Up to Speed Tag

By David Morgan, Associate Editor DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. – When the green flag flies on Sunday to kick off the 2022 Daytona 500, the NASCAR Cup Series will be venturing into unknown territory. For more than six decades, the sport has been making the pilgrimage to the Daytona high banks to win the sport’s most prestigious race and write themselves into the record book as Daytona 500 champion, but this year it’s a whole new ballgame. With the introduction of the Next Gen car for the 2022 season, drivers and teamsRead More

By David Morgan, Associate Editor Seven drivers enter Martinsville Speedway with a shot at moving on to next week’s NASCAR Cup Series championship race, but only three will leave Sunday’s Xfinity 500 with those title hopes still intact. The Round of 8 in the Cup Series Playoffs all comes down to the half-mile bullring in southern Virginia, where bent sheet metal and hurt feelings are all but inevitable. A mainstay on the schedule since 1949, the historic track, which is also the smallest on the circuit, will test both man andRead More

By David Morgan, Associate Editor The Lone Star State comes calling this weekend when the NASCAR Cup Series rolls into Texas Motor Speedway to kick off the penultimate round of the Playoffs with Sunday’s running of the Autotrader EchoPark Automotive 500 Texas first joined the circuit in 1997, but back in 2017 went through a reconfiguration, dropping the banking in Turns 1 and 2 from 24 degrees to 20 degrees, as well as widening the racing surface from 60 feet to 80 feet. Meanwhile, Turns 3 and 4 remain banked atRead More

By David Morgan, Associate Editor There are numerous adjectives that can be used to describe this weekend’s race on the Charlotte Motor Speedway road course: unpredictable, volatile, treacherous, chaotic, etc. One thing is for sure, Sunday’s Bank of America ROVAL 400 is going to be a hell of a ride, with four drivers getting cut from the NASCAR Cup Series Playoffs when the checkered flag waves. In an effort to spice things up back in 2018, Charlotte officials elected to switch from running another race on the 1.5-mile oval to creatingRead More

By David Morgan, Associate Editor The final two races that make up the second round of the NASCAR Cup Series Playoffs will be a gauntlet for the drivers still in championship contention with races at Talladega Superspeedway and the Charlotte Motor Speedway Roval set to wreak havoc on the Playoff field. Sunday’s Yellawood 500 at Talladega is the first wild card race that will have to be dealt with, as the unpredictable nature of superspeedway racing will likely throw a wrench into even the best laid plans and leave some ofRead More

By Luis Torres, Staff Writer LONG BEACH, Calif. – After 15 rounds of hard fought racing, the 2021 NTT IndyCar Series championship trail will end this Sunday. Destination? Long Beach – the site of the finale and the sports’ most prestigious street race. A tremendous amount of storylines will be settled. One of the major headlines is indeed who’ll be hoisting the Astor Cup after Sunday’s finale. One man who controls his destiny is championship leader Alex Palou. The Chip Ganassi Racing competitor who entered the sport last year as aRead More

By David Morgan, Associate Editor After running on the dirt at Bristol earlier this year, the NASCAR Cup Series returns to the track we all know and love this weekend for Saturday night’s running of the Bass Pro Shops NRA Night Race and the first elimination race of the Playoffs. Racing at Bristol is always intense, but when the lights go down for the night race, the intensity gets cranked to 11. The aggressiveness that the drivers will show on the high-banked bullring that is called “The Last Great Colosseum” toRead More

By Luis Torres, Staff Writer After yet another wild development to the 2021 NTT IndyCar Series campaign, the series head to its final state — California. These next two weeks is all there’s left in the championship trail, beginning with the popular Laguna Seca in Monterey. Originally, the circuit was supposed to be the final stop of the entire trail. However, that honor will go to Long Beach. Before heading to vibrant SoCal, 27 drivers will indeed navigate around the mellow environment, including the famous Corkscrew. Several of the field willRead More

By Luis Torres, Staff Writer After not having an NTT IndyCar Series on the West Coast for the first time since 1946 last year, the region will be the final destination for the next three weeks. The first leg of the West Coast Swing begins at Portland International Raceway where the news continue to be endless. Among the 27-car field, there’ll be another debutant in American Open Wheel Racing, driving for a team that’s making its series return. That being former Formula 2 driver Callum Ilott, who’ll drive for the rebrandedRead More

By David Morgan, Associate Editor After a wild weekend in Daytona to wrap up the regular season and set the 16-driver field for the Playoffs, the NASCAR Cup Series heads to one of the crown jewels on the circuit, Darlington Raceway, for this weekend’s running of the Cook Out Southern 500. A staple of the Cup Series since 1950, there are many elements to Darlington that make it a special track. From the egg-shape of the track that features one end narrower than the other as a result of building theRead More