Opinion Tag

By Toby Christie, NASCAR Editor This is All-Star week, which means that we are in store for a $1-million winner take all slugfest, where points aren’t on the line. The race this year has a brand new format, which seems destined to produce some great moments, but when you look back at the history of this event you’ll see that it might not have needed the extra boost in excitement. Without further adieu, here are the ten greatest moments in All-Star race history according to me: 10. Newman blows upRead More

By Toby Christie, NASCAR Editor A race team with a once sterling reputation on the track, is now fledgling. Richard Childress Racing hasn’t won a race since Kevin Harvick packed his bags for greener pastures at Stewart-Haas Racing more than two years ago. For a team that housed cars for the legendary Dale Earnhardt for nearly 20 seasons, and for years was a championship contender with drivers like Kevkn Harvick, Clint Bowyer and Jeff Burton turning the wheel, this is absolutely unacceptable. While Hendrick Motorsports, Team Penske, Joe Gibbs RacingRead More

By Toby Christie, NASCAR Editor The West Coast swing is just about complete for the 2016 NASCAR Sprint Cup Series season. Auto Club Speedway in Fonatana, California is on tap for this weekend, and is the final stop of the swing. The Cup series heads into the track on the high of a photo finish in Phoenix. Overall, four different drivers have won the four races to start the season, and I fully expect there to be a fifth driver claiming their spot in this year’s Chase this weekend. To beRead More

By Toby Christie, NASCAR Editor Through four races in the 2016 NASCAR Sprint Cup Series season we have already witnessed some outstanding moments. Among those moments have been two incredible photo finishes. Denny Hamlin edged Martin Truex Jr. to the line by one-one hundredth of a second in Daytona. This week in Phoenix, Kevin Harvick bested Carl Edwards by the same razor-thin margin. But throughout the entire four races we’ve seen so far, the finishes haven’t been the only exciting aspect. We have had the pleasure of watching breathtaking racingRead More

By Toby Christie, NASCAR Editor It’s no secret that Dale Earnhardt Jr. likes his car for this weekend’s Daytona 500. Earnhardt raced this very car in all four restrictor plate events last season, and with it he recorded two wins, and an average finish of 1.8. Earnhardt’s great luck with the car that he has named ‘Amelia’ continued in Thursday night’s Can-Am Duel qualifying race. “I was so nervous today about tearing the car up because I know how good it is versus what we have,” Earnhardt said. “What weRead 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

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 Toby Christie, NASCAR Editor He didn’t always have the best car on the track, and he hardly ever had the resources to run the full NASCAR Sprint Cup Series schedule, but Lennie Pond had more heart than arguably anyone who ever strapped on a racing helmet. Wednesday we sadly found out that Pond died at the age of 75 after a fight with cancer. Pond worked his way up through the local dirt tracks and later asphalt tracks in the Virginia area in the 1960s and 1970s. John Dodson,Read More

By Toby Christie, NASCAR Editor We’re supposed to be drumming up the fact that Tony Stewart is heading into his final Daytona 500. It’s supposed to be a fun year-long send off for one of NASCAR’s all-time greats. Unfortunately it starts off with the three-time NASCAR Sprint Cup Series champion, and winner of 48 races stuck in a hospital room. We don’t know Stewart’s status for the Daytona 500 just yet, we won’t find that out likely until Thursday afternoon or later, but regardless it’s not the news the sports worldRead More

By Toby Christie, NASCAR Editor We are less than 20 days away from the official start of the 2016 NASCAR season. For the next ten months battles will be waged on short tracks, big tracks and tracks that have right handed turns mixed in. Around every turn a storyline will develop, and a new headline will be etched into everyone’s mind. But we’re still days away from the spawning of the 2016 season. Right now my job is to predict exactly what will happen in the 2016 season. Chances are I willRead More