Seriously, is it over yet? Seven more races. Seven more weeks? Please tell me you’re kidding. There was a time when I impatiently counted the hours until the next NASCAR race within minutes of the finish of the previous one, but it’s been awhile now. After four hours of Sunday’s Dover race and much internal …
Sometimes there’s just no gray area. In the presence of a written rule known to all competitors before a sporting event, you’re either legal or you aren’t — y’iz or y’ain’t. But after the wildly popular (OK, sparsely attended, barely watched and widely ignored) Chicagoland Speedway Sprint Cup Series Chase kick-off race, NASCAR made a …
It’s all anyone is talking about. Even the presidential campaign has been pushed to the backburner, so intrigued is the general population by this year’s edition of NASCAR’s Chase. Sports talk radio stations have reported their switchboards have hit meltdown as race fans call to weigh in on the ten-race playoff. Snack, beer and soda …
If you listened to the hype, there was a whole lot on the line Saturday night during the Cup race at Richmond. The race would determine the 16 drivers eligible for (genuflecting here) the 2016 Chase. (The preliminary swimsuit competition had been rained out by Storm or the Century Hermine last week at Darlington.) Perhaps …
A couple funny things happened this weekend. Cities and communities along the Mid-Atlantic coastline (AKA, the shore, though only in New Jersey) were not pulverized and swept out to sea by a bad-tempered tropical storm. In fact, the weather ’round here was borderline spectacular. Not a single drop of rain fell. It was a pattern …
While summer doesn’t officially end until Sept. 22, the Labor Day weekend coming up marks the unofficial end of summer in most of our minds, especially for those of us old enough to recall when school didn’t start until after Labor Day or even later. I’m not sure what the deal is with students forced to …
With all due apologies to Sebastian Junger, last weekend might have offered up the perfect storm for gearheads. Going into the weekend, it all looked great on paper, anyway. NASCAR was running a triple-header at Bristol, culminating with Saturday evenings “Night Race,” one of the most anticipated events of the season. Meanwhile out on the …
The Cup series takes an all-too-infrequent week off next weekend and I’m down for my annual “stay-cation”, the sort of summer holiday for folks who don’t have two spare dimes to rub together and happen to like the area where they live just fine. My vacation fund says “Harley Davidson” on the side of it …
Digging farther into their seemingly bottomless bag of tricks NASCAR (at the behest of network overlords) has come up with their latest “can’t miss” trick to bolster sagging TV ratings and dwindling attendance. Beginning in 2017, they’re going to start races later in the day. This weekend’s Pocono event, as an example has now been pushed back …
It’s not a new problem but it’s a perplexing one. How do we promote NASCAR’s AAA system (once Grand National, then Busch, Nationwide for six years and now the NASCAR XFINITY Series) as a developmental series where newer (and usually younger) drivers hone their craft while looking for an opportunity in the “Bigs” while still …
Editor’s Note: For Part One of Matt’s retrospective on Davey Allison, click here. Robert Yates Racing and the team’s talented young driver Davey Allison made their official debut at the 1989 Daytona 500. Things got off to an inauspicious start. Davey was running well when Geoff Bodine got into his rear bumper and sent the …
If there was ever a child born to be a race car driver, it was Davey Allison. If there was ever a race car driver who never forgot his roots, always taking a few moments to sign an autograph, answer a question or smile for a photo with a fan, it was Davey Allison.
And if there was ever a hero of the sport who left us too soon, it was Davey Allison.
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