NASCAR Blogs – Page 23 – Inside Circle Track

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Would You Want a Top Ride in a Lesser Series or a Lesser Ride in a Top Series?

Since there is not so much actual racing going on in the NASCAR world right now, use your imagination for a moment and pretend that you are an up-and-coming race car driver who has been labeled as a “can’t miss” prospect. However, this imaginary scenario has one major drawback. While you’re the hot name on the lists of several car owners, there isn’t room for you in the driver lineup with any of the sport’s elite teams. Certainly you want to strike while the iron is hot in terms of moving up to the next tier but the move you…

Kyle Busch might very well go down as the greatest in NASCAR history

For the second time in his career, Kyle Busch is the NASCAR Cup Series champion. For some, that gives cause to celebrate. But for those who do not count themselves as fans of the Joe Gibbs Racing driver, there may still yet be a bad taste in their mouths as they work to digest the final outcome of Sunday’s Ford EcoBoost 400 at the Homestead-Miami Speedway. As is the case virtually every time the driver of the No. 18 Toyota achieves some new milestone, the conversation invariably turns toward Busch’s place in NASCAR history. Here is someone who is almost…

That’s not exactly how this NASCAR Playoffs thing is supposed to work

Matt Crafton won his third NASCAR Gander Outdoors Truck Series championship on Friday night at Homestead-Miami Speedway. Obviously, that’s great for the veteran driver and his ThorSport Racing team. However, his path to that title was not exactly carved out the way in which NASCAR intended when this current championship-deciding system was devised. The current NASCAR Playoffs system is the evolutionary product of the ‘Chase for the Cup’ format that was created following the 2003 NASCAR Cup Series season to prevent a situation such as the one that played out that year when Matt Kenseth won the championship by using…

Good Thing That Scuffle Happened at the End of the Martinsville Race

Here we are several days removed from the First Data 500 contested last Sunday at the Martinsville Speedway and despite being closer to the running of this weekend’s Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series event at Texas Motor Speedway, the vast majority of talk, print, and television content revolving around the sport is still focused on the paper-clip shaped track located in southern Virginia. But unfortunately, not much of that talk is centered on the racing that took place the half-mile. Instead, most who are discussing Sunday’s race are chattering about the altercation that occurred on pit road following the checkered…

Kyle Busch, Denny Hamlin enter Martinsville with decided advantages

Martinsville Speedway currently holds the distinction of being the first track to host a race in the ‘Round of 8’ portion of the NASCAR Playoffs. That means that at the end of the day on Sunday followers of the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series could potentially know who one of the four drivers with a chance to be crowned as the 2019 champion will be. The winner of the First Data 500, provided that driver is one of the eight still remaining in the title hunt, will be issued an invitation as one of the Championship 4 contestants in the…

Playoff Racing: You have won me over

Matt Kenseth drove to such an impressively consistent season in 2003 that he wrapped the NASCAR Cup Series title even before the green flag was waved over the field at the season finale race at the Homestead-Miami Speedway. Despite the fact that he only scored one victory that year, the 25 top-10 finishes Kenseth compiled were enough to allow him to be crowned as the series champion following the season’s penultimate race in Rockingham, NC. Even though he had won more than twice as many races as any other driver on the series that season, Ryan Newman could only muster…

Are the big tracks giving NASCAR a Formula 1 type feel?

The biggest and fastest tracks on the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series schedule have always required drivers to work together by using the draft in order keep pace with the competition and pass other cars. This has been true since the 1950’s when the first of what we have come to call the ‘plate tracks’ was first built. But lately it seems as if the teams, and perhaps more importantly the manufacturers, have decided that working together to achieve the goal of placing one of their own in the winner’s circle supersedes all else at Talladega Super Speedway and Daytona…

Miserable Monster Outing Leaves Penske Relying on Talladega

Virtually every driver and team still involved in the NASCAR Playoffs came into this current stretch of three races that make up the ‘Round of 12’ pointing out that they wanted to jump start their efforts in this segment by scoring a good finish at Dover International Speedway in the Drydene 400. The emphasis on Dover was born out of the fact that the next event for the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series will take place in the wildcard race at the ever treacherous Talladega Super Speedway coming up this weekend. However, one of NASCAR’s power teams now finds itself…

NASCAR made loud and clear point with Erik Jones disqualification

During the winter leading up to the 2019 NASCAR season the sanctioning body announced that it would begin taking wins and finishing positions away from cars that failed post-race technical inspections. It had been decades since the last time a car and driver had been hit with such a penalty under NASCAR’s watch but this season promised to bring about changes in the way rule violations would be handled. In more recent times, it had been common practice to issue fines, points reductions, and even suspensions to crew members when violations were found even though the winner’s trophy did not…

NASCAR Playoffs: Now the mistakes are magnified

Every race has its share of mistakes made by drivers and crews and even the officials who govern the event. Sometimes those mistakes can be overcome and sometimes they result in a team scoring a finish that may seem like an underachievement. But over the course of a long season, those mistakes are often times forgotten by the time the next racing weekend rolls around. However, that cannot be the case at this point in the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series season. The first round of the NASCAR Playoffs are set to begin on Sunday in the South Point 400…