“One person’s bad-luck is another racers gain” turned out to be the saying of day on Sunday afternoon, on the pavement of historic Indianapolis Motor Speedway as Jimmie Johnson’s gain turned out to be Juan Montoya’s bad luck. Jimmie Johnson was able to take advantage of a pit-road error by Juan Montoya that resulted in a penalty to Montoya. After restarting on the outside lane with just 24 laps remaining, Johnson was able to stay in front of his teammate and pole sitter for this race, Mark Martin, to take his second consecutive Allstate 400 at the Brickyard and his …read more

Some would say that it’s been a trying season for Goodyear in 2008 as they continue to work on developing new tires to coincide with NASCAR’s latest project, the Car of Tomorrow. Things got heated early in the season between Goodyear’s racing group and some of the drivers in the garage area, particularly after Atlanta when several of the drivers bashed the tire in public forums. You might recall one man inparticular’s rants regarding the tires as they made headlines for several weeks. Yes, I’m referring of course to Tony Stewart.
It seemed as though things had finally cooled off between all parties involved …read more

Well, he doesn’t have 7 wins in the Sprint Cup Series this season, and it doesn’t appear as though he’ll be attempting to break any of NASCAR’s overall win records at the moment, but if you ask Jimmie Johnson, dubbing Kyle Busch as your 2008 Sprint Cup champion at this point is very premature.
Johnson currently sits 4th in the points standings, but has been methodically working his way up the ladder these past few weeks after getting off to a rather slow start to the season by his standards. After winning 10 races last year and 5 in the year …read more

Saturday’s running of the NAPA Auto Parts 200 at Circuit Gilles Villeneuve in Montreal was an historic night for the Nationwide Series, and NASCAR in general. As the rainy weather crept its way onto the tracks, the race was red flagged, and for the first time ever in a NASCAR points race, the teams switched over to grooved tires to run the remainder of the race.
The rain was eventually stopped 26 laps short due to poor visibility, and in the end, it was Canadian native, Ron Fellows, out in front of the pack when the race was officially called. Throughout …read more

For the second time in just a week, ESPN.com has made a report on a premier driver’s plans for 2009 only to have NASCAR.com turn around the following day to refute those reports. Last week it was the reports suggesting that Martin Truex Jr. and DEI had come to terms on a two-year contract extension, which Truex very adamently refuted, stating that the report (David Newton) knowingly falsified his statements. That very same reporter then followed that story up with another, this time landing Ryan Newman in the seat of the no. 4 car for Stewart-Haas Racing next year with …read more

Coming off of a terrible weekend at Indy, you can bet that NASCAR’s feeling the pressure to make sure that everything goes as smoothly as possible at Pocono this weekend, and if the trip here back in June is any indication, then things should be just fine. It’s also a big weekend for the teams, as Pocono is only the second track on the schedule that the series has already traveled to once before this season, and this is about the time of year that you really begin to see how much some of these groups have been able to …read more

In a race that was dominated by tire issues, Kurt Busch brought out one of the few cautions of the day at Indianapolis this past weekend that wasn’t caused by tires. Just 14 laps into the race, Busch was trying to let the no. 29 car of Kevin Harvick pass underneath him when Busch’s car got loose and set off into a spin …. a spin that also collected Harvick in the process.
Video footage of the wreck involving Busch and Harvick:

Although these two drivers have mixed it up with one another plenty of times earlier on in their careers, this …read more

For those of you that had the misguided pleasure of watching this past weekend’s race at Indianapolis Motor Speedway, chances are that you were extremely disappointed with the product that NASCAR and Goodyear brought to the table … and, the drivers and their crews were no different. Perhaps the closed door meeting from NASCAR a couple months back asking the drivers to keep the verbal car bashing to a minimum may have warded off some of the overly eccentric tyrades similar to what we heard from Tony Stewart when he bashed Goodyear following the Atlanta race, but nonetheless, many of the Sprint Cup …read more

It’s no huge secret that Ryan Newman and Rusty Wallace were never exactly the closest of friends during the few short years that they teamed together at Penske Racing earlier this decade, and their relationship was again tested this past weekend at Indianapolis, and it was Rusty that fired the opening shots.
Baffled at the notion that anyone would ever dare leave a man that he has such deep respect for, Roger Penske and his organization, Rusty allegated that it was Penske Racing’s decision to let Newman go and that they’d fired him.
“He didn’t leave,” Wallace stated. “I’ve read many, many …read more

Martin Truex Jr. has been one of the names mentioned these past few months as one of the top candidates to make a move to some of the vacated seats that teams are offering up for 2009, to include Stewart Haas Racing, RCR, Joe Gibbs Racing, and Penske. David Newton over at ESPN.com recently attempted to squash all of those rumors in an article that he posted stating that not only had Truex come to an agreement with his current team, Dale Earnhardt Inc, that would keep him in the no. 1 car in 2009, but that the deal would …read more