This whole incident unfolded exactly as it should. NASCAR blocked him from competing until they saw what his employer would do, and as it is fundamentally an HR issue, they let the team handle it. Now NASCAR can return to a neutral position knowing full well this idiot will not get back into NASCAR racing with any grown-up operation.

Short-track legend Lee Pulliam is one of those guys who spent his career working on racing instead of schmoozing and therefore never got a big break. Dale Earnhardt, Jr. cannot resist such a story and gave Pulliam a great Martinsville car, and Pulliam almost pulled it out. He led confidently throughout the race, but the unfamiliar equipment got the better of him. He missed shifts and spun wheels on restarts, eventually making the wrong kind of headlines by stacking up the field into a huge wreck. Don’t let that overwrite the fact that he got a top-five finish and took responsibility for the mistakes, which is a good teaching for O’Reilly Series drivers. Pulliam’s teammate, Justin Allgaier, pulled out another win. He really is the last of the Busch Series legends.

As for the Cup race, here are my headlines:

• Shane van Gisbergen qualified fifth. Get your affairs in order, Cup drivers.
• Chase Elliott got a win so early in the season that he surprised himself. It is very interesting to see him have an upturn in results now that people actually have to run consistently all year, because last year he showed that few of them can do that as well as he can.

We will shortly find out what it has taught Baldwin, as he will make his O’Reilly Series debut at Martinsville this weekend.

The NASCAR media scene did itself and the few people who pay this much attention a disservice by overhyping the potential impact of the new high-falloff tires and higher horsepower package at Darlington. They created some expectation that the Cup race would be an all-timer. It wasn’t, but it may have been something better in the long-term, which is a regular old race at Darlington.

In fact, all three series had good Darlington races. Corey Heim stole the Truck Series race from Ross Chastain in a very exciting finish, and Justin Allgaier stole the O’Reilly race from Kyle Larson, which one always loves to see.

What was great about the Cup race was that the best car won. It was no lottery, but it was certainly a trial. The cars were a handful for everybody, but Reddick suffered electrical problems and had to go and win the hottest race of the year so far with no way to cool off. Mike Joy called the win in a pretty funny way, saying Reddick had returned to winning “after a two-race losing streak.” That’s four on the year, if you’ve lost count.

It was an exciting day for RFK — Keselowski, Buscher, and Preece were all top-five runners throughout the day, they combined to lead 183 laps, and Brad won stage two — but they couldn’t hang on. You’ve been able to see them coming for a couple races at this point, though, so I think there’s more to come from RFK this year.

Also of note was Carson Hocevar, who got his best Cup finish ever in his best livery ever, a very well done Chili’s-sponsored Dale Earnhardt Wrangler car throwback. Hocevar finished fourth, and teammate Daniel Suárez finished seventh. So look out for Spire, too.

The press release announcing this truly is a marvelous thing. It claims the new branding represents the series’ “Grand Prix intensity and global ambition.” I can translate that for you right now: “NASCAR makes people think of America, and (we believe) that dissuades Europeans from buying tickets.” Even better, they frame the decade-old category as the “ultimate stage for professional drivers in European touring car racing.”

Touring car racing?

Oh, I see. This is V8 “touring car” racing. That is, don’t think of NASCAR, the American organization that actually sanctions this. Think of Supercars, the Australian organization that doesn’t sanction this. I wonder how long the NASCAR relationship will carry on?

EuroNASCAR is already rolling out driver news with this catchy “NASCAR Euro Series V8GP” moniker, and I will give them this: If it were called the V8GP European Championship, it would be the thing they think it is. It isn’t, though. It’s the NASCAR European Series.

Dye was on some bootleg streaming app for people who like to open packs of baseball cards or something, and he started bragging about having no idea who David Malukas — driver of the Team Penske #12 Verizon Chevrolet in the IndyCar Series — was when they met at the St. Petersburg race weekend IndyCar and the Truck Series shared. Dye then went on to perform a homophobic caricature — apparently intended to be of Malukas — for an excruciatingly long time.

Dye has been suspended by NASCAR and his team and will be required to complete sensitivity training in order to return to racing. He posted an extremely bad Instagram apology. He will be replaced in this weekend’s Truck Series race at Darlington by A.J. Allmendinger.

Bowman’s condition has still not been publicly attributed to any particular cause.

Another storyline emerged in Vegas to watch this year: Tensions between former teammates Ross Chastain and Daniel Suárez have boiled over into a face-to-face confrontation. Their on-track encounters were not terribly severe, so whatever came up clearly goes back in their history.

Well TA2 has a new name to put on your bell-ringing list: Helio Meza. He’s won the first three races this year, and he won from pole at Road Atlanta leading every lap. Watch him whenever you can. His team also has him racing in the NASCAR Mexico Series this year.

At any rate, Anthony Alfredo had a pretty good run in the #48 at Phoenix before getting taken out. I would love to see Justin Allgaier get some redemption at Vegas for his Daytona 500 appearance.

Nowadays, I am pursuing things — very publicly, too — that I definitely would have thought were cool in middle school but could never have admitted. I never allowed myself to explore, for example, NASCAR because it would have been deeply uncool. At our school, we made fun of NASCAR and people who liked NASCAR.

Well, now I know better, and now Jonathan Davis will wave the green flag at the Cup race in Vegas this weekend, and I will be smiling.

Frankly, I thought the NASCAR races at Phoenix this weekend were a big step down into the normal midseason feeling that NASCAR is a grind. The races weren’t bad, and the outcomes were just, but there was nothing particularly distinguished, either. I know a lot of race fans find recovery drives through the pack to be inspiring racing — and Sheldon Creed, Shane van Gisbergen, and Sunday winner Ryan Blaney all provided excellent demonstrations of that — but to me that’s of a second tier to battles of evenly matched cars and drivers on challenging tracks. Don’t tell NASCAR this because they might not agree to do these anymore, but the big March weekend at Phoenix Raceway was comprehensively carried by IndyCar.

Fortunately for the storyline, Phoenix turned it on its head. Palou wrecked out of contention early in the race, and with Josef Newgarden surging back to his traditional position at the front of any short oval race, there is now a championship leader other than Palou for the first time since the 2024 season. Palou’s incident coming up on Rinus Veekay may have been a bit of a spotter fail, and another potential spotter fail of the same nature took Will Power and Christian Rasmussen out of contention later on. All day, Rasmussen continued to earn his reputation as the craziest man in IndyCar short oval racing, and it would have been quite a romp for him if he’d been able to hang on and win.

More shoutouts are necessary. Shoutout to Mick Schumacher for qualifying FOURTH in his first oval race ever. He didn’t have a glorious finish, but he sure had a glorious start. Shoutout to Dennis Hauger for one of the best saves I’ve ever seen (seen below). And — Will Power fan that I am — I must reserve my final shoutout for David Malukas for taking the 12 car to pole. That guy really has to prove he deserves the equipment upgrade he got, and this is some pretty good proof.

How did an industry that made the most famous race car drivers on Earth 25 years ago fall so hard? Well, I’m sure there is some macroeconomic explanation, but hopefully this consolidation indicates a new path forward for racing collectibles that actually takes advantage of the last 25 years of logistical advances, which have been, you know, considerable.

Prodigious racing collector Cale says:

Round 2 owns the Racing Champions brand, too, so if there is any justice in the world…

— Cale Putnam (@caleputnam.bsky.social) Mar 5, 2026 at 10:06 AM

Oh, no. It’s not over. On the contrary, Richard Childress is now putting him in the No. 33 O’Reilly car to race at Rockingham, having signed him to a two-year part-time deal. Notice how the press release calls him a “skilled driver and motorsports enthusiast” but a “genius marketer.” They aren’t even hiding why they’re doing this.

Snider drives part time in the O’Reilly series, but at the Cup race at Circuit of the Americas, he was working the lane as an assistant pit reporter for FOX Sports when he was asked to put on a fire suit and helmet, get into Alex Bowman’s car, and drive it for the final stage of the race. Bowman was succumbing to some sort of health issue — which weirdly has not been disclosed even though we assume it was just your normal cool suit problems — and he had to pull in. Snider texted a little about breaking points with friend and fellow ringer Brad Perez, jumped into the #48, and finished the race without incident.

His brother, Nick, has asked outlets to promote the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline, which anyone can call or text any time at 988.

The racing public doesn’t know much more than that, but we don’t have to in order to hold one of our own — and his family, friends, colleagues, and competitors — in our hearts.

Well, that said, the O’Reilly series still has some work to do. No, Connor Zilisch didn’t win, but he did beat Shane van Gisbergen to pole. That is to say, Shane van Gisbergen was in this race, and yes, he won. At one point, he passed five cars at once and flashed them the deuce as he left.

On Sunday, though, things changed.

Now, Connor was in it. He drove a great race, he just didn’t get anything to show for it because of misfortunes. He is having the rough entry to the Cup Series that everyone should have expected because he is racing with people at a much higher level than the people he humiliated in Xfinity last year.

Shane was also, of course, in it. His road racing skills have clearly benefitted the whole team; Shane is now P5 in points, taking second in stage 1 and in the final result (plus another point for P10 in stage 2), but Ross Chastain won the first stage.

Christopher Bell, last year’s winner, placed third. His teammate, Ty Gibbs, showed a compelling fourth. Their teammate, Denny Hamlin — the guy who hates road courses — finished P10, which he said afterward was “like a win” because of how resistant he is to races with right turns. That feeling, however, may have been colored by something else.

Namely that Denny is the co-owner of the car that won the race. And last week’s race at Atlanta. And the Daytona 500.

Yes, the first driver in the history of NASCAR to win the first three races of the season was the driver of the No. 45 23XI racing Chumba Casino Toyota Camry, Tyler Reddick.

ICON

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— Victoria Beaver (@toribeav42.bsky.social) March 1, 2026 at 10:51 PM

MX-5 Cup also raced, and they were fun as always, but nothing remarkable happened. The conditions were pretty wet for the first race, but it mostly just resulted in crashing rather than standout performances. Bobby Gossett stuck it out and won his first MX-5 Cup race, so congratulations to him. Justin Adakonis also got his first win in race 2, congrats to him as well. Earl Bamber did fine. Sébastien Bourdais did not do fine.

The highlight of the St. Petersburg race weekend was the first ever street race of the NASCAR Truck Series. The star studs in the star-studded lineup did make their appearances. Colin Braun finished best of the guests in P9, but he was the one with meaningful NASCAR experience. James “Jimmy Hinch” Hinchcliffe finished right behind him in P10, which was actually the most impressive drive any guest had because he was turned around by Dario Franchitti early on, then turned himself around a couple times, and he still drove through the pack. But — against what probably anybody in the entire world expected — the star of the first ever NASCAR Truck Series street race was the NASCAR Truck Series.

Yes, the regulars came prepared, and they fought it out lap after lap. It was an honest-to-god street race, and it was won in marvelous fashion by Layne Riggs, whom I used to not like, but that is now completely wiped away. He trained in the Ford Racing simulator with Joey Hand for months for this race, and it showed.

I am so, so happy to see how much the increased emphasis on road and street courses has up-skilled all three NASCAR fields.

First of all, the idea of bedding in with Prime Video makes obvious sense given how well their run of Cup race broadcasts went last year, and I dare say that if Formula 1 can get away with bundling U.S. race broadcasts with Apple services, bundling NASCAR with Amazon Prime seems like an even better idea.

But moreover, NASCAR just doesn’t have the same juice for a dramatic year-long documentary as Formula 1 does: There are too many drivers and teams, and those don’t have enough global celebrity star power pressure on them to make for off-track jeopardy, which is what DtS fans are really watching for. As followers of Formula 1 racing knows, the actual motorsports part barely even factors into that show, and the race events are basically just montages in it. NASCAR is all about the races, and that made a DtS-style silly season show rather boring.

This idea of focusing on the Daytona 500 will not only make for a better show that is more worth watching alongside a racing season — rather than instead of one, as much DtS watching seems to be done — it will do exactly what NASCAR needs to do as a sport and raise the profile of the races themselves as the centerpiece. Hopefully they’re thinking about this in terms of which race to focus on next, rather than just what happens in the same setting year after year.

And it’s clear why they want to: He’s about to go tell the world how corrupt the operation of the 54 car (driven by Gibbs’ grandson) is.

This year, there isn’t even any jeopardy; the whole field gets to start. That reveals the transparently profit-based reason this event continues. Nobody wants to have to tell their sponsors that they paid for an optional race they don’t even get to run.

If there has to be an All-Star Race, I like Jeff Gluck’s idea of having the last-place car drop out of the field every five laps until a winner is crowned.

Taking things up a notch, Spire Motorsports — a team whose whole thing is taking things up a notch — came out in the wake of this announcement to counter-announce that Gabehart works there now. So in turn, JGR amended their complaint to add Spire to it and requested a restraining order to prevent Gabehart from working there for 18 months until everything is returned and assurances are secured.

I wonder if we’ll ever find out what really happened here.

The Truck Series race was an intense and remarkably disciplined affair that was compressed for time due to weather delays, with Spire teammates Carson Hocevar and Kyle Busch working together to learn the kids a thing or two, delivering yet another truck win for Busch. They did tandem burnouts that were both 10s out of 10. There were other notable performances throughout the field, though, including an impressive recovery drive on debut for Trans Am ace Adam Andretti. Also notable was the pretty average performance of last year’s champion, Corey Heim.

Watch on YouTube

The O’Reilly Series race was utter insanity in the best possible way and probably the most awesome NASCAR race I have ever watched in real time. The question on everyone’s mind was, “How can we stop Austin Hill?” The answer turned out to be “using Ross Chastain.” There were so many great drives, but the most shockingly delightful was that of Sheldon Creed, who finally — after 15 second-place finishes in the series — got himself a win. The final laps of this race — as well as Creed’s celebration and post-race interview — are mandatory viewing.

Watch on YouTube

Naturally, the O’Reilly race was not without its stupidities. JGR crewman Alex Morgan was fully hit by Taylor Gray’s car exiting the pit box, but he was unharmed. A significant portion of the other stupidities were caused by Corey Day. My sense of that guy is that he’s a very good dirt racer who has not yet learned to stop dirt racing.

As for the Cup race, while it wasn’t better than the first two, it was an inspiring display of where NASCAR as a whole is at right now, and you can read my full race notes from the track.

It was your usual crazy Daytona race, but this time it felt like the Daytona 500 is supposed to.

This was no fluke drive, he was right back there with Denny in case anything stupid happened, and then it did, and he drove right through it on Nightmare Mode

— Jon 🛞 (@jon.turningfortune.com) Feb 15, 2026 at 5:44 PM

Watch on YouTube

Lawrence Garrett “Cleetus McFarland” Mitchell spun and wrecked himself after six laps. He was crestfallen and contrite and embarrassed in his care center interview, and he clearly has love of the game. I’ll give him that, but what I won’t give him is how seemingly surprised he was by being taken three-wide at Daytona. The dude is just not ready for this.

As for Tony Stewart, his truck was also destroyed, but by someone else losing control next to him and sandwiching him into the wall. It was not a very good debut for the RAM/Kaulig program overall.

I was excited to see Carson Hocevar commanding the race early, but he ended up losing track position over and over again due to repeated punctures.

Chandler Smith won in a finish that was certainly exciting, but it was also goofy. They were crawling all over each other. In short, it was the Daytona truck race.

I love shit like this, they used to always to this type of stuff when I was watching this sport growing up so it's neat to still see it being done these days!

— Shoogy Racing 🏁 (@shoogyracing.bsky.social) Feb 13, 2026 at 2:44 PM

Anthony Alfredo pulled it off in duel 2 but was disqualified in tech, handing his starting spot to B.J. McLeod, which we love because a significant prize money take for him could lead to more Katherine Legge drives during the season. As for Casey Mears, he was very much out until he was in, thanks to an incident that seemed dumb to me at first, but the more times I watch it, the more impressive I find Mears’ maneuvers:

Watch on YouTube

Oh, what happened? They pretended they were going to reveal a Dodge Cup car or something, and then it turned out to be made of stacked beer cans, and Ross Chastain drove around on a little beer scooter and revved the world’s loudest billboard.

But have you seen who is driving at St. Pete?

• Sebastien Bourdais is doing the Mazda MX-5 Cup race (what????)
• Dario Franchitti is doing the truck race
• A lesser known but no less talented Andretti, Adam, is combining Truck Series duties with his usual (and dominant) Trans Am running this year, and he will be in a truck at St. Pete
• No less than Mayor James Hinchcliffe is also doing the truck race, returning to the site of his first IndyCar win to make his first NASCAR appearance (all while running back and forth to the booth for his IndyCar TV duties)
• UPDATE FEB 18: Earl Bamber is also doing the MX-5 Cup race
• UPDATE FEB 21: Colin Braun is driving the Ram free agent truck

This all makes me wonder: Who will the guest star crossovers be at Phoenix?

He did qualify for the Daytona 500 last night, and he was only two tenths behind the other rapid cars on his team. Honestly, RFK looks like the Ford team with the Daytona package to beat. That’s exciting. But Mr. K is walking with a sponsor-branded cane, and this injury has caused him the worst pain of his life. I hope we don’t see something sad happen.

In other good news, Corey Heim’s #67 23XI entry was blazingly fast, and both he and my main man Justin Allgaier in the JR Motorsports #40 locked into the 500. JRM is now two for two on making the race, and after their great run last year, I would be overjoyed to see a strong result.

Also, in an amusing twist, Noah Gragson had his qualifying lap deleted because he did the hand-in-the-window aero trick that was literally just banned.

The race sold out for the 11th straight year, the purse is bigger than ever — I’d say the omens are good. As long as the weather doesn’t completely sap the event of joy like last year.

“For years, achieving a true gold look in motorsports has required compromises — limitations in depth, tone, reflectivity, and durability. ‘LEGACY Gold’ changes that equation entirely, delivering a finish that captures the richness, warmth, and dimensionality of real gold while meeting the demands of high-performance racing environments.”

You know I love a livery, and I equally love any innovation in the cool-looking-ness of race cars.

Watch on YouTube

I can’t say the show was very entertaining; it takes a lot more work to make it possible to follow — let alone enjoy — a heavily edited race on TV than these reality show producers put in. Had I been in charge, we would have at least published videos of the full race days after the episodes came out, but I also suspect those production value shortcuts extended to the on-track operations.

The one compelling argument I had heard against my prediction is that Carson Hocevar was a shoo-in for the #48. Welp. No he ain’t.

Folks, it was not an all-timer.

Ryan Preece — a real, honest-to-god race car driver — won handily, his first win in a Cup car, and that was nice and deserved. It was fun to celebrate afterwards, but it was hard to enjoy during the race.

Watch on YouTube

Kyle Larson started on pole, but he ended like this:

Forgot to post last night. This car has seen some things.

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— John Newby (@johnnewby.bsky.social) Feb 5, 2026 at 8:54 AM

Chase Briscoe became my public enemy no. 1 by taking out everyone I wanted to win this race in one fell swoop, and even as plucky drivers continued to try to win the race, the same old boring guys kept constantly wrecking each other and neutralizing any progress. It was a 50-mile race that took three hours. They dropped it from network straight to FS2 after it was clear it wasn’t ending anytime soon. In short, NASCAR is back, baby. Hell yeah.

Here’s the highlight reel. I’m sure it’ll be funnier this way.

Watch on YouTube

It seems to me that the people responsible for the almost-entirely-bad media decisions in motorsports have been slow-walking the actual test of the widespread conventional wisdom that people whose primary value is large audiences who watch their videos on social media can be taught to drive race cars and thereby benefit the sport. If I were using this theory to justify my salary as the cHiEf iNnoVAtiOn ofFicER at some racing series headquarters, I would be hesitant to test it, too, because if the influencers suck at driving, it would all fall apart.

Given that, I applaud the courage in letting these guys race in a NASCAR event on NASCAR’s biggest weekend, which is at the beginning of the year. It rips the band-aid off, and if they’re actually good, fine, they can do another race or two this year, and if they aren’t, now we will all finally know.

NASCAR has already been an important partner with Flo, with lots of NASCAR Regional racing (including the Whelen Modified Tour) streaming there, and in related news, Flo will now simulcast some big races with NASCAR’s own FAST channel, which is really good, and which is now available right in the NASCAR mobile app in advance of this season. It’s finally almost easy to watch racing!

UPDATE 3:27 PM: The Clash has been pushed to Wednesday, and while it could still be the coldest NASCAR race ever, it is now less likely.

NASCAR has made a string of popular moves lately, and I would like to suggest one more: Move the Clash back to Daytona permanently, and have the All-Star Race at Bowman Gray.

However. When it was just eliminating “win and you’re in” playoff eligibility, I refused to believe the conspiracy theories that Shane van Gisbergen humiliating the Americans in 2025 was the true motivation for finally making competition changes that were long-needed for more important reasons. But now that there is no longer any road course race in the Chase, my brow is beginning to furrow.

But like, if you’re going to have a road course in the Chase, make it Watkins Glen. That would even make sense in the calendar. Instead, they did the opposite this year and moved Watkins Glen to May. Go figure.

One is that they are awarding one of their Truck Series seats to the winner of a reality show. Now, people will scoff at this. I have seen nothing but people scoffing at this. But I will reserve judgment until it comes out, because I would like to remind everyone that making motor racing into a reality show has been fairly successful recently. To be good, this show would have to both successfully pick a competent NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series driver and actively increase a large audience’s engagement with and literacy in motorsports. Could it do all that? Sure! Let’s see if it does.

The other headline is that Tony Stewart is coming back to NASCAR racing to drive one of these trucks AT DAYTONA. Maybe this is shocking because Smoke has been doing anything other than NASCAR for 10 years and seemed to be totally, permanently fed up with it. In other words, this was probably a very large line item in Ram’s NASCAR budget.

Winning a race is worth a major gap in points compared to that between any other positions, which I find to be an excellent replacement for win-and-you’re-in. Everyone who blames WaYi (yes, I did that) for the kamikaze style of racing of the previous era is absolutely right, but I believe it is also still good to incentivize winning and racing hard instead of cruising for points. It’s also good to award stage points, since it keeps people pushing throughout the race. These are mechanics that actually make NASCAR racing exciting, and now they will finally matter throughout the whole season.

Some people have also complained about the fact that the cutoff position for the Chase is P16 — they think there should be fewer cars — but that makes no sense to me. The more cars there are in the Chase, the closer to a normal motorsports championship it is, and it’s not like the P16 car is going to be able to leapfrog everyone and win the championship like they could before. They’re going to have to be absolutely magnificent for 10 weeks, and if they do that, hell, crown ’em.

There are also reasonable business reasons to start with many contestants, and I feel like modern fans are not understanding enough of such things. In order for motorsports to be good, you have to, you know, have motorsports at all.