NASCAR Sprint Cup Series Tag

By David Morgan, NASCAR Contributor After leading a career-high 51 laps at Pocono last weekend en route to a fourth place finish, Chase Elliott came into Sunday’s race at Michigan looking to improve on that as he continued to be in the hunt for his first win. Elliott started the day in 10th and flexed his muscle early and often, working his way to the lead over Joey Logano on a restart at lap 117 and looked to be one of the cars to beat as the laps clicked off.Read More

By David Morgan, NASCAR Contributor After kicking off the first half of the season with three wins, Kyle Busch and his No. 18 team have been having a summer to forget, with finishes of 30th or worse in the three races prior to Sunday’s race at Michigan. Unfortunately for Busch, the summer slump would continue in the FireKeepers Casino 400. Starting ninth, Busch started having handling issues and made note that something was going on with his engine almost immediately. As Busch started dropping back just prior to lap 53,Read More

By Reid Spencer, NASCAR Wire Service BROOKLYN, Mich. – For more than a third of active NASCAR Sprint Cup Series drivers, there will be no rest for the weary. One driver from each Cup organization is eligible to participate in a test of newly repaved Kentucky Speedway on Monday and Tuesday. The test is a continuation of NASCAR’s proving-out process for a new lower-downforce competition package earmarked for 2017. Last year, as the sanctioning body solidified the rules for 2016, races at Kentucky and Darlington were used as benchmarks forRead More

By NASCAR Wire Service A rare exception as a driver from outside of NASCAR’s developmental hotbeds, Brad Keselowski calls Rochester Hills, Michigan home. Decorated already – even with his prime years potentially still in front of him – Keselowski, 32, boasts the 2012 NASCAR Sprint Cup Series championship and 19 career wins. One achievement the No. 2 Team Penske driver would dearly like to add to his resume is a win in his native state. Keselowski gets the chance to visit Victory Lane beneath the roar of his hometown fansRead More

By David Morgan, NASCAR Contributor A two-mile, high banked behemoth in the backyard of the big three American automakers, Michigan International Speedway has played host to NASCAR since 1969 and will do so again this weekend as the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series heads to the track for Sunday’s running of the Firekeepers Casino 400. Before we focus on the here and now, we’ll take a look back into the past in this week’s “Throwback Thursday Theater” and the 2001 Kmart 400, which saw the resurgence of a champion and aRead More

By David Morgan, NASCAR Contributor Since his runner-up finish at Bristol back in April, Dale Earnhardt, Jr. had been having a rough go of things in the five races that followed, failing to finish inside the top-10 in any of them, but on Monday at Pocono, Earnhardt returned to form at a track that he has had good luck at in the past. Starting eighth, Earnhardt struggled early in the race as it looked like Monday’s race might just be a continuation of their performance issues that they had beenRead More

By Reid Spencer, NASCAR Wire Service LONG POND, Pa. – Working with a substitute crew chief, and saving enough fuel to get to the finish line and complete a celebratory burnout, Kurt Busch won Monday’s rain-delayed Axalta “We Paint Winners” 400 at Pocono Raceway. Busch won for the first time this year in the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series and for the third time at Pocono, a 2.5-mile speedway featuring three widely different corners. And Busch claimed his 28th victory in NASCAR’s premier series with race engineer John Klausmeier leading theRead More

By Joey Barnes, Editor-in-Chief Jimmie Johnson saw his chances of winning the Axalta ‘We Paint Winners’ 400 at Pocono Raceway end after wrecking with less than 40 laps to go. The incident happened on one of the many frantic restarts as Johnson’s No. 48 Lowe’s Chevrolet slid in Turn 1, then clipped the rear of Brad Keselowski before making heavy contact with the inside wall. Johnson, a three-time winner at Pocono, has finished outside the top 20 in three of the last five races, with his only notable result beingRead More

By Joey Barnes, Editor-in-Chief The NASCAR has postponed its Sprint Cup Series race, the Axalta ‘We Paint Winners’ 400 at Pocono Raceway, due to persistent rain. Originally set for a 1 p.m. ET start time on Sunday, the race became delayed as mist continued to fall on the track and NASCAR officials were never able find a dry window. The new start time will be Monday, June 6 at noon ET with television coverage on FS1 and radio broadcasts on MRN and SiriusXM NASCAR Radio. The most recent event atRead More

By Reid Spencer, NASCAR Wire Service Before last week’s Coca-Cola 600 at Charlotte Motor Speedway, Martin Truex Jr.’s 2016 season could have been summed up with a lyric from the blues standard “Born Under a Bad Sign.” “If it wasn’t for bad luck, I wouldn’t have no luck at all,” could well have been Truex’s theme for the current campaign. He lost the Daytona 500 to Denny Hamlin by six inches. He led 141 laps at Texas and finished sixth. He won the pole and led 172 of 267 lapsRead More