By Aaron Burns Sam Hornish Jr. was a star in the Verizon IndyCar Series. He was a star in the NASCAR XFINITY Series, too. So, what’s happened? Hornish’s results in open-wheel and lower-tier NASCAR series didn’t translate to success in his first Sprint Cup go-around from 2008-‘10. That was excusable. He was still getting used to the heavier Cup cars. But Hornish hasn’t gotten up to speed this time around, either, and it’s a mystery as to why. Hornish’s No. 9 Twisted Tea Ford finished a respectable 12th in February’s Daytona 500. In the five races thereafter, he wound up 21st, 24th,…

By Ben White Albert “Buz” McKim, historian for the NASCAR Hall of Fame, has enjoyed numerous on-track fender smashing battles for over 60 years. At only two weeks old, he attended his first stock car race at Jersey City, N.J. when his Dad, Bob McKim, co-owned and wrenched a NASCAR Sportsman 1939 Ford. “My Dad had the old NASCAR logo on the rear glass of our family car,” McKim said. “That was one of the very first things I can recall as a human being was seeing that old logo on the back window.” Also in the 1950s, McKim’s father wrote press…

By Ben White In 1979, Dale Earnhardt’s Wrangler Jeans Chevrolets and Oldsmobiles were owned by Rod Osterlund and carried solid blue sides with yellow areas on their tops and hoods. When Earnhardt moved to RCR Enterprises for 10 races in 1981, their cars featured yellow V-styled front fenders and blue rear side sections. Earnhardt’s Bud Moore’s Fords of 1982 and ’83 again carried yellow and blue and when he returned to RCR in 1984, the familiar markings, albeit one radical yellow rear quarter panel design was rejected after one race at Talladega, remained. Masking tape stuck in a dozen directions before they…

By Jared Turner Dale Earnhardt Jr. was raised around the famous grandfather clocks that Martinsville Speedway awards to winners at the fabled short track. His father, the late seven-time NASCAR Sprint Cup Series champion, Dale Earnhardt, took home six of them. So when Junior decided early on that he wanted to follow in his dad’s footsteps and drive race cars for a living, claiming his own Martinsville grandfather clock someday was naturally high on his bucket list. After joining NASCAR’s top series full time in 2000 – a season that, coincidentally, would be his father’s last – Earnhardt Jr. struggled for awhile…