NASCAR Cup Series

KYLE BUSCH, No. 18 M&M's Red, White & Blue Toyota Camry, Joe Gibbs Racing - You could become the eighth driver to sweep the Charlotte race weekend. What would that mean to you? "It would certainly mean a lot. That's what we come to the race track to do is to try to win each and every weekend. But it's been a long, long time since I won at Charlotte, which was never in a Cup car, so finally we got that out of the way, and now we look forward to hopefully being able to make it back‑to‑back. We'll see how it goes. I thought we had some speed there to fire off with practice. A lot of guys kind of caught up to us and got a lot faster, so we've got to gain a little bit more in order to be where we need to."

RYAN BLANEY – No. 21 Motorcraft/Quick Lane Ford Fusion – ARE YOU DUE ON SUNDAY? “I don’t know if you’d call it due. We’ve been pretty strong on mile-and-a-halves this year, which has been a lot of fun to drive the race cars because they’ve been so fast. Last week in the Open and the All-Star Race, we struggled pretty bad all weekend for some reason and could never really get to where we wanted to be.

JIMMIE JOHNSON, NO. 48 LOWE’S CHEVROLET SS, met with members of the media at Charlotte Motor Speedway and discussed voting for the NASCAR Hall of Fame class of 2018, why he and the No. 48 team are so good at Charlotte Motor Speedway and many other topics.

Sponsor this weekend: "This weekend we'll have Harris Teeter ExpressLane on our No. 47 Chevy," Allmendinger said. "You can save time and do your grocery shopping online and pick up using their ExpressLane. Check it out!"

Ryan Reed will have Alan Burgess, retired USAF Major, riding along with him this Saturday afternoon at Charlotte Motor Speedway. Burgess’s name will appear over the passenger side of Reed’s No. 16 Lilly Diabetes Ford Mustang in honor of NASCAR Salutes initiatives over the Memorial Day weekend.

Change. Sometimes change is good, like when you win a few million dollars. That is good. You get married to your sweetheart. Good. Your children start arriving. If you are a mature adult, and not some self-serving narcissist, that is very good. New talented drivers emerge on the scene. That is also a good thing.

The inaugural Coca-Cola 600, originally named the World 600, was held in 1960 and won by Joe Lee Johnson, the 1959 NASCAR Convertible Series champion. It was his second victory and the final win of his Cup career. Did you know he was the first of 32 different drivers to capture what has become one of NASCAR’s most sought-after trophies?

This Sunday NASCAR celebrates Memorial Day with the 58th running of the Coca-Cola 600 at Charlotte Motor Speedway. The race will be broadcast at 6 p.m. Sunday evening, on the FOX network. The XFINITY Series will be on track Saturday for the Hisense 4K TV 300 on FS1.

The season is now almost a third over and so much has happened. Attendance is up at some tracks and way down at others. The new stages concept has given us better racing, but many are just staying away. Some of the gimmicks NASCAR has tried in order to generate interest have worked and some have not.

NASCAR announced today the inductees who will comprise the NASCAR Hall of Fame Class of 2018. The five-person group – the ninth since the inception of the NASCAR Hall of Fame in 2010 – consists of Red Byron, Ray Evernham, Ron Hornaday Jr., Ken Squier and Robert Yates. In addition, NASCAR announced that Jim France earned the Landmark Award for Outstanding Contributions to NASCAR.