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 5 Things I'm looking forward to in the 2023 NASCAR season. By Brian H Cotnoir We are Officially one month away from the start of the 2023 NASCAR Season!  Thank God!  I feel like it's been 10 years since the Championship Weekend in Phoenix, and honestly this season is the most I've looked forward to in a long time.  I'm still riding the high of watching my favorite driver, Christopher Bell, get two walk-off wins in the Playoffs and make the Championship 4, and I believe there will be plenty more to look forward to this season.  So here are 5 Things I'm looking forward to in the 2023 NASCAR Season 1.)  Kyle Busch (and KBM's) switch to Chevy I believe Kyle Busch will do great things at Richard Childress Racing and his return to GM, but I don't think I'll be the only one who will take some getting used to driving anything other than a Toyota.   I mean, Kyle Busch made Toyota what it is today in NASCAR.   He won everything (minus a Daytona ...

5 Best Drivers who never won the Daytona 500 By Brian H Cotnoir In football the biggest accomplishment a player can achieve is winning the Super Bowl.  In baseball it's winning the World Series, and in Hockey it's hoisting the Stanley Cup.  All these events happen at the end of the season, but NASCAR is the only sport I know whose biggest event opening race of the season.   Winning the Daytona 500 is one of the biggest accomplishments a driver can achieve in NASCAR, and even if the only race you win in your career it cements your legacy as a Daytona 500 Champion.  The biggest names in the sport: Dale Earnhardt, Richard Petty, Jeff Gordon, Jimmie Johnson, Bobby Allison, Junior Johnson, and Bill Elliott have all won the Daytona 500.  However, many other well-known drivers in the sport have never won the Daytona 500 but have come oh so close and several occasions.  Today, I'm going to talk about 5 of those drivers who never who won just about everything i...

5 Lesser-known facts about racecar drivers By Brian H Cotnoir I think the title speaks for itself.   I hope you all enjoy it. 1.) The Unser Family has won the Pikes Peak Hillclimb 26 times! The Unser family name is typically synonymous with the Indianapolis 500.  Al Unser Sr. won the race a record 4-times (a record he shares with 3 other driver), his brother Bobby Unser won the race 3 times, and his son Al Unser Jr. has won the race twice. However, there's another racing circuit where the Unser's have truly dominated, and that is the Pikes Peak Hill Climb.  Despite the fact that it's not an actual racetrack, the over 12-mile hill climb, was part of the AAA/USAC Schedule & Championship. (Predecessor to the IndyCar Series) from 1946 to 1970.  I know a lot of people think it's strange that the Indy 500 was part of the F1 Calendar for 10 years, but I think the Pikes Peak Hillclimb being a part of the IndyCar schedule is even stranger. The race has been won the U...

 2022 NASCAR Season Report Card By Brian H Cotnoir CUP SERIES BEST RACE(s) There were a number of good races during the 2022 NASCAR Cup Series season.  In my opinion the best races this season were all during the playoffs.  Erik Jones won his second career Southern 500 and brought Petty GMS Racing back to Victory Lane.  Chris Buescher helped RFK Racing get back to Victory Lane to the following weekend.  Hands down the best race was Martinsville, Christopher Bell and Ross Chastain snuck their way into the NASCAR Playoffs in the penultimate race of the season. WORST RACE(s) The Worst Race of the season was hands down the final race of the Regular Season finale at Daytona.  Now, I was skeptical about moving the race from its traditional 4th of July weekend from the start, but between the frequent Red Flags for rain, the race was an absolute sh!t show.  Austin Dillon pulled off the upset victory, but other than that it was a terrible race. BIGGEST SURPRISE...

Requiem for Brandon Brown By Brian H Cotnoir On October 1, 2022, Brandon Brown made what--in all likelihood--would be his last start in his #68 Brandonbilt Motorsports.   Almost one year to the day where he shocked the NASCAR world by winning his first career victory in the Xfinity Series for his family-owned team, his once promising NASCAR career went out with a whimper finishing 33rd out of 38 drivers.    What should have been the greatest day of the Virgina drivers' life in 2021 would be become marred in controversy and he would unintentionally become a focal point of a Right-Wing Political Ideology, that his career could never recover from.   The first time I remember hearing Brandon Brown's name was when legendary college basketball announcer, Dick Vitale declaring that Brown would win the season opening Truck Race at Daytona in 2016.  Now, I value Dick Vitale's knowledge and opinion on College Basketball, but when I heard this on ESPN, I remember...

In Defense of Steve Grissom By Brian H Cotnoir My most powerful memory of NASCAR driver Steve Grissom was during a race at Atlanta in 1997.   I was only seven years old, and I remember seeing his #41 Kodiak Chevy spin down the back stretch before backing into the inside concrete wall and flipping violently as his gas tank was thrown from car and erupted in a fireball.  I remember watching this on TV in the living room because I can still recall my father's reaction to the wreck "He's gone!   Nobody can survive that!" and I started to cry, because I thought he really was killed in the wreck.   Fortunately, Steve Grissom survived the wreck and would be back in his car two races later at Texas Motor Speedway.   That wreck in Atlanta wasn't a career-defining moment for Grissom, but unfortunately many of his accomplishments in NASCAR have been overshadowed by a lackluster Cup Career and being a part of some of NASCAR's most tragic moments....

4 More NASCAR facts that sound made up, but are true By Brian H Cotnoir 1.)  Richard Petty's father protested his "1st win" Even the casual NASCAR fan knows that "King" Richard Petty is the All-Time Winningest driver in NASCAR History, with 200 Career wins in the NASCAR Cup Series, but it very nearly was 201 wins, until his father intervened.   In 1959, Richard Petty won his first race in NASCAR at the Lakewood Speedway, a 1-mile dirt oval in Atlanta, Georgia.   Making the moment even more special was that Richard's father (and team owner) Lee had finished 2nd in the race...that was until Lee filed a protest and claimed a scoring error had been made, and that Richard was actually one lap down.   Hours later, the results were overturned, and Lee Petty was declared winner of the race while Richard was credited with a 3rd place finish.  Lee Petty was later quoted to have said "I would have protested my mother if I needed to". 2.) Joe Nemechek won his...