Furniture Row Racing, the Colorado-based NASCAR team that won the Monster Energy Cup championship last year with Martin Truex Jr, will shut down at the end of the 2018 season. In a statement, team owner Barney Visser explained that it's all due to a lack of funding, following the departure of one of the team's largest sponsors, 5-Hour Energy.

"The numbers just don’t add up. I would have to borrow money to continue as a competitive team and I’m not going to do that," Visser said. "This was obviously a painful decision to arrive at knowing how it will affect a number of quality and talented people.

"We’ve been aggressively seeking sponsorship to replace 5-hour Energy and to offset the rising costs of continuing a team alliance with Joe Gibbs Racing but haven’t had any success. I feel that it’s only proper to make the decision at this time to allow all team members to start seeking employment for next year. "

The Circuit of the Americas and Texas Motor Speedway sit three hours apart, and while they both are auto racing venues, not everyone has viewed their coexistence through the lens that a rising tide lifts all boats.

But it appears there is some hope. Starting in 2019, COTA in Austin and TMS in Fort Worth will both host IndyCar Series events.

COTA, a 3.41-mile purpose-built road course that already has Formula One and MotoGP (motorcycle) events, will have its first IndyCar event March 24.

"We don't know how much we will draw from the Dallas-Fort Worth area, but we don't need to rely on DFW in order to exist," COTA founder Bobby Epstein said Tuesday afternoon. "It just enhances success."

The deal only took a few weeks to put together after TMS negotiated a four-year deal with IndyCar that eliminated a non-compete radius that previously had kept IndyCar from racing at COTA. IndyCar reduced its sanction fee for TMS for that non-compete concession.

"It's not that we haven't all flirted with the idea for three or four years, but we thought they needed to work out their situation with Texas Motor Speedway and then we'd be willing to talk to them," Epstein said.

"We wanted them to clear that first and make sure they were able to even have a meaningful conversation. When they came back to us a couple of weeks ago and said they worked something out, things started in earnest."

The COTA race will be more than two months before the TMS race, which is scheduled for June 9.

"I'm surprised that they actually had that big of a radius clause because I don't think the two would be anything but complementary," Epstein said. "Especially spread this many months apart, they're just different events and they're complementary and there's really no reason for them not to both exist."

The NASCAR spring weekend at TMS comes the week following IndyCar at COTA.

"We welcome COTA to the IndyCar Series and congratulate them on adding this event," TMS president Eddie Gossage said in a statement. "I expect they will draw a huge crowd to their first race and that will be good for the sport."

Gossage wasn't as thrilled when hearing last week that Formula One's schedule has its race in Austin on Nov. 3, the same day the NASCAR Cup Series will have a playoff race at TMS.

"Shame on Formula One for doing this to the fans," Gossage said. "Fans have recognized this as the NASCAR date on this weekend since its inception long before Circuit of the Americas was built.

"I would think a lot of fans -- myself included -- would enjoy going to both races. Now Formula One is making fans choose only one. Yet another bad call by Formula 1 showing their infamous indifference toward the fans."

Epstein wasn't as concerned, believing the crossover between the two crowds is minimal.

"I don't think it's as big a deal," Epstein said.

Now that he has an IndyCar race, any chance of NASCAR coming to COTA?

"That's a question for NASCAR," Epstein said. "We want to add carefully and slowly. We spent six years of getting the MotoGP and the Formula One race where they really do well and they work. We want to focus on the IndyCar race [as the new addition] for at least a couple of years."

In NASCAR, teams know they have to cheat to win, and do. But NASCAR decided to reel in its “culture” of cheating this year by throwing out a long-established mindset of not revoking wins from cheating race cars, and for the first time in decades, it happened. NASCAR overturned a victory after the race.

The sanctioning body made an example of driver Ross Chastain’s No. 44 team after the rain-delayed Truck Series race at Iowa Speedway on Sunday, announcing soon after the 200-mile race ended that its dominant driver, Chastain, was disqualified for failing post-race technical inspection.

This is a big one. NASCAR’s records show the last winner to be disqualified, at least in its top Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series, came in 1960. (The most recent Cup Series disqualification in general was 1973.)

Chastain’s truck, NASCAR’s announcement said, was way too low in the front:

The team is appealing the penalty “in an expedited process,” NASCAR said, and the team itself that it believes race damage left the truck too low.

The DQ gave second-place finisher and 2018 series champion Brett Moffitt the victory, and dropped Chastain to last in the finishing order.

NASCAR’s tried everything to avoid physically taking a trophy away and giving it to another driver, until it announced this year that it would finally disqualify cheating teams. There were workarounds to still punish teams for cheating, like “encumbered” finishesand taking away all of the benefits of a winbut keeping the “winning” driver’s name on a trophy and at the top of the results sheet.

For anyone who’s followed NASCAR between roughly 1973 and now, though, it’s almost hard to believe a driver actually got disqualified. Teams readily admit that cheating, no matter how big or small, is part of the deal. NASCAR has long stuck to its mentality that people attending a race “should go home having seen the winner”—an idea that’s become antiquated as news has become more instant, and less about reading the headlines in the next day’s paper.

NASCAR could introduce hybrid powered cars as early as 2022, NASCAR’s SVP for Racing Development John Probst told TechCrunch.

The auto-racing series — which is America’s most popular motorsport — opened up on the development of competition vehicles powered by gas and electricity.

“We travel the world visiting other sanctioning bodies and are not ignorant to the fact that the world’s going towards more hybrid technology,” Probst told TechCrunch during a track-side interview at Charlotte Motor Speedway.

“We’re pushing to go full electric. I don’t know where the balance nets out for us long-term, but some form of hybrid technology is certainly on our radar…after 2021,” he said.

A NASCAR rep speaking on background added further clarification saying, “Nothing is fully confirmed until it hits the race track. That said, hybrid tech could certainly be in our cars by 2022, if all plans stay on track.”

NASCAR will wait until after its Next-Gen gas race car guidelines release in 2021. “Trying to do it all at once would be overwhelming,” Probst said.

As for application, NASCAR would likely debut hybrids for racing on shorter courses and those with more turns and braking. That could include technical tracks — such as Watkins Glen or Charlotte Motor Speedway’s Roval — but would not be limited to that.

“We have to research all of this, but I think there are also some deployment options for intermediates and our speedways that can be explored,” Probst said, referring to courses of 1.5 miles or less in length.

Many of NASCAR’s races — like the Daytona 500 — are endurance motorsport events (with multiple pit-stops) held on 1.5 to 2 mile oval tracks.

It could take more time to develop hybrid engine cars for these full-throttle formats, since EVs lose their regenerative braking qualities at steady rates of speed.

NASCAR is still sorting how a race hybrid would come together. “It will likely be some form of electrification parallel with our current internal combustion engine to add power,” Probst said.

Rather than use hybrid technology solely to extend range, NASCAR will look to harness it toward improved performance.

“Braking is typically used as a mechanism to get the power back into the batteries. As far as when you actually apply the power. I think that that’s what we need to study…and work through with our OEMs on how it’s deployed,” Probst said.

NASCAR could find ways to deploy hybrid technology for a supercharged or turbo effect on race cars.

“Is it deployed automatically in some pre-canned strategy? Is it deployed in the form of a button that the driver hits to get extra power to make a pass or complete a pass? Those are all areas that we have to look at,” Probst said.

“I think you could…use the engine to actually do the regen. So the driver gives up an amount of power, knowing that he’s recharging the battery to then strategically use the boost later on in the race.”

However NASCAR configures its hybrid setup, it could have application for EV tech on production cars sold by the race series’ manufacturing partners Ford, Chevy, and Toyota.

“As OEMs, NASCAR looking at a hybrid for the future is of interest to us,” said Pat DiMarco, Ford Performance’s NASCAR Manager.

While what currently runs on the race track is dissimilar to any production vehicle, there’s still a connection from NASCAR to the showroom floor, according to DiMarco.

“The days of old…when we built an engine to go racing and took the the parts off that to put directly into a production car, a lot of that isn’t there,” he said.

But DiMarco noted a number of things Ford teams use in NASCAR — such as systems to improve engine performance and aerodynamics — find their way to engineering teams in Michigan.

“We’ll use the tools here, develop them better in racing, make them more accurate, and everything automatically transfers to production,” he said.

NASCAR champion and current driver Brad Keselowski is long on hybrids in the sport. “I’m a big fan of the technology,” he told TechCrunch between races at Charlotte Motor Speedway.

“One, it gives the sport greater performance potential out of the cars and, two, it gives NASCAR relevance to the marketplace — because nobody will develop this technology harder or faster in motorsports than we will,” Keselowski said.

And the next manufacturer in NASCAR is…? Until recently, that question could be answered by another – ‘When is Dodge coming back?’ But a revised NASCAR technical ethos, and some broader-minded thinking about what the future of the sport should look like, has opened up its game perhaps like never before.

But which brand is most likely to make that move; to join Chevrolet, Ford and Toyota

Let’s join six dots…

1: Adam Stern, highly respected motorsports reporter for Sports Business Journal, reported that a group of high-powered NASCAR executives – including Steve Phelps and Steve O’Donnell – spent time in the Honda Racing hauler at the Indianapolis 500.

2: I was sat in the hospitality seats at Indy for the start of the race when a group of Honda bigwigs happened to sit next to me. Not the regular Honda USA guys – who were of course also present – these gentlemen were motorsport high-ups from Japan (with the requisite fussing over who should sit next to who). Coincidence that they were in town at the same time as the NASCAR folks? Perhaps

3: We know NASCAR has been courting manufacturers outside of its trinity of Chevrolet, Ford and Toyota. We also know that those current manufacturers have been requested to be more accommodating to ‘outsiders’ – to drop their guard when they’d normally be saying ‘having skin in the game is costing us a lot of dollars, why should we help anyone else?’

4: Over dinner with a marketing chief of a current NASCAR manufacturer earlier this year, I casually posed the question: “If you had to bet which manufacturer would be most likely to join NASCAR for Gen-7, which would it be?” His reply, without hesitation, was “Honda”.

5: Jim France is at the head of the NASCAR table, pulling the levers. You only have to look at the number of manufacturers (including Honda’s performance/luxury brand Acura) he’s attracted to his pet project – the IMSA sportscar series – to realise that he’s a very savvy player. And who won the DPi and GTD IMSA titles this year? By another coincidence, it just happened to be Acura.

6: It’s not just the car design fundamentals that NASCAR is changing. Also on the table is the powertrain – which is the number one area of competition between the manufacturers. As Brad Keselowski very eloquently outlined this time last year, the stakeholders are very keen on hybrids being introduced to NASCAR in the non-too-distant future, to ensure its ‘road relevancy’. Many purists might throw up their hands in horror at the thought, but a simple KERS-style system could bring a lot of benefits to the racing show.

Speaking recently, NASCAR’s Phelps said the new engine’s introduction will likely come down to whether the sport’s current manufacturers would prefer 2022 or 2023.

“We do have some time and I think with the existing OEMs and the opportunity to bring in new OEMs with the new engine, they are all aligned with finding some electrification to that engine,” he said. “What the rest of it looks like, we have some time to develop.”

Open development of a homologated, road-based, 500bhp-plus engine with a KERS hybrid system would be a night-and-day change for a ‘new’ manufacturer, otherwise faced with building 300 or so technically-outdated motors every year, each fitted with F1-standard, $30k-a-go valvetrains! The plan is for the number of engines required to be slashed significantly, taking out a huge part of the costs of competition.

But that’s not to say NASCAR wouldn’t remain a V8 racing engine formula – NASCAR simply has to make a mega noise. But even the DTM touring car series in Germany stepped away from V8s this year, and have plans for hybridization in the pipeline (which they just happen to be collaborating with IMSA about).

Conclusion

So those are the strands that can be tied together to make it logical for Honda to be amenable to entering NASCAR in a few years’ time. NASCAR’s timeline to facilitate such a move appears set like this: Get the Gen-7 car rules right in 2021, then address the powertrain from 2022. So the ‘lure’ to the manufacturer right now is this: have your say, sign up, join the party, then we’ll address the powertrain with your input, while ensuring our current manufacturers are on the same page as you.

And on the powertrain subject, I spoke to NASCAR’s senior vice president of innovation and racing development John Probst earlier this year, and he told me: “Our [current] OEMs want to compete using their engine technology. I think from the Cup standpoint for us it would probably make more sense to look at topologies that include probably a combustion engine of some sort in that 500-ish horsepower range, but then also use hybridization, which is now a pretty big topic for OEMs and the population as a whole, so we could see some form of added or incremental horsepower provided to the main powerplant through some electrification.

“But we’re early with that discussion. That is on the radar for sure.”

And who sells the most hybrids on the American car showrooms? Chevrolet, Ford and Toyota are all highly active in this segment – with the latter owning the lion’s share of the market. Meantime, Chevy and Ford have both been rumored in automotive circles to be considering adding hybrid power in the future to its Camaro and Mustang pony cars that it showcases in NASCAR.

Meantime, Honda’s Accord Hybrid is aimed squarely at Toyota’s similar Camry, which also just happens to be its Cup model of choice. Outside of Honda, I reckon Hyundai would also be attracted to this game, being a huge player in this market – and it joined IMSA’s ranks just this year. And don’t forget Dodge too! A lower-cost NASCAR could certainly tempt it back if market conditions are right. And Volkswagen would be cool too…

So manufacturer interest in NASCAR could explode in the long term – and who doesn’t like increased competition? But the key to that, in my eyes, is NASCAR sealing a deal with Honda to set the ball rolling.

Open development of a homologated, road-based, 500bhp-plus engine with a KERS hybrid system would be a night-and-day change for a ‘new’ manufacturer, otherwise faced with building 300 or so technically-outdated motors every year, each fitted with F1-standard, $30k-a-go valvetrains! The plan is for the number of engines required to be slashed significantly, taking out a huge part of the costs of competition.

NASCAR President Steve Phelps provided an optimistic update Sunday about three upcoming key initiatives – the next generation car, a new engine and a schedule overhaul in the 2021 season.

Phelps said NASCAR has already seen improvement in the quality of the racing product this season – particularly at intermediate tracks and superspeedways – and improved ratings and social media engagement

The Cup Series schedule will see some changes, including a new championship race site, next season and NASCAR remains on schedule to introduce its next generation car for the 2021 season.

“I think reasons to go to this new car, one is to take what is great racing, will (have) great racing in 2020, to create better racing. I think this new car will do that,” he said. “Another component certainly is around relevance

“Our OEM partners (manufacturers) were here looking at the showroom car or the street car versus what our race car will look like. It’s going to be extraordinary. We are going to put the 'stock' back in stock car.

“We’ve (been) on the track already at Richmond. We have another test coming up in a couple of weeks.”

Along with the new car, will come a new engine, which Phelps confirmed Sunday would include a hybrid component.

Phelps said it’s a direction NASCAR has to take in order to ensure continued and future car manufacturer support.

“I do think for a new engine, that engine will have some type of electrification, some hybrid that will be part of it. I know for a fact we will not have a new OEM unless we change our engine,” he said. “This engine is going to sound significantly the same as whatever the current engine is.

“We’re not going to have a bunch of electric cars going around. That’s not what this is about. It’s about having a relevant engine to our OE partners, both the existing Ford, Chevy and Toyota, as well as whoever the new OEMs that we’re looking at.

“Ideally, creating a single engine package as opposed to taking an engine and kind of choking the horsepower down, is something that I believe we will ultimately get to.”

Phelps said the schedule changes for next season and the more robust ones being considered for 2021 require NASCAR to ensure they keep the racing competitive at all of its tracks.

Nearly a decade after the NASCAR Xfinity Series traded one of its best races of the year for a much less exciting one at the big oval nearby, Indianapolis Motor Speedway, the series will move to the IMS road course this year. The switch comes a couple of months after racing tycoon Roger Penske bought the track.

It sounds like a decent move, too, if not nearly as good as just going back to the smaller track the series used to run on.

NASCAR and IMS announced the move on Wednesday, saying the second-tier Xfinity Series’ July 4 race this season will be the first time stock cars have done a layout other than the 2.5-mile oval at IMS, while the top-tier Cup Series stays on the big track. IndyCar, for example, typically runs a road-course race at IMS before the big race on the oval, the Indianapolis 500.

The configuration of the course the Xfinity Series will run isn’t final, as NASCAR said in its announcement that driver Matt DiBenedetto will do a preliminary test of a road-course layout next Wednesday. That the test will “will help determine any layout modifications for July’s stock-car debut,” NASCAR said.

This is just one of many moves the Xfinity Series’ Indianapolis date has made in the past decade, as the series moved to IMS from the nearby Lucas Oil Raceway short track in 2012. With that, the Xfinity Indianapolis weekend went from one of the best of the season—seriously, just YouTube it—to enough of a dud that NASCAR had to toss in restrictor plates in 2017 to make it more exciting. It was, but nothing ever really competes with what the weekend used to be.

But the move to the road course seems to have been heavily influenced by the new owner of IMS, as Fox Sports’ Bob Pockrass tweeted that Penske said “fans and media response” will determine what happens after this year:

Teams in NASCAR's Cup series currently use 358 cubic inch pushrod V-8s. Toyota Racing Development, or TRD for short, manufactures and rebuilds the V-8 used by its Cup teams. With large updates in store for the upcoming Next Gen car, we asked TRD's U.S. president David Wilson about possible changes in store, like modernized engines and the possibility of hybrid tech.

Wilson told us that Toyota and the other OEMs are in the “way early days” of discussing engine regulations for the series. In fact, there hasn't been a decision by the OEMs or NASCAR yet that there will even be a new engine. And even if there is a decision on a new engine, Wilson said, whatever they go with is not likely to be production-based. There goes the idea of seeing the engine from the RC F in NASCAR.

The problem with using production engines in NASCAR, Wilson said, is that if the series moved in that direction it would also have to introduce Balance of Performance (BoP). According to Wilson, BoP is a four-letter word in the NASCAR garage.

When they do decide to build a next generation engine, Wilson predicts that it will likely be a more modern design while sticking to a single rule set for all OEMs. Some of these changes could include moving to an aluminum engine block with an overhead cam arrangement and direct injection. This would be a huge departure from the current iron block pushrod engine. While it would not be production based, it would implement more current technology seen on production cars.

Wilson also told us that Chevy, Toyota, and Ford are already aligned on a hybrid component for the Cup cars. This is something that has been very well received within Toyota as the company has plans to offer some sort of electrification on every model it builds by 2025.

Wilson said it's likely that a hybrid would debut before new engine regulations. The type of hybrid he thinks it'll be is a P-2 and includes an electric motor driven off the transaxle. Much like we predicted last year.

One of the big questions about implementing a hybrid for the Cup series has been how the system will work on tracks with minimal braking, since that would impact battery regen. Wilson said that he only sees the hybrid being deployed for about half the tracks on the schedule because of the lack of braking.

Wilson sees road courses and short tracks as the real application for the technology as they want to be able to make good use of the technology. He states that they are in the early days of developing this technology but that he sees a tactical deployment of the tech for certain situations and that it could add a whole new element to the race strategy and to the entertainment from a fan perspective. He also stated that they want a system that is powerful but also balances out to a reasonable cost while keeping with the safety paradigm of the sport. Along those lines, he believes that a 90 to 95 kilowatt system would do the job. That metric roughly converts to something in the 120 to 130 horsepower range from the electric system.

Wilson said that Toyota wants the hybrid components to be “powerful enough to be credible” and that they are not interested in hybridization for driving slowly "around the garage or pit lane.” Toyota's goal is to be able to use it in the right races as part of the strategy. One of the strategies Wilson liked for the electrification would be a “push to pass” system.

Toyota is also working with IMSA in their discussions for hybrid components. Wilson did not elaborate on Toyota's potential future involvement in IMSA, but the current models planned for hybrid tech are in the top prototype categories. With the recent WEC/IMSA convergence announcement, that means it's possible that Toyota might be considering an entry in the new LMDh class or could even run its hypercar class racer in America.

But for NASCAR, while the Next Gen car promises a lot of change for entrant, the teams can have some comfort knowing that they won’t have to invest in new engines right away.

NASCAR driver Ryan Newman continues to recover from the injuries he suffered during the horrifying accident at the end of the 2020 Daytona 500 earlier this month, and after leaving the hospital just days after the accident, Newman has been able to resume many of his normal activities. Newman is being treated for an unspecified head injury, but fortunately did not suffer any other internal injuries.

He was forced to miss last Sunday's race in Las Vegas, and was replaced by Ross Chastain, and there currently is not a timetable for Newman's return to the Cup Series. Chastain will fill in for Newman again this weekend at Auto Club Speedway in California.

Newman enjoyed a bit of "therapy" earlier this week, and posted a photo of himself fishing. On Wednesday, Roush Fenway Racing shared that Newman visited the team's shop for the first time since the accident, and received an ovation from the crew and staff.