NASCAR: Kyle Busch closes on Phoenix sweep

Kyle Busch closes on Phoenix sweep By Diego Mejia Sunday, February 27th 2011, 07:28 GMT Kyle Busch could make further NASCAR history this weekend by completing a full sweep of victories in its top-level championships at Phoenix in a single weekend, having already dominated in the Trucks and Natiowide Series races at the one-mile oval. Related posts:
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Source: http://doxcar.com/nascar-kyle-busch-closes-on-phoenix-sweep/

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A great talent awaiting a great car

It is an awful irony that it has taken Robert Kubica's horrific crash in a rally car on Sunday to bring him to the attention of the wider world.

Despite four and a half seasons in Formula 1, the 26-year-old Pole was not exactly a household name. Such is the lot of a grand prix driver who does not find himself in a front-running car.

But Kubica is very different from the other men pounding around in the midfield, to whom the wider TV audience pay only scant attention while focusing on the big names battling it out at the front.

This is a man who is increasingly regarded as one of the very finest racing drivers in the world - someone who, as David Coulthard put it on Monday, can be talked about in the same breath as the likes of Fernando Alonso, Lewis Hamilton and the new world champion Sebastian Vettel.

Kubica has won only one grand prix - a superb drive for BMW Sauber in Canada in 2008 - but there was an ever-growing number of F1 observers awaiting with increasing impatience the time he would get his hands on a competitive car.

The signs have been there for some time, little snapshots that made you sit up and take notice that this was someone out of the ordinary.

In 2006, his pace as BMW Sauber's test driver effectively ended the career of 1997 world champion Jacques Villeneuve - when the Canadian fell out with the team, they needed no encouragement to sack him and replace him with Kubica, knowing that he was not only cheaper, but significantly faster.

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Despite zero experience, Kubica was brilliant in the second half of that year, immediately out-pacing his team-mate Nick Heidfeld, a veteran of more than six seasons, and taking a podium finish in only his third grand prix.

Kubica's driving style - turn in early and on the brakes, demanding a lot from the outside front tyre - meant he was affected badly by the switch to a single tyre supplier, and consequent lower grip levels, in 2007.

But he bounced back with a bang in 2008, driving with stunning consistency and pace to lead the championship after that win in Canada mid-season.

What happened next rankles with Kubica to this day.

BMW's plan was to use 2008 as a building year for a full title assault in 2009, and they stuck to it resolutely, easing off development of their race car just as they had got themselves to the top of the pile, in order to concentrate on their next model.

Their logic was that the car was not really quick enough to win the title against the superior machines of McLaren and Ferrari, that they were only leading the championship because Kubica had been more consistent than his rivals - and that the top teams would eventually get their act together.

Robert Kubica crashes his BMW in the 2007 Canadian Grand Prix

Kubica missed only one race after emerging unhurt from this crash in 2007. Photo: Getty

Kubica didn't see it that way - he saw a team giving up a golden opportunity to win the championship. Even with BMW's decision, he ended up finishing third, in contention until the penultimate race.

BMW's intransigence - matched, it has to be said, by Kubica's stubbornness - fatally damaged the driver's relationship with the team, and is almost certainly one reason behind his generally lacklustre 2009 season, when Heidfeld more or less matched him.

Even then, though, there were flashes of genius from Kubica, and last season, following his move to Renault, the doubters became less and less.

The 2010 Renault was not a great car, and had no business mixing it at the front with the Red Bulls, Ferraris and McLarens.

But Kubica performed miracles to qualify it in the top three at Monaco, Spa and Suzuka, the three tracks where a driver's input is most important, where a great driver can transcend the level of his car.

How good is he?

Among his fellow drivers, there has never been any doubt about Kubica's quality. Hamilton regards him as a future world champion - Kubica was the Englishman's main rival in their karting days as teenagers; Alonso has been quoted referring to him as the best driver in the world.

It is also a little known fact that, when Vettel was an inexperienced BMW test driver in 2007, Kubica was an average of about 0.4secs quicker than him.

At Renault, they adore him - technical director James Allison was effusive in a profile of Kubica my colleague Mark Hughes wrote for this website last season.

Allison, who has also worked with Alonso, described Kubica as "one of those very, very top guys where you know that if the car is not running at the front it's because of the car, not him", adding that he was "incredibly fast, won't make mistakes under pressure and will plough on for lap after lap at a really good pace".

Ferrari, too, have noticed his ability. He came very close to replacing Felipe Massa when the Brazilian suffered a fractured skull in a crash in Hungary in 2009, missing out only because he was too big for the car.

The interest remains. And before Sunday, most in F1 expected Kubica to replace Massa eventually, either at the end of this year or next.

Even a Ferrari drive, you suspect, would not change him. Kubica is totally unaffected by fame, has a complete lack of interest in self-promotion and is unimpressed by the razzmatazz of F1.

It now remains to be seen whether he will ever sit in the Ferrari that appears to have his name on it.

F1 drivers are renowned for their near-miraculous ability to recover from terrible injuries - they are to a man very fit and tremendously determined. And as someone close to him said on Monday, Kubica is also "totally stubborn". He will need all his single-mindedness to fight back after this.

But he has done it before. After breaking his left arm in 13 places when a passenger in a road-car crash early in 2003, doctors said he would be out for between six months and a year. Three months later he made his Formula Three debut and won.

Equally, after surviving virtually unscathed a horrific barrel-roll in the 2007 Canadian Grand Prix, doctors advised him to sit out the US Grand Prix seven days later. He was back for the following event in France, and qualified and finished fourth.

On Monday, the initial prognosis was about as positive as you could expect in the circumstances. Nevertheless, with such serious injuries, it seems likely that Kubica will be out for most of the season and replacing him is going to be impossible for Renault. There are simply not any drivers of comparable quality around.

Renault have two 'third drivers' in Bruno Senna and Romain Grosjean, but both are inexperienced and unproven, just like Kubica's team-mate, the Russian Vitaly Petrov. Will a team with aspirations of winning a couple of races this year feel they can go into a full season with a driver line-up like that?

The other option is to take someone experienced. They could potentially try to buy 2010 Williams driver Nico Hulkenberg out of his reserve driver contract with Force India. And Italian Vitantonio Liuzzi, rejected by Force India this season despite having a contract, is also available.

But the obvious contender is Heidfeld, F1's Mr Consistency, who may not set the world on fire, but can be relied upon to be decently quick and score regular points.

Whoever it is, they have a tough act to follow.

Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/andrewbenson/2011/02/it_is_an_awful_irony.html

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NASCAR Tickets - Kyle Busch Takes Checker Flag

Kyle Busch knows he is fast and fearless on the track. When this bad boy gets a chance to burn rubber watch out NASCAR fans, he is heading towards victory lane. That exactly what happened on Sunday when Busch won his second Sprint Cup Series race of the season in the Food City 500 at Bristol Motor Speedway. He led a pretty impressive race with 378 of 503 laps before taking the checkered flag. After the race, many compared number 18 to another driver who happens to be a legend, Dale Earnhardt. However, the Bristol Motor Speedway Champion doesn't want to be compared to one of the most revered drivers in history. He believes he's his own man in his own time. Get NASCAR tickets and see Kyle Busch on the track.

Number 18 received his customary chorus of boos both before the race and during his victory lane celebration. But with 14 career Cup wins (47 spanning all three of NASCAR'S to series) he's grown comfortable with the discord. There are spectators who say Kyle enjoys the dissension. After the race, the Las Vegas native told reporters he doesn't care about the hecklers from the stands and being labeled as number one, he's out on the racetrack to win races. So those who wish him ill, the bad boy from the sin city wishes ill right back at them. What really drives the crowd mad is when Kyle wins his races and then gives a sarcastic celebratory bow.

Kyle Busch doesn't care what people think and doesn't censor himself before he speaks. The speed demon is not Earnhardt and that is a good thing for NASCAR. Whether fans love him or hate him Kyle is one of the best faces for the sport. Sure, he is confident and cocky, but in an era where the drivers are too watered down and politically conservative, Busch keeps things interesting. He never holds back on his raw emotions, which tends to hurt plenty of feelings. On Saturday, his racing crew fumbled away a tire during the final pit stop of the Nationwide Series race. The bad boy would have had another victory underneath his belt; however, the carelessness drew a NASCAR penalty that took him out of contention after he'd led a race 157 laps.

So what was Kyle's reaction? The man parked his car in Turn 3 near the pedestrian tunnel and walked to his motorhome. The crew ended up collecting the car, which was a reminder that they blew a sure victory. You would think the Las Vegas native would have apologized to his crew for his actions on Sunday, but the driver didn't bother to make nice before he took on the track. On this day, number 18's crew made no mistakes. It was critical that Busch be the first car off the pit road on the final stop because the track position would play heavily into the outcome. Runner-up Denny Hamlin and third-place finisher Jimmie Johnson both acknowledged that the race was won on the pit road during that final stop. NASCAR really hasn't seen a person like Busch.

This article was sponsored by StubHub. StubHub sells NASCAR tickets, as well as many other kinds of sports tickets, concert tickets, special events tickets and theater tickets.

Article Source: NASCAR Tickets - Kyle Busch Takes Checker Flag

Source: http://www.articlespan.com/article/253130/nascar-tickets-kyle-busch-takes-checker-flag

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NASCAR Tracks-The Bristol Motor Speedway

Bristol Motor Speedway, as a half-mile oval with the steepest banking on the NASCAR circuit, is sometimes referred to as "The Toilet Bowl". When the cars line up for the starting flag, they often stretch nearly halfway around the short track. As a result, Bristol is known for its "paint swapping," and races tend to include numerous accidents and caution flags. Bristol Speedway is the last circular track on the NASCAR circuit to install the barrier system. The installation was delayed at Bristol while engineers determined how to install the walls over the track's gates. Bristol Motor Speedway, aside from being an excellent track loaded with potentially wild twists, seems to ooze a sense of brotherhood and awe among the lucky ones with Bristol NASCAR tickets. This year's Nextel Cup and Busch (now the Sprint and the Nationwide) Series will have race fans rushing out to buy tickets, among others, all eager to see their favorite race to victory.

Bristol Motor Speedway has been an integral part of auto racing since 1961. The short track makes for slower speeds, but that is offset by the high banking of the turns at Bristol, a challenging aspect like no other track on the NASCAR circuit.

Race Week at Bristol (BMS) is not just a normal week not only for the people who work there but for the fans as well. When you attend a race at Bristol it's not just go check out the race and that's it. Racers love concrete because it provides a ton of grip and less tire wear than asphalt. Fans love Bristol because no matter which of the 160,000 seats you get, you can see the whole track. Race enthusiasts here did better than that, allowing the wave to continue nearly a half-dozen times after hearing they had set the record.

Bristol has purchased property and developed satellite parking lots on Hwy 11-E. Fees are charged for tent and motor home camping at the Bristol Dragway. Bristol Motor Speedway travel packages complete the experience at one of the favorite NASCAR tracks - the track they call Thunder Valley. Buy Bristol tickets and be part of the huge crowd of nearly 150,000 fans lucky enough to have NASCAR tickets to the Sharpie 500 in August.

The Speedway, aside from being an excellent track loaded with potentially wild twists, seems to ooze a sense of brotherhood and awe among the lucky ones with Bristol NASCAR tickets. This year's Nextel Cup and Busch (now the Sprint and the Nationwide) Series will have race fans rushing out to buy Bristol Motor Speedway tickets, among others, all eager to see their favorites race to victory.

Bristol Motor Speedway could very easily have opened in 1961 under a different name. The original plan was to build in Piney Flats which is 5 miles down the road from Bristol but the idea met local opposition. Otherwise we might have been visiting the Piney Flats Speedway. In the end the speedway was constructed in Bristol on land that was once a dairy farm.

For NASCAR Merchandise, Up to the minute News, and everything NASCAR including Nascar Hoodies or Nascar Grills and Nascar Clothing we have them at the best prices everyday!

Article Source: NASCAR Tracks-The Bristol Motor Speedway

Source: http://www.articlespan.com/article/272656/nascar-tracks-the-bristol-motor-speedway

Max Jean Stefan Johansson Eddie Johnson Leslie Johnson

A great talent awaiting a great car

It is an awful irony that it has taken Robert Kubica's horrific crash in a rally car on Sunday to bring him to the attention of the wider world.

Despite four and a half seasons in Formula 1, the 26-year-old Pole was not exactly a household name. Such is the lot of a grand prix driver who does not find himself in a front-running car.

But Kubica is very different from the other men pounding around in the midfield, to whom the wider TV audience pay only scant attention while focusing on the big names battling it out at the front.

This is a man who is increasingly regarded as one of the very finest racing drivers in the world - someone who, as David Coulthard put it on Monday, can be talked about in the same breath as the likes of Fernando Alonso, Lewis Hamilton and the new world champion Sebastian Vettel.

Kubica has won only one grand prix - a superb drive for BMW Sauber in Canada in 2008 - but there was an ever-growing number of F1 observers awaiting with increasing impatience the time he would get his hands on a competitive car.

The signs have been there for some time, little snapshots that made you sit up and take notice that this was someone out of the ordinary.

In 2006, his pace as BMW Sauber's test driver effectively ended the career of 1997 world champion Jacques Villeneuve - when the Canadian fell out with the team, they needed no encouragement to sack him and replace him with Kubica, knowing that he was not only cheaper, but significantly faster.

In order to see this content you need to have both Javascript enabled and Flash installed. Visit BBC Webwise for full instructions. If you're reading via RSS, you'll need to visit the blog to access this content.


Despite zero experience, Kubica was brilliant in the second half of that year, immediately out-pacing his team-mate Nick Heidfeld, a veteran of more than six seasons, and taking a podium finish in only his third grand prix.

Kubica's driving style - turn in early and on the brakes, demanding a lot from the outside front tyre - meant he was affected badly by the switch to a single tyre supplier, and consequent lower grip levels, in 2007.

But he bounced back with a bang in 2008, driving with stunning consistency and pace to lead the championship after that win in Canada mid-season.

What happened next rankles with Kubica to this day.

BMW's plan was to use 2008 as a building year for a full title assault in 2009, and they stuck to it resolutely, easing off development of their race car just as they had got themselves to the top of the pile, in order to concentrate on their next model.

Their logic was that the car was not really quick enough to win the title against the superior machines of McLaren and Ferrari, that they were only leading the championship because Kubica had been more consistent than his rivals - and that the top teams would eventually get their act together.

Robert Kubica crashes his BMW in the 2007 Canadian Grand Prix

Kubica missed only one race after emerging unhurt from this crash in 2007. Photo: Getty

Kubica didn't see it that way - he saw a team giving up a golden opportunity to win the championship. Even with BMW's decision, he ended up finishing third, in contention until the penultimate race.

BMW's intransigence - matched, it has to be said, by Kubica's stubbornness - fatally damaged the driver's relationship with the team, and is almost certainly one reason behind his generally lacklustre 2009 season, when Heidfeld more or less matched him.

Even then, though, there were flashes of genius from Kubica, and last season, following his move to Renault, the doubters became less and less.

The 2010 Renault was not a great car, and had no business mixing it at the front with the Red Bulls, Ferraris and McLarens.

But Kubica performed miracles to qualify it in the top three at Monaco, Spa and Suzuka, the three tracks where a driver's input is most important, where a great driver can transcend the level of his car.

How good is he?

Among his fellow drivers, there has never been any doubt about Kubica's quality. Hamilton regards him as a future world champion - Kubica was the Englishman's main rival in their karting days as teenagers; Alonso has been quoted referring to him as the best driver in the world.

It is also a little known fact that, when Vettel was an inexperienced BMW test driver in 2007, Kubica was an average of about 0.4secs quicker than him.

At Renault, they adore him - technical director James Allison was effusive in a profile of Kubica my colleague Mark Hughes wrote for this website last season.

Allison, who has also worked with Alonso, described Kubica as "one of those very, very top guys where you know that if the car is not running at the front it's because of the car, not him", adding that he was "incredibly fast, won't make mistakes under pressure and will plough on for lap after lap at a really good pace".

Ferrari, too, have noticed his ability. He came very close to replacing Felipe Massa when the Brazilian suffered a fractured skull in a crash in Hungary in 2009, missing out only because he was too big for the car.

The interest remains. And before Sunday, most in F1 expected Kubica to replace Massa eventually, either at the end of this year or next.

Even a Ferrari drive, you suspect, would not change him. Kubica is totally unaffected by fame, has a complete lack of interest in self-promotion and is unimpressed by the razzmatazz of F1.

It now remains to be seen whether he will ever sit in the Ferrari that appears to have his name on it.

F1 drivers are renowned for their near-miraculous ability to recover from terrible injuries - they are to a man very fit and tremendously determined. And as someone close to him said on Monday, Kubica is also "totally stubborn". He will need all his single-mindedness to fight back after this.

But he has done it before. After breaking his left arm in 13 places when a passenger in a road-car crash early in 2003, doctors said he would be out for between six months and a year. Three months later he made his Formula Three debut and won.

Equally, after surviving virtually unscathed a horrific barrel-roll in the 2007 Canadian Grand Prix, doctors advised him to sit out the US Grand Prix seven days later. He was back for the following event in France, and qualified and finished fourth.

On Monday, the initial prognosis was about as positive as you could expect in the circumstances. Nevertheless, with such serious injuries, it seems likely that Kubica will be out for most of the season and replacing him is going to be impossible for Renault. There are simply not any drivers of comparable quality around.

Renault have two 'third drivers' in Bruno Senna and Romain Grosjean, but both are inexperienced and unproven, just like Kubica's team-mate, the Russian Vitaly Petrov. Will a team with aspirations of winning a couple of races this year feel they can go into a full season with a driver line-up like that?

The other option is to take someone experienced. They could potentially try to buy 2010 Williams driver Nico Hulkenberg out of his reserve driver contract with Force India. And Italian Vitantonio Liuzzi, rejected by Force India this season despite having a contract, is also available.

But the obvious contender is Heidfeld, F1's Mr Consistency, who may not set the world on fire, but can be relied upon to be decently quick and score regular points.

Whoever it is, they have a tough act to follow.

Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/andrewbenson/2011/02/it_is_an_awful_irony.html

Jackie Holmes Bill Homeier Kazuyoshi Hoshino Jerry Hoyt

NASCAR Tickets - Jimmy Watts' Big Mistake

Jimmy Watts might just be the most famous NASCAR crew member of the year, but that doesn't necessarily mean good things for the crew team of Marcos Ambrose and his No. 47 stock car. Watts made national headlines last week after he chased a runaway tire onto the racetrack at the Atlanta Motor Speedway during the Kobalt Tools 500, shocking everyone with NASCAR tickets and violating one of the league's biggest rules while also causing NASCAR to throw out the third caution flag on lap 67 of the race. This huge error in judgment was undoubtedly an instant reaction (and a regrettable one, at that) by Watts, and this gasman will be forced to live with the consequences of his knee-jerk reaction for the rest of this racing season.

When Jimmy Watts went onto the racetrack at Atlanta, he violated Sections 12-1 (actions detrimental to stock car racing) and 9-15-U (crew members cannot for any reason go onto the racetrack while cars or racing or running under the yellow or red flag, unless a NASCAR official directs the action) of NASCAR code, triggering a four-race suspension and a nine-month probationary period while also penalizing his crew chief, Frank Kerr. Kerr, the chief of Ambrose's No. 47 Toyota, also got slapped with a hefty fine and was placed on NASCAR probation until December 31 for violating Sections 12-1 and 9-4-A (crew chief assumes responsibility for his team members' actions).

Watts works as a fireman while he's not in the pit for Marcos Ambrose's team, and his automatic reaction to chase after the tire could be a result of his instinctive job and intense firefighting training. The gasman did offer an apology to NASCAR after the race, saying, "Everything happened so fast on pit road that I just didn't realize how far I had to go out until I grabbed the tire. I put myself in jeopardy and I know how hard NASCAR works to make the pit crew members safe on pit road. I stand by their decision and will serve my four-race suspension."

The caution flag that resulted from Watts stepping foot onto the racetrack at the Atlanta Motor Speedway may have had an effect on the race's outcome, as NASCAR officials would have waited for the green flag stops to cycle out before calling a caution had Watts not chased after the tire, keeping all the cars on pit sequence. Instead, however, the caution flag went up, and some of the Sprint Cup drivers are not pleased with the results. Matt Kenseth recently made a seething comment about the incident, saying, "Maybe he's new. Maybe he hasn't seen us drive, but we tend to wreck a lot. I wouldn't want to be out in the middle of the grass."

What's done is done, however, and Watts will have to come back from his four-race suspension at the end of April and prove that his talents outweigh his one big mistake. In the meantime, the racing will continue, and tickets to NASCAR races are always available online.

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 - Jimmy Watts' Big Mistake

Source: http://www.articlespan.com/article/250667/nascar-tickets-jimmy-watts-big-mistake

Miguel Ángel Guerra Roberto Guerrero Maurício Gugelmin Dan Gurney