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NASCAR

Ford Unveils 2020 Xfinity Series Mustang, Will Debut In Daytona 500

Using the dynamic backdrop of the 2019 Woodward Dream Cruise as an enviable world stage, Ford Performance took the veil of secrecy off of its updated Xfinity Series racing Mustang, which aims to continue the impressive success that the Mustang has had in NASCAR since it made its return to that sport in 2011. While the rules governing NASCAR prevent the updated racer from adopting radically altered body work, Ford designers still managed to make the new racer stand out from its predecessors. The graphics work for example has been updated to better reflect the current Mustang, with familiar cues …

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Auto Industry Insider: Dealing with the Stress of Classic Car Ownership

Owning a classic car is a dream come true for many. Whether you grew up watching Starsky and Hutch on TV, or you have fond memories of the Dukes of Hazzard, we all have a classic car-shaped hole in our heart. All you have to do is to figure out which vehicle fills the void in your automotive love story. However, owning a vintage car doesn’t come without stress. After all, when you drive a vehicle that left the manufacturer several decades ago, it’s only natural to worry about performance, breakdowns and overall costs. Hopefully, this short list of fears …

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Insider: Five Ideas for Racing-Themed Vacations

Do you arrange your weekends around every televised NASCAR, IndyCar, Formula One or FIA World Endurance Championship race? Is your idea of a fun day out obsessing over every car at the car show or heading out to your local track to watch the drag races? If you live and breathe cars and racing, then it should also be a no-brainer to theme your next vacation around your passion. Here are five ideas for planning an amazing racing-themed getaway. 1. Get in on the Action Why watch from the sidelines when you can jump into the fray? Many drag tracks …

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1973 Dodge Challenger Race Car – Ex-Dale Earnhardt – Saturday Night Special By PETTY

Our previous attempts at chronicling NASCAR history and Petty racecars have been pretty shoddy — so please see the full Mecum Auctions writeup below the AMAZING photo set here.  Fast facts are: — this is believed to be the only 1973 Petty-built racecar still surviving — entered circuit for the ’74 season, and was raced until the late 1980s — original driver?  None other than Dale Earnhardt The most shocking detail?  The price estimate of $40k to $80k!  Another semi interesting tidbit?  There seems to be a possible ‘special mode’  — or something — right above the gauge bezels. Some …

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2015 Toyota Camry Retraces NASCAR Roots with a Drive on Daytona Beach

No NASCAR crash course would be truly immersive at Daytona without a drive on the original NASCAR track – this pristine stretch of flawless Atlantic beach. First off, an intro. Why would driving on sand at speeds topping 140-mph have ever seemed like a good idea? When you put yourself in the driver’s seat 65 years ago, running high-powered and highly dangerous racecars on Daytona Beach actually seems really reasonable. Daytona Beach has three qualities that make it extremely desirable for high-speed runs: it is smooth, flat and nearly endless. Those same criteria are exactly what the  Bugatti Veyron La …

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2015 Toyota Camry XSE V6 Morphs Into DAYTONA 500 Official Pace Car + #83 Johnny Sauter Camry NASCAR

First up-close look at the 2015 Camry Pace Car in real life. A modified 2015 CAMRY XSE V6, shiny exhausts and a lower stance are visible above 19-inch BBS alloys and Z-rated tires. Just a tire and spring change away from being approved for 155mph? Yep. Summer rubber on this pace car, even in chilly February! The pair of Camry Pace Cars is active regularly during the Budweiser Duel Races that serve as a qualifier for the Daytona 500 lineup. This new LED-lit 2015 Camry Pace Car has no trouble managing track brutes at up to 125-mph around tracks like …

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DAYTONA – Meeting the 199MPH 2015 Toyota Camry NASCAR of Matt Kenseth #20 Dollar General

Thrilling week in Daytona Beach so far! An incredible day of meeting Toyota NASCAR drivers, crew chiefs and even the president of TRD USA, the overall lead in the Toyota Racing effort in American events. Meeting the 2015 Camry racer up close then seeing it in what felt like an HD action movie of the race Duels later? YES! So much fun to see the Daytona Speedweek leadup to the Daytona 500 tomorrow, Sunday the 22nd of February. The car-guy part of NASCAR culture makes tech and equipment off-track and in the pits every bit as serious as a wild …

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Mecum Florida 2015 – 1960 Plymouth Fury NASCAR Modified to Recreate Richard Petty’s Daytona 500 Racer

UPDATE 1 Sorry guys. Some shoddy reporting (and total lack of fact-checking:) on the first draft of this article below! Richard Petty started racing in 1958 at the Historic Columbia Speedway, so this 1960 model-year Plymouth was definitely not his first NASCAR ride. A bit of Petty trivia? He returned to this tiny dirt oval in 1959 to score his first win. The track is still around today, but in a heavily ‘disused’ state with much grass growing through the paved sections, which were laid down in the late 1960s. We do believe this body Plmouth Fury was his ride …

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Gen-6 Toyota Camry NASCAR Revealed Ahead of 2015 Season

The NASCAR ‘Car of Tomorrow’ is now in its sixth generation after barely as many years roaring round the nation’s speedways. Luckily, this latest design rulebook allows the cars to look much less generic, and more like their actual namesake road car models. The first out of the gates for the 2015 season of the Sprint Cup and 2015 Xfinity (formerly Nationwide) racing series is the new Camry. It really does look like the production car! ANIMATED OVERLAY ANALYSIS: Camry v ‘NASCamry’ In this transparency of the production Camry XSE versus the NASCAR Camry, we can see how similar these …

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NASCAR Meets Road Course?! Video of Stock Cars at Mitty 2014 + 100 Track Photos

One cannot really escape NASCAR if you are outside of a New York-LA-Chicago type of city, and especially if you are a Yankee who wakes up one day in the South. Stock Car racing is everywhere, and I am climbing down into the abyss. Overall, the cars are pretty fun to watch being driven at max attack around Road Atlanta’s challenging road course. For one, it has numerous tight corners. Second, the cars in this Stock Car class include everything from Impalas and relatively recent Charger NASCARS … all the way back in time to the Chevy Monte Carolo and …

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SHOCK! Charlotte Motor Speedway’s Banned NASCAR Mustang Prototype… Actually Looks Like a Mustang

Confession time: I have not been an active NASCAR fan in more than 20 years. But I am definitely a fan of the cars’ outright speed, power and the bravery needed to take one to victory over near-identical others on the grid. This extremely homogenized approach to racing rules is epitomized outside by what NASCAR calls the “Car of Tomorrow” bodyshell. It makes all the cars the exact same shape, excluding stickers. This seems like a huge error in judgment versus what fans want to see: actual rivalries among not just drivers, but the car manufacturers’ racing technology and expertise. …

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How Would 2012 Corvette Daytona Longtail Fare in Vmax Challenge with LMP1 Cars?

The 2012 Corvette Daytona is part of my Chevy Racing learning process, and it is a bit confusing with numerous Corvette-branded racecars in very different series. For example, the previous Grand Am sports car classes are almost a dead ringer for the Porsche 962 era of Le Mans. Grand Am merged with the American Le Mans Series, and the classes for sportscars will be covered in a future article. For now – a bit of blue-sky thinking to go with the 2012 Corvette Daytona’s namesake track. What if all the fastest racecars in the world… got together on a huge, …

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Hottest LA Debuts: 2014 Ford Mustang Official Homestead Pace Car

Mustang mania is building up! The reveal promises to be one of the most exciting from Ford in years, and the anticipation is palpable! One last hurrah for this generation of Mustangs comes in the 2014 Official Pace Car, which led the NASCAR Miami Homestead race earlier in the month before jetting west for SEMA and the LA Show. Quite a stunner, with huge fender flares that are far better integrated than most Mustang wide-body chops.