NASCAR News

CHARLOTTE, N.C. (AP) _ The tension in this Chase for the championship was evident after the first pit stop at Dover, where title contender Tony Stewart angrily bumped Paul Menard because the rookie crowded him. By the time Round 2 was over, an incensed Denny Hamlin wanted to fight Kyle Petty after an on-track accident led to an off-track confrontation. Emotions nearly erupted at Dover International Speedway, where the top half of the Chase field left Sunday's race ...

CHARLOTTE, N.C. (AP) _ Singed eyelashes were the least of Jimmie Johnson's problems after a fiery crash knocked him out of the race at Indianapolis Motor Speedway. The race roared on without the defending Nextel Cup champion, and if his luck doesn't change real soon, so will the Chase for the championship. It was the second consecutive DNF for Johnson, who has dropped from fourth to ninth in the season standings the past three races. With only six ...

Just two years ago, Jeff Gordon and his famed No. 24 Hendrick Motorsports team were struggling, his crew chief was on the verge of leaving and doubts were beginning to creep into the mind of the four-time NASCAR champion. All that is behind him now as Gordon is just past halfway through one of his best seasons yet. And that fifth championship may be there for the taking. After 19 of 36 races this season, Gordon has ...

SONOMA, Calif. (AP) _ Juan Pablo Montoya might be a NASCAR rookie, but he is a road-course master. Not known for his patience, the Colombian driver showed plenty of it Sunday. He used his well-honed road-racing skill to save his tires, stretch his fuel to the limit, and win the Toyota/Save Mart 350 for his first NASCAR Nextel Cup victory. Team owner Chip Ganassi, who lured Montoya back to America from Formula One, was as impressed as ...

MOORESVILLE, N.C. (AP) _ Dale Earnhardt Jr. is joining Hendrick Motorsports, hopefully moving one step closer to a championship that has eluded him while driving for his late father's company. Rick Hendrick said Earnhardt will replace Kyle Busch on his star-studded roster of drivers. The announcement Wednesday ended five weeks of recruiting for NASCAR's most popular driver, who became a free agent May 10 when he said he would leave DEI at the end of this season. His ...

MOORESVILLE, N.C. (AP) _ Dale Earnhardt Jr. will leave the company founded by his late father at the end of the year in a shake-up certain to ignite a bidding war for NASCAR's most popular driver. He told Dale Earnhardt Inc. on Thursday that he had decided to make the switch to another team when his contract expires, intent on going to a more competitive team. ``At 32 years of ...

MARTINSVILLE, Va. (AP) _ Jimmie Johnson withstood teammate Jeff Gordon's bumping and banging for much of the last 53 laps Sunday and held him off by a front bumper to win for the third time in six NASCAR Nextel Cup races this year. The teammates with Hendrick Motorsports provided a stirring duel at the end of the second Car of Tomorrow race, one that was mostly devoid of the destructive ...

MARTINSVILLE, Va. (AP) _ Dale Earnhardt Jr. seemed on the verge of a big day Sunday, one that would have ended his 31-race winless streak and allowed him to mark the 28-year anniversary of his father's first win with one of his own. Then came the rain, and his chances at victory flew into his window. ``I got something in my eye before we went back out after the rain,'' ...

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. (AP) _ This much Jeff Gordon knows for sure: His life will change dramatically when his daughter is born this summer. And maybe, just maybe, his NASCAR career won't seem quite so important. ``I think it's going to be one of two things: It's either going to make me work that much harder and appreciate racing that much more and enjoy it that much more,'' Gordon said. ``Or ...

Former Daytona 500 winner Ward Burton landed a full Nextel Cup ride Wednesday, signing a deal to drive the State Industries-sponsored No. 4 Chevrolet for Morgan-McClure Motorsports. Burton, the 2002 Daytona winner, competed in three races last season for Morgan-McClure _ his first Nextel Cup action since 2004. ``There's finally a light at the end of the tunnel,'' Burton said. ``I am committed to a season of success for State ...

Jimmie Johnson was ``horsing around'' on top of a moving golf cart when he fell off of it and broke his left wrist, his team told The Associated Press on Monday. The version clarifies what happened during the celebrity tournament in Lecanto, Fla., one day after the initial account from Hendrick Motorsports implied that the Nextel Cup champion had fallen out of the cart. Although Hendrick officials gave no details ...

Nextel Cup driver Greg Biffle was in a fiery crash Thursday while testing tires at Las Vegas Motor Speedway, and was helped from his burning race car by Kyle Busch. The two drivers were helping Goodyear test tires on the remodelled speedway when Biffle apparently blew a tire, causing him to hit the wall between the first and second turns. The accident broke the fuel pump and caused his Ford ...

Times Square has never seemed quite so vibrant to Jimmie Johnson. A short drive through the central part of Manhattan by NASCAR's top 10 drivers in their race cars has already become part of ``Champion's Week'' in New York _ a celebration of the new Nextel Cup champion. Johnson, who finally won the title after four years of flirting with the honour, was at the head of that parade Wednesday ...

David Letterman's idea of cheating is apparently much more severe than Jimmie Johnson's. Johnson appeared on the ``Late Show with David Letterman,'' on Tuesday night, and the host grilled NASCAR's new champion about a penalty his team incurred before the season opening race. Johnson's crew chief, Chad Knaus, was fined US$25,000 and suspended for four races for making an illegal modifications to Johnson's car during preparation for the Daytona 500. ...

Jimmie Johnson's racing goals were a bit different before being stranded in 1994 in the Baja desert. Until then, the Southern California 19-year-old, was content to run off-road races and, maybe some day, win the Baja 1000 or an off-road title. Stuck for a day and a half in the rocky no-man's-land after driving off a ridge, Johnson revised his plans. ``I decided to go a different direction, maybe see ...

The season is over, and I wound up second. It would have been great to win, but we can't hang our heads over second place. Jimmie Johnson and the No. 48 team did a great job in the second half of the Chase, and they deserve the championship. They simply outperformed us. Really, if you look at that team, they've consistently been the team to beat for the last three ...

Juan Pablo Montoya learned a lot in his first Nextel Cup race: how to run in traffic, communicate with his crew and climb out of a flame-engulfed stock car ready to explode. The former Formula One and Indy car star making the jump to NASCAR finished 34th in the final race of the season Sunday, ending in a fiery spin 16 laps short of the finish after Ryan Newman nudged ...

Jimmie Johnson's California cool turned to euphoria when he won the Daytona 500. At Indianapolis, his emotions were overwhelmed again after a win he never expected. Still, Johnson had won races before. A first NASCAR championship? For the driver who had everything but, nothing could have come as a bigger relief. ``It's going to take a little bit of time for this to soak in, just to think what this ...

Matt Kenseth made the most of his fighting chance, coming up with the strong performance he'd been missing in the last few races of this Chase for the championship. He wound 56 points short of the title with a sixth-place finish. Denny Hamlin (third) and Kevin Harvick (fifth) also raced well Sunday, finishing where they needed to _ ahead of Jimmie Johnson. Still, it wasn't even close. Turns out, Johnson ...

Denny Hamlin feels like a kid who sneaks into a stadium and winds up sitting in the front row. Heading into Sunday's season-ending Ford 400 at Homestead-Miami Speedway, the rookie was among five drivers still within reach of the NASCAR Nextel Cup championship. While most of the attention will be on series leader Jimmie Johnson and second-place Matt Kenseth, who trails by just 63 points, Hamlin is all smiles about being tied for third with Kevin Harvick. Harvick ...

The Nextel Cup title is Jimmie Johnson's to lose. Unfortunately for Johnson, he knows how easy that is to do. Three years in a row, he's gotten off to a miserable start in the Chase for the championship. Had he simply started the post-season the way he ran the rest of the year, he'd be closing in on his third title right now. Instead, he needed frantic rallies to climb back into contention _ only to still ...

When Jimmie Johnson whacked the wall at New Hampshire, his crew chief slumped in his seat atop the pit box. Another season had just been wrecked, this time in Round 1 of the Chase for the championship, and it would probably cost the most dominant team in NASCAR the Nextel Cup title. Chad Knaus took a deep breath, composed himself and told his driver to meet him back in the garage. He wasn't giving up that easily, ...

Jimmie Johnson, on the cusp of winning his first NASCAR Nextel Cup championship, had a few anxious moments Friday on the way to qualifying 15th for the season-ending Ford 400 at Homestead-Miami Speedway. ``We're certainly excited to just get to work,'' said Johnson, who needs to finish 12th or better in Sunday's race to win his first title. Since making himself the solid championship favourite with a second-place finish last Sunday in Phoenix that moved him 63 points in ...

Robert Yates doesn't know who will drive one of his cars and who will be the primary sponsor for the No. 88, but he insists it's full speed ahead with two NASCAR Nextel Cup cars for Robert Yates Racing in 2007. ``It's wonderful,'' Yates said Friday at Homestead-Miami Speedway, where the 2006 Cup season will end Sunday with the Ford 400. ``We're going to run our three cars _ our ...

The way this Chase for the championship has gone, no one should be conceding the Nextel Cup title to Jimmie Johnson just yet. Granted, his 63-point lead over Matt Kenseth means Johnson will need a total collapse in Sunday's season finale to give his first title away. But this third year of the Chase has been a wild one, in which no driver has been immune from issues. So should ...

Jeff Gordon took a break from the Nextel Cup championship to get married again. The four-time NASCAR champion wed Belgian model Ingrid Vandebosch on Tuesday in a private ceremony in Mexico, Jon Edwards, Gordon's publicist, confirmed Wednesday. The 35-year-old Gordon, the sport's most marketable driver, and Vandebosch have been together since 2004. They appeared in the movie ``Taxi,'' in which the 37-year-old model played a bank robber and Gordon made ...

It's hard to wipe the smile off Tony Stewart's whisker-covered face these days. Since failing by just 16 points to make it into NASCAR's Chase for the Nextel Cup championship _ relegating him to a season finish no better than 11th _ the two-time series champion has been on a roll. He's won three of the eight Chase races so far, including the last two in a row, and has ...

Mark Martin had nowhere to go, and now he'll have to drive a backup car Sunday at Texas. Martin's primary car was wrecked in the final NASCAR Nextel Cup practice Saturday when he was hit by the car of Tony Raines, who had got loose in Turn 4 and was trying to get to the pits. He drove into Martin, who was trying to pass and couldn't escape contact. ``It's unfortunate for Mark, and the last ...

It would be hard to blame Kevin Harvick if he wanted the NASCAR Busch Series season to go on forever. Harvick dominated the field again Saturday in the O'Reilly Challenge 300 at Texas Motor Speedway, winning for the second straight week and third time in his last four starts. It was the ninth Busch victory of what is already a championship season for the Nextel Cup star. To cap another great day for Harvick, after being told ...

First, he was Texas Terry, the smooth, young driver from Corpus Christi with all the potential in the world. Then he became the Ice Man, known for his cool demeanour and unflappable personality. A little further down the NASCAR road, Labonte became the Iron Man, setting a record with 655 consecutive NASCAR starts, a mark later broken by Ricky Rudd. In the end, though, the two-time series champion wants to ...