NASCAR Cup Series

Jeff Burton, driver of the No. 31 @CATMining Chevrolet, will make his 1,000th-career NASCAR start when the Sprint Cup Series heads to Phoenix International Raceway on Sunday, Nov. 10, 2013.

Phoenix International Raceway may be 2,000 miles from his house in North Carolina, but the racetrack in the desert feels like home to David Gilliland. The driver of the No. 38 Long John Silver's Ford is a west coast native and spent several years racing the one-mile oval in Avondale, Ariz., earlier in his racing career.

If he could, Josh Wise would push the fast-forward button on the aging of the track surface at Phoenix International Raceway. The driver of the No. 35 MDS Transport Ford enjoys tracks with the character that comes with aging, and he is eager for that process to happen on the recently repaved one-mile oval.

Phoenix International Raceway might only be a one-mile track, but David Ragan considers it more of a speedway than a short track these days, and that's how he and his No. 34 team will approach it for this weekend's Sprint Cup Series race.

As the race for the six shooters and black cowboy hat moved from afternoon into evening, here is what was surprising and not surprising...

Sometimes you have a test that doesn’t go anything like you hoped. Other times, you have a test and everything goes that way. That was the case for Jimmie Johnson, Chad Knaus and the No. 48 team as the test they had following Talladega at Texas paid off for them.

There was the bursting of the bubble that had Jeff Gordon as an actual Cup contender. When his tire blew, when his car slammed into the fence, when he left with just a couple of points to his credit, that fantasy came to an end. To be honest, even if he had ran tenth, it would have mattered little.

Phoenix International Raceway has announced the operating schedule for its Park & Ride program and is encouraging race fans to take advantage of the shuttle service when traveling to and from AdvoCare 500, the semifinal race in the Chase for the NASCAR Sprint Cup on Sunday, Nov 10.

The opening Chase race at Chicagoland may be a distant memory for Dale Earnhardt Jr., but after posting his third runner-up finish in eight Chase races in Sunday's AAA Texas 500 at Texas Motor Speedway its impact continues to haunt him.

Jimmie Johnson captured his 66th career win on Sunday afternoon at Texas Motor Speedway after completely dominating the day. The point’s standings were the picture on...