Winning at least one race was pretty much essential for making the 2022 NASCAR Playoffs. Austin Dillon’s win at Daytona in the regular season finale left Ryan Blaney as the only winless driver to have a shot at the championship following the cutoff race. But things seem to be working out differently this season as it appears as though there will not be as many different victors after the 26th race on the schedule as was the case last year. There are 16 available Playoff spots with race winners getting first dibs. Those who rank highest in points without a…

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With there having been 10 NASCAR Cup Series winners in the 16 completed races held so far in the 2023 season, the number of available spots in the NASCAR Playoffs are quickly becoming spoken for. There are 10 remaining events to be held before the cutoff will be made to determine those 16 drivers who will compete for the championship with six spots still to be determined. In 2022, there were 16 different winners in the first 26 races(keep in mind that Kurt Busch had won but could not compete in the Playoffs for medical reasons). Since winning a race…

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*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. What drivers have surprised you(good or bad) going into the break? Richard: I’m going to start with those who have surprised me most on the positive side. I thought it would take a while for Kyle Busch to get acclimated to Richard Childress Racing and it would take a while for RCR to get acclimated to Kyle Busch. There have been a couple of instances that…

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NASCAR dropped the hammer on one particular driver and one particular team this past week and they should have. In both cases, either a clearly stated rule was violated or an unwritten no-no in which the sanctioning body had already established a precedent was committed. Without strong penalties, rules, whether written or not, have no teeth. Unless you have been in complete seclusion for a week, you probably already know that Chase Elliott will be sitting out this weekend’s Enjoy Illinois 300 at World Wide Technology Raceway near St. Louis. The decision to suspend the sport’s most popular driver and…

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I have only recently begun to learn a little bit about how the English Premier League works from a co-worker who has explained some of it to me. One aspect of that soccer league that interests me is that an underperforming team can be “relegated” to a lower division in favor of one of the teams from that lower division being boosted up to the top level. Hearing about that got me thinking about NASCAR. Recently, a group of NASCAR Cup Series owners stated that the charters they receive should become permanent. Currently, there are 36 charters split among 16…

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Memorial Day means a lot of things in the United States. Chief among those, of course, is the remembrance of the men and women who have fallen in battle serving the country in its armed forces. Aside from that, though, is the fact that this is the biggest racing weekend on the calendar each year. Whether it’s pavement racing, dirt racing, drag racing or just about any other form of motorsports one can imagine on oval tracks, road courses or otherwise, it will be among the biggest sporting events to take place over the next few days. If one is…

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Auto racing’s most historic and celebrated event will be contested this weekend when the 107th annual Indianapolis 500 takes the green flag at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. The Borg-Warner Trophy, presented each year to the winning driver, is not only the biggest prize in IndyCar racing but is one of the most sought after rewards in all of motorsports. Although not nearly as steeped in tradition as the Indy 500, from 1994 to 2020 the NASCAR Cup Series contested the Brickyard 400 on the famed 2.5-mile oval at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. When the winds of public opinion blew toward…

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The NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series race this past Saturday at North Wilkesboro Speedway played out in front of one of the most enthusiastic crowds that particular series has seen in quite some time. Granted, there was the nostalgia element of having racing return to one of the sport’s original facilities after an absence of more than a quarter-century. Still, that race exemplified something that both the NASCAR Xfinity Series and the Truck Series need more of – enthusiasm. In my opinion, there is a way in which that sort of enthusiasm can be replicated. For quite some time I have…

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My least favorite word in the English language is “deserve” because everybody in our modern society thinks they deserve whatever they want just because they want it. Not very many people seem to want to go out and earn whatever they want or need, they just want it given to them claiming they deserve whatever they desire. As a result, I rarely use the word deserve in any context. However, I am going to make an exception to that right now. If ever any group of modern-era people ever deserved something, it is the people who have invested their blood,…

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