Rick Minter, Senior Writer
Rick Minter joined The Atlanta Journal-Constitution in 1991, where he covered motorsports as well as serving as a bureau chief. From 2000-2008 he focused on racing exclusively, traveling the NASCAR circuit as the paper’s motorsports writer and winning awards from several organizations including the Georgia20 Automobile Racing Hall of Fame Association and the City of Atlanta. Minter and his wife Joanne live on the family farm in Inman, Ga. In his spare time he collects and restores antique tractors and trucks.
Articles by Rick Minter
By Rick Minter | Senior Writer
RacinToday.com
For the past 10 years or so, anytime big news broke on the NASCAR scene, it wouldn’t be long before I got a phone call from David Poole. Sometimes I was already onto the story, sometimes not.
Poole knew how important is was for beat reporters to be on top of [...]
By Rick Minter | Senior Writer
RacinToday.com
Talladega, Ala. – Reporters are probably the least qualified of anyone involved to solve the problems that come with racing today’s NASCAR cars at Talladega Superspeedway.
So the best approach for scribes to take is to observe, report what they see and let the readers decide what they think.
That being said, [...]
By Rick Minter | Senior Writer
RacinToday.com
Talladega, Ala. – NASCAR’s rules for racing at Talladega Superspeedway are intended to produce safer racing. Drivers run restrictor plates to slow speeds and they’re prohibited from going below the yellow line at the bottom of the race track, among other things. But on Sunday at the end of the [...]
By Rick Minter | Senior Writer
RacinToday.com
Increasingly in NASCAR these days, interviews with top drivers occur in scrums held behind the team hauler in the garage. The driver stands on the steps. Reporters push and shove their way to the front, trying to get in a question or two. Others stand around the periphery, straining to [...]
By Rick Minter | Senior Writer
RacinToday.com
Talladega, Ala. – David Ragan’s first major NASCAR victory, a last-lap thriller in Saturday’s Nationwide Series race at Talladega, was a long time coming. It followed 185 winless starts in the Sprint Cup, Nationwide and Camping World Truck Series.
It actually was a lot longer than that.
The Ragan family from Unadilla, [...]
By Rick Minter | Senior Writer
RacinToday.com
Talladega, Ala. – Richard Childress said Friday that he came away from a recent hunting trip to Montana with a big game plan – for his race teams.
Childress said it was on that trip that he finalized his plans for swapping the No. 07 and No. 29 crews at his [...]
By Rick Minter | Senior Writer
RacinToday.com
Talladega, Ala. – Matt Kenseth won the most recent restrictor-plate race, the season-opening Daytona 500, but those results weren’t reflected in the practice speeds from Friday at NASCAR’s other plate track, Talladega Superspeedway.
Kenseth was 37th in Happy Hour on Friday. Qualifying is set for Saturday morning, and the cars will be [...]
By Rick Minter | Senior Writer
RacinToday.com
Talladega, Ala. – By definition, a prelude is some event that comes before another, more important event.
But in the case of the annual “Prelude to the Dream” at Tony Stewart’s Eldora Speedway in Rossburg, Ohio, the opener is becoming as big an event as the “Dream” dirt Late Model race [...]
By Rick Minter | Senior Writer
RacinToday.com
This week, one of NASCAR’s often overlooked talents, Donnie Allison, will get his due.
That’s when he’ll be inducted into the International Motorsports Hall of Fame, along with long-time car owner and promoter J.C. Agajanian, NASCAR Modified star Jerry Cook, and NASCAR team owners Bud Moore and Raymond Parks.
Allison becomes the [...]
By Rick Minter | Senior Writer
RacinToday.com
To compare TV ratings among NASCAR’s Sprint Cup and Camping World Truck Series in baseball terms, it’s “one up, one down.”
While the Fox broadcast of Saturday night’s Cup race drew a record-low 3.3/6 for a race from Phoenix and overall numbers are down 14 percent this year, the truck series [...]