There really aren’t many things NASCAR driver Robby Gordon hasn’t raced. At SEMA, Chad from BangShift caught up with him in the Magnaflow booth to talk about cubic inches, high horsepower, his daily drivers and his burly Hummer. Hey guys, how about taking it easy on Nads?

I’ve found it a little funky-looking in some of the renderings and photos that have been circulating, but when I saw it in person in the Ford booth at SEMA, the new Nationwide-Series Mustang just looked plain mean. Plus, this is seriously historic: while Mustang has dominated a ton of other motorsports series, it’s been largely absent from national-level stock car racing, so its entry into NASCAR is a pretty big deal. And moreover, the rear sheetmetal, even though it’s a NASCAR-mandated template, looks better than the factory Mustang’s 2010 back end. The Nationwide Mustang will be running the new Roush Yates FR9, an all-new beast and a complete departure from the 351-based motor that Ford’s been running in NASCAR since ‘91. More pics…

Continue reading "The New NASCAR Mustang at SEMA" »

I went out with John, Jen and Michelle on Thursday night for our traditional post-SEMA Vegas blowout. We started with a ride on the NASCAR roller coaster at the Sahara, followed by a somewhat barfy meal in the casino. Next stop was a huge cheesy souvenir shop (John was hoping to find another Lucky 777 hat, but failed) and then we headed over to Terrible’s for a night of cheap drinks and quality entertainment. Thanks again to John, Jen and Jim for all the awesome blogs, and to Michelle for the great walk-around videos (and Jim, next time you have to go out with us!). And thanks to all the CarDomain members and readers for making this all possible (and sorry the blog comments don’t seem to be working for many of you–we know about it, and we’re working on it). So tune in again next year for another round of SEMA coverage! Oh, and we’ll start our Best of SEMA voting on Wednesday.

Continue reading "Last Night in Vegas" »

One thing I hate about SEMA? How slow the crowds move. I bicycle around 100 miles a week, so having to be in traffic with heards of fat dudes who drive down to the mailbox makes me want to kill myself. But anyway, on the way to the show this morning, Jen and I came up on a pack of particularly slow-moving folks, and I was reminding myself that it’s not OK to just bodycheck them out of the way, when I noticed Richard Petty was in the middle of the throng signing autographs. If you aren’t familiar with his signiture, it makes John Hancock’s look like it was done by a drunken four year old, and he was graciously autographing everything put in front of him. Long live the king!

This week at Talladega, the competing automakers are each officially debuting their Nationwide Series version of the Car of Tomorrow–and at least two out of the four are opting for  ponycar-based racers. Dodge’s Nationwide Challenger is the hottest ride to take to the NASCAR circuit since the 70’s, and the NASCAR-ed out Mustang, while awkward, is nonetheless going to be a huge shot in the arm for both Ford and the troubled Nationwide Series. The odd man out? (Well, Toyota is sticking with the Camry, because of course they don’t have anything less boring to base a stock car on). But Chevrolet, probably the biggest underwriter of NASCAR in the world, inexplicably opted not to build a Nationwide car based on the new Camaro. What? Yeah, they’re going to stick with the now-played-out Impala, the same nameplate they use in Sprint Cup. Chevy officials made vague PR-sounding excuses about not wanting to compromise the new Camaro’s iconic lines, citing the partially templatized body they’d have to conform to (okay, for one thing, what iconic lines? The Camaro looks like a cartoon, but in a good way–perfectly suited to the Lightning McQueen era of NASCAR). That warmed-over Impala looks nice and everything, but seriously, wtf? They think running a Camaro in NASCAR would be bad for the brand? Unbelievable.

In any case, the new cars are in final testing at Talladega Superspeedway today, and will be run in four races during the 2010 Nationwide Series, beginning at Daytona in July. NASCAR hopes to have the hot new Nationwide rides fully integrated into the series by the 2011 season. Check out a whole gallery of new Nationwide rides below the jump, and read the press release at egmcartech.

Continue reading "NASCAR: Challenger Is A Go For Nationwide Series, But Not Camaro" »

Joey Logano already has a Sprint Cup win under his belt, but his real baptism by fire came last weekend on the “Monster Mile” in Dover, Delware, when he was involved in a nasty wreck that sent his car flipping a full seven revolutions.

Ironically, Tony Stewart, the guy who used to drive the car that Logano took over, was one of the primary players in the action that led up to the big wreck. Essentially, Stewart rear ended Logano at full speed when Logano was forced to brake hard to avoid smashing into another car. Stewart was very apologetic about the wreck to reporters.

With all of the aerodynamic work done on these cars over the last ten years, cases of flying Stock Cars have been fairly limited. Still, not every situation can be accounted for and no one, not even a highly paid team of engineers, can beat physics.

One thing that is amazingly clear though is that the Car of Tomorrow, while reviled by many NASCAR followers, is one safe automobile. The fact that Logano could escape under his own power with only a potentially soiled fire suit is an amazing thing. This would have been a surely fatal wreck not so long ago.

You’ve got to give the kid some credit. He’s hanging in there with the big boys, now he’s had his “big one. He gives a good account of what was going through his head to FoxSports.

Here’s video of the action:

Welcome to another installment of the CarDomain Obscure Muscle Car Parking Lot, a regular feature which aims to expand the definition of what a muscle car is, and to discover hidden treasures while doing so. Many do not even know that the Buick division of General Motors produced the Grand National on a platform other than on the Regal, but there was a very unique Grand National built in late 1985: the 1986 LeSabre Grand National. This was the debut of GM’s new full-size FWD platforms, and the two door Buick LeSabre (along with its corporate cousin, the Oldsmobile Delta 88) proved to be quite slippery in wind tunnel tests. We have had this question in this series before, but can a front wheel drive two-door really be considered a muscle car?

Continue reading after the jump!

Continue reading "CarDomain Obscure Muscle Car Parking Lot – the 1986 Buick LeSabre Grand National" »

As of Saturday’s awesome night race at Richmond, the Sprint Cup Series is now officially into its 10-race season-ending playoff, the Chase For The Cup. So it’s down to only twelve drivers who have a shot at this year’s championship: Mark Martin, Tony Stewart, Jimmie Johnson, Denny Hamlin, Kasey Kahne, Jeff Gordon, Kurt Busch, Brian Vickers, Carl Edwards, Ryan Newman, Juan Pablo Montoya, and Greg Biffle. Kyle Busch is notably absent, as is Dale Jr., though the greatest heartbreak for me this year was that Clint Bowyer, just barely, failed to make the Chase.

So, of the remaining twelve, who do you figure has the best shot at scoring the championship? More to the point, who do you want to see win this year?

The Associated Press is reporting that three NASCAR crewmen have been suspended from competition due to violations of the substance abuse policy. The story seems to indicate the the three were caught actually using drugs or a banned substance at the track, which was Bristol. We thought those guys were thrashing all weekend. No wonder they are always so cheery.

The report also says that, with these three, the total number of crew-member suspension for the season is ten. As we all know, Jeremy Mayfield is the only driver who has been whacked by the new system.

Ten guys is a fair amount. It seems that the mentality that they’ll not get caught doing stupid or illegal things is still in the forefront of the offenders’ brains. Not surprising as it sounds like they have been cooking brain cells for a while.

I went and checked out the dirt track races on Saturday night! I’d never actually been, and after all the over-sanitized high-dollar NASCAR I’ve gotten used to, it was pretty cool to see banged-up packs of midgets, modifieds and late models carving their way around a tiny oval of mud at Grays Harbor County Fairground. The racing was just as cut-throat as it is in the big leagues, the rules were looser, and the wrecks were intense but non-lethal. Racin’ the way racin’ should be!

How about you? What did you do this weekend?

Continue reading "What Did You Do This Weekend?" »

With the Car of Tomorrow redesign underway in NASCAR’s second-tier Nationwide Series, there’s been a lot of wild-ass speculation about whether the Big Three might seize the opportunity to introduce their newest crop of pony cars to stock car racing. It’s not as far-fetched as you might think: there were those CoT prototypes tested last year at Richmond, Ford has all but committed at least some version of its Mustang to run in Nationwide, and the mags and the blogs have been mulling over the idea for months. Two main threads within the CoT development discussion include 1. the importance of running a car that’s closer to “real” cars available at the showroom, and 2. the idea that the car would be different enough from Sprint Cup’s CoT that Sprint Cup drivers would have no particular advantage in the series–so in other words, you wouldn’t have to watch Carl Edwards and Kyle Busch win the race on cruise control weekend after weekend, with the rookies whom Nationwide is supposed to serve bringing up the rear of the pack. I think the racing of factory-based Mustangs, Camaros, and Challengers would not only be awesome, but it’d give the ailing Nationwide series the shot in the arm it needs: it could finally be cool in its own right, rather than a little-brother series to Sprint Cup and a lazy playground for already-established NASCAR champs. Check out Murray Pfaff’s rendering from the October 2009 issue of Hot Rod, which, apart from the fact that it depicts the supposed Nationwide cars in Sprint Cup sponsorship regalia, gives a pretty good idea of what Detroit’s pony cars might look like racing side-by-side on the track. The whole thing kind of begs the question, though: what’s Toyota supposed to run?

Jalopnik has a pretty good plan to “fix” NASCAR. I myself have never enjoyed the sport and often think of it as a waste of fuel and rubber, but perhaps with these adjustments, I would watch it once or twice (when nothing else is on…and I really mean nothing). Take a look at their plans.

Last weekend NASCAR held a groundbreaking ceremony at Pocono for what should be the largest solar power facility at a sports venue in the world. The 25 acres of solar panels will cost $15-17 million to build out, but should pay for themselves over time. More at AutoblogGreen

Ben Smith is a columnist for the Fort Wayne, Indiana’s, Journal Gazette. He hits the nail right on the head about NASCAR’s “Car of Tomorrow” and its negative effect on the fan perception and interest of NASCAR racing.

The recent fanfare about the Mustang “body” being introduced into the Nationwide series was nothing more than a cruel joke for anyone who actually believed that something with some shred of a connection to a factory car was going to be interjected into that series. The “Mustang” looks like something a third grade art class drew up when the teacher demanded a picture of a race car. Hit the link here to read Ben Smith’s take on the Car of Tomorrow.

Saturday’s night race saw veteran driver and comeback kid Mark Martin score his fourth win of the season in his ultra-dominant No. 5 Chevrolet, after leading the lion’s share of laps in the LifeLock 400. Meanwhile, Kyle Busch screwed the pooch once again, driving into the wall and blowing an engine before storming off in a sulk. See more pics from Chicagoland Speedway below the jump, courtesy of Getty Images.

Continue reading "Mark Martin Rides Off Into The Sunset At Chicagoland" »