Nascar

For sale: Prime real estate on the hood of cars driven by former Cup champions Tony Stewart and Jeff Gordon. Gordon and Stewart, who have six championships between them, are NASCAR's two biggest stars looking for additional sponsorship for next season. They're chasing corporate America's dollars just as much they're driving for a title over the 10-race Chase for the Sprint Cup championship. Corporate sponsors have dried up to the point that Kyle Busch says he may have to fold his truck team next season.

The motors were running at the Kansas Motor Speedway as NASCAR brought their best drivers to Kansas City this weekend. Eyewitness News reporter Karl Man reports on how an a Kansas native is bringing an alternative fuel to the track.    

NASCAR's top series has shifted to scenic wine country and its first of two races this season on a road course. But the talk at Infineon Raceway wasn't about the twists and turns of the winding track, or the road course ringers who show up hoping for a rare victory. Instead, the discussion was on Carl Edwards and his contract negotiations, and the announcement that Red Bull is leaving NASCAR at the end of the season. Edwards is the key to free agency, as most teams are waiting to see if he'll re-sign with Roush-Fenway Racing.

NASCAR's competition applications for 2011 require drivers to select which series they will race for a championship in this season. The requirement first was reported by NASCAR.com, which spoke to driver Kenny Wallace about the application he filled out last weekend. Wallace confirmed the requirement in a post on his Twitter page. The move will not allow Sprint Cup drivers to race for championships in both Sprint Cup and Nationwide. The move is not a surprise because NASCAR has openly discussed implementing ways to give its second-tier Nationwide Series its own identity.

NAsCAR president Mike Helton held a morning press conference in the Kansas Speedway Media Center, confirming there was an incident between Kyle Busch and Richard Childress. Helton would not talk about the details of what happened. Reports have been flying on the internet since about 30 minutes after Saturday's truck race at the Kansas Speedway that Childress hit Busch after post race contact between Busch's truck and the RCR truck driven by Joey Coulter. Childress will have restrictions on where he can and cant go in the garage area during Sunday's race and NASCAR officials say it would been unlikely that you will see Childress anywhere other than on top of his team haulers.

There was no shortage of fans, expecting an autograph from Emporia-native Clint Bowyer in Wichita early Tuesday evening. The NASCAR star was at the east side Menard's store, from 6:00 - 8:00 p.m. Eyewitness Sports reporter Grant Meech was there as Bowyer signed autographs. Grant estimates Bowyer probably signed one thousand autographs. Bowyer is having a decent year.  He placed 6th last week in Richmond. Up next, he'll race in Darlington, South Carolina.

NASCAR chairman Brian France wants to stay away from gimmicks when it comes to improving the on-track product.     Make no mistake, France wants the best racing possible. But to get there, he's ignoring a call from track promoter Bruton Smith to implement mandatory cautions during races.     France instead has dispatched top NASCAR personnel to work with teams to determine how the racing can be improved.     Although the storylines are heating up as the push begins to set the 12-driver Chase for the Sprint Cup championship field, fans have been split on how they view the racing this season.

On Saturday, June 9 th , Eyewitness Sports Reporter Heather Williams received two 2012 Heart of America Awards. The awards were given from the KC Press Club Society of Professional Journalists in recognition of “the best journalism by the best journalists in Western Missouri and Eastern Kansas”. Williams' two awards include a silver in the online Blog category for “The Backstretch Blog” which is a regularly updated blog on KWCH.com. She also won a bronze in Small Market sports for “Clint Bowyer's Racing Roots”.

Why in the year 2011 doesn't every NASCAR sanctioned track have safer barriers (also known as soft walls)? I mean did you see that last lap crash started by Boris Said that slammed David Ragan and David Reuttiman into walls with no safer barriers? Surethey both walked away. But that doesn't negate the fact that NASCAR is playing with fire by continuing to race at tracks that don't have the latest safety features. "It's a shame that a race track that we go to in 2011 doesn't have a better wall design all the way around the racetrack," Ragan said after the race.

So it's day two of the NASCAR Media Tour and while today's stops have included visits with Roush Fenway and Earnhardt Ganassi racing, maybe the biggest stop of the day was a trip to the Charlotte Motor Speedway for the unveiling of the new 2013 Ford Cup car. Behind the scene photos It has long been a complaint of many people that NASCAR has totally lost touch with it's roots when it comes to the car. This is, after all the National...

In case you haven't noticed, the NASCAR police has been very busy over the last week or so. From Penske to Gibbs, names that have not normally been in the spotlight are getting busted too. So is NASCAR being unusually harsh on teams? "We've got the rules in play," said NASCAR VP of Competion Robin Pemberton. "They're put there a lot of times by NASCAR, but with input from the teams, manufacturers and outside experts, and it's our job to manage those rules and manage that rule book as it relates to the garage area.

Johnny Sauter lost the Truck Series points lead Wednesday after NASCAR penalized him for an illegal fuel cell at Kansas. Sauter was docked 25 points by NASCAR. It knocked him from first place into a second-place tie with Jeb Burton, 13 points behind new leader Matt Crafton.         Crafton and Sauter are teammates at ThorSport Racing.         The illegal fuel cell was found on the No. 98 Toyota during an opening day inspection and was not used in the race.

After failing a post-race inspection of his Kansas Speedway engine, winner Matt Kenseth has been hit with a massive penalty. Kenseth loses 50 drivers points, his pole will not count toward entry into next season's Sprint Unlimited, nor with the win count toward chase bonus points or a Wild Card spot in the chase. But it's gets worse for his crew chief and owner. Crew Chief Jason Ratliff has been fined $200,000, suspended for six weeks and put on probation until December 31. Owner JD Gibbs also loses 50 owners points and is suspended for six weeks.

We are now eight races into the NASCAR season and Tony Stewart is 21st in the standings, yes I had to look twice. It is 21st. What's worse is, it's not as if he has had bad luck, he's finished every race. But he only has one top ten. In simplest terms...Where in the world is NASCAR's Tony Stewart? Out to lunch. It's not just Smoke, his entire race team seams to be way off, Ryan Newman is 17th in points, Danica Patrick is 25th. It's particularly disturbing for Stewart, who is just two seasons removed from a championship and hasn't finished out of the top 10 in points since 2006, when he was 11th.

This week was already emotional for five time Sprint Cup Series Champion Jimmie Johnson. I mean it was emotional for everyone, the photos from Boston were both chilling and heartbreaking. But Johnson had a personal connection to the events, he had met one of the runners who was injured in Monday's bombing, Nicole Gross. "I think everyone dealt with grief and sadness and shock," said Johnson. "She's a swim coach and works with a lot of people. That hit home for me, I was like wow I know who that is. " But as the story continued its bizarre and tragic twists and turns, it became even more personal for Johnson and his Hendrick Motorsports teammates.

Brad Keselowski is pretty angry with NASCAR these days.         After another top-10 finish in Texas, the defending Sprint Cup champion says what he's seen lately has him questioning everything he believes in. He's not happy about it. Before Saturday night's race, NASCAR confiscated the original rear-end housing from Keselowski's No. 2 Ford and the No. 22 of Joey Logano, his Penske Racing teammate. That could lead to penalties, including possibly suspensions, the loss of championship points and/or fines.

It was 49 years ago that NASCAR denied Wendell Scott what he earned the first time. If you are not familiar with the legacy of Scott, he was the first African American driver (and to date the only) to win a NASCAR race. it was 1964. The south was going through the growing pains of integration and NASCAR, with is southern roots and confederate flags, was one of the last bastions of the old south. That is until a brash racer from Virginia decided he wanted to race. It was not easy for Scott, he usually raced with out of date or hand me down equipment, and many of the other drivers didn't want him on the track.

If you are a hardcore race fan, then have probably heard by now that NASCAR fined driver Denny Hamlin $25,000 on Thursday for criticizing the new car. Hamlin was asked after Sunday's race at Phoenix how he liked the car, and he answered that he didn't want to be a "pessimist, but it did not race as good as our generation five cars. This is more like what the generation five was at the beginning. " In a statement released with the penalty announcement, NASCAR spokesperson Kerry Tharpe said in part, "While NASCAR gives its competitors ample leeway in voicing their opinions when it comes to a wide range of aspects about the sport, the sanctioning body will not tolerate publicly made comments by its drivers that denigrate the racing product.” What I don't get is, doesn't it help NASCAR if drivers are honest about what is going on out on the track?

So 2013 is already out to a better start for Clint Bowyer than 2012 did. A seventh place finish at Phoenix has the 15 car fifth in the standings two weeks in. After everything that happened, it was a decent day," said Bowyer. "We got up there and got position.  I thought we were going to have at least a top-five car. " NASCAR now heads to Las Vegas, a so-so track for Bowyer. In seven starts he has one top five and three top tens. But since moving over to Michael Waltrip Racing, Bowyer has improved at a lot of tracks that he used to no perform at. And he is excited about his car this weekend.

Saturday night NASCAR drops the green flag on its 2013 season and unveils a new generation of race car. It promises fans a return to the days where race cars were stock cars and looked like the cars we drive every day. The new cars are supposed to look more like the first generation cars, which first hit the track in 1949. See the 6 Generations of NASCAR Sprint Cup Series Cars Large scale racing has been around for almost 40 years. But the idea of racing cars straight off the show room floor was relatively new. NASCAR (National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing)