For the race teams, this week was their first full week back to work after the holidays. And there was no shortage of news to go along with it. We finally got the official announcement about the Petty Enterprises/Gillett Evernham Motorsports merger on Thursday. The new team will run three full time Sprint Cup cars and possibly [...]
Archive for January, 2009
The NASCAR Week That Was: Jan. 4-Jan. 10
January 10th, 2009 
T.C. Ganassi’s Area 51
January 8th, 2009 Journo Deep in the Pennsylvania mountains lies one of motorsport’s biggest secrets. Built in the 1890s, the Laurel Hill Tunnel was one of a series of tunnels opened to accomodate the South Pennsylvania Railroad. When the railroad never opened the tunnels were abandoned. In the 1940s Laurel Hill Tunnel found new life as part of the Pennsylvania Turnpike. In order to alleviate [...]
Posted in NASCAR History, The Business of NASCAR 
Tags: CGR, Chip Ganassi Racing, Earnhardt-Ganassi Racing, EGR, IRL, Laurel Hill Tunnel, LHT, Mike Hull, Testing 
8 Comments »New Teams Finding Opportunities in Down Economy
January 7th, 2009 T.C. When we look back at this off-season, what we will remember the most were all the teams we lost to closings and mergers, and all the employees who lost their jobs. It has certainly been one of the toughest periods in the history of our sport. But where holes have been left behind by teams like Petty, Bill [...]
Ask The Insiders Wednesday #5
January 6th, 2009 T.C. It’s the first Wednesday of 2009, so welcome to the first “Ask The Insiders Wednesday” of the New Year. My inbox has been filling up with great questions over the last week. In case you don’t know what this is, we will be answering any and all questions every Wednesday until at least Daytona comes [...]
Posted in Ask the Insiders Tags: Dale Earnhardt Jr., DEI, Earnhardt, Earnhardt-Ganassi Racing, Ganassi, Merger, pit area, pit road safety, pit stops, rule book 2 Comments »UPDATE: Fastenal to RCR…
January 6th, 2009 T.C. Jayski is reporting tonight what we told you almost a month ago (December 10th), that Fastenal is moving its sponsorship from Chip Ganassi Racing to Richard Childress Racing’s Nationwide Series program. According to the report, the #2 Fastenal Chevy will be shared by Clint Bowyer, Martin Truex Jr, and Scott Pruett. Chalk up another point [...]
The G.O.A.T. Showdown at Darlington
January 5th, 2009 Journo Every so often some news organization does a 50 or 25 greatest drivers list. We have not done this (although I have thought about it), but reader Savannah sparked a good idea for how to do this a little differently. She asked: If you could pick a fantasy racing league with 10 drivers from any [...]
Posted in Ask the Insiders, NASCAR History Tags: Dale Earnhardt, Junior Johnson, kirk shelmerdine, NASCAR, NASCAR History, Richard Petty 12 Comments »Lack of Mechanical Knowledge Impeding Some Young Drivers
January 4th, 2009 T.C. Driver development has been a topic both myself and Journo have written about in the past here at TNI. We’ve talked about the business of driver development, talked about different drivers, and even offered up some advice to people coming up. The last time I wrote a post with some advice in it, I chose [...]
Posted in Driver Development Tags: advice, Driver Development, feedback, mechanical, setup, technical, young drivers 8 Comments »The NASCAR Week That Was: Dec. 27-Jan. 3
January 3rd, 2009 Journo Happy New Year! Just 42 days until the Daytona 500 and the after New Years rumors have already begun. Earlier in the week news surfaced that the on-again, off-again Petty Gillett Evernham merger appears to be on again, with the deal in its final stages. The news of the merger came just days after Elliott Sadler’s removal [...]
Article About Us…
January 2nd, 2009 T.C. Journo recently did an interview with Rebecca Gladden over at InsiderRacingNews.com about The NASCAR Insiders. She wrote a great piece about us and the site. If you’d like to check it out, click here for the article. Thanks Rebecca!
Happy New Year
January 1st, 2009 T.C. We just wanted to take a minute today to wish everyone a very Happy New Year! It’s been a great first 8 months or so here at The NASCAR Insiders, and we plan on keeping the momentum going into 2009. Thanks to everyone who continues to make this little project a lot of fun!
