Inside Circle Track

Did Ross Chastain do enough?

No one ever said that racing is fair. The fastest car doesn’t always win. The team that works the hardest sometimes sees their car caught up in a crash that a driver other than their own caused. And top flight rides sometimes go to drivers who haven’t really proven themselves but do have sponsorship money instead of to drivers who have proven their talents to be worthy of said rides. We are about to find out if last statement is true regarding Alva, Florida native Ross Chastain. In the three recent NASCAR Xfinity Series events held at Darlington Raceway, Las…

Hendrick Motorsports on unfamiliar ground in the NASCAR Playoffs

Have we been transported to some alternate dimension? After last Sunday’s Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series event at Las Vegas Motor Speedway the three drivers representing Hendrick Motorsports in the NASCAR Playoffs are staring the possibility of elimination squarely in the face. The championship seeking field will be cut down from the 16 current combatants to 12 survivors following the next two weekends at Richmond Raceway and the Charlotte Motor Speedway Road Course. And with the pending cutoff looming, HMS drivers Alex Bowman, Jimmie Johnson and Chase Elliott are in serious jeopardy of placing this organization that has been a…

Hard hits knock Harvick, Jones and Elliott out of first playoff race

To say the least, the first race in the first round of the NASCAR Playoffs were disastrous for some. A total of seven of the 16 drivers who qualified for the championship stretch run finished outside the top-20 in the final rundown of the South Point 400 Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series race at the Las Vegas Motor Speedway. But of those to have bad days, three of them in particular suffered through their own personal versions of hard knocks as Kevin Harvick, Erik Jones and Chase Elliott were involved in hard crashes that ended their respective days prematurely. On…

Martin Truex, Jr. trying to “block out all the noise” in search of second title

Under normal circumstances the defending Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series champion would be in the spotlight at the beginning of the NASCAR Playoffs, and that certainly is true of 2017 title winner Martin Truex, Jr. However, these are far from normal circumstances for the Furniture Row Racing team as their title defense begins this weekend in the South Point Casino and Hotel 400 at the Las Vegas Motor Speedway. As has been well documented, Furniture Row team owner Barney Visser recently announced that the No. 78 operation would be shut down at the end of the 2018 season due to…

Playoff Teams Must Decide Between Gambling or Playing It Safe

With the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series about to head for Las Vegas it seems like a good time to talk about gambling. But this piece isn’t about the type of gambling one might do at a slot machine or a blackjack table. Rather, it’s about the type of gambling the teams who find themselves locked into the NASCAR Playoffs might very well find themselves doing over the course of the next three weeks. As the playoffs are structured, 16 drivers and teams qualified to race for NASCAR’s ultimate prize over the next ten races. However, that field of championship…

Can Brad Keselowski steal the Cup title from the Big-Three?

Some may call it luck. Some may say that it is a situation in which preparation has met with opportunity. Some may simply call it mojo. But whatever terminology you may choose to use, Brad Keselowski has found it in a major way. And more importantly for the Michigan native, he and his Penske Racing team have found it at just the right time of the season. Keselowski has won back-to-back Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series races. And these weren’t just any old races that the No. 2 Ford claimed, but rather, they were crown jewels of the sport. On…

Unpopular Opinion: Rules Have to be Enforced Even When Fans Think Otherwise

One of the most difficult jobs in all of sports has to be that of a racing sanctioning body when it has to enforce rules that are deemed by competitors, fans, and media as being unfair or just plain stupid. In those cases organizations such as NASCAR, Formula 1, IndyCar, the Lucas Oil Late Model Dirt Series, the World of Outlaws Late Model and Sprint Car Series are often placed in the no-win situation of having to penalize a popular driver or team in order to maintain the sanctity of their rule books. But such decisions have to be made,…

Nik Williams closes out 2018 at Kingsport Speedway in strong fashion

Nik Williams finished the season at Kingsport Speedway about as hot as a driver possibly could. The Greeneville, Tenn. racer won six of the final eight Late Model Stock Car races held on the upper east Tennessee track known as ‘The Concrete Jungle’ to close out the 2018 campaign. The driver points out that his strong late season charge was aided by the preparation leading into each race night. “We work on it all week” Williams explained in an interview with InsideCircleTrack.com. “It’s like having another job. When you get home you get in the shop and get after it….

Logan Seavey takes ARCA checkered flag on the dirt at DuQuoin

For the second time in the 2018 season the ARCA Racing Series took to the dirt to stage a race. this time it would be at the DuQuoin State Fairgrounds for the Menards General Tire Grabber 100. At the end of the afternoon it was Logan Seavey driving a Venturini Motorsports Toyota who came away from the Illinois track with the win at the end of the Labor Day classic ARCA Racing Series points leader Sheldon Creed led the way in qualifying with a lap of 31.805 seconds around the one-mile clay oval. That lap bettered the former track previous…

Isn’t the Xfinity Series supposed to be for inexperienced drivers?

A lap 111 incident during the Sport Clips Haircuts VFW 200 NASCAR Xfinity Series race on Saturday afternoon at Darlington Raceway and the ensuing comments made by the drivers involved in that incident caused quite a stir on social media following the race. At the root of the issue was a regular front-runner in the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series who voiced his opinion that the Xfinity Series regular(and driver for an underfunded Cup team) he had raced with for the lead before the crash was ill-suited for the ride he had been entrusted with on that day. Ross Chastain…