, Earnhardt had reboundedRead More

By David Morgan, NASCAR Editor With William Byron moving to the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series and the No. 24 team for Hendrick Motorsports in 2018, there was one piece of the puzzle missing. Who would be his crew chief for his upcoming rookie season? On Wednesday, the mystery was solved as Darian Grubb, who currently returned to the pit box as crew chief for Kasey Kahne and the No. 5 team on an interim basis, was named as full-time crew chief for Byron next season. Byron currently drives forRead More

By David Morgan, NASCAR Editor Each week, NASCAR Editor David Morgan will break down who’s hot and who’s not after the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series race weekend. Today, we break down the First Data 500 at Martinsville Speedway. WINNERS Kyle Busch – There was only one driver that was truly happy after Sunday’s race at Martinsville and that was Kyle Busch, who won for the fifth time this season and punched his ticket to the championship race at Homestead. Busch would lead for 184 laps on the day, butRead More

By Reid Spencer, NASCAR Wire Service MARTINSVILLE, Va. – The sun went down, the new lights came on, and all hell broke loose at Martinsville Speedway. In a wild overtime finish that took Sunday’s First Data 500 to 505 laps at the .526-mile short track, Kyle Busch beat Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series leader Martin Truex Jr. to the stripe by .141 seconds to take the checkered flag and earn a spot in the Nov. 19 Championship 4 race at Homestead-Miami Speedway. As Busch crossed the finish line, a multi-car wreckRead More