By Aaron Burns Football fans can spend hours arguing over who they’d pick for Most Valuable Player. It’s the biggest individual honor an NFL player can get, and I think Carolina Panthers quarterback Cam Newton deserves it. He’s led his team to a 5-0 record and has done everything asked of him. Picking NASCAR’s version of a Most Valuable Player is tougher. For years, we’ve ranked Jimmie Johnson as the No. 1 driver in Sprint Cup, and with good reason. Death, taxes and Jimmie Johnson going for the title. We could always rely on those, right? Johnson was eliminated in the 16-driver…

By Aaron Burns Danica Patrick’s finish wasn’t indicative of how competitive she was on Sunday in the Hollywood Casino 400 at Kansas Speedway. Patrick qualified 29th and finished two laps down in 22nd, but it wasn’t as much a product of poor performance as it was a need for better track position. The story in Sunday’s race was the same as the previous week’s event at Charlotte Motor Speedway: If you had track position, you kept it. If you lost it, you didn’t get it back. Patrick didn’t start with good track position and on a track that has proven increasingly difficult…

By Jared Turner 5 Lessons Learned At Kansas JoLo Looks Unstoppable While it might not be wise to anoint any one driver as the odds-on championship favorite in such a fluid Chase environment where a guy can go from hero to zero status in just one week, it appears that Joey Logano is only getting stronger the further we go into the season. With his win at Kansas, Logano now has a career-high five triumphs this year. Just as impressive, however, as the number of wins is that they’ve come at a variety of tracks – restrictor plate (Daytona), short track (Bristol),…

By Jared Turner After locking horns with Matt Kenseth at Kansas while battling for the lead in the closing laps, Joey Logano was unapologetic about spinning the Joe Gibbs Racing driver and costing him a win that would have punched Kenseth’s ticket to the next round of the Chase for the NASCAR Sprint Cup. While Kenseth – who was clearly blocking Logano – refused to take any blame for the contact that sent his No. 20 car spinning, Logano refused to offer any regrets. And why should Logano have regrets? When two guys are racing that hard for the lead at such…