Kyle Busch’s winning truck fails inspection

Monetary fines will be administered for one or two missing lug nuts, with a suspension warranted for anything else.

Tony Stewart has won more times here than any other racer in the field. He methodically picked his way through the top five thanks to a series of late cautions and even restarted third in NASCAR overtime. “If that is the answer you are looking for, it isn’t what you are going to get”.

New England Style means a pair of playoff races, as the Camping World Truck Series will run its inaugural Chase race, the UNOH 175, on September 24, joining the September 25 New England 300 Sprint Cup race.

Anything can happen in the Chase though, and here are some drivers to watch in the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 400 at Chicagoland Speedway as the Chase begins… Jeff Gordon was third and Martin Truex Jr. was fourth. A win and you move on as the pressure builds to the first cutoff at Dover. Long dedicated to allowing a race winner’s result to stand even in the face of rule violations discovered in post-race inspection, the sanctioning body has decided to make sure a driver and team can’t win a championship by thumbing its nose at the rules. I’ll take a pass on Earnhardt, since he would have made the Chase if he weren’t sidelined with concussion symptoms.

Hamlin has a pair of bookend victories in the non-Chase regular season – Daytona and Richmond – that underscore his skills on all types of tracks.

Hamlin started on the pole and led 189 laps on his way to Victory Lane. A year later, he’s cruising into the 10-race bracket-style playoff series at the head of the class. If the season ended today, his 15.3 average finish would tie for the lowest of his career (2014). The 37th-place finish put Elliott into a huge hole, but by the 11th race of the season at Kansas Speedway in May, he made his way into the top 10 in points, where he stayed until mid-July, when three back-to-back-to-back finishes outside of the top 30 dropped him to 11th in the championship standings. He won four his next five races, including the last three in a row at Kentucky, Loudon, N.H., and Indianapolis. He comes into this weekend at 8-1 odds and should be one of the drivers to watch on Sunday.

“It was a insane race”, Buescher said. After all that went down last season, Matt Kenseth is definitely aware of just how important an early Chase round victory is so don’t be surprised to see the #20 Toyota at the front of the field on Sunday. Kyle Busch will attempt to defend his title in a 10-race, four-segment playoff.

“I mean, winning the championship is something that you always dream about as a little kid, ” said Busch, a native of Las Vegas, who shared that dream with his older brother Kurt Busch, the 2004 Sprint Cup champion. “They still seem to have what you need”. Busch called Larson a good fantasy league pick.

“I would say every year you want to go out there and win the championship, ” Busch said. Dan took my choice of this week’s victor. The Team Penske driver started second here last time out and finished the event with a solid sixth place performance. Busch led 95 of the 150 laps on the 1.5-mile oval for his 167th win on NASCAR’s top three circuits. His only championship was in 2003, the year before the Chase was launched. “They have a huge engineering staff”, Johnson said.

As the hours tick down toward the first race of the Chase for the Sprint Cup at Chicagoland Speedway, time also ticks on Jimmie Johnson’s rendezvous with history. Kyle Busch and Brad Keselowski, who both have four wins this season, occupy the top two spots. The Joe Gibbs Racing juggernaut does well at this track and so does Matty K.