Let The Engines Roar: by Anthony Baker

     For those of you that haven’t been following along, NASCAR has stepped up efforts as far as expanding the fan base and expanding the sport all together. This involves things such as bringing NASCAR to the streets of Chicago, running an exhibition race inside of the LA Coliseum, Garage 56, and talking to other countries about potentially hosting a NASCAR race there. While that’s going on, we also have a resurgence in international drivers as well as drivers from different backgrounds making more appearances, so you would think that NASCAR fans shouldn’t have any problems with this right?      Well how about NASCAR also delivering some returns to the past and keeping its core fanbase in the south East happy. How about NASCAR reviving North Wilksboro Speedway for the all star race, or talks about bringing back “The Rock”, a track that last saw Cup series action in 2004 that has also been revamped and ready for a race date. NASCAR tried the Bristol dirt ex...

   So far in the 2024 NASCAR Cup Series season, we’ve been met with some intense and chaotic racing, with thrilling moments and electrifying finishes. From the clash to last weekend at Bristol, I think all fans old and new should have had something to enjoy in terms of “what NASCAR is all about”. The ratings boosting so far this season especially after Atlanta seem to prove that theory. NASCAR has even made more mainstream media headlines for positive rather than negative reasons, and now we ride that wave into Circut Of The America’s or COTA for short for the first road race of the season.      The race will be at 3:30 est on FOX. With this being the first road course of the season I expect different skill sets to show. I expect that this, along with more international stars in the Cup field (Shane Van Gisbergen, Kamui Kobayashi) we should get more eyes on the sport this weekend and hopefully the momentum keeps up.      So far the talk of the wee...

     In a little less than three hours the NASCAR Cup Series will take to the high banks of Bristol Motor Speedway, otherwise known as the Last Great Colosseum. The topic coming into this week was adding more horsepower specifically to the short track package. The topic a few hours before green flag is how will the “resin”, a compound put down for grip, effect 500 laps of racing in Cup cars.      So far this weekend we have seen the cup cars slipping and sliding around and frankly I believe that we are in for a show. This is the first Bristol concrete race in the day time since the 2020 pandemic race. The weather is beautiful so we will be able to see the Next Gen on the Bristol day concrete surface for the first time. There is also a new tire designed for increased tire wear. That combined with resin wearing off lap by lap will most likely make for a interesting race.   This race also marks the return to concrete from dirt. Also one of few weather fre...

     It’s time for nascar to take to Phoenix raceway and it’s also time to debut its new Next Gen short track package. Back in January it was announced by NASCAR that they would be bringing a new short track and road course package update starting this weekend at Phoenix (first track with either not including clash). NASCAR announced a few areo changes to the package in hopes of producing more competitive racing on the circuits as since the Next Gen has released, the racing seems to have tapered off from what it was with the gen 6. Rather the changes work or not will be tested this weekend. This track was the host of testing for the package changes as they tested in December of last year with a few teams, and say they received feedback that they liked.     

The real season as many call it begins this weekend as NASCAR takes to the Las Vegas motor speedway. This is the first of many tracks on the circuit that don’t run the racing packages that we saw at Daytona and Atlanta, so there is more chance to spread out and the drivers are in more control.     Drivers now have more of a opportunity to control their own destiny this weekend as now that the tapered spacers, (a part used to restrict horsepower and create pack racing), is taken off, we should see a more traditional race approach from drivers. The skill set is placed more into the drivers hands than the draft so it will be interesting to see how the points shake up this weekend.       Starting off the season with two drafting tracks has led to some heavy hitters running at the bottom half of the standings coming into this weekend like Joey Logano and Brad Keselowski, two drivers who made the playoffs last year but currently run 31st and 34th in points. The t...

        We saw it happen at the Daytona 500 and now NASCAR wants to do something about it. So far throughout the week there have been several drivers who have voiced their displeasure with the fuel saving methods on Monday. While we saw an interesting race, there were times when we saw that the drivers were going slower than usual while all still in a pack. There were times that the big pack was around 4 seconds off pace, traveling around the hi banked speedway at 175 mph. Drivers were getting told as early as lap 1 to save fuel and from drivers to industry members and team members, a lot of people didn’t like it.      NASCAR has responded. On Tuesday morning Elton Sawyer, senior vice president of competition for NASCAR, spoke on the matter. Sawyer wants drivers to push it to the limit from start to finish. He acknowledged that the fuel saving strategy was on a trend of getting more aggressive, and said that NASCAR will take “a deeper dive into this pa...

      It’s Daytona speedweek and we have drama waiting to happen in every series that returns this weekend. It’s time for The Real season to kick off and it looks like it’s going to kick off with a bang before the racing even starts.      Every series that is scheduled to race this weekend has a higher entry list, than the number of spots available for the actual race. I will go over the implications of each qualifying session in order from Wednesday to Saturday. Today I talk about the next two days of on track qualifying .        Wednesday kicks off NASCAR Cup Series qualifying which sets the front row, 1st and 2nd position, for the Daytona 500. The rest of the positions determine the starting order for the duel races. The duel races are two 150 mile races that help set the grid for the Daytona 500. The duel lineups are again set by single car qualifying speeds with odd numbers starting in duel 1, and even numbers starting in duel 2. We...