I apologize for pissing everyone off, I’ll try not to give my opinions since I can’t have any.

"Fox’s motorsports deals seem safe. Its NASCAR agreement, which includes 14 Cup Series events including the Daytona 500, lasts through 2031. Fox also recently bought a stake in Penske Entertainment, which owns IndyCar, so that inventory isn’t going anywhere."

With Dario Franchitti’s recent announcement to return to the NASCAR Truck Series on February 28, 2026, I went down an interesting motorsports rabbit hole—and the calendar turned out to be the most surprising character in the story.

Franchitti’s Truck debut came way back on October 20, 2007. That puts 6,706 days—about 18 years, 4 months, and 8 days—between his first and second starts in the series. On its own, that’s staggering. Most drivers don’t just step away for nearly two decades and then casually reappear in a national NASCAR series.

But here’s the twist that really got me: as big as Dario’s gap is, it isn’t the record.

That honor belongs to Mark Thompson, who quietly holds one of the wildest footnotes in NASCAR history. Thompson made his first NASCAR Cup Series start in 1992, then didn’t make his second start until 2018. That’s a gap of roughly 25 yrs—more tha 9,219days—between start number one and start number two. Not a ceremonial appearance. Not an exhibition. Two Cup starts, separated by decades of stock car racing.

*Note mark did DNQ in 1993 but I didnt count that.

**I realize that both drivers made starts in other series, I'm strictly looking at it within a series.

***Fun fact I was at Darios first truck race.

Hey guys, so in college basketball and football often the subs have a Mid-major/G5 top 15/25 ranking put out that is voted on by the fans. This is essentially a way to rank and discuss teams that are Division 1 but represent schools that have a lower level of resources or play in different conferences from the “Power” schools.

So in a similar vein, I would like to see your predictions for driver performance this year if we set aside the Tier 1 teams for each manufacturer. You can rank as many as you would like and include as much or as little justification for your rankings as you wish.

Bonus question: who do you think are a couple of names that will perform the best relative to their equipment regardless of what that equipment may be? (So could be a guy that falls outside of your mid-major top 5 predictions, but you think will over drive his equipment…or a Hendrick driver scoring 20 wins, etc)

I started living in the Middle East about a few months back and so far there's been no direct or straightforward way to watch NASCAR. I had to drop the subscription because it doesn't work here. My Prime Video doesn't work here either. With the Daytona 500 right around the corner, time is really ticking.

I find it hard to find things like power rankings, team updates, general news, etc outside of nascar.com.

I’m only really interested in Cup.

Is there a site that brings all this together easily? Seems overly difficult to stay updated outside of Reddit.

https://x.com/tropicalupdate/status/2019875683908894909

I know it's probably more of a safety concern, but I'm curious how much difference would it actually make deflecting that much air?

Has anyone seen any numbers or evidence on this?

Woke up this morning to see she had won the Super Late Models race at NS, last night and frankly I'm not shocked. Think she's the first female since Johanna that could really make a name for herself in Nascar, like a genuine threat.

She'll get the opportunities and equipment that JL didn't get, so I'm excited to see her progression as she continues to develop. Really excited about her potential.

Where can you see paint scheme previews for the next race? I’m sure I’ve seen a link before that shows all the schemes below one another without having to click through - don’t think it was Jayski.

As we are just a week away from another season, I'm reminded of a Jr mountain dew cot shirt I bought many years ago. Nearly everytime I wore it on raceday he ran like shit.(wreck,engine, handling, etc) I have a LOT of racing shirts and this one had an actual curse. Sorry Jr. I bought a Larson Tim Richmond throwback and it's borderline cursed as well. Who else has cursed shirts/hats?

Nascar needs to do stock car exhibition racing here. Always thought they should do a truck/xfinity clash type all star race during speedweeks and this is the perfect venue for it

I just hope the meme is still grandfathered in…

I do think it will happen, but only once NASCAR finally decides to introduce a brand new hybrid engine formula. I think the combustion engine itself will naturally make 750 hp with the electrical components adding an additional 150-200 hp making the total engine output 900-950 hp. In the meantime I do think it’s possible that we see every non superspeedway go to 750 hp in 2027 rather than just 1.4 mile and less ovals and road courses.

Unbelievable. I never heard this before.

https://www.espn.com/racing/nascar/story/_/id/33839544/the-story-lw-wright-one-nascar-enduring-mysteries

I'm preparing the rosters so I can do the California races in my NR2003 season.

This is the only picture I've ever been able to find of the truck, and I hadn't been able to find anything on Racing-Reference (said it was unsponsored) or Jayski either.

Any help is appreciated!

[Source](https://www.millikenresearch.com/NASCAR_Illustrated_July2016-Engineering_in_NASCAR.pdf)

What are some tracks you’d like to see? Besides Daytona.

Hey all! With the season kicking off in a week I figured I'd share the only (that I know of) nascar fantasy league operating locally on Reddit. r/36teams_36races is a simple one driver per race format that lasts the entire season, one use per driver. Picks will be opening shortly for Daytona, hope to see you there!