By Jim Pedley | Managing Editor
RacinToday.com
NASCAR’s era of big changes has faced high levels of criticism from the paying customers. But there is one change that was made for the 2014 season that some say just might be capable of cross-generational appeal.
It’s a tweaking of the points format and it was aimed squarely at a [...]

By Jim Pedley | Managing Editor
RacinToday.com
An extra day of practice at Las Vegas Motor Speedway on Thursday may have resulted in an extra day of discovery for some Sprint Cup drivers, but for Greg Biffle of Roush Fenway Racing, the test produced an extra day of frustration.
The first question directed at him in a post-session [...]

By Jim Pedley | Managing Editor
RacinToday.com
It’s always been tough to slot Kevin Harvick during discussions about driving talent. By the end of the 2014 Sprint Cup season – 2015 at the latest – that process will become easier.
Right now, albeit just a week into the current season, there is growing evidence that Harvick’s place in [...]

By Jim Pedley | Managing Editor
RacinToday.com
Kevin Harvick, fast all week in practices, was fast on race day as well as he notched a dominating win in Sunday’s Sprint Cup Series race at Phoenix International Raceway.
The win was Harvick’s fifth in a Cup race at PIR and first overall since leaving Richard Childress Racing at the [...]

By Jim Pedley | Managing Editor
RacinToday.com
When it comes to racing machinery, there are very few inconsequential changes. Virtually all have the ability to produce or reduce speed – and, hence, finishing positions in races – depending on how teams and drivers deal with the changes.
For that reason, today’s Sprint Cup Series race at Phoenix International [...]

By Jim Pedley | Managing Editor
RacinToday.com
Turns out, there was no need to make use heart needles during the Sprint Cup Series’ debut of “knockout qualifying”. The new procedure was interesting but hardly the fuse-blowing fun-o-rama that some had predicted/hoped it would be.
“I don’t know,” driver Aric Almirola of Richard Petty Motorsports said when asked about it [...]

By Jim Pedley | Managing Editor
RacinToday.com
Speedweeks was much more than a series of races and practices driver Tony Stewart. It was also a series of tests. This week, with the Daytona 500 behind him – comfortably behind him – Stewart says that while the racing didn’t go as hoped at Daytona International Speedway, the accompanying [...]

By Jim Pedley | Managing Editor
RacinToday.com
Over the past several years, the Daytona 500 had truly become “NASCAR’s Super Bowl”. That is, more about the pomp than the circumstance.
As with the NFL’s annual biggest game of the year, after which people spend more time talking about commercials and halftime shows than football, NASCAR fans have spent [...]

By Jim Pedley | Managing Editor
RacinToday.com
Dale Earnhardt Jr. held off a large pack of the biggest stars in Sprint Cup in a sprint to the checkered flag and won the rain-hammered Daytona 500 Sunday evening.
The victory, which ended with the field frozen because of a last-lap wreck, was a popular one with a big Daytona [...]

By Jim Pedley | Managing Editor
RacinToday.com
When Denny Hamlin won last year’s season-ending Sprint Cup race in South Florida, it seemed at the time to be just a warm ending to a cold season. Now it appears that last November’s victory could have been the start of something big.
Hamlin, whose victory at Homestead-Miami Speedway at the [...]