Race Weekend Central

Beside The Rising Tide: Waiter, I’ll Have Whatever She’s Having

2015 New Hampshire Motor Speedway Ncwts Austin Dillon Checkered Flag Credit Nascar Via Getty Images

(Photo: NASCAR via Getty Images)

Without a whole lot of hullaballoo to build it up, the IndyCar Series kicked off its 2017 campaign on Sunday. Somehow, the open-wheel race got shown on the mother ship (ABC) rather than relegated to the swamp of cable TV. In a nifty bit of scheduling, the Mouse network decided if NASCAR wasn’t going to …

Read more

Beside the Rising Tide: Buzz Off

2017 Atlanta Cup Ryan Blaney Racing Barry Cantrell Nkp

(Photo: Barry Cantrell/NKP)

It’s hard to believe that it has come and gone yet again. The Feast of the Excited Insect Day celebrations have reached their crescendo and are dying down now like the embers in a trailside campfire, though naturally the insects themselves remain quite jolly. It’s the same thing every year. You get caught up in …

Read more

Beside the Rising Tide: And Now, For Something Completely Different

2017 Daytona Cup Zach Catanzareti Monster Energy Nascar Cup Series

(Photo: Zach Catanzareti)

It seemed at times during Saturday’s NXS race the event might be eternal but as I write this Monday morning, I have it from a good source close to the situation all racing has concluded at Daytona Beach and the circus has packed up and rolled out of town. Like every year since 1982 the …

Read more

Beside the Rising Tide: NASCAR Hits The Beach

Rb5a8264

As NASCAR slowly awakens from its off-season hibernation clanking, smoking and leading decidedly to port after a tough season last year, here are some of the notes I’ve been scribbling on the back of Wawa receipts, none of which wound up being enough for a separate column. Supply and Demand Gone Badly Askew? I was reading this …

Read more

Beside the Rising Tide: Will New Mean Better? 2017 NASCAR Season Preview

2016 Daytona Ii Cup Pack Racing Iii Nigel Kinrade Nkp

(Photo: Nigel Kinrade/NKP)

Portions of Maine remain buried under 4 feet of snow, but one of the annual harbingers of spring arrives this weekend: The Advance Auto Parts Clash this Saturday night will feature genuine Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series cars driven in anger for the first time this year as a prelude to the following weekend’s Daytona 500. …

Read more

Beside the Rising Tide: Take You to the Leader of the Band

With a very displeasing, sneezing and wheezing, The calliope fell to the ground… -Bruce Springsteen- It’s a natural part of any human enterprise, I suppose. At the onset, one must be able to articulate the plans, hopes and dreams of the venture. At the conclusion, one must reflect on how those plans worked and whether …

Read more

Beside the Rising Tide: All the Leaves Are Brown

2016 Kentucky Cup Pack Racing Sunset Russell Labounty Nkp

(Photo: Russell LaBounty / NKP)

“All the leaves are brown, and the skies are gray” –John and Michelle Phillips Say what you want about the 2016 NASCAR season, good or bad, but one fact is undeniable: in about a week’s time (weather permitting) it will finally be over. So in the place of your regularly scheduled column, instead this week …

Read more

Beside the Rising Tide: Seven Up

2016 Chicago Cup Jimmie Johnson Brett Moist Nkp

(Photo: Brett Moist / NKP)

Is it history in the making? The thing about history is that it’s typically only clear in retrospect. Quite often history is one of those objects in the rear-view mirror that looms larger than it first appeared. If Jimmie Johnson claims a seventh NASCAR Sprint Cup Series title in two weeks, he will join just two other drivers in …

Read more

Beside The Rising Tide: NASCAR’s Tidal Wave-Around Rule

It was a late October day in Virginia, paired with temperatures that felt more like Memorial Day and not a cloud in the sky. There was a race that actually started prior to 1:30 at Martinsville, the scenic and historic half-mile short track nestled in a historic area ablaze in autumnal foliage. Good ol’ short track racing, side-by-side, …

Read more

Beside the Rising Tide: It Don’t Come Easy

2016 Nascar Sprint Cup Series, Talladega

(Photo: Nigel Kinrade/ NKP)

The race is not always to the swift, Nor the battle to the strong…. – Ecclesiasticus – Sunday’s Talladega race was not at all what many of us expected or dreaded in the week leading up to the event. There were no big, huge smoking pig-piles of wrecks and blessedly nobody got hurt. Whether that …

Read more

Beside The Rising Tide: Bad Moon Rising

Some weeks, topics to write about after a race are obvious. Then, there are races like this weekend’s event at Kansas City, just another generic McRace at yet another one-and-a-half-mile McTrack of the sort that popped up like dandelions on a spring lawn back in the waning era of NASCAR’s Boom Years. I’m trying to …

Read more

Beside The Rising Tide: Oh Brother, Where Art Thou

2016 Chicago Nxs Ty Dillon Nigel Kinrade Nkp

(Photo: Nigel Kinrade/NKP)

Given that I’ve vocally opposed the Chase format in the Cup Series, it should come as no surprise I’m not a big fan of it oozing down to XFINITY and Trucks. Sunday evening gave those few fans paying attention yet another lesson in the rule of unintended consequences stemming from the new championship format. I haven’t …

Read more