By Jen Dunnaway

Editor

Oh my god, the Daytona 500. I’ve been looking forward to it for months–months!–and apart from the rain delay that handed Matt Kenseth the win (congrats to him anyway), Daytona’s fabled superspeedway did not disappoint. One point of contention was the “controversial” wreck on lap 124 triggered by Brian Vickers and Dale Earnhardt Jr. that sent race cars scattering like marbles and swept out a quarter of the field, including past champs and credible contenders for the win. No one who witnessed Fox Sports’ two-dozen-or-so replays can help but have an opinion about the hellacious crash. From what I saw, Vickers basically ran Earnhardt off the racetrack and then got his just desserts when Junior bobbed back up from the infield shoulder, clipping Vickers in the left rear and sending him into a spin that caused a ten-car pileup. But the prevailing buzz is that Junior’s “pent-up frustration” after an entire week of pit mishaps was what compelled him to orchestrate the disastrous wreck, a perspective echoed by Vickers himself (that redheaded stepchild) who accused Earnhardt of “intentionally wrecking in front of the whole field” just so that he could benefit from the ensuing caution. I dunno, it just don’t sit right: Earnhardt typically isn’t a driver who fights that kind of dirty. And from the broadcast, it was pretty clear (especially from the No. 88 car’s on-board footage, which we didn’t get to see until after the race) that Earnhardt had a legitimate run on Vickers, who dove to the bottom only at the last possible moment, becoming the instrument of his own undoing. It was too late for Junior to check up, and if he he’d tried, it was more than likely that the subsequent shockwave would’ve caused an equally catastrophic wreck in the back of the field, albeit one that Vickers would have conveniently sailed away from, unscathed. But hell, I’ll admit that my opinion is biased by my guarded admiration for Earnhardt and my impression of Vickers as “one of those Red Bull Toyota yahoos” who get recruited on the basis of image and swagger rather than on any real chops as stock-car drivers. I dunno: was it a boneheaded move by Vickers that wrecked the field? Or is Junior really that much of a dick?

By Jen Dunnaway

Editor

Now Junebug sure loves him some Camaros, so it was only fitting that Chevy would put out a special edition of its new musclecar to celebrate its most popular NASCAR driver. It’s got the 6.2L E85-capable V8, shorty headers, and Hurst short-throw shifter. Factory ground effects, rear diffuser, rear lip, and interior and exterior JR Motorsports trim round out the package. Who knows—like the Dale Earnhardt Monte Carlo before it, this hopped-up Camaro might become the favored baby-daddy car of the next decade! Check out this GM video of the Dale Jr. Camaro getting built, and look for more pics below the jump.

Continue reading "Dale Jr. Edition Camaro" »

Beyond hilarious: a pair of NASCAR-themed 1979 Camaro 4×4′s have shown up on eBay. Each of these monster cars boasts a brand-new 355, a set of 37" tires, and a perfect balance of my two most cherished redneck pursuits. Inexplicably, both are holding steady at zero bids with less than a day left on the auction (though it might’ve helped if the seller had spelled either of the drivers’ names right). Check out the Jeff Gordon car here and the Dale Earhardt car here.

By Jen Dunnaway

Editor

Sunday marked the final race of what’s called NASCAR’s "regular season," and now we’re on to the Chase for the Cup, the ten-race showdown that determines this year’s Sprint Cup champion. Only the top twelve drivers who emerge from the pre-Chase season are eligible for the championship, so there was no small degree of scrambling in the final run at Richmond, particularly among the drivers who were close to falling off the bottom of the top twelve. A three-way battle between Clint Bowyer, Kasey Kahne, and David Ragan for that all-important twelfth spot ended with Bowyer alone moving on to the Chase, after battling his way back from a fifteen-position loss when he got boxed in at his pit stall by Juan Pablo Montoya’s lousy parking job. My boy Clint was overwhelmed with relief, and I couldn’t be happier for him! More cryin’ and crashin’ after the jump!

Continue reading "Countdown To The Chase Wraps Up, With Relief, Just Desserts, and a Sweet Tony Stewart Tantrum" »

By Jen Dunnaway

Editor

Dale Earnhardt Jr. broke his 76-race winless streak today, cruising to victory at Michigan for his very first win for Hendrick Motorsports! Junior was down to almost no gas in the final laps as he battled his way ahead of Jamie McMurray, and had to shut his engine on and off, coasting to save fuel during some late-race caution laps. During the final green-white-checker run for the finish, the caution again came out when Patrick Carpentier took a spin into the grass, and Junior cruised to the start-finish line on fumes with Kasey Kahne right on his bumper. Congratulations, Junebug. Your daddy would be so proud.

By Jen Dunnaway

Editor

NASCAR, having tired of all the public bitching from its drivers about the problematic and still-under-development Car of Tomorrow, called the boys in this week for a stern talking-to. NASCAR’s position: the griping, and the public shots by drivers against its CoT program, are making the sport look bad, portraying the drivers as a bunch of spoiled ingrates, and insulting the fans, who (let’s face it) have bigger things to worry about. NASCAR adopted the safer, bulkier, and ill-handling new car full-time for this year’s Sprint Cup Series, equalizing the drivers’ rides in an effort to increase safety and decrease ballooning costs for the team owners. Dale Earnhardt Jr. has been one of the most outspoken critics of the CoT—he’s railed against its lousy handling and its inability to pass other cars on the racetrack. Dale Jr. wasn’t the only one to stand tall before the man this week—it was mandatory for all drivers—but he was one of the most contrite. In a press conference following the tounge-lashing, a chastened Junior admitted to having been "overly critical" of the new car and added that he and other drivers "should be thankful for the position they’re in." Sounds like somebody’s sorry, though there was no info released on the specifics of NASCAR president Michael Helton’s diatribe. Suffice it to say that there may have been some pretty specific consequences outlined for further bellyaching, and it’s not the first time NASCAR has used its persuasive powers to, um, neutralize dissent within its ranks.

By Jen Dunnaway

Editor

Now that’s what I’m talkin’ ’bout—look how Junior nearly lifts Elliott Sadler’s drive-wheels off the ground. Aggressive nose-to-tail racing was going on all day long, a necessary part of restrictor-plate runs. Since the cars are set up so equally, drafting is one of the few ways drivers can get ahead of the pack, building on each other’s momentum to gain the speed necessary to pass.

By Jen Dunnaway

Editor

Tony Stewart and Dale Earnhardt Jr. are both really good drivers with really good race cars, but both have been starved of victories this season. Throughout the Aaron’s 312 today, it looked like they were really clobbering on each other: Tony, who spent most of the race out front, had to put up with Junior smashing relentlessly on him from behind, and during each of the few laps that Junior had the lead, his No. 5 car similarly had a rear bumper full of Tony. But what looked like dirty-fighting was actually a strategy that kept both cars in first and second place for most of the run. In restrictor-plate racing, the draft is the means by which cars combine their momentum, meaning that two fast cars yoked together in a draft will run faster laps than either of those two cars would alone, and the bumping the rear car gives the lead tends to boost them even faster, as long as no one gets squirrelly.

Clearly, Tony was the one who benefitted from today’s ongoing bro-mance, as Junior’s attempt during the final laps to slingshot into the lead fumbled when no one stepped up to help draft him past Tony. In any event, both these racers have been due for a win for quite some time, and I have a feeling Dale Jr. will be looking for payback during tomorrow’s Aaron’s 499. Will Tony make it a sweep at Talladega, or will Junior, a projected winner whom Tony himself credited in part for his own win today, finally score Sprint Cup victory?

By Jen Dunnaway

Editor

Hendrick Motorsports must’ve been crazy to kick Kyle Busch to the curb. As you may know, the preeminent NASCAR Sprint Cup Series team dropped Busch in order to pick up Dale Earnhardt Jr. for the 2008 season as Junior fled his former team, DEI. The orphaned Busch brother was soon picked up by Joe Gibbs Racing, and meanwhile Gibbs was bought out by Toyota. Today, this sequence of events has at last paid dividends all around as Kyle, at 22, became the youngest driver ever to win a Sprint Cup race at Atlanta Motor Speedway, and the first since 1954 to drive a foreign make into victory circle. The win was a huge relief for Toyota, whose controversial move into Sprint Cup racing last year, and its longstanding inability to prove itself to be truly competitive in NASCAR’s top series despite sinking untold bucketloads of cash into its NASCAR effort, was starting to become a bit of an embarrassment. Now it’s clear that Joe Gibbs has scooped up the right driver and Toyota has bought the right team—congrats all around! Poor Rick Hendrick must be just kicking himself right now, but he should be biding his time: new acquisition Junior’s performance has been trending upward in the early races of this season, and by all accounts he’s poised to make a major comeback in ’08.

Dale Earnhardt Jr. is flying strong under his new colors, scoring his second high-profile victory of the Sprint cup season for his new team, Hendrick Motorsports. He won the first of the two qualifying races held today to lock in the Daytona 500 starting order. As the two race leaders have already been determined by lap times, this means Junebug will be starting from 3rd place. His victory follows close on the heels of his awesome win at the Budweiser Shootout last Saturday, and marks a serious comeback from a lackluster final season with DEI. If Junior won the Daytona 500 on Sunday, not only would he be driving to victory lane on the 10th anniversary of his late father’s Daytona 500 victory; he’d also be the first driver to win the Shootout, a qualifying race, and the 500 all in a row. In light of all that, I kind of can’t help rooting for him—we’ll see how he does on Sunday!