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…

By Jared Turner Tony Stewart had a lot of audacity walking over and lambasting Martin Truex Jr. on pit road for allegedly cutting him off in the closing laps of Sunday’s Auto Club 400. This is the same Stewart – mind you – who, despite competing for one of the sport’s best organizations, entered Sunday’s race having finished no better than 30th in four previous outings this year. Moreover, Stewart hasn’t won a race since June 2, 2013 – an eternity ago by NASCAR standards. Truex, meanwhile, is off to easily the best start of his Sprint Cup career, with five finishes…

By Jerry Bonkowski I spend a great deal of time scanning wires for photos of NASCAR drivers, seeking the photo that best illustrates the story that I am writing or editing. The past two weekends – particularly the most recent race weekend at Auto Club Speedway – I came upon a rather interesting observation. Since he came back from a NASCAR-imposed three-race suspension to start the season, I’d say that at least 90 to 95 percent of photos of Kurt Busch have shown him without a smile on his face. Big deal, right? But bear with me as I explain further. In…