Posted on by Steve Luvender

You never know what’s going to happen at Talladega — and that’s not a spotter-less Brad Keselowski reference. Few expected nearly two-thirds of the field to get wiped out in crashes, including eight of the 12 remaining playoff drivers, but it happened Sunday.

Here’s what was good and bad about 500 miles at Talladega to mark the halfway point of this year’s playoffs.

Thumbs Up: Racing Without a Spotter

If there’s a place you want to know what’s going on around you, that place is Talladega. It’s the biggest track on the circuit and close draft packs make constant spotter communication more than vital.

But, for race winner Brad Keselowski, he couldn’t hear his spotter — making the daunting task of racing at Talladega even more frightening. That means no one to tell you what’s happening on-track, no communication of who’s going to work with you, no messages being delivered from angry competitors telling their spotters that the No. 2 had better watch out …

Eventually, Keselowski pitted to have the antenna replaced on the roof of his car. (Yes, NASCAR race cars have antennae.) And, of course, he drove his Ford to Victory Lane — aided, of course, by spotter communication in the end.

It’s tough to decide whether or not Keselowski and the No. 2 crew deserve a thumbs up or thumbs down for racing at the most spotter-intensive track on the circuit, but we’ll give ’em a thumbs up for doing the unthinkable.

Thumbs Down: Clint’s Rage Quit

Talladega’s a frustrating place, especially when you’re not running well.

Clint Bowyer, unable to continue after his No. 14 Ford was overcome by crash damage, took his frustration out on his pit crew following his exit from the race.


Maybe there’s an explanation for this.


Thumbs down for getting frustrated with your crew. They’re the group that has your back.

Thumbs Up: Dale Jr.’s final restrictor plate race

Even though Dale Earnhardt Jr. didn’t score his seventh victory at Talladega, he had quite a race.

From winning the pole, navigating through multiple crashes including “The Big One“, to even asking for extracurricular information while racing …


… it was an impressive effort for Junior in his final restrictor plate start.

Unfortunately, he was slowed on the final run due to a dragging splitter (his arch nemesis), relegating him to a seventh-place finish in his last time at Talladega — but it was certainly an eventful day.

Thumbs up to the man who will forever be The Pied Piper of restrictor plate racing.

Thumbs Down: Crash damage

The Alabama 500 was slowed 11 times Sunday, mostly for multi-car crashes including a wreck that claimed more than a quarter of the field after Martin Truex Jr. and David Ragan tangled.


Thumbs down for tearing up lots of cars. Thankfully, everyone was OK, physically, at least, though Talladega will certainly have an impact on the playoff picture moving forward.

In the end, just 14 cars finished the race and only 12 remained on the lead lap.

Maybe that’s why it’s called the Round of 12.

Biggest Thumbs Up of the Week: The new king of restrictor plate racing

It’s only fitting to crown a new king of restrictor plate racing following Earnhardt’s final restrictor-plate race.

Keselowski — yes, spotter-less Keselowski, who drove a paint scheme honoring Earnhardt — pulled off his fifth victory at Talladega.


Keselowski’s win, and resulting lock into the Round of 8, seems to have a benefit for everybody.

Posted on by Staff Report

PHOTOS: Kids of the NASCAR garage

The Cassill household increased by one this week.

Front Row Motorsports driver Landon Cassill announced on his Twitter page that he and his wife, Katie, have welcomed Daphne Plum Mayola Cassill into the world. Daphne is the second child for the Cassills and the first little girl.

She joins older brother Beckham, who was born in 2015.

 

In a twist of irony, Dale Earnhardt Jr. announced Monday he and wife Amy are expecting a little girl. Earnhardt then shared a text conversation between he and Cassill from a few weeks ago.

 

Posted on by Staff Report

Elton Sawyer, NASCAR’s Vice President, Officiating and Technical Inspection, appeared on SiriusXM NASCAR Radio on Monday morning and explained why the No. 48 Hendrick Motorsports team was penalized toward the end of Sunday’s Alabama 500.

During the red-flag period, NASCAR ended Johnson’s day when it was deemed that his crew was working on the car while the red flag was displayed. In a post-race interview with NBC, Johnson said he was unclear on why the penalty occurred.

“While we’re under red, no work or service can be done to the vehicles,” Sawyer told SiriusXM NASCAR Radio. “What happens is David Hoots, who is our race director, he will say — as he did yesterday — the cars that are stopped on the back straightaway can fire up the engines. We’re still under red-flag conditions. …

“The team assumed that they could go back to work, but our officials, as you would notice, were on pit road saying, ‘No, you can’t do that.’ Then the red was rescinded and we displayed the yellow, which would have allowed them to go back to work.”

Johnson was scored with a 24th-place finish in the race and is eighth in the playoff standings, seven points above the cut line entering Sunday’s elimination race at Kansas Speedway.

Posted on by Brad Norman

PHOTOS: Dale and Amy through the years

Dale Earnhardt Jr. has told us how much he wants to start a family, and he and Amy shared the good news with NASCAR fans Monday that they are expecting a little girl.

 

Junior is retiring from full-time driving in the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series after this season. He talked at Dover recently about how much he is looking forward to having children.

“I’m excited to start a family, and I hope I’m fortunate enough to do that with Amy,’’ he said. “We definitely want to do that. And it would be weird not being a race car driver if I have a daughter or son, I think about that, would they understand what I’m telling them or what I did for a long time. I’m hoping to find out all that stuff soon.’’

Brad Keselowski, who won Sunday’s race at Talladega Superspeedway in a No. 2 Team Penske Ford with a paint scheme honoring Earnhardt Jr., sent congratulations on Twitter, as the social media well wishes started pouring in regarding the joyful news.

Earnhardt Jr., who is 43, and Amy wed on New Year’s Eve last winter.

Posted on by Staff Report

RELATED: Full schedule for Kansas

A pair of high-profile personnel moves announced Monday will shake up the spotters’ stand in 2018.

Alex Bowman announced Monday that he’ll work with spotter Kevin Hamlin next season in the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series. Hamlin joins the Hendrick Motorsports No. 88 Chevrolet team in place of TJ Majors, who will be moving to Team Penske in 2018 to spot for Joey Logano’s No. 22 Ford.

Majors currently serves as the eyes in the sky for Dale Earnhardt Jr., who is in his final full season of competition. Bowman will take over as Earnhardt’s replacement in the No. 88 Chevy next year.

Majors announced earlier in the afternoon via Twitter that this season would be his last as the spotter for the Hendrick No. 88, thanking the organization for the friendships and memories accumulated over his 10-plus years there. Later Monday, he revealed his destination for 2018 on the “Door, Bumper, Clear” podcast on Dirty Mo Radio.

“I feel like this is somewhere where I can go and work probably until Joey retires,” Majors said on the podcast. “That was one of my deciding factors in it was that it was somewhere I could go and probably be … and I feel like Joey’s going to be competitive and he’s going to be competitive for a long time. Obviously it’s another great company to go to. Nothing but great things, I’ve heard a lot of great things about them and I look forward to it.”

RELATED: Key players in NASCAR’s Silly Season

Majors also serves as the spotter for the JR Motorsports No. 7 team and driver Justin Allgaier in the XFINITY Series and Brad Keselowski Racing’s No. 29 for driver Chase Briscoe in the Camping World Truck Series.

According to Bowman, Hamlin will shift from his role spotting for driver Kasey Kahne and the Hendrick Motorsports No. 5 team. Kahne is set to leave the Rick Hendrick-owned organization for Leavine Family Racing in 2018.

Bowman was named as Earnhardt’s successor in July.

Posted on by Steve Luvender

Paint and sheet metal weren’t the only things traded this week following the crash-filled playoff race at Talladega Superspeedway. A flurry of 140-character jabs flew between competitors, too, when Dale Earnhardt Jr. and Landon Cassill openly discussed their drafting practices on Twitter.

It started Sunday when Dale Jr., making his final Talladega start, didn’t quite get the drafting help he was hoping to receive from Cassill — making his frustration known over team radio.

In the end, Junior contended for the win after navigating through a series of multi-car crashes, including the Lap 173 “Big One” that ended Cassill’s day (and involved upwards of a dozen others — many of them playoff contenders).

 

After the race, the two traded barbs on Twitter (playful barbs, we think).

Junior, in the past, has heaped praise upon Cassill’s abilities…

…but things are different now.

Posted on by Nascar

CONCORD, N.C. — Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series points leader Martin Truex Jr., Kurt Busch, Daniel Hemric, and Jamie McMurray are scheduled to take part in a Goodyear tire test Tuesday and Wednesday on the road course at Charlotte Motor Speedway.

The course, an 18-turn layout which measures 2.4 miles, will be used for next October’s Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series Playoff race. It will be the first road course configuration in the series’ 10-race playoffs since the format debuted in 2004.

MORE: McMurray says ‘my fault’ after Dega crash | Charlotte shows off road-course addition

The track will continue to host the series’ annual All-Star race and Coca-Cola 600 in May on the 1.5-mile tri-oval.

Driver AJ Allmendinger tested the layout in January of this year. Chicanes have since been added on the backstretch prior to entering Turn 3 and on the frontstretch coming out of Turn 4.

Greg Stucker, Director of Race Tire Sales for Goodyear, said his group will begin the testing process with the tried and true — tires it currently uses at Watkins Glen International.

“We’ve got one fast road course on the circuit and that’s Watkins Glen,” he said. “We think we have a pretty good package there. Obviously we know what road course requirements are from a construction perspective. So that’s where we’ll start.

“And then depending on how much the chicane slows the cars down, then we’ll have some options to look at, some softer combinations; see if we can maybe go a little softer and add some grip.”

The Monster Energy Series currently competes on road courses at Sonoma and Watkins Glen while XFINITY and Camping World Truck Series have road course events at other venues as well. That gives Goodyear officials a good database from which to draw, Stucker said.

Stucker said Tuesday’s initial program would involve “sorting through the backstretch chicane,” as the final layout of that portion of the track has not been determined.

“There are about three different options to look at,” he said. “So actually the morning of the first day is going to be spent looking at those three different configurations and between NASCAR and the race track trying to figure out what’s the best option. 

“That will take up a little bit of time; then we’ll go through and get our short runs down probably in the afternoon. As standard on the second day go through and do our longer runs and see how we look under those conditions.” 

Stucker said standard rain tires will be produced as well in case of inclement weather.

Posted on by Staff Report

MORE: Key players in NASCAR silly season

Leavine Family Racing has relieved crew chief Todd Parrott of his No. 95 Chevrolet crew chief duties effective immediately, the team announced Monday morning.


Currently 27th in points, driver Michael McDowell picked up his first career top-five finish earlier this year at Daytona with Parrott atop the box. The veteran crew chief has notched 31 Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series wins and led Dale Jarrett to the 1999 premier series title.

Jon Leonard, who had been serving as race engineer, will take his first swing at interim crew chief duties this weekend at Kansas Speedway.

Kasey Kahne will helm the No. 95 Chevy beginning in 2018.

Posted on by Nascar

RELATED: Race results | ‘Big One’ shakes up Playoffs | Updated Playoffs standings

TALLADEGA, Ala. – There were 11 cautions, three red flags and at the end of the day only 14 cars running at the finish.

At times it seemed as if there were more safety vehicles under power.

This race was moved from its position in the cutoff spot to the second of three in the Round of 12 this year. It was an attempt to provide somewhat of a cushion to those chasing the championship in the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series.

Playoff contenders might have seemed somewhat less annoyed after getting knocked around and booted from Sunday’s Alabama 500 at Talladega Superspeedway, but it was hard to tell. The line was a long one leading out of the infield care center.

Of the 12 playoff teams, only four finished the 188-lap race under power. Brad Keselowski (Team Penske) won, Denny Hamlin (Joe Gibbs Racing) finished sixth, Kyle Larson (Chip Ganassi Racing) limped home 13th and Matt Kenseth (JGR) wobbled across the line a lap down and 14th on the scorecard.

Those were the lucky ones.

It was a race that shook up the championship picture, all right, and it doesn’t matter if it’s the first race of the round, the middle race or the one on the end. Talladega’s 2.66-mile layout does not discriminate.

Kyle Busch (JGR) was sixth in the standings before Sunday’s race; he left in ninth, one spot out of the playoff picture.

Incredibly, in spite of all the poor finishes of others, Kenseth somehow dropped a spot from ninth to 10th. Ricky Stenhouse Jr. (Roush Fenway Racing) improved one spot, but is still on the outside in 11th while Jamie McMurray (Ganassi), knocked out of the race early, is 12th.

Thankfully, while the garage resembled a junkyard, none of the drivers involved in accidents were injured.

RELATED: Keselowski tames wreck-filled ‘Dega race 

And for those in the playoffs, there’s one more race – next week’s Hollywood Casino 400 at Kansas Speedway – to try and recoup lost points and put themselves back in contention.

Which is one of the reasons drivers sought to have the Talladega race moved to the middle of the round in the first place.

“If you have guys with (points) buffers they’re not going to run in the middle of the pack. They’ll just run in the back and the race won’t be nearly as exciting,” Hamlin said on pit road afterward.

The race might have seemed crazy and out of control but as he noted, “This race always becomes a wreck-fest eventually. I’ve watched races back where you’ve got 15 healthy cars running at the end. At this time of the season you’ve got 30 cars that really don’t give a damn what happens.

“It’s good that they moved it at least to the middle race; nobody knew where they were, now you’ve got to go to Kansas and perform.”

Kansas promises to be a bit tamer, perhaps, but with the postseason field getting trimmed by four there’s plenty of room for action on the 1.5-mile track.

In the meantime, Talladega will continue to be Talladega no matter where it falls on the calendar.

“I feel fortunate to be even walking after that,” Ryan Newman (Richard Childress Racing) said. “It’s crazy out there. I don’t know how many people actually want to be a part of it.”

That from the driver who finished second. Similar sentiments have been uttered here before.

It’s Talladega and it’s done and there are no more restrictor-plate races from here until season’s end.

And that’s just fine with points leader Martin Truex Jr. (Furniture Row Racing), who finished 23rd. A winner last weekend at Charlotte, Truex has already secured one of the eight positions in the next round.

“We came here knowing that we were in good shape,” he said, “and we were just going to race hard, try to put ourselves in position to hopefully get another win and unfortunately we couldn’t. We could never even get to the lead all day.”

His Toyota was one of 16 cars involved in a crash 17 laps from the finish.

It was a day when there were “some really strong cars,” Truex said, “and we weren’t one of them.”

For the points leader, and a lot of other folks, Kansas has never looked so good.

Posted on by Jessica Ruffin

RELATED: Talladega gives Dale Jr. his dad’s 1979 Monte Carlo

TALLADEGA, Ala. — Dale Earnhardt Jr. climbed out of his No. 88 for the last time at Talladega Superspeedway as the sun began to set on Alabama.

After an immediate inspection of the damaged right-front splitter that plagued his final laps and left him with seventh instead of first, Earnhardt debriefed with his team, shaking their hands in a circle.

There was plenty riding on this race for the undeniable crowd favorite. For many drivers, a seventh-place result at a place like always-unpredictable Talladega is considered a good day. It’s different for Earnhardt.

Ultimately, he wanted the win for the folks in the grandstands.

“It’s been better than the last couple of trips here, the last couple of trips we had a lot of trouble in wrecks and hadn’t been able to come home with a decent finish,” Earnhardt said. “I would have loved to have won the race for all the fans that come out here. I know a lot of folks came to see this race just for the fact that it was my last plate race and trust me, I wanted to win it for all those folks more than myself, but just couldn’t get it done.”

WATCH: Junior wheels through the ‘Big One’

Earnhardt was one of 14 cars that made it through the perils of Talladega on Sunday afternoon in a race that saw three red flags. Indeed it seemed that the No. 88 driver certainly seemed to have a guardian angel on his shoulder throughout the afternoon; he squeezed through a multi-car melee with minimal damage at Lap 171 that took out 16 cars then just barely avoided hitting a crashing Ryan Blaney and Trevor Bayne near the yellow line at Lap 178.

Four laps later, he escaped a wreck that collected his teammate Chase Elliott and rookie Daniel Suarez.

The No. 88 team “got lucky,” he said.

“I (was) carrying Stevie Waltrip’s scripture in the car,” Earnhardt said, referring to the Bible verse that Darrell Waltrip’s wife places in his car each week. “She probably had me a little luck there. So, it never hurts to have an angel on your shoulder.”

A portion of this week’s verse, coming from Lamentations 3:22-24, read, “By His mercies we have been kept from complete destruction,” which seems eerily fitting in regards to Earnhardt’s day of near misses. After the verse, Stevie wrote “Hope you feel loved and hugged.”

He was certainly loved — and has been loved — at Talladega on Sunday. The roar of the grandstands when he led the field to green as the polesitter at the start of the race or when he made a move for position is a testament to that.

He loves it here, too — that started even before he won six races at Talladega in the premier series, when he was a young child running around the garage as his father made a name at the Alabama track.

“I really do owe a lot to this track and the support that we have had here from the fans, owe a lot to them,” Earnhardt said. “You know, it just has been a very fun place. When I was a little kid going to ‑‑ we got to go to a handful of race tracks throughout the year, and this was always a fun trip. There was a pay‑to‑ride go‑kart track down where the hotels were where all the drivers and everybody stayed, and me ‑‑ I’d get a hundred bucks from Dad maybe, and then … a bunch of us would run over there and spend all our daddies’ money riding go‑karts … Me and the boys, we’d run around the garage looking at the cars that came in there, they were broke or wrecked or whatever, and they’d just bring them in there and park them and leave them.

“Just so many good memories as a kid coming here, and that was back before hot passes and pit passes, garage passes. Man, you could run anywhere you wanted to go, and we were all over the place having fun and goofing off … A lot of great memories here, and then obviously the career in Cup here, four in a row, all those things mean a lot to me.”

Even though his career in the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series has come to a close at NASCAR’s largest track, the Earnhardt connection will remain; he’ll be back in a different form.

RELATED: All of Dale Earnhardt and Junior’s wins at Talladega

“I hope to always have a great connection here, and trust me when I say that whatever the track needs from me, anytime they want anything, I’ll be here to help promote and support this place no matter what the request is,” Earnhardt said. “They’ve done so much for me, and I want to remain very close.”

This last one is a bag of mixed emotions for him; his slight disappointment is evident, but he maintains a slight smile and cheerful spirits during interviews. He finished the race, earned a top 10 and gave his devoted fans something to watch up until the very end.

“I’m always disappointed when we don’t run well at tracks I know we should, but we did run well today, but I know that everybody was probably ‑‑ is a little bit of air out of the bag there at the end to finish seventh,” Earnhardt said. “I hate to leave slightly disappointed, but hopefully they enjoyed everything else they saw. I mean, we ran as hard as we could, did the best we could.”