ONE: The Championship Four All week long, conventional wisdom suggested that Kyle Busch (+22 points up on fifth place) and Joey Logano (+20 on fifth) would secure their berths alongside Martin Truex Jr. and Kevin Harvick in the final four for the second straight season. While each of the four …

ONE: Penske’s Power Move I think it’s fair to say that no-one — outside those directly involved — had any sense that we were going to have such a seismic announcement on the future of open wheel racing in the United States yesterday. The news, in case you missed it, …

ONE: And Then There Were 8 I’m going to boldly predict that not many prognosticators had Kyle Larson, Ryan Blaney and Denny Hamlin winning the three second stage playoff races, so I’m not going to be foolish enough to make any wild picks for the third round. Given that winning …

ONE: What Might Have Been Next to the actual Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series points standings on that little gem of a site, www.racing-reference.info, are the non-playoff standings. They show how the 2019 Cup season would be playing out under the original “most points over 36 races” format. And with …

ONE: The Roval Unlike every other circuit on the Monster Energy Cup Series slate, and especially the other nine tracks that make up NASCAR’s postseason, we know next to nothing about the Charlotte Motor Speedway road course better known, of course, as the Roval. Following an eventful debut in the …

ONE: Impending Fireworks Like the format or not — and I realize plenty who will read this column absolutely and definitively do not — one thing is for sure: the tension ratchets up incrementally as soon the playoffs get underway. Each minor on-track mistake, each pit-road miscue, each missed shift …

ONE: Is Joey Logano This Year’s Joey Logano? In 2018, we spent a lot of time debating which of the “Big Three” who had dominated the regular season — Kevin Harvick, Martin Truex Jr. and Kyle Busch — would race off with the title once the playoffs got underway. As …

Bonus Points Heading into the 2018 iteration of the playoffs, Kyle Busch and Kevin Harvick had a whopping 50 bonus points apiece while Martin Truex Jr. had a healthy 35 points in third place. Brad Keselowski was a distant fourth (19 points), with Clint Bowyer (15), Kurt Busch (14) and …

A Hero, Defined To many people, race car drivers are heroes, and it’s a thought echoed in the famous old Ernest Hemingway quote: “There are only three sports: bullfighting, motor racing, and mountaineering; all the rest are merely games.” And yes, on some levels, what drivers do could be considered …

Taking Stock With nine races in the books – a quarter of the way through the full season — and an off weekend ahead, it seems like an opportune moment to take stock on the season so far with some quick hot takes. First things first, two teams have sprung …