Category: NASCAR Blogs

The South Point 400 held last Sunday at the Las Vegas Motor Speedway was a terrible race. There’s just no two ways about it. The NASCAR Sprint Cup Series event had nothing to hang its hat on as two drivers(Denny Hamlin & Kyle Larson) combined to lead all but 35 of the 267 laps and despite the fact that Chase Elliott did close in on eventual winner Denny Hamlin late in the going, there was little doubt who was going to win over the closing laps. Following a weekend that featured one of the most exciting and drama-filled races of…

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Whoever is crowned as the NASCAR Cup Series champion on November 7th at the Phoenix Raceway may very well look back at the South Point 400 at the Las Vegas Motor Speedway as the most important of the races within his NASCAR Playoffs run. After all, this race on the 1.5-mile layout located in the Nevada desert could very well be considered the only “normal” race within this ‘Round of 12’. Besides the race in Las Vegas, this Playoff round consists of a race at the Talladega Super Speedway and the Charlotte Motor Speedway ‘Roval’. Both of those tracks bring…

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The sister site to this one, InsideDirtRacing.com, is obviously dedicated to the coverage of dirt racing so the title of this piece may get this writer in trouble with some of his readers. But this past weekend clearly demonstrated that, for NASCAR at least, the concrete surface at the Bristol Motor Speedway made for better racing than the clay surface installed around the half-mile oval back in the spring. As a matter of fact, it would be hard to image a better collective trio of races than those contested by the NASCAR Camping World Truck Series, the NASCAR Xfinity Series,…

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The first round of cuts in the NASCAR Playoffs will take place this Saturday night following the NRA Bass Pro Shops Night Race at the Bristol Motor Speedway. Four of the original sixteen drivers who earned their way into the title chase will lose the opportunity to be crowned champion at the end of the 2021 NASCAR Cup Series season. As a result, the pressure is on for those involved in the stretch run toward the championship as the first round draws to a close at one of the sport’s toughest and most exciting tracks. Potentially adding to the high-banked…

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After contact with the No. 3 car of Austin Dillon on lap 125 of the Cook Out Southern 500, the Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota of Kyle Busch slammed the outside wall of the Darlington Raceway. The damage was significant enough that the No. 18 team decided immediately to take the car to the garage area and retire it from competition. It was a devastating blow in this race that served as the opener for the NASCAR Playoffs. Soon after the incident, Busch was interviewed by NBC and his language was not exactly well suited for a Sunday School class. “It…

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The sixteen drivers who will race for the NASCAR Cup Series title in the NASCAR Playoffs have been named and now it is time for the ten-race stretch run that will determine the eventual champion to begin. Three separate rounds made up of three races each will be used to whittle the contenders down until only four remain for the series finale at Phoenix Raceway on November 7th. The bottom four drivers in the rankings of those who do not score a win within that particular round will be eliminated after each of the first three rounds in order to…

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Going into the 2011 ‘Chase for the Sprint Cup’, as the current NASCAR Playoffs system was then know by, Tony Stewart had not won a single race. He and his Stewart-Haas Racing team made it into the ten-race stretch that would ultimately decide the NASCAR Cup Series champion by virtue of their place in the standings at the time of the cutoff. Stewart’s name was not on the top of very many lists when media and fans named off their picks to win the title that year. However, Stewart would make a run in those final ten races that few…

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He’s won five points-paying NASCAR Cup Series races including the Coca-Cola 600. He earned $1 million in the NASCAR All-Star Race. He has won two of the three biggest Sprint Car races held this season. He won the Chili Bowl Nationals. He has won multiple Dirt Late Model features including the crown jewel Prairie Dirt Classic. Surely the driver to have accomplished all of these things has no faults, right? Kyle Larson has been the talk of the motorsports world in 2021. But even with all of his accomplishments this season, the Elk Grove, California driver admits that he doesn’t…

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The FireKeepers Casino 400 held on Sunday at the Michigan International Speedway clearly illustrated exactly how the 550 horsepower/high downforce package is supposed to work. And some comments made after the race seemed to show exactly who that package is meant to attract. Much of the 400 miles contested on Sunday featured cars racing in close quarters with one another and even, from time to time, coming in contact with each other or bobbling briefly after losing downforce when getting too close to another. But on the flip side of that close racing was the fact that this particular package…

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Going into the 2020 NASCAR Playoffs, Kevin Harvick was the talk of the Cup Series. The driver of the Stewart-Haas Racing Ford had amassed seven wins and a series-leading number of playoff points at that time and appeared to be the clear favorite entering the ten-race dash to the championship. Hardly anyone would have predicted that the No. 4 team would not be a part of the Championship 4 when the sport rolled into Phoenix Raceway to contest its finale last November. Of course, Harvick ultimately was not one of the four drivers who had a chance of being crowned…

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