Matt McLaughlin

As our long-time friend Michael Lee Aday (aka Meatloaf) used to tell us in one of his operatic, overly bombastic, teenage testosterone-fueled hits, two out of three ain’t bad. NASCAR’s annual All-Star event has fallen out of favor with most of the race fans I communicate with regularly. If the All-Star …

In many ways more consequential than the sport of auto racing, the world is currently a bit topsy-turvy. Yes, meteorologically speaking we have reached summer, but the living is far from easy. The COVID-19 virus has everyone on edge. One school of thought has it that the virus will magically …

For better or worse, the first NASCAR doubleheader Cup weekend races are now in the rearview mirror, presumably closer than they might appear. Given the novelty of the idea of hosting two Cup races at the same track in a single weekend, it seemed that NASCAR and their network “partners” …

At least partially due to the severity of Ryan Newman’s last-lap wreck in this year’s Daytona 500, NASCAR made several tweaks to the rules package run at Talladega Superspeedway this weekend. I’m an old guy. I still call Talladega and Daytona International Speedway the plate tracks. And over the years, …

There are some statistics and numbers NASCAR types prefer to keep to themselves. Starting in 2014, NASCAR information services stopped giving out attendance figures for the races. Suspiciously, those numbers had been declining at an alarming rate in the seasons leading up to the decision to withhold the information. The …

Editors Note: What in blazes am I doing here? Yeah, Matt, what’s up? You write on Tuesdays, having given this column up years ago. Yep. You recall correctly. Bryan Keith, who took over this column when Mike Neff stopped doing it, has been doing a fine job with the race …

Well campers, what should we talk about this week? I mean there’s nothing going in our insular little racing world across these vast United States of America, is there? Well quite obviously there is, of course, as all of us find a way to cope with an ongoing pandemic that has …

Hey Boy Blue, can’t you hear all the noise? It’s for you, all the town’s waiting there. – Jeff Lynne It seems like ancient history now, but last week at Charlotte, Chase Elliott finally broke through with his first Cup win of 2020, shortly after edging out Kyle Busch for the Truck …

Early in my career Ben Blake, one of the great all-time writers in NASCAR history, taught me that the only thing worse than rain at a racetrack is rain at a racetrack with lights. I’d later add my own corollary that the only thing worse than rain at a racetrack …

In a Nutshell: For years I wrote on a Sunday night deadline (that sometimes stretched to the point my alarm clock was going off while I was still trying to clean up the punctuation) for at least a half-dozen websites in various forms and under various titles. At Frontstretch, that …