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(Martin Truex Jr in victory lane at Darlington, May 9,2021) https://twitter.com/SpeedwayMedia/status/1391578340054740994?s=20 Martin Truex Jr put of a dominating performance on route to victory lane at the Goodyear 400 in Darlington South Carolina. Sweeping both stages with little to no competition until the final stage as Kyle Larson gave it all he had in the closing laps. Typically the throwback weekend is ran during the Southern 500 at Darlington but this year with the track given two dates on the schedule, the 400 mile race put on the now traditional 'retro' show. Kyle Busch who ran fast all day, had tire problems early. His right rear tire tore apart making him spin. This brought out the first caution. Tires seemed to be an ongoing issue for a lot of the drivers as grip was hard to find. Stewart Haas Racing drivers Aric Almirola and Cole Custer crashed out early in separate incidents, but very similar fashion. Both drivers had hard impacts head-on into the backstretch wall after making contact in turn 2. For race winner Truex, it was career win number 30 and season win 3. He is currently the only driver with multiple wins this season. Goodyear 400 Top 5: 1. Martin Truex Jr 2. Kyle Larson 3. Kyle Busch 4. William Byron 5. Denny Hamlin Notables: 9. Chris Buescher 10. Ryan Newman 12. Tyler Reddick 24. Brad Keselowski (Pole Sitter) Written by: Matt Marr

Written by: AJ Appeal In conjunction with our usual work, I wanted to take an in-depth look at NASCAR's All-Star Race for my first #StatChat post. Adam's work follows trends, primarily, this 3-part series will review a total of 3 categories. For Part #1, a series of leaderboards will be presented in the form of bar graphs. The All-Star event has been around for 36 years, so there is plenty of data around for us to share. Sure, we know Jimmie has won the thing a million times, but do you know who's led the most laps? What about car number history? These topics as well as other less common statistics will be included in our my first post. I hope you enjoy; and we hope you will look forward to Parts 2 and 3 as well. In Part 2 I'll break down the history of format changes, including the famed 'open' wildcard events. In our final piece I'll work to predict the future...ok, maybe not. However, I'll use trends already provided to us in previous StatChat content from Adam to make our best suggestion for the newly formatted event at Texas Motor Speedway. While the greatest the sport has to offer have competed in the event since it's inception, the All-Star has missed the occasional superstar from year to year. Mark Martin has a distinct lead, competing in the event every year from 1989 through 2013. His 24 starts currently give him a four race lead over the next active driver Kevin Harvick who has 20. STARTS Winning and Percentage Longevity isn't always the most important part of a racing career. Few have enjoyed a lengthy career without a fair portion of on-track success such as wins. As I joked earlier, Superman Jimmie Johnson has the most wins overall in this super hero calibered event. While Jimmie has won the most overall, with 4 total victories, Davey Allison has the highest winning percentage. Allison won 2 of his 7 total starts for a winning percentage of 28.5. No other driver has a total of 2 wins in the all-star with less than 16 starts. Career Earnings Another category led by Johnson is total earnings. In 2016, NASCAR stopped posting the total awarded cash earnings of their competitors. From 1985-2015 this information was commonly shared to the media and fans. Johnson both dominated the era at the same time the money was growing for the sport. Below are the combined total cash earnings during that era. The top 20 drivers are included. You can see that few drivers have come close to even HALF of the mark, with only a total of 9 competitors over the $2 million mark. When you average earnings over the same time period, Jimmie reigns supreme as well with many of the same drivers near the top from the early Sprint/Nextel era. One driver who found the top 5 on averages was Scott Riggs, who's lone attempt in the event earned him $145,000. Pole Awards and Trivia NASCAR has changed the formats for qualifying over the years. Often times, the field would be set by a qualifying competition that included the pit crew of the team. 19 different drivers have won the pole position, and the category was dominated by Bill Elliott. His first pole was during his Ford Thunderbird days in 1987, but it would be another ten years until he won his second pole. He also won in 2000 and 2003, making him the only driver to have won an All-Star pole in 3 separate decades. No other driver besides Elliott has 5 poles. 3 drivers have 3, and several have 2. What I found most interesting about this was that Elliott did not return to the All-Star race again until 2008 despite remaining an active and part time driver. Another surprising fact was that some of NASCAR's greatest drivers of all-time performed so poorly under the various qualifying formats. 7-time champion Dale Earnhardt Sr. recorded only one pole award, Hall-of-Famer Jeff Gordon won one as well, as did perhaps the greatest All-Star driver ever Jimmie Johnson. Laps Led There have been 3212 total laps of racing competition in the All-Star Race. Kyle Busch has led the most and 8.4% of all laps led in the event. Bill Elliott is a close second with 8.3% of all laps led. There have been a total of 52 lap leaders in the All-Star, but the ten drivers provided in the attached photos have led more than 3%. The orange section included below is the remainder of laps led by other competitors. Going The Distance A total of 85,000 miles has been raced across the Atlanta, Charlotte, and Bristol Motor Speedways since the advent of the All-Star Race. The All-Star race has seen an evolution of formats that sometimes even included eliminating drivers for not finishing high enough in a segment or heat. There is also a well-known history of pricy crashes in this event because the drivers know that only bragging rights are on the line in the non-points event. Below are the drivers who have survived the most miles of All-Star Race competition. Car Number There have been a total of 22 different car numbers to have won the All-Star event. Only the #9 and #11 have multiple wins with multiple drivers. No driver has won the All-Star event with more than one car number. The lowest car number to have won the event is #1, when Jamie McMurray won driving for Chip Ganassi in 2014. The highest number to have ever recorded a victory came in 2011. Car #99 was driven by Carl Edwards. Both of these wins came at Charlotte. Carl's win in the #99 is the only time in history that a car with a number higher than 48 has won. The average car number for a race winning driver is 20.7. Thirteen of the 35 winning drivers were driving a single-numbered car, while 22 were driving a two-digit entry. No driver has entered the event with a car number more than two digits. Famous Families There have been a handful of occurrences of relatives winning the All-Star race. The Earnhardt family has recorded 4 wins. The Allison, Labonte, Waltrip, and Elliott families have all won a combined 2 times. Some as pairs and others with one member of the family winning both. Several famed families have not won the All-Star event including the ones listed below. Burton Petty Andretti Parsons Blaney Jarrett Sadler Nemechek The Wallace family has one win, with Rusty claiming the big checkered flag in 1989. Data Compiled By AJ Appeal More to come! We are thrilled to welcome you back next week for parts 2 and 3 of the All-Star analysis. See you soon!

(Photo Source : Twitter.com/NASCAR)

(Photo Source : Twitter.com/NASCAR_Trucks)

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: https://twitter.com/ToyotaRacing/status/1388992483829424129?s=20 Sunday marked the 16th consecutive season that Kyle Busch has gone to victory lane. The no. 18 M&M's Toyota Camry carried a consistent pace throughout the day and showed that the curse of Kansas Speedway has been lifted for the Joe Gibbs Racing driver. Busch won stage one as well as the race win but had to hold off challengers. In what seemed like another edition of the Kyle and Kyle show, Kyle Larson showed again why he is a force to be reckoned with. With a stage 2 victory, Larson remained in the top 5 all day until the final restart that resulted in what could have been a massive wreck off of turn two turning Ryan Blaney sideways into traffic. The aggressive push would unfortunately end the 5 team's bid for a second victory this season. Chris Buescher gambled by staying out on a long green flag run hoping for a caution as a tire ran away from a pit stall. Buescher would finish with a top 10. Rowdy was the 10th different winner in eleven races this season. The way I see it..this may be the start of a bounce back year for Kyle Busch. Top 5: 1. Kyle Busch 2. Kevin Harvick 3. Brad Keselowski 4. Matt Dibenedetto 5. Chase Elliott Notables: 9. William Byron 12. Denny Hamlin 21. Ryan Blaney 22. Austin Cindric (R) Written By: Matt Marr

A wild day of unpredictability is the normal game at Talladega Superspeedway as Brad Keselowski crossed the finish line fending off a late charge by Michael McDowell and William Byron. Only leading one lap, the most important lap. the number 2 Money Lion Ford Mustang was fast all day being in the lead pack for the majority of the race. It's not if but when for the "Big One" at Talladega... and the aggressive nature of the drivers took over. The Big one never stood out as the most violent crash of the day, claiming victim Joey Logano in what is described as a product of Talladega. He flipped over multiple times on the entrance of turn three, causing safety concerns and complaints from the driver. When asked about the flip he told Jamie Little of Fox NASCAR "I'm one hit away from the same situation Ryan Newman just went through". One of the favourites for the race was Denny Hamlin, who led the most laps with 43, but was caught up in a late race caution ending his day. Matt Dibenedetto looked very strong leading 28 laps in the final stage before getting shuffled back in the final laps to settle for a fifth-place finish. The Victory for Brad marks his 36th of his career and his 6th at Talladega tying him for second on the all time wins list with Dale Earnhardt Jr and Jeff Gordan at the Superspeedway. Geico 500 Top 5: 1. Brad Keselowski 2. William Byron 3. Michael McDowell 4. Kevin Harvick 5. Matt Dibenedetto Notables: 6. Kaz Grala 19. Bubba Wallace (Stage 2 winner) 27. Erik Jones Written by: Matt Marr

Colton Herta celebrates his first win of the season. (Tampa Bay Times) The second round of the 2021 NTT IndyCar Series season took place Sunday afternoon for The Grand Prix of St. Petersburg where we saw Colton Herta take the dominating victory. Herta, who started on pole position, led 97 laps in rout to his first win of the season and his fourth win of his career. Odds on favorite of the day, Josef Newgarden made the battle closer as the race came down to 15 to go, but with him being on the alternate red tires, lost grip and speed for the final laps as Herta pulled away with a margin of victory of 2.49 seconds. Jimmie Johnson had a rough day on the slick street course as he spun once late in the race and got into the tire barrier between turns 13 and 14. He finished 22nd, five laps down. Top 5: 1st: Herta 2nd: Newgarden 3rd: Pagenaud 4th: Harvey 5th: Dixon Notables: 8th: Power 17th: Palou 18th: Hinchcliff 19th: O'Ward 21st: Rossi 22nd: Johnson Next weekend, the NTT IndyCar Series heads to its first oval weekend of the season for a doubleheader at Texas Motor Speedway.

( Photo Source: Twitter.com/TKNews8 ) It wasn't that long ago that we knew the #48 Chevrolet team and Victory Lane as synonymous. The Fox and NBC telecasts had talented announcers shouting the name of Jimmie Johnson at the end of their broadcasts on a regular basis. Among Johnson's history in the Cup Series, one of his greatest feats were his 83 wins, including 10 in the 2007 season. In the first 908 starts, the #48 had only won 3 races, two with James Hylton and one with Bill Norton in 1951. Since then, #48 has won 84 times with Jimmie Johnson and now Alex Bowman. The storied legacy of the 48 did start prior to Jimmie's on track success, though. Johnson's era started only 26 days after September 11th attacks on October 7th of 2001. 9/11 was dramatically and emotionally documented by every news, sports, and entertainment outlet 24 hours a day. Lowe's Home Improvement Warehouses, Chevrolet, and Hendrick Motorsports created 'The Power of Pride' campaign to help promote patriotism across the sport, and Jimmie got to drive the car. The nation was somber. President George W. Bush referred to the incident as being attacked by '..a faceless coward.' Lowe's had been on the hood of Richard Childress Racing's #31 Chevrolet with driver Mike Skinner for 4 seasons and already had intentions of switching their marketing strategy with young Jimmie Johnson. The #48 team ran as a part-time entry in the fall of 2001 at Charlotte, Homestead, and Atlanta. Lowe's finished the year with Robby Gordon behind the wheel of their #31 Chevrolet team, where he would win the last race of the 2001 season at New Hampshire. The New Hampshire race had been cancelled earlier in the fall in response to the attacks. Hendrick Motorsports worked relentlessly to develop a new shop and team in the off-season of 2001/02, led by former mechanic and tire changer Chad Knaus. Knaus spent the 2001 season as crew chief of Stacy Compton's #14 Pontiac. The pairing of crew chief Chad Knaus and driver Jimmie Johnson were a magnetic connection. They claimed the pole for the Great-American race, the 2002 Daytona 500 in their first start. A brotherly connection was made between Knaus and Johnson. They won their first race together in only their 10th attempt at Auto Club speedway. This became the start of a legacy of winning. With Johnson's articulate ability to drive tracks of every shape and size, Knaus' exceptional understanding of the NASCAR rulebook, and an engine program from Hendrick Motorsports and Chevrolet, they became the greatest tag-team in the history of American Motorsports. They won a Daytona 500, multiple World 600 events, and Brickyard 400 races, in addition to winning the All-Star and a record tying 7 Cup Series Championships. Their era is one that we may never see again. When it was announced that Johnson would retire from full-time competition at the end of the 2020 season, many felt that the #48 team would suffer or perish. Johnson was moving along to a new career in open-wheeled racing. and Knaus had been promoted to an executive position within Hendrick Motorsports. It was well documented that Johnson had a hand in picking who would take over the #48, and the driver that was selected had experience replacing a previous NASCAR legend in Dale Earnhardt Jr. Arizona's Alex Bowman was transitioned from the #88 team to the #48 ALLY team in the 2020/21 off-season. With the new ride, the historic #48 showed speed from day one. The keys to the car were now handed to Bowman, who along with crew chief Greg Ives repeated history. In February at Daytona 500 Pole Qualifying, they set the fast lap and put the #48 Chevrolet on pole for The Great-American Race. Living up to their expectations, they did one better than Johnson/Knaus...winning in only their 9th start as a team at Richmond in April of 2021. It wouldn't be realistic for us to predict a career for Bowman that matches the many records of his successor in the #48, but his youth and talent will prove that he can create his own legacy while honoring the historic past of his car number. The torch has been handed off for now, and we can expect many more wins for #48 in NASCAR's most elite series.