For decades, women in motorsports have been underrepresented, underserved, and under-resourced, despite proving time and again that they have the talent, grit, and determination to compete at the highest level. Now, a new partnership is aiming to change that.

The National Hot Rod Association (NHRA) has teamed up with Deep Blue Sports + Entertainment to launch “Women of NHRA,” which is a new initiative designed to elevate the league’s top-tier women racers and create more commercial and fan engagement opportunities across the sport. Deep Blue, a firm dedicated to driving commercial investment in and growth opportunities for women’s sports, brings deep expertise in advertising, media, and brand partnerships. Deep Blue will work to create long-term commercial value for NHRA’s women athletes and maximize their influence as marketers, leaders, and women in sport.

“The NHRA has a compelling story – its male and female drivers compete on the same circuit, the fastest driver on that circuit is a woman, female drivers manage their teams, work on their cars, are multi-hyphenate with experience ranging from electricians and engineers, understand and optimize to performance margins that drive success through tools like AI and machine learning, and beyond,” said Laura Correnti, Founder and CEO of Deep Blue Sports + Entertainment. “Through strategy, storytelling, and activations we’re working with the NHRA to drive commercial awareness of what makes it a compelling investment.”

A Unique, Level Playing Field

Today, the NHRA is the premier sanctioning body for drag racing in the United States and is the largest auto racing organization in the world. The organization oversees 20 national events annually and offers competitive opportunities across all levels of the sport from youth and grassroots racing to professional competition. With more than 100 member tracks nationwide and a legacy of innovation, the NHRA has a long history of gender equity. NHRA drag racing is unique in the fact that men and women have competed head-to-head on a 1,000-foot track for decades. Today, women in NHRA have amassed an impressive resume, with more than 100 women having won at an NHRA national event and athletes like two-time Top Fuel champion Brittany Force paving the way as the fastest person in NHRA history, setting a national record of 3.62-seconds at 341.59-mph.

“Women and girls are not just out here competing. They’re out here actually setting records, winning races, winning championships, winning multiple championships, and racing together with the guys,” said Ida Zetterström, NHRA driver who was recently named “Best New Talent” by NHRA’s National Dragster publication. “People don’t realize how big of a turnout we have at our events, how big our TV numbers are, that we’re actually competing with the guys, and that the fastest person in the world is a woman.”

Bringing Commercial Awareness And Investment To Women In Motorsports

Amid the surging growth of women’s sports across all levels, NHRA and Deep Blue are ensuring that women in motorsports are part of the mainstream conversation around fandom and sponsorship. Women of NHRA aims to accelerate women in motorsports and drag racing into its next era by deepening investment in women racers, unlocking new sponsorships, and growing the sport’s passionate fanbase through the visibility and influence of its women athletes.

“There’s a huge piece of momentum going on right now in women’s sports, and I feel like we have to tell our story because these women compete and win and dominate against men on an equal playing field and do it every day and every weekend,” said Jeffrey Young, Vice President of Marketing at the NHRA. “I want to make sure that people know that there is a sport where it’s an even playing field and the women are dominant.”

Women of NHRA will kick off at the NHRA Sonoma Nationals taking place July 25 – 27, 2025 at the Sonoma Raceway. Deep Blue and NHRA will host a VIP race-day experience that includes a brand summit on NHRA’s growth trajectory, followed by exclusive trackside access with some of the sport’s brightest stars.

NASCAR warned customers this week of a data breach caused by a cyberattack in March.

The incident exposed the Social Security numbers of an unknown number of victims. In filings with regulators in Maine, New Hampshire and Massachusetts, the company declined to say how many people were affected.

NASCAR, an acronym for the National Association for Stock Car Racing, said its IT team identified a cyberattack on April 3 and began an investigation.

Law enforcement was notified and a cybersecurity firm was hired to look into the attack.

“The investigation determined that the unauthorized actor acquired certain files on the Company’s network between March 31 and April 3, 2025,” NASCAR said.

In late June, the company determined that Social Security numbers had been exposed. 

Founded in 1948, the Daytona Beach-based company operates as an auto racing sanctioning body that organizes more than 1,500 races across the U.S. each year.

Breach notification letters were sent out to victims on July 24, and victims are being given one year of credit monitoring services. 

NASCAR did not respond to requests for comment in April when the Medusa ransomware gang added the company to its leak site and demanded a $4 million ransom. The company also did not respond to inquiries on Friday.

Medusa claimed to have exfiltrated gigabytes of company data and set a deadline of April 19 for ransom payment. It is unclear if the data was published.

In March, the FBI and other U.S. agencies warned that Medusa was behind more than 300 cyberattacks on critical infrastructure organizations.

For more than four years, the group has terrorized governments and companies — gaining notoriety for an attack on Minneapolis Public Schools that exposed troves of sensitive student documents impacting more than 100,000 people. 

In addition to attacks on the Pacific island nation of Tonga, it has targeted municipalities in France and government agencies in the Philippines, as well as a technology company created by two of Canada’s largest banks. 

Rebecca Moody, head of data research at the cybersecurity firm Comparitech, said Medusa is among the top 10 most prolific ransomware strains this year so far, with 106 attacks claimed and 19 that have been confirmed. 

The group’s attack on Bell Ambulance affecting more than 100,000 people is one of this year’s biggest data breaches, she said. 

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NASCAR will be bringing street races to an active military base for the first time ever next year in San Diego.

The racing organization said the three-day event, which will take place in June 2026 at Naval Base Coronado, will be the first of its kind.

However, this will be NASCAR’s second street course in its modern era — the Chicago Street Course has hosted racing events for the past three seasons.

Ben Kennedy, NASCAR’s executive vice president, chief venue & racing innovation officer, said the track is not set in stone yet, but it will be a blend of traditional street racing that will include racing past military aircraft.

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The event is scheduled to coincide with the 250th anniversary of the U.S. Navy.

“We contemplated a number of places, not just in San Diego, but the greater Southern California region,” Kennedy said. “Naturally, I think we all started to gravitate towards the military base, seeing that we knew that the 250th anniversary was upcoming, our natural ties that we have to the military and then the location of it. I mean, you couldn’t ask for a better location than Coronado, sitting between downtown San Diego, the Pacific Ocean and not far from Tijuana, either.”

The San Diego street race will mark NASCAR’s return to Southern California for the first time since February 2024.

This story was reported on-air by a journalist and has been converted to this platform with the assistance of AI. Our editorial team verifies all reporting on all platforms for fairness and accuracy.

Dale Earnhardt Jr. suggested Kyle Larson’s attempt at ‘The Double’ derailed his form in the 2025 NASCAR Cup Series season – but he’s found his groove again thanks to his form on dirt. 

Last season, Larson won the Brickyard 400. This time around, the former Cup Series champion will officially compete in both the Cup and Xfinity Series races at Indianapolis Motor Speedway, joining Katherine Legge as one of the few drivers to race both in 2025..

On Monday, Hendrick Motorsports announced that Larson will be driving the No.17 car, which featured a new driver in Jake Finch at Dover last weekend. The reigning Brickyard 400 winner will look to defend his crown, and Earnhardt Jr. believes Larson is beginning to discover his form. 

Larson finished fourth at Dover in his last race, which was his first top-10 finish since Pocono in June and his first top-five finish since Michigan two weeks before Pocono. Since attempting the Indy 500-Coca-Cola 600 double in May,  which he won’t do again, Larson has tallied four top-10 finishes in eight races. 

Earnhardt Jr. believes the double attempt derailed Larson’s NASCAR form. On his ‘Dale Jr. Download’ podcast, the 50-year-old said: “All of those things didn’t go as well, or as easy or as smooth as he had hoped. I think that kind of knocked him off his perch.

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“The schedule wouldn’t allow him to find some consistency to be able to gain confidence and get the team back to where it needs to be, everybody feeling good about everything. Over the last handful of weeks, I’m sure that they’ve all been questioning, are we doing everything we need to do? … They’ve decided not to panic, get back to the basics, get in the part of the schedule where they might can find some peace of mind.”

Earnhardt Jr. thinks Larson started to find his rhythm and form thanks to “success in the dirt car,” which has helped him turn around his season. He added: “When he starts doing good in that, it’s like everything starts getting better. 

“His Cup stuff starts getting better as well. He needs to be behind the wheel of a race car, and he needs to be winning for him to get up on plane and be where he wants to be mentally.

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“He’s no different than anybody else, in terms of when you don’t have the results and the results are harder to come by. He’s just as human as the rest of us, and he’s going to have some self-doubt, or what am I doing differently? What should I maybe do differently or new? 

“They are going to have those internal conversations as a team. I feel like that’s all in the review mirror now.”

Larson is looking to win his fourth Cup Series race of the 2025 season when he competes in the Brickyard 400 at Indianapolis Motor Speedway on Sunday, July 27.

INDIANAPOLIS — Kyle Larson raced to his third NASCAR Cup Series victory of the season at Kansas Speedway in mid-May, then turned his attention to his second straight and perhaps final attempt at racing’s double — completing all 1,100 miles of the Indianapolis 500 and NASCAR’s Coca-Cola 600 at Charlotte Motor Speedway on the same day.

Instead, he was hit with a double whammy.

A crash on the 92nd lap knocked him out of the Indy 500, relegating him to a 24th-place finish in the famed open-wheel race, and two crashes — the second on the 245th lap — ended his night earlier than planned in North Carolina, where he finished 37th.

Not much has gone right for Larson since that Memorial Day weekend disappointment.

He posted just one top-five finish over the next eight Cup Series races before finishing fourth at Dover Motor Speedway last Sunday. Now he’s back at Indianapolis Motor Speedway, this time in a stock car and trying to recharge his Cup Series season in the Hendrick Motorsports No. 5 Chevrolet.

He’ll be seeking to repeat Sunday as the winner of the Brickyard 400, considered one of NASCAR’s “crown jewel” races.

“It’s great to be back here in Indy and back at the track; hopefully I’ll do a much better job than I did in May,” the 2021 Cup Series champion said Friday. “It’s a privilege to get to run here, and I would love nothing more than a good run and hopefully kind of put the bow on the double stuff.”

Only three drivers own back-to-back Brickyard wins: Jimmie Johnson in 2008-09, Kyle Busch in 2015-16 and Kevin Harvick in 2019-20. Larson won last year on Indy’s historic 2.5-mile oval instead of the road course used the previous three years; the first 27 editions of the event from 1994 to 2020 were also held on the oval.

Most if not all drivers prefer running the oval, including Larson.

“There’s so many people from all over the world here, whether it be May (for the Indy 500) or our events or, really for that matter, any events,” said JR Motorsports driver Justin Allgaier, who won the 2018 edition of the second-tier Xfinity Series race at IMS. “… It’s just, there’s nothing quite like it.”

Larson understands that well as he prepares for his fourth start at IMS in the past 14 months — back-to-back Indy 500s and Sunday’s Brickyard repeat bid — but the difference for him this year is that he wants to change directions after some subpar results.

They haven’t dashed the 32-year-old Californian’s hopes for a second Cup Series championship. His three wins this season are tied for second on the top-tier circuit, he has already accrued 23 playoff points, and the only drivers he trails in points are Hendrick teammates Chase Elliott and William Byron — neither of whom has a Brickyard win on his resumé.

Neither does Denny Hamlin, who sits just behind Larson in points despite winning a series-best four times — including last weekend at Dover — and signed a two-year contract extension with Joe Gibbs Racing on Friday.

If he can add a win Sunday to his three each in the Daytona 500 (2016, 2019, 2020) and the Southern 500 (2010, 2017, 2021) and the 2022 Coca-Cola 600 victory, Hamlin would join the short list of drivers who have won all four crown jewel races.

“It certainly would mean a lot to me,” said the 44-year-old Hamlin, who owns 58 Cup Series career wins and will be making his 17th Brickyard start. “We’ve come close. We were actually as close on the road course as we were on ovals, although, I don’t know — you could argue whether that (road race) was actually a crown jewel or not. So, yeah, highly motivated.”

Things already are off script, though, for Hamlin, Larson and everyone else at Indy.

Friday’s scheduled practice was rained out, marking the second week in a row that has happened for the Cup Series. Qualifying is scheduled for Saturday, when temperatures are expected to be in the mid-to-upper 80s with rain in the forecast most of the afternoon. The forecast for Sunday looks almost identical to Saturday.

That’s not what Larson wanted to hear, even though race organizers rescheduled a short practice for Saturday afternoon.

“Hopefully, our car is good again,” he said before the scheduled practice. “I believe it should be fast, if not better than it was last year. So, you know, hopefully we’ll have a good practice, good qualifying, and execute a good race on Sunday.”

Larson’s goal is simple: Qualify up front, stay up front and stay out of the trouble he has found far too routinely the past couple of months.

“When (JGR driver Christopher Bell) spun (at Dover), I thought I was going to get collected and be like, ‘Uh-oh, just continuing our bad luck here,” he said. “So hopefully this is the beginning of us to kind turn things around. We’ll see.”

NASCAR will be bringing street races to an active military base for the first time ever next year in San Diego.

The racing organization said the three-day event, which will take place in June 2026 at Naval Base Coronado, will be the first of its kind.

However, this will be NASCAR’s second street course in its modern era — the Chicago Street Course has hosted racing events for the past three seasons.

Ben Kennedy, NASCAR’s executive vice president, chief venue & racing innovation officer, said the track is not set in stone yet, but it will be a blend of traditional street racing that will include racing past military aircraft.

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The event is scheduled to coincide with the 250th anniversary of the U.S. Navy.

“We contemplated a number of places, not just in San Diego, but the greater Southern California region,” Kennedy said. “Naturally, I think we all started to gravitate towards the military base, seeing that we knew that the 250th anniversary was upcoming, our natural ties that we have to the military and then the location of it. I mean, you couldn’t ask for a better location than Coronado, sitting between downtown San Diego, the Pacific Ocean and not far from Tijuana, either.”

The San Diego street race will mark NASCAR’s return to Southern California for the first time since February 2024.

This story was reported on-air by a journalist and has been converted to this platform with the assistance of AI. Our editorial team verifies all reporting on all platforms for fairness and accuracy.