Ryan Blaney Tag

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 Joey Barnes, Editor-in-Chief FORT WORTH, Texas – It wasn’t the ideal outcome, but Ryan Blaney put in a solid sixth-place finish to keep himself in the championship mix in the AAA Texas 500 at Texas Motor Speedway. The 23-year-old Ohio native started eighth, but managed to climb into the top three before losing the rear of the car while defending his position entering Turn 2 on Lap 258 and fading quickly the  of the backend top 10. From there, Blaney struggled to regain the lost track position, but quietlyRead More

By Reid Spencer, NASCAR Wire Service FORT WORTH, Tex. – A driver without a signed contract for 2018 won the pole position for Sunday’s AAA Texas 500 at Texas Motor Speedway (2 p.m. ET on NBCSN) with a record lap — giving a timely birthday present to his crew chief. In the final round of Friday’s knockout qualifying session, Kurt Busch covered the 1.5-mile distance in 26.877 seconds (200.915 mph) to top the previous record lap of 200.111 mph posted by Tony Stewart in 2014. In a third round thatRead 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 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

By David Morgan, NASCAR Editor After a trip out to America’s Heartland, the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series heads back east this weekend and straight to the final short track race of the season, with Sunday’s running of the First Data 500 at Martinsville Speedway. A mainstay on the schedule since 1949, the historic half-mile, which is also the smallest on the circuit, will test both man and machine over 500 grueling laps. Sunday’s race will mark the start of the three-race playoff semi-finals that will trim the eight driverRead 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 Hollywood Casino 400 at Kansas Speedway. WINNERS Martin Truex, Jr. – Racing with heavy hearts after the loss of crew member Jim Watson to a heart attack on Saturday night, Truex and his Furniture Row Racing team had extra incentive to go out and score the win on Sunday. Though the team was able to capitalize andRead More

By Reid Spencer, NASCAR Wire Service KANSAS CITY, Kan. – Martin Truex Jr. survived a restart penalty and an unscheduled pit stop to return to what has become a thoroughly familiar locale—Victory Lane—in Sunday’s Hollywood Casino 400 at Kansas Speedway. In a dramatic race that brought Truex his seventh Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series win of the season, calamity eliminated four drivers from the series Playoff. Jamie McMurray, Ricky Stenhouse Jr., Matt Kenseth and Kyle Larson all saw their postseason hopes end with the final event in the Round of 12.Read More

By David Morgan, NASCAR Editor The Round of 12 all comes down to this. After a wild weekend on the high banks of Talladega Superspeedway that saw the majority of the field suffer some kind of damage on the 2.66 mile behemoth in Alabama, the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series heads west to America’s Heartland to take on the fast 1.5-mile Kansas Speedway for Sunday’s running of the Hollywood Casino 400. First joining the circuit as a relatively tame 1.5 mile track with 15 degree banking in the turns, KansasRead More

By David Morgan, NASCAR Editor In his final start at Talladega Superspeedway, Dale Earnhardt, Jr. will start exactly where he intends on finishing Sunday’s race – in first. Talladega has served as Earnhardt’s most successful track, with six wins, but in all of the accolades he has gotten over the years at Talladega, he had never won a pole on the 2.66-mile track, but that all changed on Friday afternoon. With wild applause from the fans in the stands, Earnhardt was the fastest in the first round of qualifying andRead More