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 Seth Eggert, NASCAR Writer Athletes in their final events before moving from one team to another are often considered a ‘lame duck.’ Current Richard Petty Motorsports driver Aric Almirola does not want that label. Almirola has just two Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series races left with the team before departing for Stewart Haas Racing next year. Almirola’s tenure at RPM started at the 2010 Martinsville Playoff race. Since then he has earned one victory (Daytona 2014), 11 top-fives, 30 top-10s, and one pole position for the team. Almirola’s bestRead More

By Seth Eggert, NASCAR Writer Friendship can be a very strong bond. Two people that know that very well are Stewart Haas Racing’s co-owner Tony Stewart, and the team’s newest acquisition starting in 2018, Aric Almirola. Almirola and Stewart have been competing together for years. However, their careers have taken very different paths. Stewart won two championships with Joe Gibbs Racing before becoming an owner himself and winning a third Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series Championship in 2011. Almirola, who was once a Joe Gibbs Racing development driver spent timeRead More

By Seth Eggert, NASCAR Writer One of the worst kept big ‘secrets’ is finally out. Stewart Haas Racing confirmed Aric Almirola would take the wheel of their No. 10 Smithfield Ford Fusion in the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series. Smithfield will adorn Almirola’s No. 10 for the entire season. This will not be the first time that Almirola will have been paired with team co-owner Tony Stewart. The duo were teammates for a time at Joe Gibbs Racing. Almirola ran in late models, the NASCAR Camping World Truck Series, andRead More

By Seth Eggert, NASCAR Writer When Ricky Stenhouse Jr. takes to the track at Phoenix Raceway this weekend, he will be driving a very special car. The Roush Fenway Racing team will pay tribute to their longtime competitor, engine partner, and 2018 NASCAR Hall of Famer Robert Yates. The paint scheme echoes the one used by Davey Allison when he won at Phoenix in 1991 and 1992 while driving for Yates. Yates passed away in October after a lengthy battle with Liver Cancer. Earlier this year in May, he wasRead 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