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Congratulations to Joey Logano and ThorSport for putting on a show for the fans at Bristol tonight! Hope you bring that momentum to the Cup race tomorrow night!

IT’S BRISTOL ON DIRT BABY! The Trucks are off and it’s been exciting so far after stage 1. Kaden Honeycutt is doing well but Logano and Blakey have been making my day.
Get ready for Sunday though.

A good week for the Hendrick team. The appeal for their massive penalty has been heard, and while the fines and crew chief suspensions are upheld, the points deductions have been fully restored. (Needless to say, the decision to maintain only part of the penalty has been quite controversial, which will make Kaulig Racing’s identical appeal later this week worth paying attention to.) And to top it off, Kyle Larson wins the race at Richmond. With William Byron’s two wins and Alex Bowman still atop the points standings, the only question now for that team will be how Chase Elliott will do once he eventually recovers from that broken leg.

Really hoping Dean Thompson, Matt Mills, Trey Hutchins, and Armani Williams are ok. Big crash for them and some big hits.

Tyler Reddick gets it done today at COTA! What an amazing race we had and an amazing crew to take the vic and I think you deserved it Tyler, great work!

@Background Pony #E25C
2 of 3 of those bottom names will pilot NASCAR’s Garage 56 bid in Le Mans, Johnson and Button. Jordon Taylor is related to Ricky Taylor, I think Ricky was a driver for Acura Team Penske. Kim I and Button I THINK should have some experience at COTA idk I’m not too big into F1. Also, let the drought for BK and the 6 car continue…

The Hendrick team has been appealing their penalties, as well as Kaulig Racing for Justin Haley, so we’ll have to wait and see how that will turn out. Denny Hamlin is also appealing his penalty. As for last weekend’s race at Atlanta, the Truck and Xfinity series races had a record number of cautions, yet the Cup series race was relatively calm with Joey Logano winning with a last lap pass over Brad Keselowski.

I’m not sure how much any of you might have heard, but as far as I’m aware, that Xfinity series race in Atlanta saw perhaps the most viral moment in NASCAR since Ross Chastain’s “Hail Melon” wall ride at Martinsville last year. Here’s what happened; Stage 1 saw so many cautions that there were more laps run under the yellow flag than the green flag, and one car that got damaged in one of those cautions was some guy named Josh Williams. His crew tried to quickly repair the damage to his car with large sheets of tape referred to as bare bond. However, due to the very cold weather that day, the adhesive fails to stick, and as his car goes back onto the track, the bare bond is blown off. That debris quickly puts out yet another caution, so NASCAR officials decide to park Josh Williams, essentially ending the race for him. He got so upset over that call that he decided to stop his car right on the start/finish line, climb out of his car, and then walk across the infield to pit road while waving to the spectators. As I’m sure you can guess, he ultimately received a penalty for that publicity stunt by being suspended for the next race (no fines or points penalties, because as he said in a video recorded when he arrived onto pit road, “What are they gonna do, fine me? I can’t afford to pay it.”) Needless to say, Josh Williams, typically one of those back-of-the-field drivers that most of us would usually know almost nothing about, has now become quite popular for the absurd way he stuck it to the race officials.

Anyway, this weekend’s race is at Circuit of the Americas, the road course in Austin, Texas. I can already say the Cup series race could be very interesting due to several well-known drivers participating, including two former F1 champions (Kimi Raikkonen and Jenson Button), an IMSA champion (Jordan Taylor), an IndyCar racer (Conor Daly), and seven-time Cup series champion Jimmie Johnson.

MASSIVE penalties were issued just a few days ago!

All four Hendrick drivers (William Byron, Alex Bowman, Kyle Larson, and the 9 team) along with Justin Haley have been penalized for an illegally modified part to their cars, which means all five of them will each receive the following: $100,000 fine, loss of 100 regular points, loss of 10 playoff points, and the crew chief is suspended for four weeks. (Chase Elliott is the only exception to all of this because he was not in the race due to his injury, so no penalties for him, and replacement driver Josh Berry is not competing for the Cup Series championship, so he also avoids any penalties, though the crew chief suspension and owner points deductions and fine still hold.)

Not only that, Denny Hamlin also got a 25 point penalty and $50,000 fine for intentionally wrecking Ross Chastain at the end of the recent race in Phoenix.

All in all, this season for a lot of big names just got completely flipped over. The Hendrick team that has outperformed so far this season will now have to continue outperforming just so they can catch back up to the rest of the major teams.

William Byron is going to be a threat this year!

And then winning again today!

Quite a shame that Chase Elliott broke his leg in a snowboarding accident last Friday and will be missing the next few races. At least the rest of the Hendrick drivers are doing well, especially with William Byron winning yesterday’s race at Las Vegas.

And KB with the win! His 5th at Auto Club and first with RCR!

I’m honestly surprised no one has bothered to mention anything about what happened during the Daytona 500. Long story short, the race was won by Ricky Stenhouse Jr (only his third career win, the two previous wins both being back in 2017). Though I would like to note that, had the race ended without an overtime finish, Kyle Busch would’ve finally won the Daytona 500, but I guess that’ll have to wait for another year.

Anyway, the next race that’ll be on this weekend will be at Fontana, California. It has been confirmed that this will absolutely be the final race ever on that track in it’s current two-mile configuration. The plan is for that track to be reconfigured into a half-mile short track, though there are very few details that have been made official at this time aside from the fact there will not be a race at that track next year or possibly the year after as well. Whatever eventually happens to that track, be sure to enjoy watching one last race there in its original layout on Sunday (and hopefully without a weather delay).

We are now only a few hours away from the start of the Daytona 500. Considering which drivers are participating this year (the return of 7-time champ Jimmie Johnson, motorsports icon Travis Pastrana, Indycar racer Connor Daley, and the first time the previous season champions of all three major NASCAR series (Joey Jogano in Cup, Ty Gibbs from Xfinity, and Zane Smith from Trucks) are also in), I have a feeling this could be one of the most significant runnings of this race for quite some time. Made even more special with this year being NASCAR’s 75th anniversary season.

But how about Justin Haley winning the pole in qualifying or SHR’s strong performance with Aric Almirola and the newcomer Ryan Preece?

Since this was one of those special races where caution laps did not count towards the official length of the race, the fact that we saw so many cautions resulted in a race that went on for much longer than anticipated. I heard that because of the main race being extended so much from those extra caution laps, some cars actually ran out of fuel before the end of the race due to no one being allowed to refuel after the start of the last chance qualifying races (quite honestly, that resulted in a rather unfair advantage for those who advanced from the heat races and didn’t have to participate in the last chance qualifying races).

At the very least, I hope the strong finished by Kyle Busch here indicates how good his chances are for success this season with his new team. And with how many laps led by Bubba Wallace (including at the halftime break), I’m hoping for some good things from him as well.

Over 15 cautions after last year’s 5.

Not a big Truex Jr. but I’m happy for him. The dude went winless last year and wins his first Clash to start off ‘23 after thoughts of retirement. Congratulations to Martin Truex Jr. as well as 2nd and 3rd, Austin Dillon sporting a slick looking mustache and former JGR champ Kyle Busch.

First race of 2023, the Clash at the Colosseum in Los Angeles, will be on tomorrow, and after how last year’s running of that event went, I’m definitely looking to seeing how things will go this year.

I get most of my news from the NASCAR app

Here’s another YouTube channel I follow that I find to be very informative about NASCAR, much more than just recent events:
https://www.youtube.com/@S1apShoes

Who here has NASCAR Diecasts?

Here’s a couple of YouTube channels about NASCAR That I regularly follow:
https://www.youtube.com/@EricEstepp
https://www.youtube.com/@TheIceberg

I find them to be a reliable source of quick information regarding recent news, such as the recent announcement by Kevin Harvick that he will retire at the end of the upcoming season.

Next year will be NASCAR’s 75th anniversary, so some news site has decided to highlight 75 great moments in the sport’s history, one per day up until the start of the next season. Here’s a link to the first page, which will be updated with links to all the other pages as they’re added:
https://www.autoweek.com/racing/nascar/a42084555/nascar-75-stories-that-impacted-racing-series-intro/

I have a broken PS3 with NASCAR 14 on it, but I recently got a steering wheel, pedals, and a stick shift to play NASCAR Heat 5 and NASCAR 21: Ignition