Despite being the dominant driver of the 2020 NASCAR Cup Series season, Kevin Harvick will not race for the championship Sunday at Phoenix Raceway.  A nine-time winner in Cup Series competition to date, the Stewart Haas Racing driver suffered through a decidedly sub-par performance yesterday at Martinsville Speedway, struggling with early race handling issues before cutting a tire and losing two laps while pitting under green for repairs. His team made modest improvements to their Mobil 1 Ford in the second half of the race, but despite long runs of green flag racing, Harvick struggled t ..read more

Kyle Busch’s defense of the 2019 NASCAR Cup Series championship is over. It ended with a whimper rather than a bang Sunday, with his Joe Gibbs Racing M&Ms Toyota sputtering out of fuel with three laps remaining in the Bank of America ROVAL 400at Charlotte Motor Speedway. Busch collided with fellow playoff contender Clint Bowyer and cut a tire near the end of Sunday’s second stage, forcing crew chief Adam Stevens to play a “Hail Mary” strategy card, leaving Busch on the racetrack when the balance of the field pitted. It earned Busch a few encouraging laps at the head of the field, but his ..read more

NASCAR finds itself on the hot seat today, in the aftermath of a race at Talladega Superspeedway that featured 13 caution flags – three of them red – and required Triple Overtime to complete.  Wild even by Talladega standards, yesterday’s race saw a number of penalties assessed for either racing below the double-yellow line at the bottom of the speedway, or forcing another driver to do so.  The most controversial penalty was assessed to driver Matt DiBenedetto, who swerved down the track while leading in the final turn, in an attempt to block challenger William Byron. Contact was m ..read more

It has been a challenging 2020 season for Kyle Busch. The defending NASCAR Cup Series champion has struggled to repeat a 2019 campaign that saw him win five times and post 27 Top-10 finishes in 36 starts. This time around, the Las Vegas native has struggled to keep pace with dominant drivers Kevin Harvick and Denny Hamlin, going winless in his last 29 starts – since last year’s Homestead Miami finale – with only 16 Top-10 finishes in 29 outings this season. The Joe Gibbs Racing driver finished a close second to winner Kevin Harvick Saturday night at Bristol Motor Speedway; a track where he ha ..read more

Getty Images/Portland Press Herald One of the true giants of New England Motorsports was lost Friday, when New Hampshire Motor Speedway founder Bob Bahre passed away at the age of 93. The Connecticut native began his racing career as a midget car owner in the 1950s and early ‘60s, before purchasing Maine’s Oxford Plains Speedway in 1964. He turned that facility into a showplace of northeast motorsports, hosting a series of big-money “Getty Open” Late Model events that brought full-fendered racers to the forefront of Northeast motorsports. His monthly Getty Opens pitted wildly div ..read more

My friend and former Sirius XM Speedway co-host Angie Skinner found herself swept-up in a controversy not of her own making yesterday, when her stepson, Dustin Skinner, posted some shocking, racially insensitive comments on social media. Sadly, much of the online backlash was directed at Angie and Mike, who in no way deserved the hateful, vitriolic comments that came their way.  Angie reached out to me today -- as a friend -- to share her heartache and disappointment. After reading her words, I asked if I might share them with you here. Not because Mike and Angie need defendin ..read more

NASCAR banned the display of the Confederate Flag at its race events and venues yesterday, saying its presence “runs contrary to our commitment to providing a welcoming and inclusive environment for all fans, our competitors and our industry.” That decision comes during a tumultuous period for both our sport and our country, with the recent murder of George Floyd at the hands of a Minneapolis, MN police officer reopening the ongoing debate over equal rights, racism and discrimination against people of color. Controversy surrounding the Confederate flag is not new to our sport. In the 1950 ..read more

Phelps: "The time is now to listen." Just before the start of yesterday’s “Folds of Honor QuikTrip 500” at Atlanta Motor Speedway, NASCAR took the unprecedented step of stopping its race cars on the front straightaway during the final pre-race parade lap, for sanctioning body president Steve Phelps to deliver an address expressing NASCAR’s support for improved race relations and an end to the social unrest that currently threatens to tear this nation apart. “Our country is in pain and our people are justifiably angry, demanding to be heard,’’ said Phelps, as the field sat silent be ..read more

NASCAR and Dover Motorsports, Inc. confirmed today that the NASCAR Cup Series will return to Nashville Superspeedway next season; the first major league motorsports event to take place there in nearly a decade. In its prime, the 1.33-mile concrete oval -- located approximately 35 miles southeast of Nashville in Lebanon, Tennessee – hosted four major race weekends each season, headlined by the NASCAR Xfinity and Truck Series, along with IndyCar. While attendance was good early in its 20-year run, ticket sales plummeted dramatically in the late 2000s, prompting Dover Motorsports to close the ..read more

Brad Keselowski won the Coca-Cola 600 at Charlotte Motor Speedway Sunday night, with the checkered flag falling at an hour when even the most rabid NASCAR fans struggled to maintain consciousness. Already the longest race on NASCAR’s 2020 schedule, the 600’s traditional “daylight to darkness” format was stretched even further by an hour-long rain delay and an overtime finish. The only thing preventing it from being called a marathon was the fact that it ran longer than two marathons, with plenty of minutes still to spare. And that, my friends, is becoming a problem.   In 1960, when C ..read more