Kevin’s Corner

These days, the brunt of both fan and media attention is focused on the larger, more well-funded teams of NASCAR — and rightfully so. They’re, …

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Most will focus on the championship battle at this weekend’s Sprint Cup Series Homestead race — and why not? After a close Chase, a first-time champion could very well be crowned unless a five-time former champ can make some magic happen and overcome a hefty deficit in the final race of the year.

But that’s not all that’s at stake in Florida. From the time the season began in that very state to now, there have been 35 regular season races, meaning 35 different chances to claim a victory. A total of 15 drivers have won those events, with Brad Keselowski, Jimmie Johnson and Denny Hamlin at the top of the category with five wins apiece.

So, yeah. Howie Mandel’s hosting the 2012 Sprint Cup Awards Banquet. Following in the footsteps of such comedians / hallowed entertainment icons as Jay Mohr, David Spade and Frank Caliendo, the “America’s Got Talent” and “Let’s Make a Deal” host will helm the Las Vegas ceremony later this month. He replaces Reba McEntire, who guided the action in 2011.

As with many of the last few hosts, save for McEntire and perhaps Caliendo, Mandel doesn’t explicitly have much to do with NASCAR or its fan base, which will undoubtedly cause many to wonder why he’s even there in the first place. According to Mandel, he’s “spent many years in [his] career evaluating and analyzing talent,” and he has no doubt that NASCAR competitors are among the world’s best talents.

When Travis Pastrana drove a race in Roush Fenway Racing’s No. 60, competing in the NASCAR Nationwide Series at Richmond last September a few fans raised an eyebrow at the development.

Two months later, consider both eyebrows raised.

Pastrana, the extreme sports star looking to break into stock car racing, is “reportedly close”:https://frontstretch.com/breakingnews/42015/ to a deal that will have him in a Roush Fenway Nationwide car full-time in 2013.

After an off week while the Cup and Truck Series traveled to Martinsville, the Nationwide Series returns to action this weekend at Texas.

And the race for the series title couldn’t be much closer than this one.

With three races to go in 2012, three drivers sit within reasonable contention for the end-of-year trophy, with the top two separated by a mere half-dozen points. Elliott Sadler, in the final year of his tenure with Richard Childress Racing, holds the lead by a slim six-point margin over defending champion, Ricky Stenhouse, Jr. Rookie Austin Dillon sits third, 26 points back.

The 2012 ARCA Racing Series season went out with a bang, rather than a whimper, last Friday at Kansas Speedway with three separate cars getting airborne during the 99-lap event. Alex Bowman won the battle — his fourth victory of the year — but Chris Buescher won the war, edging out nine-time series champion Frank Kimmel by 75 points en route to his first ARCA championship.

Parity, a running theme in NASCAR had to be a hallmark of this stock car series in 2012. Throughout the 19-race season (a 20th, DuQuoin, was cancelled due to inclement weather and the inability of series officials to reschedule a second time before season’s end) 11 different drivers found Victory Lane, three winning for the first time in the series. Officially, 147 different racers made an event, 10 of whom started every date on the schedule in 2012.

On Tuesday, NASCAR revealed multiple changes to the sport that will affect both the Sprint Cup and Nationwide series when they take effect come 2013. Most prominently, the sanctioning body announced the abolition of the top-35 rule for qualifying and new testing procedures.

Let’s waste no time and take a closer look at all three changes, one by one.

Most notable is the Sprint Cup Series’ new qualifying format. Well… new-ish. Actually, come to think of it, it’s not very new at all. Recycled is the better term.