By Larry Woody | Senior Writer
RacinToday.com
In response to a recent rant about the non-racing that has become the norm in NASCAR, readers suggested numerous solutions – from awarding points to only the top finishers to using an electric cattle prod to nudge drivers along.
To be fair, sandbagging is not new to the sport. David Pearson [...]

Thank God it’s Monday:
The plan, Kevin Harvick says, is not to pick up bonus points for leading the most laps in Sprint Cup races. The plan, he said, is to pick up victories. Thanks to dad, it’s always been that way for him, he says.
The plan has worked to near perfection the [...]

By Jonathan Ingram | Senior Writer
RacinToday.com
From RacinToday.com’s Monday Morning Crew Chief™:
Nothing stirs the pot like rumor, conjecture or bona fide big news. And big news for the Sprint Cup came in the form of the signing of Kimi Raikkonen by Kyle Busch Motorsports to run races in the Camping World Truck Series this season. On [...]

By Jim Pedley | Managing Editor
RacinToday.com
Kevin Harvick passed Dale Earnhardt Jr. with five laps to go and went on to win the Goody’s Fast Pain Relief 500 at Martinsville Speedway on Sunday.
The victory was the second straight for Harvick, as he won a week ago at Auto Club Speedway in Southern California. In that race, he [...]

By Jim Pedley | Managing Editor
RacinToday.com
Following Saturday’s Camping World Truck Series race at Martinsville, the track looked like the Gulf beaches of Louisiana after the BP oil rig blow out. Balls of black tire gunk littered the surface.
Luckily, no otters live inside the Martinsville short oval, so cleanup afterward was pretty quick and pretty simple.
But fixing [...]

Jamie McMurray earned the right to start Sunday’s Sprint Cup Series race at Martinsville Speedway from the pole after turning a fast qualifying lap at 96.509 mph on Saturday afternoon.
The pole is the first of the season for McMurray, the  Earnhardt Ganassi Racing driver who won the 2010 Daytona 500 and the 2010 Brickyard 400.
Ryan [...]

By Jim Pedley | Managing Editor
RacinToday.com
Not far from the coffee pot in the infield media center at Daytona International Speedway about 10 years ago, the late Bob Latford sat at small, white table wasting his time.
He reiterated points, he borrowed a pen and a sheet of notebook paper and scribbled what appeared to be numbers, [...]

RacinToday.com
A Jimmie Johnson slump: Kind of an oxymoron the last five years. But as the Sprint Cup Series arrives in Martinville for Sunday’s Goody’s Fast Relief 500, the defending five-time champion is suffering a bit of a dry spell.
He has not won a race since September of last year, when he won at Dover. [...]

Call it solid preparation and execution or call it luck. Ryan Newman is off to a great start in the NASCAR Sprint Cup series.
Heading to Martinsville for the sixth race of the season, the Stewart Haas Racing driver already has rolled up four top-10 and three top-five finishes. That’s just one less top-five than Newman had [...]

Bristol, Tenn. – It had been about a year since I’d had a one-on-one interview with Jeff Gordon, so back at Daytona I asked his publicist Jon Edwards if he’d put me on Jeff’s calendar for Bristol.
In a Sprint Cup world where publicists don’t exactly jump when an interview request comes in, this transaction was [...]