Inside Circle Track

Does NASCAR Really Need Street Racing?

Over the past couple of weeks the topic of NASCAR taking its sport to street courses has been tossed about on social media and various other sites where racing is discussed. And my simple one word response to that is- Why? Motives such as reaching new markets and racing in cool locales have been mentioned as reasons for the sudden desire to take NASCAR to the streets. However, little mention has been made of the racing that would actually take place on these makeshift courses potentially set to become new homes for a sport that has traditionally been contested on…

Stewart Friesen to campaign Toyota trucks in search of 2020 NGOTS title

Fresh off his first NASCAR Playoffs Championship 4 appearance last month at the Homestead-Miami Speedway driver Stewart Friesen and his Halmar-Friesen Racing team have announced a partnership with Toyota that will set the Canadian driver up for another run at the NASCAR Gander RV & Outdoors Truck Series title in 2020. The No. 52 trucks will be purchased through Kyle Busch Motorsports and will be housed in a shop located in Statesville, NC. according to a press release posted on StewartFriesen.net on Tuesday. In previous seasons, HFR had campaigned Chevrolet trucks out of the GMS Racing stables. The 36-year-old Friesen…

Turn 2 Blog: Jimmie Johnson’s Farewell & Evaluating Driver Moves

*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. Richard: This off-season has gotten off to a fast start with some big news having already dropped and perhaps more still in the offing. I think we have to start with the announcement that seven-time NASCAR Cup Series champion Jimmie Johnson plans to retire from full-time NASCAR competition at the end of the 2020 season. While this might not necessarily come as a shock to most,…

Stephen Nasse Poised for Snowball Derby Breakthrough

Every pavement Super Late Model racer has aspirations of winning one of the sport’s crown jewel events. Among those most coveted of races, and likely at the top of the list for most drivers and teams, is the Snowball Derby. That event is held each December at Five Flags Speedway in what many consider the ‘Super Bowl of Short Track Racing’. Now, the time has come for teams to make their yearly trek to Pensacola, Florida for the 52nd annual version of that storied short track race. Stephen Nasse is one of those drivers whose efforts have been pointing toward…

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…

Josh Brock winning the most important battles

The 2019 season has proven to be a very solid campaign for Josh Brock and his team. While the Corbin, Kentucky native was already known within the ranks of Super Late Model racing on pavement, he has become increasingly more familiar to racing enthusiasts after scoring major wins in the North-South Challenge, a race accompanied by the ARCA Menard’s Series at the Fairgrounds Speedway in Nashville back in May, and the Summit City 100 at Indiana’s Baer Field Speedway in July. Both of those triumphs came in events sanctioned by the ARCA/CRA Super Series. Brock’s results from throughout the season…

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…

Rich’s Ramblings: Thoughts Following Homestead-Miami

From time to time I plan to drop in a brief(4-6 minutes) recording to offer a few thoughts. I plan to make most of these on the way to or from a race track on some topic that may be of interest but not necessarily for a written story. This offering is about the Ford EcoBoost 400 at Homestead-Miami Speedway and the race win and Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series championship of Kyle Busch. Just click the play button below to listen. Richard Allen is a member of the National Motorsports Press Association Respond to this piece on Twitter –>…

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…

Don’t consider Kevin Harvick an underdog just because he isn’t with JGR

Three of the drivers that make up the Championship 4 going into the season finale and title deciding Ford EcoBoost 400 at Homestead-Miami Speedway have something in common. Kyle Busch, Denny Hamlin and Martin Truex, Jr. all drive for Joe Gibbs Racing and it doesn’t take much of a math wizard to deduce that the organization owned by the legendary football coach has a 75% chance of claiming the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series trophy. As a result of there being three of the four drivers still standing with a shot at earning one of auto racing’s most prestigious crowns…