By Jim Pedley | Managing Editor
RacinToday.com
KANSAS CITY, Kan. – It’s the day before the eighth Sprint Cup race of the season and the temperature is knuckle-reddening cold, the wind is shredding flags and banners, and the Kansas Speedway track surface is coming up in five-inch chunks.
If Scott Miller, the vice president of competition for Michael [...]

By Jim Pedley | Managing Editor
RacinToday.com
KANSAS CITY, Kan. – Time was, a solitary victory at a race in mid-April at a track in the Midwest wouldn’t have produced much action on J.D. Gibbs’ satisfaction-o-meter. But following the STP 400 at Kansas Speedway Sunday, the look on Gibbs’s face indicated that the SOM needle had taken [...]

By Jim Pedley | Managing Editor
RacinToday.com
KANSAS CITY, Kan. – Denny Hamlin passed Ryan Truex Jr. with 31 laps to go and held on to win the STP 400 Sprint Cup Series race at Kansas Speedway on Sunday.
The victory was the second of the year for the Joe Gibbs Racing driver as he won at Phoenix International [...]

By Jim Pedley | Managing Editor
RacinToday.com
KANSAS CITY, Kan. – James Buescher  won the SFP 250 Camping World Truck Series race at Kansas Speedway on Saturday.
It victory was his first in the series and came in Buescher’s 76th start.
“Finally got there,” the native of Plano, Texas told his team over the radio after crossing the finish [...]

By Jim Pedley | Managing Editor
RacinToday.com
KANSAS CITY, Kan. – It’s tough to find a consensus among race car drivers on anything. But this weekend there does seem to be massive agreement among Sprint Cup drivers on the subject of the soon-to-commence repaving of Kansas Speedway.
They are against it.
And the insistence by track and International Speedway [...]

KANSAS CITY, Kan. – A.J. Allmendinger, driving a Penske Racing Dodge, won the pole on Saturday afternoon for Sunday’s STP 400 Sprint Cup race at Kansas Speedway. Harvick’s pole lap was at 175.993 mph.
The pole was the first at Kansas in a Cup car for Almendinger, who moved to Penske from Richard Petty Motorsports for the [...]

By Jim Pedley | Managing Editor
RacinToday.com
KANSAS CITY, Kan. – Some around NASCAR say that Greg Biffle has never quite been able to cross that line which separates good driver from great driver. Biffle would likely retort that he has never been able to cross that line which separates hard-luck driver from to good-luck driver.
Today, it [...]

By Jim Pedley | Managing Editor
RacinToday.com
KANSAS CITY, Kan. – This weekend, teams and drivers and fans will bid farewell to the original racing surface at Kansas Speedway. For many – especially drivers – the farewell will be tearful.
But know this: The removal and replacement of the 11-year-old asphalt at Kansas is absolutely necessary. The alternative [...]

LEAWOOD, Kan. – It’s easier today for young drivers with untested talent to get a shot at stardom in NASCAR than it was in the 1990s and before. There is very little doubt about that. But there is also very little doubt that keeping a ride in one of NASCAR’s top three series is as tough [...]

By Jim Pedley | Managing Editor
RacinToday.com
Some thoughts about a rather large weekend of racing and many hours in front of the flat screen (LCD, not that plasma crap):
– Robert Hight’s Funny Car season is shaping up to be one of those special jobs that seems to come along every decade or so in the NHRA. [...]