NASCAR Track Talk

REMINDER: I made a topic in the generals section instead of general discussion. Please use that one instead.

Congrats to Zane Smith and Front Row Motorsports for their dominant win to secure the NASCAR Camping World Truck Series championship. That was an exciting race.

Congrats to Ty Gibbs on winning the 2022 NASCAR Xfinity Series championship! Man that was exciting!

So the last 2 champions won the pole. If this continues, Joey Logan’s should win the title if things go that way. But things could change. Really don’t know who to root for.

Joey Logan’s wins a bittersweet championship. Just hours after his son won the Xfinity Series title, Ty Gibbs’ dad, Coy Gibbs, passed away before Sunday’ race. Rest In Peace Coy Gibbs.

Kind of a little late to be starting a topic about NASCAR just as the current season has finished, don’t you think?

If anything, I would have at the very least expected someone to start such a topic a week ago after Ross Chastain pulled off that unbelievable wall-riding move at the end of the race at Martinsville.

I put one in the generals tab so use that one

All I know is that my dad was a NASCAR nerd and my family went to a few races in some summers.

Cool!

We actually had NASCAR Thunder 2002 on PS2. I never really got into it though.

I have a broken PS3 with NASCAR 14 on it, but I recently got a steering wheel, pedals, and a stick shift to play NASCAR Heat 5 and NASCAR 21: Ignition

Next year will be NASCAR’s 75th anniversary, so some news site has decided to highlight 75 great moments in the sport’s history, one per day up until the start of the next season. Here’s a link to the first page, which will be updated with links to all the other pages as they’re added:
https://www.autoweek.com/racing/nascar/a42084555/nascar-75-stories-that-impacted-racing-series-intro/

Here’s a couple of YouTube channels about NASCAR That I regularly follow:
https://www.youtube.com/@EricEstepp
https://www.youtube.com/@TheIceberg

I find them to be a reliable source of quick information regarding recent news, such as the recent announcement by Kevin Harvick that he will retire at the end of the upcoming season.

Who here has NASCAR Diecasts?

Here’s another YouTube channel I follow that I find to be very informative about NASCAR, much more than just recent events:
https://www.youtube.com/@S1apShoes

I get most of my news from the NASCAR app

First race of 2023, the Clash at the Colosseum in Los Angeles, will be on tomorrow, and after how last year’s running of that event went, I’m definitely looking to seeing how things will go this year.

Not a big Truex Jr. but I’m happy for him. The dude went winless last year and wins his first Clash to start off ‘23 after thoughts of retirement. Congratulations to Martin Truex Jr. as well as 2nd and 3rd, Austin Dillon sporting a slick looking mustache and former JGR champ Kyle Busch.

Over 15 cautions after last year’s 5.

Since this was one of those special races where caution laps did not count towards the official length of the race, the fact that we saw so many cautions resulted in a race that went on for much longer than anticipated. I heard that because of the main race being extended so much from those extra caution laps, some cars actually ran out of fuel before the end of the race due to no one being allowed to refuel after the start of the last chance qualifying races (quite honestly, that resulted in a rather unfair advantage for those who advanced from the heat races and didn’t have to participate in the last chance qualifying races).

At the very least, I hope the strong finished by Kyle Busch here indicates how good his chances are for success this season with his new team. And with how many laps led by Bubba Wallace (including at the halftime break), I’m hoping for some good things from him as well.

But how about Justin Haley winning the pole in qualifying or SHR’s strong performance with Aric Almirola and the newcomer Ryan Preece?

We are now only a few hours away from the start of the Daytona 500. Considering which drivers are participating this year (the return of 7-time champ Jimmie Johnson, motorsports icon Travis Pastrana, Indycar racer Connor Daley, and the first time the previous season champions of all three major NASCAR series (Joey Jogano in Cup, Ty Gibbs from Xfinity, and Zane Smith from Trucks) are also in), I have a feeling this could be one of the most significant runnings of this race for quite some time. Made even more special with this year being NASCAR’s 75th anniversary season.

I’m honestly surprised no one has bothered to mention anything about what happened during the Daytona 500. Long story short, the race was won by Ricky Stenhouse Jr (only his third career win, the two previous wins both being back in 2017). Though I would like to note that, had the race ended without an overtime finish, Kyle Busch would’ve finally won the Daytona 500, but I guess that’ll have to wait for another year.

Anyway, the next race that’ll be on this weekend will be at Fontana, California. It has been confirmed that this will absolutely be the final race ever on that track in it’s current two-mile configuration. The plan is for that track to be reconfigured into a half-mile short track, though there are very few details that have been made official at this time aside from the fact there will not be a race at that track next year or possibly the year after as well. Whatever eventually happens to that track, be sure to enjoy watching one last race there in its original layout on Sunday (and hopefully without a weather delay).

And KB with the win! His 5th at Auto Club and first with RCR!

Quite a shame that Chase Elliott broke his leg in a snowboarding accident last Friday and will be missing the next few races. At least the rest of the Hendrick drivers are doing well, especially with William Byron winning yesterday’s race at Las Vegas.