Circle Tracks

Denny Hamlin was the straw that stirs the drink in the final Final Four press conference prior to the NASCAR Cup Series Championship Race on Sunday at Phoenix Raceway. First, Hamlin was much looser than he was on Friday following a mechanical scare, aided by the fact that he scored pole position on Saturday afternoon. During the NextGen era, the finalist that qualified the best of the four ...Keep readingView the full article

Denny Hamlin 's 20-year quest to become a NASCAR Cup Series champion just got one step closer after securing pole position for the title-decider in Phoenix on Saturday. Hamlin flew to pole position with a confident-looking 28.914s lap, collecting his 48th career pole and his fifth of the 2025 season. "We're trying," smiled Hamlin after securing the top spot on the grid. "We're doing ...Keep readingView the full article

Joe Gibbs Racing locked out the front row for the season finale with Brandon Jones earning pole position over teammate Taylor Gray. Jones' fast lap of 27.490s was more than a full tenth faster than his teammate Gray, who earned his first career win one week ago at Martinsville. Sheldon Creed qualified third, but the top-qualifying Championship 4 driver was Connor Zilisch in fourth. Zilisch ...Keep readingView the full article

Hendrick Motorsports (HMS) was established as All-Star Racing in 1984, while Joe Gibbs Racing (JGR) joined NASCAR for the first time in 1992. Since then, HMS has won 320 races and JGR has won 227, making them the two of the three winningest teams in Cup Series history.  They've also combined to win 19 of the last 30 Cup titles, with Hendrick collecting 14 championships and Gibbs five ...Keep readingView the full article

Corey Heim obliterated the competition in 2025. He won 4x as many races as his closest competition, scored nearly twice as many top fives, led 3x as many laps led, and ended the year with an average finish more than four places better than any other full-time driver. To cap it all off, Heim drove from tenth to first in two overtime restarts (with four fresh tires), making up most of the ground ...Keep readingView the full article

After years of Cup drivers ransacking the lower divisions for race wins and championships, NASCAR introduced a policy limiting Cup drivers to a maximum of five races in Xfinity and five in Trucks, while also forbidding drivers from racing for multiple championships. On Saturday, NASCAR revealed that they will actually double the number of races from five to ten for the 2026 NASCAR O'Reilly Auto ...Keep readingView the full article

Ray Heim was losing his figurative s--t watching the NASCAR Truck Series Championship Race from the infield but his son remained resolute through it all. The Tricon Garage No. 11 team was not going to lose this race and championship on a caution with five laps to go because Connor Mosack did not pit to address his tire rub. They were not going to lose it to those who took two tires when Scott ...Keep readingView the full article

Corey Heim entered this race as the overwhelming favorite for the title, but the format meant he had to perform at Phoenix or face losing the title despite a historic season.  He won both stages and led the most laps, but when the race fell into double overtime, he had to fight with everything he had to win the title. Coming from tenth on a two-to-go restart, he drove up to second with a ...Keep readingView the full article

The final NASCAR Cup Series practice session of the year, for the championship race at Phoenix Raceway, contained no shortage of drama and intrigue. Overall, there were numerous left side tire failures, and that included a championship finalist. The first was Chase Briscoe and then two straight left side failures by AJ Allmendinger, the second of which caused a crash that will send him to a ...Keep readingView the full article

During the hour-long practice session in Phoenix, the issues began when championship contender Chase Briscoe lost a left rear within five minutes of the start of the session. It was the first of many, and those failures are likely not an anomaly but a result of teams being aggressive with suspension adjustments and tire pressures. Phoenix Raceway is a unique type of oval because it is ...Keep readingView the full article

The lone practice session for the NASCAR Cup Series title-decider at Phoenix Raceway began with a flurry of tire issues. It didn't take long for the drama to unfold. As Hamlin pulled out of line and slowed to avoid all the traffic, trouble found his title rival and Joe Gibbs Racing teammate Chase Briscoe. The No. 19 slowed down the backstretch with a cut left-rear tire, dragging the ...Keep readingView the full article

The final qualifying session of the 2025 NASCAR Truck season is complete, and the lineup is set for Friday night's title-decider at Phoenix Raceway. Earlier in the day, NASCAR discovered a panel that was not permitted on the No. 34 Front Row Motorsports Ford of Layne Riggs, resulting in a crew chief ejection, being sent to the rear of the field, and having to now serve a drive-through penalty ...Keep readingView the full article

Kaden Honeycutt is not the defending champion like Ty Majeski, nor has he dominated the entire year like Corey Heim, or spent several years racing Trucks full-time like Tyler Ankrum. Instead, Honeycutt is in his first full-time year of competition and he has never even won a NASCAR Truck race before. To make his situation even more unique, the 22-year-old is ending the year with a different ...Keep readingView the full article

This year, no Truck driver even comes close to Corey Heim. He has won eleven of 24 races, a series record. He faces three title rivals in the Championship 4 who have combined to win just one race this year — and eight total if you add up their whole careers. Heim's average finish of 5.2 is followed by Ty Majeski's 10.2, Tyler Ankrums 10.7, and Kaden Honeycutt's 13.2 over the course of the ...Keep readingView the full article

NASCAR is in a season of change. Some of it is the result of self-reflection and the changing tides of sport and entertainment, and some of it will eventually be the results of the lawsuit brought against the Sanctioning Body, but things are changing in the Cup Series and around it. That is a broad summary of the annual state of the sport press conference held every year before championship ...Keep readingView the full article

Over the past year, it’s been a fringe talking point in NASCAR fan circles about whether or not Denny Hamlin’s 23XI Racing bringing a lawsuit against the Sanctioning Body would have consequences on the track. In other words, as The Associated Press brought up in a nearly one hour State of the Sport press conference, what would NASCAR leadership say to fans if race control has to call a ...Keep readingView the full article

While his own title hopes ended in a brutal tiebreaker last weekend, Layne Riggs is still fighting for the owner's championship on behalf of Front Row Motorsports at the Phoenix Raceway finale. NASCAR found that the No. 34 FRM Ford had "added a panel to the oil that closes off the area between it and the floorboard, which is not permitted." As a result, Riggs will start from the rear of the ...Keep readingView the full article

Daniel Suarez is about to move to Spire Motorsports, which will be his fifth team since joining the NASCAR Cup Series. However, the majority of his Cup career and both of his wins all came with Trackhouse, who he has raced for since 2021. This weekend, that era of his career will come to an end, with the team honoring him through a special video message and a unique paint scheme. But before ...Keep readingView the full article

For three of the four drivers racing for the NASCAR Cup Series championship this weekend, braggadocio is not inherent to their personalities. Kyle LarsonWilliam ByronChase Briscoe Sure, Larson is good for what those within the industry call #BluntLarson zingers every now and then but he doesn’t go out of his way to give other teams bulletin board material. Briscoe and Byron are generally ...Keep readingView the full article

It’s still a longshot but Denny Hamlin might not be able to say he ‘beat your favorite driver,’ much longer because in a twist of irony, he’s now becoming one of them. For the first time in his career, the polarizing veteran cracked the National Motorsports Press Association Most Popular Driver Awards finals, meaning the 44-year-old is one of the five highest vote getters as of this ...Keep readingView the full article

Justin Allgaier was something of an invested party to the Sam Mayer and Jeb Burton incident on Saturday night at Martinsville. Well before Mayer intentionally crashed Burton during the cool-down lap, or even before the series of instances of hard racing between the two, Allgaier was also caught up in it during the first stage. Allgaier won the first stage but had to wrestle it away from ...Keep readingView the full article

In a newly released deposition featuring Bob Jenkins, the owner of Front Row Motorsports, he reveals why he chose not to sign the 2025 NASCAR Charter Agreement. Jenkins is the owner of several fast food and restaurant franchises, but he has also been operating a Cup team since 2005. While being questioned in a June 27th deposition, he was asked directly if 23XI actively tried to convince him to ...Keep readingView the full article

Several documents, depositions, and internal conversations have been made public as a result of the ongoing antitrust lawsuit between 23XI Racing, Front Row Motorsports, and NASCAR. Along with the full 2025 Charter Agreement, other information offers a behind the scenes look at some 'what if' scenarios over the years, including a proposal for a very different TV package than the one we have ...Keep readingView the full article

Daniel Suarez has been with several teams throughout his NASCAR Cup career, but none as long as Trackhouse Racing. He was a founding member of the organization, and its first driver in 2021. The team's first top five, top ten, and laps led all came with Suarez. The Mexican-born driver went on to win two Cup races with Trackhouse in both 2022 at Sonoma and at Atlanta in 2024, where he won in the ...Keep readingView the full article

12 drivers enter this weekend's season finale at Phoenix Raceway with hopes of becoming a NASCAR Cup Series champion, but only three will leave with the hardware.  In the Cup Series, the legendary Joe Gibbs Racing team will have Denny Hamlin and Chase Briscoe facing the might of Hendrick Motorsports and their drivers, Kyle Larson and William Byron. In Xfinity, Justin Allgaier will seek to ...Keep readingView the full article