NASCAR Tag

By Reid Spencer, NASCAR Wire Service DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. – Danica Patrick has 118 NASCAR Sprint Cup Series starts to her credit. She has no victories, no top fives. But as Patrick starts her fourth full season in Sprint Cup, paired with new crew chief Billy Scott, she points to her ability to get up to speed more quickly in practice as a source of confidence that the results will be better this year. “I’m far more confident,” Patrick said on Tuesday at Daytona International Speedway during NASCAR Media Day,Read More

By Toby Christie, NASCAR Editor 17 years ago Dale Earnhardt Jr. was a talented, young up-and-coming driver, fresh off of a championship in the NASCAR XFINITY (then Busch) Series, who had a very famous last name which helped push expectations to an unreasonable level. Sound familiar? If so, it’s probably because it’s nearly the exact same scenario that Chase Elliott finds himself in as he heads into his maiden voyage in the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series. On Tuesday at Daytona 500 Media Day, Earnhardt hit the topic of his newRead More

By Reid Spencer, NASCAR Wire Service DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. – When tandem “love-bug” racing was the order of the day at restrictor-plate tracks, Dale Earnhardt Jr. didn’t like it one bit. Hated it, if you want to know the truth. NASCAR’s most popular driver couldn’t see the logic in pushing another car to victory, even if it happened to be a car driven by a teammate. When Jimmie Johnson won at Talladega in 2008, Earnhardt’s No. 88 Chevrolet was the caboose, and the caboose finished fourth. To Earnhardt, that wasRead More

By Toby Christie, NASCAR Editor It wasn’t that long ago that Jeb Burton was mentioned in the same conversation as drivers like Chase Elliott, Ryan Blaney and others as being considered one of the brightest rising stars in the sport. Burton, the son of former Daytona 500 winner Ward Burton, exploded onto the NASCAR National Series scene with a tremendous 2013 season in the NASCAR Camping World Truck Series. Burton collected a victory at Texas Motor Speedway, to go along with an impressive seven pole positions en route to aRead More

MOORESVILLE, N.C. (Feb. 16, 2016) – Cole Custer’s No. 00 Chevrolet Silverado will wear OneMain blue and white for three races in the NASCAR Camping World Truck Series (NCWTS) this season, beginning at Ohio’s Eldora Speedway (July 20). OneMain, which joined JR Motorsports as backer of the No. 1 OneMain Chevrolet Camaro in the NASCAR Xfinity Series with Elliott Sadler, will also be on Custer’s No. 00 entry at Talladega Superspeedway (Oct. 22) and again the following week at Martinsville Speedway (Oct. 29). “We are proud to see OneMain stepRead More

By Joey Barnes, Editor-in-Chief With the Sprint Unlimited now in the books and Denny Hamlin its victor, it is time to look at some key takeaways from Saturday night’s event. 1) NASCAR overtime rules prove insignificant The field was set after a late race caution with Hamlin leading Joey Logano, Paul Menard, and a charging Kyle Larson. They passed the overtime line on the backstretch of Daytona International Speedway, and after taking the white flag several cars ended up in the wall in Turn 2. NASCAR had a chance toRead More

By Toby Christie, NASCAR Editor NASCAR has a new set of rules for their green-white-checkered finishes in 2016 and one race into the much-hyped ‘overtime’ rules, we’re already seeing a continuation of a recurring theme – anticlimactic finishes. The Sprint Unlimited was a fiercely contested race. All night long drivers were weaving in and out of traffic, spectacular crashes ensued and all along the way the suspense built toward what seemed to be an epic battle for the win between Denny Hamlin, Joey Logano and a whole host of others. This trulyRead More

By Reid Spencer, NASCAR Wire Service DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. – Saturday’s Sprint Unlimited at Daytona International Speedway ended with a mere handful of cars undamaged—and race winner Denny Hamlin’s Toyota wasn’t one of them. But Hamlin got his wreck out of the way early in a two-car incident with Ricky Stenhouse Jr.’s Ford on Lap 13 and won the race in overtime with a large swatch of silver tape on the right side of his No. 11 Joe Gibbs Racing Camry. Hamlin triumphed in the season-opening non-points event for theRead More

By Joey Barnes, Editor-in-Chief After battling his own health issues the past several years, Brian Vickers is set for a golden opportunity in replacement duty for an injured Tony Stewart. Stewart-Haas Racing announced on Friday that Vickers will run the Sprint Unlimited (a non-points event) Saturday night, and the 58th annual Daytona 500. Vickers, 32, has seen his promising career derailed with a series of health issues that date back to 2010. However, after missing all but opening two races last season, the battle-tested North Carolina native has overcome aRead More

By Toby Christie, NASCAR Editor Sometimes crew chiefs don’t get their full due in the sport of NASCAR. That wasnt the case Friday at Daytona International Speedway as crew chiefs were at the forefront of how the grid for Saturday night’s Sprint Unlimited was decided. The exhibition event’s starting lineup was decided by a random draw from the crew chiefs of the teams eligible to compete. Chad Knaus, Jimmie Johnson’s crew chief, nabbed the pole position for the race. Johnson has won at Daytona three times in his NASCAR SprintRead More