Pivotal year for HMS teammates William Byron and Alex Bowman

Perhaps the most intense competition in all of racing is that between the two drivers employed by the same Formula 1 team. The ultimate measuring stick to evaluate the driving skills of one of those competitors is to compare how often he out qualifies and how often he finishes higher than his own teammate. If that were the case in NASCAR, William Byron and Alex Bowman would have a tall order in front of them going into the 2021 season. One thing the two young drivers have going for them is the fact that they drive for powerful Hendrick Motorsports….

Continue reading

Will Kyle Larson prove his worth in championship equipment?

Kyle Larson has won a total of six NASCAR Cup Series races out of the 223 starts he has made at the sport’s top level. He has posted a highest finish in the final standings of sixth in 2019. And while there are a number of racers who have toiled longer while having achieved fewer victories, those numbers do not seem overly impressive considering that many argue this driver is among the most talented in the sport. In comparison, Chase Elliott has visited victory lane 11 times in 185 career starts and is coming off of a season in which…

Continue reading

How much longer can Kevin Harvick keep up this pace?

Kevin Harvick had a phenomenal 2020 season on the NASCAR Cup Series. The Stewart-Haas Racing driver led the series in wins(9), top-5 finishes(20), top-10 finishes(27), laps led(1531), lead lap finishes(33), and average finishing position(7.7). The only thing he didn’t do was win the championship after failing to make the Championship 4 during the final stretch run of the NASCAR Playoffs. Title or not, however, the achievements of this driver and his team during the disjointed coronavirus-plagued 2020 season were quite remarkable. That is perhaps even more true when one looks back into NASCAR’s past and sees that many of the…

Continue reading

Now or Never time for a Denny Hamlin championship?

Being labeled as the best driver to never win a NASCAR Cup Series championship comes with both positive and negative connotations. On one hand, any driver being considered for such a title has obviously won races and contended for titles. But on the other hand, the person carrying that moniker has no doubt, on at least a few occasions, finished seasons with the frustration of not having achieved the ultimate goal at the sport’s top level. Among active drivers in the NASCAR Cup Series division today, the label of best driver to never win a championship is most often attached…

Continue reading

There were plenty of positives that came out of NASCAR in 2020

It’s easy to find negatives from the year 2020. If you don’t think so, just look at social media and read all the negativity spewing from Facebook and Twitter everyday. But instead of focusing on the bad, a look at the positives that came from this soon-to-be-finished year would make for a much better way to dive into the New Year. NASCAR provided plenty of positivity to at least briefly turn the attention of its fans away from coronavirus, shutdowns, politics, natural disasters, and all of the other difficulties faced in America and the world during the past year. For…

Continue reading

Which organizations will benefit most from driver shuffles?

The driver lineups of some of NASCAR’s major organizations will look a little different from last year when teams arrive at the Daytona International Speedway in February to kick off the 2021 Cup Series season. Joe Gibbs Racing, Stewart-Haas Racing, Hendrick Motorsports, and Chip Ganassi Racing have each shuffled their driver lineups as they prepare for the upcoming campaign. And as has been the case over the past few seasons, the trend continues to be that of replacing older veterans with much younger drivers as three of the four stated teams did. It was a substandard year for all of…

Continue reading

Will single-driver domination of the power organization’s last beyond 2020?

Often times when people discuss domination in the NASCAR Cup Series, they tend to do so in terms of a particular team that appears to have an advantage over the competition. There have been seasons in which one organization would have multiple drivers to pile up wins and occupy multiple positions within the top-10 in the series standings. For example, the four drivers who piloted Toyota machines for Joe Gibbs Racing won 19 of the 36 races contested and had one of its drivers, Kyle Busch, to win the championship in 2019. And those wins were very much evenly distributed…

Continue reading

Chase Elliott bringing spotlight to short track racing during off-season

Whether it be his intention or not, NASCAR Cup Series champion Chase Elliott is about to bring a fairly bright spotlight with him when he competes in two major short track events during this brief bit of down time prior to the restart of his regular job. The 25-year-old driver plans to race a pavement Super Late Model machine in the upcoming Snowball Derby at Five Flags Speedway in Pensacola, FL on December 6th. He will then make his first ever attempt at the famed Chili Bowl Nationals in a Midget Sprint Car during the week of January 11-16 at…

Continue reading

What has 2020 taught us that we should have already known?

As the end of the year approaches many have grown fond of saying they cannot wait for 2020 to end as if issues such as coronavirus, racial tensions, political divide, and general discontent are going to magically go away when the clock strikes midnight and the calendar turns to January 1st. Our society has faced some major issues during the past year and virtually all of those problems will remain beyond the current year and beyond the presidential inauguration that will take place shortly after the New Year. On a much less important scale, NASCAR has also been faced with…

Continue reading

NASCAR moving Truck Series from Eldora to Knoxville

In 2013 the NASCAR Camping World Truck Series held its initial race at Eldora Speedway making it the first time one of the sanctioning body’s top-three divisions competed on a dirt surface in decades. Since then, that series had continued to make yearly stops at the Tony Stewart-owned facility located in Rossburg, OH until the coronavirus pandemic of 2020 forced the race intended for this summer to be cancelled. And now, it looks as if the time in which the trucks will race on one of the country’s most historic dirt tracks has come to an end, at least for…

Continue reading