Race Weekend Central

Holding a Pretty Wheel: What NASCAR Owners Should Expect From Drivers & What Expectations Go Too Far

A couple of weeks back, I wrote about which drivers I might like to have should I own a race team. That kind of got me thinking about some of the things that teams owners face, and it was about then that I decided that I never, ever want to own a race team. A …

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Holding a Pretty Wheel: Is There a 48 in Kyle Busch’s Mirror?

Kyle Busch has dominated the Sprint Cup landscape for much of the season. It’s a championship caliber year for Busch, with seven wins, 12 top-five finishes and 13 top 10s in 20 races. He’s on par with great seasons like Jeff Gordon’s 1997 campaign. Busch is certainly on top of the Sprint Cup world. However, …

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Holding a Pretty Wheel: Dale Earnhardt Jr. or Patrick Carpentier, Marketability Matters

Last week I started my very own hypothetical race team and picked my short list of the most talented drivers racing in Sprint Cup today. Any of the five would make a strong start for a new team for sure, and talent like that should attract sponsorship to the team as well. But I said …

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Holding a Pretty Wheel: Picking Today’s Top NASCAR Talent

There’s always debate about who the “best” driver in the Sprint Cup Series is, and there are certainly many ways to look at it. I was trying to put together my list of the five drivers I think are the most talented, which got me thinking: if I was putting together a team in today’s …

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Holding a Pretty Wheel: Has NASCAR Finally Found a Race It Could Fix?

“I’m humbled by this award. This means more to me than you’ll ever know.” Those were Kenny Wallace’s words in 2006 at the NASCAR Busch Series (now Nationwide Series) end-of-year banquet. The award wasn’t for series champion, nor for any other points position. Wallace was the series Most Popular Driver in 2006, as voted by …

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Holding a Pretty Wheel: According to Bruton Smith, New Hampshire Offers Bright Future, Not a Means to an End

When Bruton Smith talks, everyone listens; and Sunday was no exception. Popping up just prior to his track’s main event, Smith spoke to the media as newly purchased New Hampshire Motor Speedway prepared for the first NASCAR Sprint Cup Series event under the Speedway Motorsports Inc. banner. As usual, all ears were in Smith’s direction …

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Holding a Pretty Wheel: Boston Ventures Could Give Petty Enterprises a Bright Future – If They Remember the Past

It had to happen, really. Petty Enterprises’ announcement on Wednesday that they had sold a portion of the family business that has been around as long as NASCAR has been on the track was not really a surprise. But on some level, it is a disappointment. Boston Ventures, by all accounts, is a wealthy, stable …

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Holding a Pretty Wheel: It’s Not All Dale Earnhardt Jr. All the Time

I was reading through some old (and not-so-old) racing columns and found one that I wrote last year that got me thinking. Actually, it was the comments that I got that got me thinking. I wrote about some of the issues that were making NASCAR less than popular with the fans. You can read about …

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Holding a Pretty Wheel: 3 Shots Heard ‘Round the World – NASCAR’s Defining Week

It’s the unofficial start of summer, but things heated up weeks ago in the NASCAR world. Much of the swirl of discussion has been predictable; what driver will go where, who is living up to expectations, when will Junior win, the same things that go around every summer. But there are a couple of stories …

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Holding a Pretty Wheel: Ken Schrader a Lot Like a Rock

It was very nearly perfect. Stock car racing returned to the too-long-silent Rockingham (formerly North Carolina) Speedway last week on a picture perfect early summer day. All eyes were on Joey Logano, the rookie phenom who won easily from the pole in his ARCA Re/Max Series debut, but it was a veteran who truly epitomized …

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