It seems like lately we’re losing a lot of motorsports legends, including Ken Black of NHRA Pro Stock drag racing fame. Black passed away on August 26 at the age of 79, leaving behind him a legacy of automotive performance excellence and a successful race team that’s still going.
Learn about the Dodge Challenger mysteriously abandoned in a cornfield.
As a motorsports pioneer, Black helped get NHRA Pro Stock off the ground, then pushed the competition to new heights. Not only did he give six-time world champion Greg Anderson his start, he also shepherded another world champ, Jason Line. His team, KB Racing, helped build units for many other racers and is still churning out powerful cars as KB Titan Racing.
Himself a drag racer, Black cut his teeth at a drag strip when he was a teenager. While still in high school, in 1964 he entered his first race with a Chevy II Nova SS at Stardust International Raceway in Las Vegas, winning that faceoff. Bitten by the bug, he kept racing.
Later, after marrying his sweetheart Judy, the couple built a successful construction business in Las Vegas. Black used that financial success to fund his endeavors on the track. In fact, Vegas General Construction was on the side of his racecars, including on Greg Anderson’s Pro Stock car when he snagged his first win at Bristol back in 2001.
Back in 2014, Black was inducted into the Southern Nevada Sports Hall of Fame.
KB Titan Racing released an official statement about Ken Black’s passing, which reads in part, “It is with great sadness that we say goodbye to our dear friend, our coach, and the man who built KB Racing. His legacy will live on through our racing program, but more importantly, through each of the lives he touched. We are who we are because of him.”
With the 2026 NASCAR Cup Series season just over a month away, teams are already hitting the track for crucial preseason testing. This week, one driver from each chartered organization will participate in a dedicated test at the historic North Wilkesboro Speedway — the short track north of Charlotte — to evaluate NASCAR’s new higher-horsepower package.
The test focuses on the updated configuration for short tracks (under 1.5 miles) and road courses, where baseline horsepower jumps from 670 to 750. This increase, first announced by NASCAR in October, pairs with reduced downforce through smaller three-inch rear spoilers and fewer strakes on the rear diffuser. The changes aim to boost tire wear, enhance driver control, and deliver more exciting racing by putting more emphasis on skill behind the wheel.
The one-day session at the revived 0.625-mile oval — which returns to the points-paying schedule in 2026 with its first regular-season race in 30 years on July 19 — offers teams an early look at how the package performs in real-world conditions.
Several storylines add extra intrigue to the test:
– Daniel Suárez will make his on-track debut with his new team, Spire Motorsports, after switching rides following the 2025 season. North Wilkesboro marks his first laps in the No. 7 Chevrolet. – Two organizations — Rick Ware Racing and Haas Factory Team — will run Chevrolet for the first time in the Gen-7 era after switching from Ford and securing technical alliances with Richard Childress Racing and Hendrick Motorsports, respectively.
Here is the complete list of confirmed drivers participating:
– Ross Chastain – No. 1 Trackhouse Racing Chevrolet – Daniel Suárez – No. 7 Spire Motorsports Chevrolet – Kyle Busch – No. 8 Richard Childress Racing Chevrolet – Chase Elliott – No. 9 Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet – AJ Allmendinger – No. 16 Kaulig Racing Chevrolet – Chris Buescher – No. 17 RFK Racing Ford – Chase Briscoe – No. 19 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota – Josh Berry – No. 21 Wood Brothers Racing Ford – Joey Logano – No. 22 Team Penske Ford – Zane Smith – No. 38 Front Row Motorsports Ford – Cole Custer – No. 41 Haas Factory Team Chevrolet – Erik Jones – No. 43 Legacy Motor Club Toyota – Tyler Reddick – No. 45 23XI Racing Toyota – Ricky Stenhouse Jr. – No. 47 Hyak Motorsports Chevrolet – Cody Ware – No. 51 Rick Ware Racing Chevrolet
This test serves as an important early checkpoint for teams preparing for the revamped rules package that will shape racing action across multiple venues in the upcoming season. Fans can expect more driver-focused competition and potentially closer battles as the changes take effect. The 2026 Cup Series kicks off soon — stay tuned for updates from North Wilkesboro!
An eyewitness to NASCAR legend Greg Biffle’s plane crash harrowingly claimed that “there is nobody alive” during a haunting 911 call.
On the morning of Dec. 18, a private jet owned by Biffle burst into flames upon attempting to make an emergency landing at Statesville Regional Airport in North Carolina. NASCAR confirmed that Biffle, along with his wife Cristina and their children Ryder and Emma, lost their lives in the crash, as did Dennis Dutton, his son Jack, and Craig Wadsworth.
The devastating news sent shockwaves through the racing community, with tributes pouring in from current and retired drivers alike, including Denny Hamlin and Richard Petty.
Moments after Biffle’s Cessna 550 Citation II erupted in a blazing fireball, a witness called first responders to inform them that the plane was “down and burning.” The individual described the scene as a “pretty big-sized fireball, a lot of black smoke,” before adding: “Whoever was on the plane probably didn’t make it. It’s a big fireball.”
When asked to elaborate on what occurred, the caller revealed that the aircraft was “fully engulfed” by flames. “I can see the tail section, but the rest of the plane…. Looks like a small private jet,” he said.
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The witness expressed little confidence that any passengers on board the jet could’ve survived the crash, stating: “There is nobody alive. There’s no way they could survive it. Looks like it hit short of the runway. Here comes the fire engines.”
As of writing, the official cause of the plane crash that took the lives of Biffle, his family, and three other passengers remains undetermined by authorities. Federal investigators began probing the wreckage of the Cessna 550 Citation II on December 19.
The National Transportation Safety Board reported that the aircraft had taken off from Statesville Regional Airport bound for Florida but attempted to return about 15 minutes into the flight.
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A joint statement issued by the families of the victims read: “We are devastated by the loss of our loved ones. This tragedy has left all of our families heartbroken beyond words. Greg and Cristina were devoted parents and active philanthropists whose lives were centered around their young son Ryder and Greg’s daughter Emma (mother – Nicole Lunders). Emma was a wonderful human being with a kind soul who was loved by many people. Ryder was an active, curious and infinitely joyful child.
“Dennis Dutton and his son Jack were deeply loved as well, and their loss is felt by all who knew them. Craig Wadsworth was beloved by many in the NASCAR community and will be missed by those who knew him. Each of them meant everything to us, and their absence leaves an immeasurable void in our lives.”
Off the back of a much-improved 2025 campaign which yielded a comfortable fifth place in the Formula 1 world constructors’ standings, Williams is now a team that is looking up rather than over down.
Over the past 18 months the Grove-based squad harvested bountiful low-hanging fruit that was holding it back, and that meant that while its aerodynamic development has largely been focused on 2026 and beyond, it still found ways to improve its performance level with the FW47, guided by its experienced driver line-up of Alex Albon and Ferrari hire Carlos Sainz.
But while Williams’ trajectory has been likened to that of world champion McLaren three or four years ago, when the Woking-based squad was embarking on a similar rebuild, Vowles is also the first to admit Williams remains a work in progress and is not ready for life at the very top of F1 yet.
That’s why he sees 2026’s wholesale regulations changes as a big opportunity for Williams to take the next steps in its large-scale overhaul rather than the final exam of whether his team has succeeded.
“I think it’s harder within the current regulations set to be finding performance relative to others, when you’re constrained by perhaps a way of thinking or a construct you’ve had before, whereas 2026 really is just a clean sheet of paper, so you’re able to approach it a very different way,” Vowles explained to Motorsport.com in an exclusive interview.
“But I don’t think it’s an acid test. I think it’s just a continuation of the journey. I think, if anything, the opportunity to scrap a few things and start again gives us a bit of a leg up.”
Williams took two podiums with Carlos Sainz in Baku and Qatar as part of a much-improved 2025 campaign
Photo by: Andy Hone/ LAT Images via Getty Images
That journey has involved plenty of ups and downs, including the humiliation of not being able to field two cars in 2024’s Japanese Grand Prix due to a lack of spare chassis. At the time Williams was fighting to produce two cars that were on weight and on the same specification, an uncomfortable situation that it fully addressed for 2025.
It is just one public example of how its many behind-the-scenes changes have addressed some of the structural issues Vowles identified after joining from top team Mercedes, and the other is a – very limited – upgrade programme that showed the Grove factory was operating much more efficiently than before. But Vowles suggested the general lack of 2025 aero development was also an opportunity to focus on other areas, giving the team the freedom to use the 2025 season to experiment.
“We’ve only put a couple of weeks of aerodynamic development into the 2025 car during the year,” he said. “But what we’ve been working on instead is: ‘Do we have the right balance? Do we have the right way of working the tyres? Do we have the right way of communicating with the drivers? Do we have the right differential tools? All those are zero cost. They’re just about using a product in a different way to what we had before.
“Quite a bit of performance that was locked away has been coming out of that, and that’s what I’ve been focused on.
“It’s what I like about our sport. You constrain yourself in one way by not putting any more development in this car, but I give you the freedom every weekend to go out there and try something different. As long as it is backed up by logic and has a data-driven mechanism behind it, then I’m fine to support it and try it. And that’s what we’ve been doing, and it’s working. You could see across the year how, despite the car not changing, we were moving forward.”
More “honest” Williams ready for more change
That kind of approach is only possible within a transparent organisation. One of the biggest changes Vowles has had to make since taking over at Grove is stamping out the team’s previous blame culture and providing the “psychological safety” for departments to be brutally honest rather than fool itself.
“It’s very easy for you to produce a report that says I’ve added two tenths of performance this week through X, Y and Z – not validated, not backed up, not checked,” he explained.
Alex Albon, Williams
Photo by: Andrew Ferraro / LAT Images via Getty Images
“And actually, what we do now is very robust, peer reviewed checks on what performance we’re adding, how it’s adding, and it’s what I call honest, correct accounting. In aerodynamics, all too often you have something called drift, and there’s two ways to deal with drift. You can just go: ‘That’s our new benchmark’. Or you go: ‘No, I’ve lost a point, and I’m going to get that point back.’
“And we’re very good here at doing what I think is honest accounting because of the psychological safety and belief in the culture to do so.
“I’m giving you a lot of detail, but actually the biggest change is we have a culture that is ready for more. We know we’re not at a championship level yet, but that scrutiny we apply to ourselves allows us to be stronger.”
Any change is difficult at first, but the results Vowles’ approach has been yielding means the Williams’ organisation has become much more amenable to it.
“As an organisation the first change you make is hard, but then you become more agile and more accommodating to it as you see that the change is net beneficial,” he explained. “So I’d actually say globally, we’ve changed more in 2025 than we did in 2023 and 2024, but the business is also ready for it.
“And now we have a really interesting situation where the business is going: ‘Okay, what next? What else do we do? Let’s go.’ It’s great. And now we have to move faster than we did before.”
F1 2026 rules ‘in a good place’
Quite how that will pan out for Williams in 2026 is anyone’s guess right now, and it will likely take several races into the new campaign to have a clear picture of F1’s new world order.
James Vowles, Team Principal, Williams Racing
Photo by: Shameem Fahath / Motorsport Network
“This is just guesswork,” Vowles said. “But clearly, we won’t see the same gaps we had in 2025 where a few tenths separates a few cars. But conversely, it won’t be anywhere near 2014 where there’s like three and a half seconds, it’ll be somewhere between the two.
“That said, there’ll be a couple of teams who have now done a power unit for the first time, have done a car for the first time. It really is hard and competitive now. Let’s be completely blunt, that’s why we fell back to 10th for a period of time.
“I think the gaps will be a couple of seconds front to back, but I still think you’ll have competition at the sharp end, which is a good point. And the sport has understood that we need competition, so therefore we will close the regulations up in a way that will create that.”
He added: “I think the regulations are in a good place now. I’m sure we’re going to see overtaking, it just won’t be in the places you normally expect it to be, because it is an electrical energy chess game that you’ll be playing.
“But I think it’s worth saying the regulations from where they were when we were talking in Montreal in 2024 [when they were first revealed by the FIA] to where they are today are quite different, and it’s produced a much better package.”
Alex Bowman may not have stockpiled wins like his teammates Kyle Larson, Chase Elliott, or William Byron, but he has shown quite a consistency in both speed and progression across various types of tracks. His quantum leap into Hendrick Motorsports traces directly back to Dale Earnhardt Jr., who first spotted his potential.
In 2016, when Junior’s injuries sidelined him for an extended stretch, he pushed Bowman’s name forward to drive his No. 88 HMS machine. Bowman subsequently filled in for Jeff Gordon to secure his No. 48 Hendrick Motorsports seat. During a recent conversation with HOT ROD Pod, Bowman credited Dale Jr. for opening doors at Hendrick Motorsports, while acknowledging his good fortune.
His Cup Series tenure dates back to 2014, though his first campaign saw him piloting a No. 23 Toyota for BK Racing, a smaller outfit. The following season brought a shift to Tommy Baldwin Racing. Neither stint produced meaningful results, leaving Bowman searching for traction.
Reflecting on that watershed moment, Bowman recounted the sequence of events. “I qualified next to Dale at like Richmond, I think, and we were riding around the truck pre-race together, talking about I was trying to get in some good Xfinity cars at the end of that year and have some good races cuz running for small teams was definitely rough.”
“He had some openings at JRM the end of that year that I was able to get into. Kind of took off from there.” The stars aligned when Junior’s injury created an unexpected vacancy. “So obviously, crazy set of circumstances, with him getting hurt. I was driving the Sim for Hendrick at the time. Dale was a big supporter of mine and called me and kind of forced Hendrick to use me…”
“I feel like, because we all found out so late. But super fortunate to get to fill in for him and then share the car with some guy named Jeff Gordon for the rest of the year, which was wild to me. And somehow I’m still here.”
Bowman’s most recent Cup win came at the Chicago Street race in 2024, marking one and a half seasons since he last tasted victory. But across nine campaigns with HMS, he has missed the playoffs just once, in 2023, when a back injury sustained during a sprint car accident forced him to sit out three races.
Last season presented challenges as well. Though winless, the 32-year-old recovered a 13th-place finish in the final standings. His best performance last season came in Mexico, where he competed despite nursing injuries from a crash at Michigan International Speedway the previous weekend.
Racing at less than full strength in NASCAR’s inaugural Cup Series event in Mexico City, Bowman clawed from P29 on the grid to P4 at Autódromo Hermanos Rodríguez, claiming his third top-five result of the year.
Gordon and the entire HMS operation maintain faith in Bowman’s abilities and ceiling. But only the upcoming season will bring answers to their confidence as Bowman adapts to the new Chevrolet body and higher horsepower.
The Chili Bowl Midget Nationals ended for one expected contender before it could even begin.
Buddy Kofoid has made the Championship Saturday main event five times in six attempts with Keith Kunz Motorsports but an illness is going to keep him away from the Tulsa Expo Center this week.
After winning 18 times in a 410 Sprint Car across numerous tours in 2025, and becoming the richest (in terms of winnings) driver in the discipline, Kofoid looked poised to challenge for a Golden Driller this week.
Instead, the No. 71W will not idle this week as Kunz told Motorsport.com at the Expo that there are ‘no plans’ to fill the seat despite making some calls when it became apparent that Kofoid couldn’t make it.
Kofoid has won prelims in 2022 and 2024. He finished second in the main event in 2024. He finished sixth in the main event last year. He is one of the most prolific drivers in the building.
Ultimately, it’s one less major contender for those hoping to lock in on Friday night.
Pretty standard day, but …
For everyone else, it was a largely procedural practice day, even if the track was not reflective of what it will be the rest of the week.
It was especially slick and tricky, as best articulated by USAC National Midget champion, and perennial contender Cannon McIntosh.
“You know, this track is very unique,” McIntosh said. “It’s small. We got the berm, which is, you don’t run a berm very often throughout the year, so just trying to time that right, you know.
“You can’t just go in there and just plow into it and that is a lot of people’s mistake is just going in there and hammering it. Everything has to be calculated and just trying to figure out the way the track is changing.
“You know, today was kind of strange in that the curb was kind of like a small ledge and then you could get above it as well. Just very, very different.”
In addition to the near moment above, it didn’t look procedural for Corey Day and Willie Kahne, who spent a good amount of time debriefing after the second session trying to make their car better than it was in 2025 after locking into the feature in 2024.
“You know, we wish we really knew,” Day said of the struggles last year. “We really don’t know. I think the track had a lot of grip in it last year compared to the year prior. Like, the curb was really thick and gripping. It would suck you in.
“Whereas, the year before it was kind of powdery and it would crumble and wasn’t completely that way. So, I think it’s like in the middle of both of those this year in practice day, but it could be way different come the prelim nights and all that. So we just are kind of trying to be ready for everything.”
Photo by: Bruce Nuttleman
Meanwhile, Nathan Crane rolled over and Ryan Bernal became the first flip of the week during the morning session.
Of Swindell Speedlab
Last year, in the pursuit of three consecutive Chili Bowl victories, Logan Seavey said he was ‘being annoying’ because every session included complaints about his throttle response. They won their prelim and finished seventh in the feature through it all.
At least on Sunday during practice, Seavey said they almost got it back, but wants a little more power put back into it.
Trial and error.
“I was pretty happy with it,” Seavey said. “We’ve changed a lot with our engines. We changed a lot last year because all I did was complain about how they throttled. The way they drive did not fit the way I wanted to drive the car. We changed a lot this year to try to help me out a little bit.
“We’re really close to where we need to be, I think. I’ve been really happy in both sessions.”
Swindell, the four-time race-winning driver said it’s a work in progress.
“We tried to do stuff to work on that more and what we did is better but they also kind of don’t run as clean as they should,” Swindell said. “It’s like, we calmed them down correctly, but it’s like we’re just not balancing something to offset the changes to get ‘em exactly right.”
Swindell has four cars this year with defending Wednesday winner Emerson Axsom, Jett Barnes and Kyle Cummins joining Seavey.
“So, we kind of swung at Emerson’s there at the end to go back to normal and it ran and then we kind of did half and half on Jett’s there (on) that last run to sort of see and I think it was okay,” he added. “So it’s like basically sitting around here trying to figure out if I’m gonna go all the way back to normal, go somewhere in between. Like Logan was happy, it just has like a little sputter crackle to it that’s not as clean as we would like it to be.
“But Logan almost asked for more motor basically today so I think we did the right thing. It’s just trying to find the kind of the happy medium to make sure it kind of takes off and does some things.”
Overall, this is where having four cars has helped the entire team.
“Today was is hectic, because we ran all four, and tomorrow we’re running three (with Race of Champions) but then it’s just one a night,” Swindell said. “So the prelim nights are not a big deal, and I can just babysit each one individually from there on out.
“Saturday, if you’re in good shape, you just throw them out there from how they were in their prelim. It’s just getting through these first two days of working on multiple cars each day.”
And, Swindell says he’s having fun, and that he really feels like a legitimate crew chief with this much volume.
“I needed my wife to go buy me an actual notebook,” he said with a laugh. “I had just been writing on cardboard and sheets of paper every time I needed to keep note of something today.”
Seavey says he likes having teammates too and it makes his car better.
“I feel like our car looks slightly different than everyone elses,” Seavey said. “So its weird to see it from the stand and watch our cars go around and the things I feel from inside the car.”
Meanwhile, quotes from Fred Vasseur suggest Ferrari are in no rush to take drastic measures in testing.
The 57-year-old points to the budget gap as a factor to consider when charting this year’s upgrade plan:
“If a team starts introducing four or five updates in the first races,” he told Gazzetta.
“Or if, for example, they have to send a new floor to a distant race like Japan or China – they’re burning through half their development budget at the start of the year.
“It will therefore be important to carefully evaluate step by step what to do, based on where we are.
“Whoever is ahead of everyone in Melbourne, at the first race, won’t necessarily have the winning car of the year.”
Fred Vasseur, Ferrari team principal, Ferrari Media Gallery.
Avoiding mistakes of the past
Ferrari know better than most teams about how deceptive the first races of the year can be. At the beginning of the 2022 regulations, for example, the Maranello team was flying high.
Two wins and one second place for Leclerc in the opening three rounds, alongside DNFs for Verstappen in Australia in Bahrain, painted a very positive picture for the season ahead.
Within a few months, however, Red Bull not only out-developed their Italian rivals, but also eliminated all reliability issues – whereas Ferrari suffered a series of devastating retirements in Spain and Baku.
Moreover, the last set of regulations showed the price of investing in the pursuit of a flawed concept.
Mercedes in 2022, Aston Martin in 2023 and even Red Bull in 2024 were headline examples of wasting resources on upgrades that were taking the car in the wrong direction.
Ferrari themselves faced this issue during the European leg of the 2024 season, with updates at the Spanish GP derailing the team’s progress that season.
Eager to avoid this fate over the next twelve months, Fred Vasseur has reason to exercise a measured approach. The question is whether the work fundamentals being developed at the factory in Maranello are strong enough to build upon.
