NASCAR

8:39 PM ET Associated Press CHARLOTTE, N.C. — Clint Bowyer will retire at the end of the NASCAR season and join the Fox Sports booth as an analyst. Bowyer, in his 15th full season, heads into Sunday’s race at Charlotte Motor Speedway facing elimination from the playoffs. He’s ranked 11th in the 12-driver field that

10:46 AM ET Associated Press Team Penske found a one-year solution for Matt DiBenedetto while building a long-term plan to move Austin Cindric to the Cup Series. DiBenedetto’s contract was extended Thursday to drive for Wood Brothers Racing in 2021. Cindric, currently competing in the Xfinity Series for Penske, will take over the seat in

3:20 PM ET Associated Press CHARLOTTE, N.C. — Former driver Justin Marks has started a new NASCAR team that will field a car in 2021 for Daniel Suarez. The team, announced Wednesday, is called Trackhouse Racing and will field the No. 99 Chevrolet for Suarez, who will drive for his fourth team in four years.

4:07 PM ET Associated Press CHARLOTTE, N.C. — The most coveted seat in NASCAR belongs to Alex Bowman in a Hendrick Motorsports lineup shuffle to replace seven-time champion Jimmie Johnson in the iconic No. 48 Chevrolet. Bowman and crew chief Greg Ives, who won five championships with Johnson as his engineer, will move from the

11:50 PM ET ESPN News Services In an essay posted to his website Sunday night, suspended NASCAR Cup Series driver Kyle Larson writes of the lessons he’s learned — and the steps he’s taken to make amends — since using the N-word during a virtual race in April. Chip Ganassi racing fired Larson, who has

7:10 PM ET Associated Press TALLADEGA, Ala. — Denny Hamlin was one of the last drivers standing at the end of the messiest and longest race in Talladega Superspeedway history. The Daytona 500 winner surged to the win with a sweeping three-wide pass — the 58th lead change of the race — coming out of

8:02 PM ET Associated Press TALLADEGA, Ala. — Justin Haley stormed into the second round of the Xfinity Series playoffs with a win Saturday at Talladega Superspeedway, his third superspeedway victory of the season. Haley, who in 2019 won the Cup race in July at Daytona, has three career Xfinity Series victories, all this season,

4:10 PM ET Associated Press TALLADEGA, Ala. — Raphael Lessard, a 19-year-old Canadian rookie, got his first career NASCAR national series race win Saturday in overtime under caution at Talladega Superspeedway. Lessard was racing side by side with Trevor Bayne on the final lap of the two-lap overtime shootout when a pack of trucks running

1:42 PM ET Associated Press CHARLOTTE, N.C. — NASCAR promised radical changes to the 2021 schedule and delivered Wednesday with six road courses, the first dirt race for the Cup Series since 1970 and new stops in Nashville, Tennessee, and Austin, Texas. Dropped from the lineup were Kentucky Speedway and Chicagoland Speedway, two “cookie-cutter” intermediate

12:02 AM ET ESPN News Services SPARTA, Ky. — Kentucky Speedway has lost its spot on NASCAR’s 2021 schedule, the racetrack said Tuesday night ahead of the sanctioning body’s announcement of venues and dates for next season. In addition, the mayor of Joliet, Illinois, told The Athletic that Chicagoland Speedway is also off NASCAR’s 2021

4:47 PM ET Associated Press CHARLOTTE, N.C. — Chad Knaus will move into a management role with Hendrick Motorsports after the season, ending his crew chief career after a record-tying seven NASCAR championships. Hendrick on Tuesday announced Knaus will become vice president of competition. He will replace Jeff Andrews, who has been in the role

11:03 PM ET Associated Press LAS VEGAS — Luck finally fell Kurt Busch‘s way at his home track, where he pulled out an upset Sunday night at Las Vegas Motor Speedway to sneak his way into the third round of the NASCAR Cup playoffs. Busch ended an 0-for-21 losing streak at Las Vegas with good

10:50 PM ET Associated Press LAS VEGAS — Chase Briscoe routed the field in the Xfinity Series playoff opener for his eighth win of the season, the number he’s said should earn him a promotion to NASCAR’s top level. Briscoe, in a Ford for Stewart-Haas Racing, won all three stages Saturday night at Las Vegas

11:37 PM ET Associated Press LAS VEGAS — Austin Hill, the regular-season Truck Series champion, rebounded from a poor opening race of the playoffs with a victory Friday night at Las Vegas Motor Speedway. Hill had dropped from first in the standings — where he’d been ranked since the second race of the season —

9:00 AM ET ESPN Betting Insiders Kevin Harvick picked up his ninth victory of the season last week at Bristol, Tennessee, and now the second round of NASCAR’s playoffs begins with the South Point 400 in Las Vegas on Sunday (7 p.m. ET). Who will take the checkered flag? Senior writer Ryan McGee and editor

6:28 PM ET Associated Press CHARLOTTE, N.C. — Hendrick Motorsports was fined $100,000 on Thursday for exceeding the amount of wind tunnel testing allowed in a year. NASCAR also docked the organization 10 hours of wind tunnel time for next year. An organization is allowed a maximum of 70 hours in 2020 and 90 hours

6:44 PM ET Associated Press A pilot’s inability to maintain proper airspeed and the flight crew’s decision to continue an unstable approach and landing likely caused the crash of a small plane carrying race car driver Dale Earnhardt Jr. and his family in 2019, according to a National Transportation Safety Board report released Wednesday. The

2:40 PM ET Michael Jordan is now a NASCAR team owner. Maybe it reads strange. Maybe it sounds strange. But the road to making that sentence a reality isn’t as nearly as long or as rocky as most might think. On Monday night, the sports world was buzzing when news broke that Jordan was entering