INDYCAR fell into lockstep with the gimmick-it-up-for-TV crowd of sanctioning bodies Friday, unveiling a new qualifying format to set the 33-car starting field for the 98th running of the Indianapolis 500.
Qualifying will feature three sessions of time trials over two days, with the expressed intent of “increasing entertainment value, fan attendance and TV viewership” for [...]
By Jim Pedley | Managing Editor
RacinToday.com
Kurt Busch’s fascinating run for a Sprint Cup championship a season ago prompted one of 2013’s biggest bench-racing debates: Was it car or driver? The likely best answer, of course, is both.
But you just have to believe that both the Furniture Row Racing team that built the cars, and [...]
By Jim Pedley | Managing Editor
RacinToday.com
There is considerable belief around NACSCAR Nation today that for the second year in a row, the pole position for the Daytona 500 has somehow been gifted to a competitor. That belief is that pole qualifying for the biggest Sprint Cup race of the year is becoming little more than [...]
For the second season in a row, a high profile rookie will start the Daytona 500 from the pole position.
A year after Danica Patrick won the pole for NASCAR’s biggest event in her first full season in Sprint Cup, first-year driver Austin Dillon earned the right to lead the field to the green flag in [...]
By Jim Pedley | Managing Editor
RacinToday.com
Denny Hamlin, whose 2013 Sprint Cup season was interrupted for six weeks by a back injury, won Saturday night’s Speedweeks-opening Sprint Unlimited at Daytona International Speedway. Hamlin not only won the overall race, but also all three segments of the 75-lap exhibition.
Hamlin’s Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota was clearly the [...]
Three-time NASCAR Sprint Cup Series champion Tony Stewart on Friday took laps in a Sprint Cup car for the first time since suffering severe injuries in a sprint car race last year in Iowa.
After taking those laps at Daytona International Speedway in practice for Saturday night’s Sprint Unlimited, Stewart discussed, among other things, how [...]
By Jim Pedley | Managing Editor
RacinToday.com
Tradition, it appears, will never be a problem for the race which is now known as the Sprint Unlimited. That’s because the event – a kind of non-points-paying all-star race which kicks off the Sprint Cup season – won’t sit still long enough to establish a true tradition.
Every year, additions [...]
By Jeff Hood | Senior Writer
RacinToday.com
DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. – There was no shortage of optimism and storylines in the room during media day at Daytona International Speedway on Thursday as a steady stream of nearly 50 NASCAR drivers were paraded in front of the assembled press.
Sporting new hair styles, tans, fit bodies and unblemished racing [...]
By Jim Pedley | Managing Editor
RacinToday.com
Thursday was Media Day at Daytona International Speedway. The following are some select Qs and As from the day. Some are listed because the questions are, um, interesting. Some because the answers are, um, interesting.
Readers can figure out which are which.
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Q to Carl Edwards of Roush Fenway Racing: You have [...]
In the mid-1980s, a guy from the advertising department at the newspaper I worked for in Colorado came to my desk and asked if I was going to the local dirt track that weekend. When asked why, ad guy gave a two-word answer: Kinser’s there.
Not the sprint cars or the World of Outlaws or the [...]
By Jim Pedley | Managing Editor
RacinToday.com
Last weekend, Richard Petty had some interesting things to say about Danica Patrick, the current state of racing in NASCAR, and how those two entities connect. None of it was very flattering to Patrick as a race car driver nor NASCAR as racing series driven by actual racing.
After giving it [...]