Chase Elliott spends time away from NASCAR perfecting his racing craft

After you’ve won the NASCAR Cup Series championship, there’s no need to further develop your racing abilities, right? And more, doesn’t that tour’s 36-race schedule offer enough opportunities for the sport’s top drivers to get their racing fix? Well, it’s often said that anytime a race car driver sits in the seat of a race car, that driver is bound to improve his skillset. If that’s the case, Chase Elliott has been working to perfect his racing craft during the times over the past year or so when NASCAR has not been racing. Of course, with the Next Gen car…

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Late Model winner of Gateway Nationals could receive NASCAR Truck Series ride

This weekend will see the three-day Castrol Gateway Dirt Nationals play out in The Dome of the America’s located in St. Louis, Missouri. This will be the fifth running of the event held in the former home of the NFL’s St. Louis Rams before that franchise moved back to Los Angeles. The Thursday and Friday night Late Model shows will pay out $5,000 each to the victor while Saturday’s main event will award the winner a hefty $30,000 first prize. But on Wednesday evening, a NASCAR Camping World Truck Series team announced that there could be an even bigger prize…

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Kyle Busch stands to gain the most from the return of practice

The statistics compiled by Kyle Busch between 2015 and 2019 are nothing short of amazing. During that time period the Joe Gibbs Racing driver steered his Toyota into victory lane a total of 27 times and finished in the top-10 a stunning 70% of the time. In those five seasons he started from the pole position 16 times and led more than 1,300 laps each year except for his injury-shortened 2015 campaign. Most importantly, Busch was a Championship 4 participant in the season finale of all but one of those seasons with that stretch being bookended by two NASCAR Cup…

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The downside of NASCAR bringing back practice and qualifying

Since the NASCAR Cup Series returned to action following a shutdown brought on by the global pandemic early in the 2020 season, the sport has greatly altered the way in which it carries out each race weekend. For the most part, the institutions of practice and qualifying, which were once thought to be essential, have been eliminated. Instead, the teams have rolled their cars onto the track on race day having not turned a single lap leading into that particular racing event. However, with Covid-19 seeming to subside(hopefully) and the coming of a new car, NASCAR plans on returning to…

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Penske crew chief Jeremy Bullins having fun in the dirt while prepping new car, driver

Being a NASCAR Cup Series crew chief is one of the most demanding and stressful jobs in sports. A long 36-race schedule, endless travel, and the constant pressure of trying to get ahead of the competition can be exhausting both mentally and physically. Almost certainly, each of those who hold that title have to find some sort of release from the grind of leading a team in the most high-profile form of American motorsports. Team Penske crew chief Jeremy Bullins has indeed found a way to leave the day-to-day worries of having to prepare cars capable of competing for race…

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Kyle Larson, Chase Elliott taking part in USAC’s Hangtown 100

Two of racing’s biggest stars are participating this weekend in the USAC-sanctioned Hangtown 100 race for Midget Sprint Cars. And it’s not just any high-profile drivers taking part in the event held at California’s Placerville Speedway, it’s the two most recent NASCAR Cup Series champions who are hitting the quarter-mile dirt track for competition. The Hangtown 100 is part of the USAC NOS Energy Drink National Championship Series. Kyle Larson entered the weekend as the defending champion of the Hangtown 100 from the last time the event was contested back in 2019. And more, the 2021 Cup Series titlist unveiled…

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Brad Keselowski making moves to reassert Roush organization as “top-tier team”

The organization led by Jack Roush was a perennial contender for NASCAR Cup Series race wins and championships earlier in its history. Drivers such as Mark Martin, Matt Kenseth, Greg Biffle and Carl Edwards were frequently seen at the front of the field and near the top of the standings just over a decade ago. However, the company that was long the standard bearer for Ford Motor Company’s stock racing efforts has over the past few years fallen to the level of a mid-pack runner. The organization’s last wins came in 2017 when Ricky Stenhouse Jr. scored victories at the…

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Can NextGen car help Stewart-Haas regain form?

A look at the overall statistics from the 2020 season makes it seem as if the entire Stewart-Haas Racing organization was highly competitive. However, a closer examination of those numbers reveals that, in reality, it was only one of of that company’s teams that compiled the bulk of those stats. During that season, SHR had a total of 10 wins and 30 top-5 finishes. Their Ford machines led a total of 2121 laps during that campaign. But that closer look mentioned above reveals that the No. 4 car driven by Kevin Harvick actually amassed nine of those ten wins and…

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NASCAR Championship vindicates Kyle Larson’s extracurricular racing schedule

After Kyle Larson was suspended by NASCAR early on in the 2020 season, the Elk Grove, California native went on an amazing tear through the dirt racing world that saw him collect trophies from Sprint Car, Midget, and Late Model events across the country. Essentially, not having any Cup Series entanglements freed him up to do other things and he did those other things remarkably well. But at the beginning of 2021, Larson was reinstated by that sanctioning body and was then signed by powerful Hendrick Motorsports to drive their No. 5 Chevrolet machine. Once that took place, some began…

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Should a season championship be decided by the last pit stop of the last race?

While there were all sorts of possibilities for how the NASCAR Cup Series season could have ended, its conclusion ultimately played out in the best possible way. Following the 2020 campaign in which the driver with the most wins over the course of the year did not even make the Championship 4, the driver that had dominated in virtually every way possible in 2021 ultimately hoisted the trophy on Sunday evening at the Phoenix Raceway. And he did so in the most dramatic of ways. Kyle Larson earned the NASCAR Cup Series title after having won the regular season championship,…

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