By Jared Turner 5 Lessons Learned Heading Into September Joe Gibbs Racing Is The Team To Beat After coming out of the box slow in 2015, Joe Gibbs Racing has been hands-down the top Sprint Cup Series organization for most of the season. Now with all four of its drivers locked in the Chase for the Sprint Cup, JGR has to be considered the odds-on favorite to claim the 2015 title. Will it happen? Well, it’s certainly too early to tell. This much is certain, however: JGR’s Matt Kenseth and Kyle Busch have been the sport’s two most dominant drivers over the…

  By Jared Turner Going Retro Is Good How appropriate is it to see so many old-school paint schemes for Sunday’s Bojangles’ Southern 500 at Darlington Raceway, where the Sprint Cup Series will compete on Labor Day weekend for the first time since 2003? More than half of the teams in the 43-car field have unveiled throwback colors for the big race. If you’ve ever wanted to go back in time, this weekend offers a splendid chance to do it. "It will be fun to see all the throwback schemes racing at Darlington and on Labor Day Weekend,” said team owner Richard…

By Jared Turner 1. JJ, Hendrick Remain In A Funk Just when it seemed like Hendrick Motorsports’ recent slump and the struggles of Jimmie Johnson, in particular, couldn’t get any worse, think again. In Sunday’s race at Michigan, Johnson suffered a tire failure, overshot his pit stall and spun out – all separate incidents. The end result: A 39th-place finish and a failure by Johnson to finish in the top five for the eighth time in nine races. Of course, Johnson’s woes are just a microcosm of the issues that are ailing Hendrick as a whole. Since Johnson triumphed at Dover on…