NASCAR Tickets - Hylton Yearns for One More Start

74-year-old racing legend James Hylton is NASCAR's Energizer Bunny, and as the 2009 racing season gets well underway, Hylton still just keeps going and going. James Hylton is the owner of the Hylton Motorsports race shop in South Carolina and has been for 45 years, but he just can't get racing out of his blood, as this famed driver has recently expressed interest in competing in one last NASCAR Sprint Cup Series race before relinquishing his driving powers to the next generation of NASCR contenders.

Last summer, Hylton became the oldest driver ever to start a Nationwide Series, qualifying Johnny Davis' No. 01 Chevrolet and completing 82 of 105 laps while coming in at 36th place. This racing icon also holds the record as the oldest driver to ever qualify for an ARCA race, and now he's going for records across the boards as he has recently expressed interest in snagging the Cup Series record for oldest driver, which currently belongs to Jim Fitzgerald and Hershel McGriff (who were each 65 when they made their respective final races). While hardships with sponsorship and finances keep Hylton off the track for now, the racing legend still thinks it's feasible to make a Sprint Cup start in the near future, saying, "One more Cup race. I want that record. I've put my whole life into this thing, and I feel like I'm still capable of doing it. If I thought I was endangering any of the competitors or I was in the way or I was somebody out there to cause a wreck... I ain't going to cause anybody no wreck. That's not saying I won't wreck, I've wrecked several times, had bad crashes. But the worst crash I've been in wasn't my fault."

James Hylton grew up in the backwoods of Virginia as one of 13 kids in his family, immersed into stock car racing culture at a young age. Hylton started out in the racing realm working as a mechanic for Rex White, but he eventually got into the driver's seat himself, capturing loads of fans when he made his strong NASCAR debut in 1966, popularizing the No. 48 car before Jimmie Johnson could get to it and winning the league's Rookie of the Year Award the same racing season. The next decade was an absolute racing frenzy for the great James Hylton, who finished the NASCAR championship in second place three times and finished a season in 11th place or better for 10 consecutive seasons.

Hylton retired from the full racing circuit in 1982 but has since gone on to set a number of records, now feasting his eyes upon one last Sprint Cup Series race. Hylton attempted a Daytona 500 race two years ago when Richard Childress supplied him with a bright orange car for the event, yet engine trouble kept him from starting the race, ultimately failing to capture the Sprint Cup record. The big question mark in NASCAR today still stands as whether or not James Hylton will ever accomplish his dream of starting one more Sprint Cup race, and if he does, which one it will be. In case Hylton does get to start one final Cup race soon, get NASCAR tickets online and cheer on this racing sensation, as you won't want to miss this record-setting event!

This article is sponsored by StubHub.com. StubHub is a leader in the business of selling NASCAR tickets, sports tickets, concert tickets, theater tickets and special events tickets.

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Source: http://www.articlespan.com/article/254220/nascar-tickets-hylton-yearns-for-one-more-start

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Chip Ganassi Makes More History With Victory in Rolex 24 at Daytona

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DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. -- Sure, Chip Ganassi's driver lineup looked unbeatable: three Indy 500 champions, a Daytona 500 winner and the reigning sports car season champs. But in the always grueling, unpredictable and increasingly wild and woolly Rolex 24 at Daytona, it takes more than talent. It takes luck, preparation and in Sunday's case, great tenacity to win.

Reigning Grand-Am Series champ Scott Pruett took the lead from his Chip Ganassi Racing teammate, 2008 Indy 500 champ Scott Dixon, with 45 minutes left in the twice-around-the-clock race on the 3.56-mile Daytona International Speedway road course, then held him off on a re-start with one lap to go to give Ganassi his fourth Rolex 24 win in the last six years.

Ganassi is the first owner in racing history to simultaneously own the Daytona 500, Indianapolis 500, Brickyard 400 and Rolex 24 trophies -- something people are already affectionately calling the "Chip Slam.''

"I don't drive the cars, I don't change the tires and I don't work on the engines,'' Ganassi said, modestly acknowledging the accomplishment. "I'm just the guy that gets to stand up here and talk about it. It's a lot of other guys that do the hard work.

"A win here does not reward you at the next race. We had a great day today and tomorrow we're on to the next race.''

The first four finishers were separated by less than four seconds after 24 hours of what was one of the most competitive races in the event's 49-year history. It was the fourth overall and ninth class win for Pruett, who co-drove with Memo Rojas, second-generation IndyCar driver Graham Rahal and sports car veteran Joey Hand.

"We were very optimistic, but did we know we'd win? No,'' Pruett said about his last stint in the car after chasing his teammates for much of the race. "But Joey (Hand) did a great job making up time. We knew we had a strong car and were just looking at our options.''

 

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Source: http://motorsports.fanhouse.com/2011/01/30/chip-ganassi-makes-more-history-with-rolex-24-at-daytona-victory/

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NASCAR Tickets - Talladega Brings Crashes, Leaves Seven Fans Wounded

The Talladega Superspeedway is known for its tight track and close races, and last weekend's Aaron's 499 at Talladega proved this to be true once again. Wrecks were the name of the game in Sunday's 'Dega race, as restrictor-plate racing gave way to multiple accidents in yet another intense race at the speedway. Three big accidents took out many of the Cup Series' top contenders, as a 13-car buildup early in the race on Lap 7 would set the tone for the day. A 10-car accident also ensued toward the end of the day with nine laps to go, and finally on the sprint to the finish Carl Edwards made Talladega's grand finale with a fiery crash that sent his car soaring through some fencing against the grandstands, injuring seven fans while sparking an unreleased medical condition with an eighth.

While Talladega's two multi-car pileups were ample cause for riled-up excitement in Sunday's NASCAR Sprint Cup Series race (as they took out Jeff Gordon, Clint Bowyer, Mark Martin, Martin Truex Jr., Sam Hornish Jr., A.J. Allmendinger, Kasey Kahne, Kevin Harvick and several more top-runners,) it is Edwards' crowd-injuring crash that is likely to be remembered from the speedway. In the last lap of the 'Dega race, the battle for first place came down to a four-car struggle between Brad Keselowski, Carl Edwards, Ryan Newman and Dale Earnhardt Jr., with Edwards and Keselowski in a locked-in battle that ultimately led to Edwards' disastrous crash.

Keselowski nudged Edwards into first place with one lap to go in yesterday's intense race, but when Keselowski attempted to pass him, Edwards blocked the pass and inevitably caused contact that sent his car in a spiral, landing in a frontstretch fence and just barely missing contact with the grandstands. Debris went flying and ultimately injured seven race fans (though none seriously) becoming cause for evaluation by NASCAR officials to tighten safety features for upcoming races.

Carl Edwards made a statement following the race that while he wasn't pegging the crash on any one driver, he was upset that the accident had such a disastrous result. "I'm glad the car didn't go into the grandstands," he told the media. "I saw some fencing at one point and that made me a little bit nervous. I don't know if I could live with myself if I ended up in the grandstands." About the current rules on restrictor-plate racing at Talladega, Edwards said, "We'll race like this until we kill somebody, then [NASCAR] will change it."

This type of restrictor-plate racing that is in place at 'Dega also applies at Daytona, attempting to limit the high speeds at the two racetracks. Inevitably, this use of restrictor plates leads to a tightly-packed field on the track, and crashes are typically in high numbers at both speedways where they're in place. Dale Earnhardt Jr. spoke of this subject following Sunday's Talladega race, saying, "For years, we've had wrecks like this every time we've come to Talladega, ever since the plate got here. And for years it was celebrated. The media celebrated it, the networks celebrated it, calling it 'The Big One,' just trying to attract attention."

If these drivers sound like they're upset about the way things ran at Talladega, perhaps they are. Several drivers were out of luck yesterday following the two massive buildups during the race, and after the damage was done (including for those in the grandstands) reevaluation of the track and race will most likely be in question. Ryan Newman, who snagged a third-place finish at 'Dega, summed things up by saying, "Talladega is short for 'We're going to crash, we just don't know when.' We saw [an airborne car] two times this weekend, so maybe we need to look at things that keep the car down on the ground."

Indeed, some changes are unavoidable concerning safety at the track, but in the meantime the Cup Series will go on. Last weekend, Jeff Gordon lost his first-place standing for the first time since NASCAR season started, as Kurt Busch is now in first place after Talladega, and the excitement is just now getting started. Several more races are still to come this season, and NASCAR tickets are still available online in the meantime!

This article is sponsored by StubHub.com. StubHub is a leader in the business of selling NASCAR tickets, sports tickets, concert tickets, theater tickets and special events tickets.

Article Source: NASCAR Tickets - Talladega Brings Crashes, Leaves Seven Fans Wounded

Source: http://www.articlespan.com/article/264695/nascar-tickets-talladega-brings-crashes-leaves-seven-fans-wounded

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2010 Team Reviews: Stewart-Haas Racing Steps Back

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Not everyone doubted Tony Stewart when he announced his departure from Joe Gibbs Racing in 2008 to form his own Sprint Cup team, Stewart-Haas Racing.

But he will certainly note, as will anyone else around at that point, that so many people from so many corners of NASCAR thought the two-time champion was committing career suicide.

Instead, 2009 proved to be about as far from the gloomy predictions as possible when both Stewart and teammate Ryan Newman qualified for NASCAR's championship battle. Their campaigns in the 2009 Chase to the Sprint Cup were to little avail, but seemed to paint a soon-to-be-dominant future for the race team.

Comparatively, 2010 was a step back for the SHR team -- back to about the level most thought Stewart would be competing at by now.

 

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Source: http://motorsports.fanhouse.com/2011/01/19/2010-team-reviews-stewart-haas-racing-steps-back/

Kevin Conway Joe Nemechek Jason Leffler Kevin Harvick Armour

F1 gurus lead a revolution in car design

Formula 1 is undergoing a quiet revolution.

In two years' time, the cars that line up on the grid for the start of the 2013 season will be vastly different from those that raced in 2010.

Governing body the FIA has already announced that the current 2.4-litre normally aspirated V8 engines will be replaced by 1.6-litre turbocharged versions with integrated energy recovery systems.

Now, BBC Sport can reveal that, driven by this big change to the engine regulations, the cars will also undergo their own huge revisions.

To the casual observer, they will still look like F1 cars and, importantly, will still go like them. But within the limitations of an open-cockpit, single-seater racing car with exposed wheels, they will be very different from current machines.

Gone will be the huge, snowplough front wings that have been required since the last major change of rules. Gone will be the high, chunky rear wings. Gone, too, will be the high-revving shriek of the engines.

In their place will be a car with much smaller front and rear wings and the much flatter, lower-pitched sound of a lower-revving turbo.

And critically - although largely invisible - there will be a shaped underfloor, replacing the flat bottoms that have been on F1 cars since 1983.

The 1982 Ferrari - a 126C2 - also possessed a small front wing

The 1982 Ferrari - a 126C2 - also possessed a small front wing

These external changes reflect a major change in the philosophy behind the cars and, as with the turbo engines, it is a case of back to the future. As the 1980s dominate the latest High Street fashions, so F1 is borrowing from technologies last seen then and updating them for the 21st century.

F1 last saw turbo engines in 1988. The last time cars had shaped underbodies was 1982. Those were the days of 'ground effect', when designers created huge amounts of aerodynamic downforce - and high cornering speeds - by accelerating the air under the car through the use of curved underfloors to create a 'venturi effect'. This was enhanced by the use of 'skirts', which sealed the underbody and prevented air leaking out of the sides.

We are not talking about a return to those days but the general principle is the same. Just as the cars in the 1979-82 period had small front and rear wings, so will the cars of 2013 and beyond.

The difference now is that whereas in the late 1970s and early '80s aerodynamics in F1 cars were still relatively in their infancy and designers were simply chasing as much as they could, now they are highly refined. And the men behind the proposed new rules are using the underfloor of the car to create efficient - but strictly limited - downforce.

The FIA recognised that if it was to make such a major change to the cars, it needed to be done as effectively and credibly as possible. So to help draw up the new rules they asked two of the most respected and experienced designers they could find - Patrick Head and Rory Byrne.

Between them, Head, the engineering director of Williams, and Byrne, now retired but formerly of Benetton and Ferrari, have won a total of 17 constructors' titles and 15 drivers' titles. They were first approached by FIA president Jean Todt in March 2010.

Among the provisos Head and Byrne were given were: a) at the very least, make sure the changes did not make overtaking any harder than it already is; and b) make the cars a bit harder to drive - the target being for a driver to be able to be on full throttle for only about 50% of the lap, as opposed to the current average of 70%.

The new regulations are being fine-tuned by FIA race director Charlie Whiting this week before being sent to the 12 F1 teams for analysis. In the new year, they will be critiqued at the sport's Technical Working Group, a group of leading engineers who effectively define the technical rules.

Head says "sure as hell there'll be some small changes" there. The basic philosophy, though, is expected to stay the same, while Head says the shaped underfloor is "inevitable".

"It all starts with the fact that we are only going to have roughly 65% of the amount of fuel, and a (limited) fuel flow rate," he explains. "When you're very limited on fuel, it's very clear you've got to reduce drag enormously. OK, the tyres are a very high proportion of the drag but we decided not to put tiny skinny tyres on it because it's still required to go around corners quickly.

"So the next thing you turn to is the massive rear wing we're running at the moment and as soon as you replace that with a much smaller one, it's 'Oh, we've lost all our downforce, so what can we do?' So inevitably you end up with a shaped underside."

This idea has been around for a long time - as long ago as 1998, when another working group, led by the late Dr Harvey Postlethwaite, also suggested reducing the sizes of front and rear wings and re-introducing shaped underfloors. The idea was canned by then FIA president Max Mosley.

Back then, the motivating factor was to improve the racing. In theory, cars designed this way can follow each other more closely than modern F1 cars.

Currently, drivers experience a severe lack of grip when they get to within about a second of a car in front because the airflow to their cars, particularly over the critical front wing, is badly disturbed.

In theory, with smaller wings and a greater proportion of the total downforce coming from under the car, there is less disturbance in the wake of the car in front, so a following car loses less aerodynamic downforce. It therefore retains more grip, allowing drivers to get closer to the car they want to overtake, making passing easier.

Under these new rules, any benefit to the racing will be secondary. The first goal is improving the cars' efficiency.

But it's just possible that, in chasing a goal that is all about keeping F1 in step with a world of diminishing fossil fuels, the effect will be to make overtaking easier.

Chastened by years of rule changes aimed at making cars more raceable that made no discernible difference, those involved are cagey about that for now. But one senior figure will at least admit the thought is on their minds.

"One of the fundamental parts of this," he said, "was that it wouldn't make it worse. But we do believe that if you can ensure there's less disturbance in the wake, that's good."

Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/andrewbenson/2010/12/formula_1_is_undergoing_a_quie.html

FedEx Office Toyota Tony Stewart Old Spice Office Depot Chevrolet Jeff Green

IRC: Hanninen may yet defend IRC title

Hanninen may yet defend IRC title By Matt Beer Thursday, February 3rd 2011, 10:23 GMT Re igning Intercontinental Rally Challenge champion Juho Hanninen may yet defend his title alongside his new S2000 World Rally Championship campaign. Skoda had previously announced that the only IRC rounds it would enter Hanninen on this year would be the Monte Carlo season-opener and the team's home event - Rally Zlin - in August. His main focus would be an S-WRC programme with Red Bull Skoda. Related posts:
  1. IRC: Hanninen certain to clinch IRC title Hanninen certain to clinch IRC title By Matt Beer Thursday,...
  2. IRC: Hanninen stays on top in Monte Carlo Hanninen stays on top in Monte Carlo By Matt Beer...
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Source: http://doxcar.com/irc-hanninen-may-yet-defend-irc-title/

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F1: McLaren extends Santander deal

McLaren extends Santander deal By Jonathan Noble Wednesday, February 2nd 2011, 13:12 GMT McLaren has extended its sponsorship deal with Santander, meaning the banking giant's logos will continue to appear on the cars of two teams in 2011. Related posts:
  1. F1: McLaren extends Hugo Boss deal McLaren extends Hugo Boss deal Tuesday, May 18th 2010, 11:34...
  2. MOTOGP: Pedrosa extends Honda deal to 2012 Pedrosa extends Honda deal to 2012 By Pablo Elizalde...
  3. F1: Canada Sunday quotes: McLaren Canada Sunday quotes: McLaren Sunday, June 13th 2010, 20:02 GMT...
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Source: http://doxcar.com/f1-mclaren-extends-santander-deal/

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NASCAR Announces New Points Format, Chase Changes, New Qualifying Rules

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CHARLOTTE, N.C. -- Citing the need to make the championship format "simpler," NASCAR chairman Brian France formally introduced a new points system for the three national touring series Wednesday and also announced slight changes to the Chase for the Sprint Cup playoff format and race qualifying procedures.

As has been rumored during the last two weeks, the new points payout will be 43-to-1 -- paying 43 points to the race winner with each position decreasing in one-point intervals, with a single point going to last place in the 43-car fields.

The race winner will also receive a three-point bonus. There are one-point bonuses available for leading one lap and for the driver who leads the most laps, meaning there is a maximum of 48 points available for a race winner who leads the most laps.

"So now everyone will know, when a driver is down by 10 points, that he needs to pass 11 more cars to take the lead in the point standings,'' France told a crowded room of reporters at the NASCAR Hall of Fame in downtown Charlotte.

"Very much a simple, easy to understand system for us."

In other significant news, France announced the third major change to the Chase playoff format since its inception eight years ago. The top 10 drivers in points after the 26-race regular season will qualify for the Chase for the Sprint Cup championship. And in an effort to emphasize winning, NASCAR will now make the 11th and 12th place Chase qualifiers the drivers outside the top-10 with the most wins -- giving it a sort of wild-card feel.

The top-10 drivers will be reseeded as before, with a three-point bonus given for each win, compared to the 10-point bonus previously handed out. The 11th and 12th place drivers will be reseeded but will not receive bonus points for their wins.

"These guys are going to be driving like their hair is on fire,'' Texas Motor Speedway president Eddie Gossage said.

"Give NASCAR credit for placing the emphasis on winning races with the new points system. The points championship should be secondary to winning races week in and week out. If you do that, championships take care of themselves."

 

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Source: http://motorsports.fanhouse.com/2011/01/26/nascar-announces-new-points-format-chase-changes-new-qualifyin/

Olivier Gendebien Marc Gené Elmer George Bob Gerard