2016 Sprint Cup Year In Review
The season started off with Denny Hamlin winning the Daytona 500. He wound up finishing sixth place in the points with three wins.
Jimmie Johnson though finished off the season with the victory in Miami and his seventh Championship tying Richard Petty and Dale Earnhardt Sr. for most championships in the series.
Tony Stewart was in his final season of racing. He was sideline for the first eight races of the season with an off season injury, but was still able to make the chase by getting one win.
Dale Earnhardt Jr. and his concussions came back again. It sidelined him for half a season. This caused so called retired driver Jeff Gordon to come back for 8 races and got two top tens. Alex Bowman though got in ten races in the car and get three top tens.
Chris Buescher become the lone surprise entrant in the chase as he won a rare fog shortened Pocono race that had to be run on a Monday.
Clint Bowyer had a wreck of a season as he spent one full season in the HScott Motorsports ride before moving over to the Tony Stewart ride. He only had three top tens all season long.
The silly season was not so silly this year, but both Roush Fenway Racing and Richard Petty Motorsports lost a driver as Brian Scott surprising announced his retirement and Greg Biffle left his ride right after the season was over.
The big major rule change of the year was the lug nut rules. It was so controversial that is got extra changes throughout the season to not punish drivers with a points penalty for just one missing lug nut.
Sprint was in the final year of a title sponsorship. As the season went on NASCAR did not announce would be the title sponsor and still have not announced it.
Furniture Row Racing announced that it was moving to two teams next season adding Erik Jones as a driver.
2016 Xfinity Series in review:
Chase Elliott got the Xfinisty season off to a great start with the win at Daytona.
Daniel Suarez though finished the season on the high note by winning the championship besting out his teammate Erik Jones. Daniel becomes the first ever Mexican born driver to win a major NASCAR title.
The big xFinity rule change this year laid the smack down on Sprint Cup drivers and forcing them to only 10 races a year if they have over five years of Sprint Cup experience. Plus no full time Sprint Cup driver can race at Miami even if it is the first full time year in Sprint Cup.
Kyle Busch was a bit to blame for that rules change as he was only in 17 races for the season, but won 10 races in 2016.
The worst weather of the season came at Mid-Ohio where the Xfinity drivers had to race in very rainy weather for two parts of the race. A part time driver in Justin Marks was able to survive all the messy weather and win the race.
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