After Michigan, Logano is two-for-two with new aero package

June 12, 2016 By Reid Spencer NASCAR Wire Service BROOKLYN, Mich. – In the second race that featured NASCAR’s new lower-downforce package, Joey Logano lowered the boom—again. There was one major difference between Joey Logano’s victory in Sunday’s FireKeepers 400 at Michigan International Speedway and his win May 21 in the Sprint All-Star Race at Charlotte. This one counted in the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series standings and punched Logano’s ticket into the Chase. But it remained abundantly clear that Team Penske already has a handle on the aerodynamic configuration the sanctioning body is considering for 2017. Logano led 139 of 200 laps…

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Mexican driver Suarez scores breakthrough at Michigan

June 11, 2016 By Reid Spencer NASCAR Wire Service BROOKLYN, Mich. – Daniel Suarez was speechless—and justifiably so. The Mexican driver had just passed Joe Gibbs Racing teammate Kyle Busch for the lead on the next-to-last lap and held on to win Saturday’s Menards 250 presented by Valvoline NASCAR XFINITY Series race at Michigan International Speedway by .280 seconds over the man who sets the standard in the series. The first Mexican-born driver to win a NASCAR national series race, Suarez overcame a pit road speeding penalty assessed on Lap 29 of 125 under the first of three cautions. He restarted eighth…

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Flashback: Bill Elliott’s Superspeedway Win at Michigan

By Keith Waltz Bill Elliott, a 28-year-old racer from Dawsonville, Georgia, scored his first NASCAR superspeedway victory on June 17, 1984, when he won the Miller High Life 400 at Michigan International Speedway. Elliott, who started from the pole in the No. 9 Coors Ford, took the lead from Geoff Bodine on a lap 194 restart and beat Dale Earnhardt to the checkered flag by two seconds in front of a reported record crowd of 64,000. “I hated to see that last caution come out because I knew there were a lot of cars that were running awfully good,” Elliott said in…

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Michigan Preview: ‘The Outlaw’ Could Win Another

By Jared Turner Prior to Kurt Busch winning Monday’s rescheduled and rain-delayed race at Pocono Raceway, the Stewart-Haas Racing driver had experienced a fairly quiet and uneventful season in the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series. But after going to Victory Lane and punching his ticket to the 2016 Chase for the NASCAR Sprint Cup, Busch is suddenly the talk of the town. That’s because in addition to being the Sprint Cup Series’ most recent winner, he enters Sunday’s FireKeepers Casino 400 at Michigan International Speedway as the defending race winner of the June event at MIS, where he owns a total of three…

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Just Sayin’: It Always Rains at Pocono Raceway

By Jared Turner Doesn’t it always rain at Pocono? With all due respect to Pocono Raceway, there’s no track more undeserving of two annual Sprint Cup dates than the so-called “Tricky Triangle.” Aside from the fact that races at Pocono tend to be among the most humdrum on the schedule, there’s also the harsh reality that rain seems to be a factor virtually every time NASCAR visits the 2.5-mile track. This past weekend was no different from the norm as wet weather hampered the proceedings on Friday and Saturday and then on Sunday forced the first postponement of the 2016 Sprint Cup…

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Larson wins rain-shortened NASCAR XFINITY race at Pocono

June 4, 2016 By Reid Spencer NASCAR Wire Service LONG POND, Pa. – The maiden voyage of the NASCAR XFINITY Series at Pocono Raceway was shorter than planned, but race winner Kyle Larson wasn’t complaining. NASCAR awarded the checkered flag in the Pocono Green 250 to Larson when the race was red-flagged after 53 of 100 scheduled laps and then called because of persistent rain. The victory was Larson’s first of the season and fourth in the series, but it was a source of frustration to runner-up Erik Jones, who arguably had the fastest car and was closing rapidly on Larson when…

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