Category: NASCAR Blogs

Certainly one of the biggest news stories during the 2022 NASCAR Cup Series season has been the uncertain contract status of two-time champion Kyle Busch. The contract of the talented 37-year-old driver with Joe Gibbs Racing will expire at the end of the current campaign and has yet to be renewed. Unless that situation changes, the Las Vegas native could become one of the most highly regarded free agents to be available in quite some time. Busch’s record speaks for itself. He has won a total of 60 NASCAR Cup Series races and was crowned as the champion in 2015…

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*Turn 2 Blog is a regular feature on InsideCircleTrack.com. Here, site operators Michael Moats and Richard Allen take turns offering their thoughts on the NASCAR and pavement short track racing topics of the day. The Hy-Vee supermarket chain went all out to promote the recent IndyCar double-header at the Iowa Speedway. Is more enthusiastic promotion of this kind needed in all forms of racing? Richard: For any company that chooses to sponsor a race, it is in their best interest for the event to do as well as possible. An empty grandstand serves no one well. With that in mind,…

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*Turn 2 Blog is a regular feature on InsideCircleTrack.com. Here, site operators Michael Moats and Richard Allen take turns offering their thoughts on the NASCAR and pavement short track racing topics of the day. Is all the Kyle Busch contract drama surprising to you? Richard: I’m not sure anything surprises me anymore when it comes to Kyle Busch. Without question, the Las Vegas native is one of the most talented NASCAR drivers of all time but he also is one of the sport’s most interesting personalities. Getting back to the question at hand, I am not surprised that his contract…

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Call it what you will- circumventing the rules, working in the gray area, finding a competitive advantage, or cheating – but all of those things have been a part of racing since racing has been a thing. And one would think that more often than not, despite the best efforts of the rule enforcers, many have gotten away with something that ultimately led to a victory. That said, NASCAR has stated since early on in the development of the Next Gen car that they will not look favorably on teams that try circumvent the rules(or cheat) and they clearly demonstrated…

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Kevin Harvick has been one of the most prolific winners on the NASCAR Cup series over the past decade. The Bakersfield, California native has won a total of 58 races over the course of his career with 35 of those victories and a championship coming since joining forces with Stewart-Haas Racing in 2014. But as has been well documented, things have not gone so well of late for the No. 4 Ford crew. Harvick is currently in the midst of a 63 race winless streak that dates back to the Bass Pro Shops/NRA Night Race at the Bristol Motor Speedway…

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NBC/USA/Peacock took over the coverage of the NASCAR Cup and Xfinity Series races a couple of weekends ago in Nashville and it feels like, at least to me, that there has been a definite theme in the early going. Almost like the the WWE or Marvel movies, the coverage seems to be taking on a heroes vs. villains type of concept as the broadcasts appear to label certain drivers as one or the other. Mind you, this is not really meant to pick on NBC but simply to make an observation. Keep in mind that Fox never really seemed to…

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*Turn 2 Blog is a regular feature on InsideCircleTrack.com. Here, site operators Michael Moats and Richard Allen take turns offering their thoughts on the NASCAR and pavement short track racing topics of the day. Is Ross Chastain really too aggressive? Richard: This is a question I am mixed on. Everyone says they want drivers to be aggressive but then when they are public opinion condemns them for doing so, especially if they run afoul of one of the popular stars. Ross Chastain is certainly an aggressive driver and he is one that the fans, media, and other competitors have decided…

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In the movie ‘Gladiator’, the lead character Maximus Decimus Meridius played by Russell Crowe asks a rather subdued crowd following a gladitorial battle scene the question, “Are you not entertained?” The cheers that followed indicated that they were indeed entertained. In today’s era of short attention spans and various entertainment options available to potential attendees and viewers, all sports find themselves balancing the purity of their particular sport with the entertainment value they can offer fans. Every sport does it. The NFL, MLB and NBA have all structured their rules to encourage offense and games that come down to the…

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Speedway Motorsports, Inc. completely reconfigured the Atlanta Motor Speedway prior to the first visit by the NASCAR Cup Series to the track earlier this year with the hope of producing the same type of racing seen at Talladega Super Speedway and the Daytona International Speedway. And to some degree, that was accomplished as the race held on the redesigned 1.5-mile layout did feature some pack racing as well as a couple of ‘Big One’ type accidents. Steeper banking than what had been the case on the old AMS configuration as well as a tighter racing groove generated high speeds and…

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*Turn 2 Blog is a regular feature on InsideCircleTrack.com. Here, site operators Michael Moats and Richard Allen take turns offering their thoughts on the NASCAR and pavement short track racing topics of the day. Sunday’s NASCAR Cup Series race at Road America featured another first time winner. What’s going on here? Richard: I think there are two factors at work here that have aided the fact that there have been so many new winners in 2022. First, the Next Gen car has changed everything we thought we knew about the sport from the car’s handling characteristics to pit stops. As…

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