Rewind back to mid-July of 2009. Kevin Harvick, the Sprint Cup Series championship leader for most of the 2010 season, sat 25th in points and winless for two-and-a-half years. His and the rest of Richard Childress Racing’s teams’ seasons were long down the toilet, destined to miss the Chase for the first time since 2005. …
Last week at Michigan, Elliott Sadler ended a nine month top-10 drought and amassed a season high 375-point cushion on the bubble. Regan Smith and Scott Speed also turned heads on race day by parlaying pit strategy into a pair of top-25 finishes while Sam Hornish Jr. continued a steady seven-race gain. But behind these …
Tremendous point swings marked last week’s chapter of the 2010 Top-35 battle as the twists and turns of Watkins Glen stirred up the standings. While Marcos Ambrose earned a season-best third-place finish and 90 points of cushion, Scott Speed plummeted 46 points down into bubble danger with the first last-place finish in his young Cup …
Who… gets my shoutout of the race? For a driver and team equally uncertain of their future, a top 10 was a much-needed shot of confidence. Elliott Sadler used a combination of pit strategy and plain old speed to bring his Richard Petty Motorsports No. 19 home in ninth place, their first top 10 of …
Last week at Pocono, Sam Hornish Jr. was all smiles when his fourth consecutive top 11 at the tricky triangle capped a five-race, 157-point climb up the standings for his No. 77. The run moved them past Marcos Ambrose, who suffered his third engine failure of 2010, and Elliott Sadler, who was left catching his breath after a horrifying late-race crash, while putting the top 25 in points within reach.
To fully appreciate Elliott Sadler’s assertion that his crash at Pocono was the hardest hit he’d ever had in a NASCAR racecar, consider his terrifying end-over-end crash at Talladega in 2003. Maybe impact-wise it wasn’t as rough, but this guy has been through some frightening stuff. Even what we could see of Sadler’s wreck at …
In light of Elliott Sadler’s “horrific, almost head-on collision,” as it is being described by NASCAR officials at Pocono last Sunday, one NASCAR insider has announced that airbags will be required in all racecars in 2011. That “NASCAR insider” has asked to remain anonymous, due to the fact that he/she doesn’t want to get fined …
A Truck Series race in Nashville this weekend! Yes, I’ve decided to shelve my beef with the Superspeedway concerning the overpricing issue and am taking my wife to her first NASCAR event on Saturday. I guess it boils down to being willing to pay $35 a pop to see the Trucks instead of the Nationwide cars. …
Following a nasty wreck for Elliott Sadler at Pocono, there was an outcry about the lack of a SAFER barrier at the point where Sadler hit. Is it time for NASCAR to mandate set safety standards for all its tracks, or should the tracks themselves bear full responsibility considering the cost involved?
Elliott Sadler had the very definition of a hero-to-zero weekend: Winning the inaugural Pocono Truck race on Saturday, then sustaining what he described as “…probably the hardest hit I’ve ever had in a racecar,” in the Cup race on Sunday afternoon. But then, such is the great sport of NASCAR. One day, you’re at the …
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