Big 6

The Big 6: Questions Answered After the 2013 Sprint Unlimited at Daytona

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The good news is that nobody had to worry about points on Saturday night. The bad news is that many teams come to Daytona with three cars: their Sprint Unlimited car, Daytona 500 car and Daytona 500 backup. After a practice wreck, some teams could be left scrambling. Carl Edwards’s team already loaded his Unlimited car on a hauler bound for Charlotte after his practice wreck; they’ll fix it, hang new sheetmetal, and bring it back to serve as the Daytona 500 backup as Edwards was forced to pull his original second car out for Saturday’s race.

The Big 6: Questions Answered After NASCAR Acceleration 2013

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Leave it to Bristol Motor Speedway to capitalize on its rough-and-tumble reputation in what was perhaps the most creative game of the day in terms of the actual racing at that track. Everyone has seen the carnival games where someone has to launch a beanbag or a ball through a deceptively small hole to win a prize. But for Bristol, could there be a more appropriate version of this one than a helmet toss, paying homage to, among other incidents, Tony Stewart’s display of anger toward Matt Kenseth last summer? Apparently not, because in order to win Bristol’s prizes, fans had to fire a miniature helmet smack through the driver’s side windshield of a cardboard racecar. Sometimes things are simply right, and this game was one of those times.

The Big 6: Questions Answered After the 2012 Ford EcoBoost 400 at Homestead

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For possibly the first time ever, Dale Earnhardt Jr. snuck up for a good finish. Usually, it’s impossible for Earnhardt to fly under the radar in a race. But this week, with the spotlight on his teammate and his former employee running for the Cup, Earnhardt did just that, finishing 10th after running mid-pack for most of the day.

The Big 6: Questions Answered After the 2012 AdvoCare 500 at Phoenix

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Dale Jarrett said it best: as much as everyone wanted to see the race end, and as close as some teams were on fuel mileage, there needed to be a caution for Danica Patrick on the green-white-checkered attempt. NASCAR’s failure to throw the yellow was costly. As Harvick took the checkers, several cars sustained heavy damage as their drivers raced for position coming to the finish line, only to realize that there was fluid on the track from Patrick’s limping car. Menard slammed into the back end of Patrick’s slower car so hard that the No. 10 was thrown into the air. Ryan Newman, Mark Martin, Menard and Brad Keselowski all suffered damage. Kurt Busch’s car was destroyed and on fire.

The Big 6: Questions Answered After the 2012 AAA Texas 500

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There was a time when racing hard with the title contenders would have brought out the worst in Kyle Busch. But this time around, Busch put on a clinic of how to do it right. Busch had a top-three car, and when late-race cautions bunched up the field, he had a shot to race Brad Keselowski and Jimmie Johnson for position — and he did it in the best possible way. He didn’t roll over and give either Chase driver a spot; instead, he raced them both with maximum effort, balancing that with controlled aggression. Busch didn’t race them checkers or wreckers; he raced them hard and clean.

The Big 6: Questions Answered After the 2012 TUMS Fast Relief 500 at Martinsville

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There were a few typical Martinsville skirmishes on Sunday. Kurt Busch called Kevin Harvick “half-assed” when Harvick refused to cut him some slack as Busch wanted to move into the bottom groove and Harvick got into him instead spinning him around. Johnson was upset with Mears after Mears got into his right front, wrenching the steering wheel from his hands, though no damage was done. Montoya was upset with Johnson, who shoved his way underneath the No. 42 in the closing laps, sending him up the track.

The Big 6: Questions Answered After the 2012 Hollywood Casino 400 at Kansas

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What a mess. That’s what several teams were left thinking after the wreckfest that was the Hollywood Casino 400. A track-record and season-high 14 cautions marred the racing over the course of the 400-mile event, caused by everything from a rash of blown tires, a couple of driver errors at the wrong time, a move made in anger, and a very slick repaved racetrack. “If people are wondering where all the cautions went, they moved to Kansas,” Brad Keselowski said at one point during the day, referencing complaints about a lack of yellow flags during several events this season.

The Big 6: Questions Answered After the 2012 Bank of America 500 at Charlotte

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It wasn’t the win he has been searching for for more than a year and a half, but for Carl Edwards, a seventh-place finish was a welcome ending. For Edwards, who has just three top-five performances in 2012, this week’s result was only the second to fall inside the top 10 in the last eight weeks, just his 13th top-10 finish in 31 races. That’s half the number he had a year ago, when Edwards lost the Sprint Cup title to Tony Stewart in a tiebreaker. The top-five stat is even more dismal. Edwards finished in that group 19 times in 2011, more than six times as often as 2012. No matter where his points finish is, it will be the worst of his career because he didn’t make the Chase cut and can finish no better than 13th.

The Big 6: Questions Answered After the 2012 Good Sam Roadside Assistance 500 at Talladega

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Although qualifying doesn’t matter much at Talladega, you might think that winning the pole would make for a less stressful day. Not so for Kasey Kahne, who ran out of gas under green-flag conditions and got shuffled all over the place during the event. Then, things only went from bad to worse; he got a windshield full of Stewart’s undercarriage in the last-lap mayhem as Stewart landed on top of his car. Just like that, Kahne was relegated to a 13th-place finish.

The Big 6: Questions Answered After the 2012 AAA 400 at Dover

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Sometimes those who have nothing to lose are the most dangerous of all. For most of the day on Sunday, it looked as though Kyle Busch, who failed to make the Chase this year, had the field covered at Dover. If the race hadn’t come down to fuel mileage, Busch would most likely have been the driver in Victory Lane. True to his take-no-prisoners style, Busch took the race lead from teammate Denny Hamlin and from there, cut nobody a break — not even Hamlin, who is very much in the title hunt. Leading 302 of 400 circuits, the only thing stopping Busch was that extra stop for gas, slipping him to a seventh-place finish when winner Brad Keselowski and others could go the distance.