MANUFACTURERS OFFER CARS,MORE IN SWEEPSTAKES

RELATED: Sign up for sweepstakes today

All three NASCAR manufacturers are taking to social media, reminding fans of possible end-of-season rewards -- including new cars.

Chevrolet, Ford and Toyota all have sweepstakes where those who enter can win a Chevrolet SS, Ford Fusion Sport or Toyota Camry XSE. Learn more about that here.

Beyond even a new car, fans can win multiple prizes from each manufacturer, including a trip to Las Vegas for Champion's Week.

See below as Austin Dillon, Brad Keselowski, Kyle Busch and more fill in the details via social media.

TALLADEGA CHAIRMAN EXPLAINS BURN BAN FOR RACE WEEKEND

Open campfires, long a staple of fans attending NASCAR races at Talladega Superspeedway, will not be allowed on track property during next weekend's race events at the track featuring the Sprint CupSeries and the Camping World TruckSeries.The ban is in conjunction with a Drought Emergency Declaration signed by Alabama Governor Robert Bentley that covers 46 counties, including Talladega County.
"We're not going to allow any open fires," Grant Lynch, Chairman of the 2.66-mile track, told NASCAR.com Thursday.
Campfires, fire pits, fireworks, flying lanterns and other similar outdoor activities or items will not be permitted. The use of grills for cooking will still be allowed "but you can't use it as a heat source (to stay warm)," he said.
"We are probably just a couple of days ahead of the state putting the same (restrictions) on maybe all the counties that are currently under the burn ban. It's just really a tough situation in the fact that our parking lots, our campgrounds, everywhere is just bone dry and crunches under your feet.
"I've been here 23 years and we've never had to do this. There are fires everywhere in Alabama right now. And it's depleting the resources. We are doing the thing that is safest for our fans and to protect the folks that are going to be here having to put out any potential issues we have anyway."
While the Carolinas coastal region continues to recover from Hurricane Matthew's heavy rain and high winds, Lynch said last week's wet weather never made it far enough inland to impact his facility.
"Not a drop. It never got this far," he said. "We would have taken all we could have gotten. There is no green grass on the property; it's all brown."
Approximately 1,200 acres of track property is used for parking and campgrounds. The infield alone accounts for nearly 250 acres.
"People say, 'Well, you should water everything,'" Lynch said. "You can't water 1,200 acres."
If there's a bright side to the situation, it's the weather outlook for next weekend's doubleheader. Currently, the extended forecast calls for unseasonably warm temperatures.
"It's not like we're telling fans you can't have a campfire and it's going to be 30 degrees at night," Lynch said. "A nice jacket and you should be fine all weekend.
"If everyone cooperates, it will keep everyone safe here and we don't have unnecessary, runaway fires. We've already had a fire by the International Motorsports Hall of Fame. We put it out and about three hours later it came back. We put it out again. This stuff can go down into the ground and come up somewhere else.
"We're not doing this without a lot of thought and a lot of concern for taking care of everybody that's going to come to our property in the best way we can and we have to enforce this. It's our duty to do that for our fans."

Homestead-Miami Speedway to collect donations for Hurricane Matthew relief

Homestead-Miami Speedway, in partnership with Chris Fellowship Church, will be collecting donations on Oct. 14 at Fast Lane Friday presented by The Ticket Clinic to help those affected by Hurricane Matthew.

Homestead-Miami is also offering car enthusiasts who donate the chance the chance to enter their street-legal car for an opportunity to compete on the 1/8-mile drag strip from 6 p.m. to Midnight. Donations will be accepted started at 5 p.m.

Those who make donations from 5 – 9 p.m. will also have the opportunity to take a paced lap around the 1.5-mile speedway. Contributions can also be made without having to enter into Fast Lane Friday. Any individual who donates an item will be entered into a raffle with the chance to win a $100 gift card.

Those wishing to donate to the cause are encouraged to bring the follow supplies:

• Anti-Bacterial Bar Soap
• Antibiotic ointment
• Aspirin/Tylenol
• Baby blankets
• Baby bottles
• Baby clothing
• Baby formula
• Baby scales
• Bandages
• Batteries
• Diapers
• Feminine products
• First aid kits
• Flashlights
• Gauze
• Hand sanitizer
• Hygiene kits
• Mosquito nets/bed nets (for pregnant women to protect from Zika)
• Pedialyte
• Powdered baby formula
• Protein bars
• Protein drinks
• Tents/tarps
• Thermometers
• Vitamins
• Water purification tablets

Hurricane Matthew was a category 2 storm when it traveled up the Florida coast the weekend of Oct. 7. In addition to the damage it caused in Florida, Hurricane Matthew is reported to be responsible for the death of nine individuals while leaving one million people without power.

For more information on Fast Lane Friday at Homestead-Miami Speedway and Hurricane Matthew donations, you can visit here.

Podcast: Behind the scenes at the origins of the RTA and its charter negotiations with NASCAR

Inside an airplane hangar that’s a shrine to the P51 Mustang fighter pilots who helped win World War II, NASCAR’s most powerful team owners gathered to plot seismic events.
Rick Hendrick, Roger Penske, Richard Childress and Jack Roush met at a conference table in Roush’s personal hangar at the Concord, N.C., airport more than two years ago, identifying the stiffest economic headwinds facing their Sprint Cup organizations.
That was the genesis of the Race Team Alliance, an initially controversial consortium that brokered the landmark charter deal with NASCAR this season, recalibrating the team business model with more dependable and predictable revenue streams.
“It was fascinating,” Roush Fenway Racing president Steve Newmark, who attended the meeting, said in the latest NASCAR on NBC podcast. “As the owners were discussing the challenges they had on sponsorship and some things they saw coming down the pike, they all had similar views of what was going on. These were very successful businessmen both in racing and outside of it.”
In the podcast, Newmark details the behind-the-scenes machinations and negotiations that led to the formation of the RTA and team charters.
The meeting in Roush’s hangar was preceded by a February team owner meeting called by NASCAR at its headquarters in Daytona Beach, Fla., during Speedweeks 2014. Childress then lobbied his peers to gather independently.
“It evolved from there that the owners got together,” Newmark said. “We tried to figure out how to achieve some more synergies in the sport.
Part of the initial purpose was to talk about we’re all spending ridiculous amounts of money on hotels, rental cars. Is there a way we can leverage our purchasing power on some of these items to do a better job?
“That was one of the primary discussion topics. It wasn’t these meetings were intended to discuss ‘How can we overthrow NASCAR?’ That was some of the suspicions, and I understand that, but that wasn’t the origin or purpose.”
By June, the RTA (chaired by Rob Kauffman) was formed and announced on July 7, 2014, in the form of a news release.
Newmark said it was a much more complex process than it seemed.
“That was more work than anyone envisioned,” he said. “Even the simple act of selecting a name. I’ve still got an email with 50 names on it with everyone trying to create an acronym that made sense. Ultimately we settled on Race Team Alliance. We had to have attorneys guide us because we didn’t want to trip up on antitrust issues. We didn’t want to be anticompetitive, and there were lots of issues that we were told, ‘Hey, the teams together cannot talk about that.’ ”
Though the RTA had made NASCAR aware of its existence, it was met by a chilly reception from the sanctioning body, which initially indicated there would be no plans to recognize the group.
“We’d talked to NASCAR in advance, made sure they were aware, tried to alleviate concerns,” Newmark said. “But it was natural because it was such a sea change from how we operated in the past.
“I do think there was initial trepidation for certain folks in NASCAR. To be blunt, probably the concern was because you saw this whispered in the press. If I were in NASCAR, that would have been a legitimate concern. Is this what they are aiming to do? We had to have a learning process and build trust. There was a constant dialogue. After initial concern and pushback, it transformed very quickly.”
Within a year, the framework had been built for the charter system that would assign value to teams while allocating revenues through a new structure based partly on historical performance.
But while the numbers in the deal were worked out relatively easily, governance – or how much influence teams would have on the direction of NASCAR competition and rulemaking – was a sticking point that caused negotiations to last well into the offseason.
“One of the more contentious days, where I wondered if we’d be able to have a meeting of the minds, was Christmas Eve,” said Newmark, who was heavily involved with Kauffman in negotiations. “Rob and I, with some lawyers and some other team presidents, we were sending issues lists on Christmas (to NASCAR). We were able to bridge some of the gaps that came up then. That was a fairly constant process. It was fun doing it. It was grueling.”
Newmark recalled an all-night session at The Ballantyne Lodge in which talks with NASCAR went until 3 a.m. and resumed at 6 a.m. He took a nap at the hotel rather than make the 3-mile drive to his Charlotte home.
“Ask my kids, they’d get used to my phone lighting up with Rob Kauffman on it,” Newmark said. “It was very different than a lot of negotiations I was involved in with walkout moments. This had a more collaborative spirit. That doesn’t mean we didn’t have a difference of opinions, and we didn’t have some tough moments. But there really was an openness that I think was unprecedented in the sport.”
Other topics discussed by Newmark on the podcast:
–How the merger between Roush Racing and Fenway Sports Group transpired and how the entities still are working together;
–The evolution of team owner Jack Roush’s role from demanding leader to mentor;
–How NASCAR might be positioned to hook Millennials in the face of possibly declining car culture;
You can listen to the podcast by clicking below or download and subscribe to it on iTunes by clicking here.
The free subscription will provide automatic downloads of new episodes to your smartphone. It also is available on Stitcher by clicking here and also can be found on Google Play, Spotify and a host of other smartphone apps.

ISC issues third quarter report, discusses attendance for Sprint Cup events

International Speedway Corp. held its conference call with investor analysts Thursday morning to detail results from the third quarter.

ISC hosted four Sprint Cup weekends during the third quarter, which ended Aug. 31 — two races at Michigan, Daytona in July and Watkins Glen. For the full financial report, go here.

Among the items mentioned in the nearly hour-long conference call:

— Admissions for comparable Cup events was up about 1 percent compared to the same time last year. This was mostly attributed to the Daytona race in July. In 2015, the seating capacity was reduced to about 50,000 for the Daytona summer race as construction continued on the grandstand. The stadium debuted at this year’s Daytona 500 with 101,500 seats.

— Watkins Glen had a second consecutive sellout this year.

— Michigan International Speedway saw admission declines for both its Sprint Cup events.

— The average ticket price for the four Cup races at ISC tracks in the third quarter was $83.11. That’s an increase of about 8 percent from the same period last year. The increase was mainly generated by the new seating and pricing at Daytona.

— The average ticket price for all Cup races at ISC tracks through the first nine months of the year is $96.14. That’s an increase of about 8 percent, also driven by pricing at Daytona.

— For the fourth quarter, ISC reported lower attendance-related revenue for Cup weekends at Darlington, Richmond and Chicagoland Speedway. Advance sales for the remaining events at ISC tracks (Kansas, Talladega, Martinsville, Phoenix and Homestead) are down 10 percent on average. ISC officials anticipate a sellout for the season finale at Homestead-Miami Speedway.

— In response to a question about admissions and the future of the sport, John Saunders, president of ISC, said on the call: “On the attendance side, we’re doing a number of things internally where we are looking at the next generation of fans and how we reach them. We’ve talked before about aging fans, avid fans that are aging out. We have repositioned resources within the company and are currently working through and resourcing how we recruit the next generation of fans. We’ve got to be very aggressive in the next phrase and we are. We’re ramping it up more than ever. … We’ve got great racing, but we’ve got to get these folks to the track, we’ve got to get them exposed to the live experience and from there we’ll build retention.’’

— In response to another question about attendance, Saunders noted the changing landscape of Cup drivers (both Jeff Gordon and Tony Stewart are scheduled to drive their final Sprint Cup races this season). Saunders said: “We find ourselves in the sport with star-power opportunities, I won’t call them challenges, I will call them opportunities. We have a generation of drivers who are starting to retire and we believe that’s having an impact. … What’s key for us on the attendance side is to stay focused on our consumer strategies, really, really honing in on the live entertainment value of these events, the social experience of these events and building that driver connectivity, star power, we’ve got great drivers coming up through the ranks.’’

— ISC exceeded its corporate sales target by about 12 percent from 2015.

— From 2017-2021, ISC plans to spend $500 million on capital expenditures. ISC has stated that redevelopment construction at Phoenix International Raceway will begin in 2017 and continue through late 2018.

— Daytona International Speedway’s stands suffered no structural damage from Hurricane Matthew.

Xfinity Series Spotlight: Darrell Wallace Jr.

Darrell Wallace Jr. caught a break at the right time.
Starting in go-karts around 2002, Wallace had a fast racing progression. From karts to Bandoleros and Legend cars, Wallace was competing in Late Models by 2009. And up until that point, Wallace was doing so with the financial backing of his parents, Darrell Wallace Sr. and Desiree.
“We had a small business that was able to get us to 2009,” Wallace told NBC Sports, “and we were able to get that far. They spent a quarter of a million dollars in 2008, so that was a lot for them.”
Wallace ended up signing a development deal with Joe Gibbs Racing. He made his way into the NASCAR K&N Pro Series East with the Drive for Diversity program. Wallace won six races between 2010-12 and earned 2010 Rookie of the Year honors.
In 2012, Wallace went full-time in the Camping World Truck Series under the tutelage of Gibbs driver, Kyle Busch. After two full seasons and five wins, Wallace again made a move. This time, it was to the Xfinity Series, where he now competes for Roush Fenway Racing. Although he has yet to break into victory lane, Wallace is championship eligible after advancing into the second round of the inaugural Xfinity Chase.
As for the journey, Wallace admits, “Kind of the right spot at the right time.”
The following Q&A has been edited and condensed
NBC Sports: On your website, it says your interest in racing was by chance, what does that mean?
Wallace: I started racing when I was nine, but my dad bought a Harley Davidson and he wanted to trick it out and make it look good and the guy who did that, Chris Rogers, he had a bike shop. He raced out of the back of his shop, so we became good friends, and he invited us out to one of his races. We were sitting in the stands, and my dad was like, ‘Hey, you want to try it?’ So it was just one of those going out to watch and ended up buying a go-kart.
NBC Sports: How important was signing with Joe Gibbs Racing, in addition to participating in the Drive for Diversity program?
Wallace: The way it worked out was 2008 had a really good year; 2009 is when we signed on with JGR, and they gave us a little financial backing with the Late Model stuff, but that ended up being our worst year in Late Models. I don’t know why. We ran about half a season there and called it quits so then we were trying to figure out what’s the next step. JGR had their (K&N Pro Series) East program going on at the time, but they had Max Gresham and Brett Moffitt driving. So they didn’t really have anything, but they looked into the Drive for Diversity deal for us. We did some research and saw that Andy Santerre was running the whole deal, and we’re like, ‘Well, hell yeah, we’ll go over there and run that.’ It was kind of a blessing that we did because those two great years with the Drive for Diversity program really helped my career launch.
NBC Sports: Do you have a racing story you like to tell or one that stands out?
Wallace: Got a lot of good stories; got a lot of bad ones, too. I ran over my dad when we were go-kart racing. We were at Concord Speedway, and Chris (Rogers) and my dad were out there, and I leveled my dad at like 45 miles per hour. I thought I killed him and he comes hobbling up and says, ‘All right, let’s keep going.’ So that one’s probably the scariest one I’ve had. The best one is probably Dover. The first Dover (September 2010) I was scared. Driving into the corners like, ‘Heck no.’ Had motor problems, and we were in a Rookie of the Year battle with Cole Whitt. He blew a right front tire Lap 27; I blew a right front tire Lap 37. So we locked up the Rookie of the Year title.
Going back (in September 2011) I’m like, ‘Here we go with this place again’ and that’s when my mom lost her uncle. We took my name off the door, and I just put a piece of tape down and wrote his name on there. It was pretty special because we went out and won both practices, sat on the pole (by) two-tenths and won the race. So I think that was a pretty special weekend. That’s one of my favorite stories.
NBC Sports: Take me back to the Camping World Truck Series race at Talladega when you had that really bad accident in 2013, is that the most scared you’ve been behind the wheel?
Wallace: Yeah, I think so. When I hit for some reason there was a flash of like an actual car going down the highway, which I don’t know why that crossed (my mind), but it was like, ‘Holy crap.’ I had no brakes and was sliding towards I think it was Jeb Burton’s pit stall. Kyle (Busch) come down into me; hit the wall head-on, and I went back down heading straight for their pit box and closed my eyes and come to stop. Didn’t hit the wall. Then my spotter was like, ‘Put it in reverse, we still gotta finish,’ so I threw it in reverse not having brakes, so I’m gassing on it and John Wes (Townley) beats me by inches and then I don’t know how I stopped. I don’t know if I hit the wall or if it just kind of come to a stop. But that one was pretty scary.
NBC Sports: How did your love of instruments start and did you teach yourself how to play the drums?
Wallace: Mom says I was banging on pots and pans since I was two, so I had an itch for it. In middle school, you could try out for band when you got to seventh grade and you had to write down three things you wanted to play. Drums were my top one and think I put like saxophone and trumpet. Well, I didn’t get chosen for the drums but it ended up working out. The first year it was more of both Snare (Drum) and then when you have a Bass Drum, the one that sits on a stand and put your arm on it and just hit it with a mallet.
I took over that role in eighth grade, and everybody knew that was MY spot. But growing up, I got into the heavy metal stuff in about seventh grade and it took me listening to stuff and shutting out the words. Yeah, you don’t know what they’re saying unless you pull up the lyrics and read along, but it’s easy for me to listen to the drums and be like, ‘Oh, it’s kind of cool how he’s doing footwork.’ Now I’ve got my own little kit just trying to get better, and it’s fun to do.
NBC Sports: Have you always been very outgoing and open to sharing things on social media?
Wallace: Yeah, but (Ryan Blaney) is not. That’s more of me pushing him, ‘Hey, this is going out Twitter.’ Like that video of Chase (Elliott) I posted after the Georgia – Tennessee football game I said, ‘Hey bud, just so you know this is going on Twitter.’ That stuff, I’ve always been post it and get it in trouble later instead of worry about the consequences right away. But I’ve always been like that and the crazy stuff we’ve done, I think all you guys have seen it.
NBC Sports: Is there anything in particular you like to shoot when doing photography? 
Wallace: Really anything; a lot of time-lapse stuff. It’s always fun looking at the clouds and see what they’re doing because every three to four seconds it changes shapes. I haven’t picked up my camera in a while but I’m always looking at buying new equipment, and I don’t even use it. It’s weird and not smart decisions but it’s still fun to look at how to be better and how to take better pictures. We did a photo shoot recently for the Coca-Cola racing team, and people will think, ‘Oh, you just like to look at yourself’ and I’m like, no it’s really cool how you get these kind of shots. So I can sit there at a photo shoot and be there for hours trying to figure out what in the hell they are doing. I got to do stuff with NASCAR at the racetrack, like shoot the All-Star Race a couple of years ago. Shot the Xfinity race (at Charlotte) a few years ago as well.
NBC Sports: How is Darrell Wallace afraid of the dark?
Wallace: When you grow up and watch scary movies non-stop. I’ve had a love for scary movies but they scare the hell out of me …
NBC Sports: So do you keep the lights on all the time?
Wallace: No, I have a process that I need to film to share with you guys. So in my house, the living room has big high ceilings and it has a ceiling fan, but it doesn’t have a light. You have to use two lamps and then my stairs are right beside me; so I’ll get up and turn on my stairway light then go turn off my lamps. Walk up the steps, turn on my hall light, turn off my stair light; walk to my bedroom, look behind me, turn off my hallway light, close my door and go to bed. It’s a process. I don’t trust looking in the dark because your eyes start fixing to the dark and you start seeing stuff.

Cain: Don't count out Harvick,Logano,Elliott or Dillon at Kansas

RELATED: Chase Grid | Set your Fantasy lineup for Kansas With two races remaining to set the Round of 8 to contend for NASCAR's 2016 Sprint Cup title, the four most vulnerable drivers in the standings have vastly different histories at this week's venue, Kansas Speedway for the Hollywood Casino 400 (Sun., 2:15 p.m. ET, NBC, MRN, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio). And with the unpredictable nature of Talladega Superspeedway's restrictor plate brand of racing coming up next week for the Round of 12's elimination race, the more traditional Kansas 1.5-mile venue offers a relatively calmer opportunity to climb the standings. Now. The four drivers hoping to race back inside the top eight are separated by only five points. Austin Dillon and Chase Elliott are tied, only three points behind eighth place Denny Hamlin, whose Toyota suffered a rare engine failure last week late in the Charlotte race. WATCH: Hamlin's engine blows late at Charlotte Joey Logano is six back and 2014 Cup champion Kevin Harvick trails Hamlin by eight points. The two veterans -- Harvick and Logano -- currently trying to race their way to a top-eight transfer position have historically fared well at Kansas. The younger competition -- Dillon and the rookie Elliott -- still don't have much of a track record to lean on. Harvick sits eight points out of the cutoff position after a 38th-place finish -- due to mechanical issues -- at Charlotte last weekend and a 37th-place result at Dover International Speedway the week before. Harvick, however, won the fall race at Kansas in 2013 and has three runner-up finishes there in the last five races. In the last six Kansas races, he has led the most laps (392) of the four drivers hoping to climb back into the top-eight in the standings. In the last three years, he has three pole positions (fall of 2013 and both 2014 races) and an average finish of 10.8 at Kansas. "The repave is definitely what changed and turned things around for us at Kansas," Harvick said. "Really, I liked the racetrack the way it was before with the asphalt really worn out and cars sliding all over. But, once the repave happened, we were able to really hit on some things and, for whatever reason, it kind of fits my driving style and we have gotten some good results out of it. "It has been a really good-performing racetrack for us and one that we look forward to going to and hopefully continue to get good results out of it because it's been so good for us in the past." Logano, who is currently ranked 11th of the 12 still-eligible Chase drivers, had five consecutive top-five finishes at Kansas until a crash this May, which resulted in a 38th-place showing. But most importantly -- and encouraging -- to Logano's Team Penske crew, he is the two-time defending winner of this week's Chase race. "Things happen," Logano said of his 36th-place showing at Charlotte. "It's part of racing, but we're not out. We're not gonna die. This team is resilient. "We've proved it before and we'll just have to go out and prove it again. We just have to have two flawless races. It's something we can make up." Dillon and Elliott, who are both three points behind the top-eight cutoff, don't have an extensive Kansas track record to examine. The 20-year old Elliott finished ninth in his only Sprint Cup race there this Spring. He also scored top-10 finishes in both XFINITY Series races he competed in at the track. He hasn't led a lap at Kansas previously in either series. However, his No. 24 Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet has turned in impressive work out front during the Chase, with 176 laps led in four races -- more than half of his season-long total. Dillon, 26, has two top-10 finishes in six starts at Kansas, including a sixth-place effort this May. However, he also has three finishes of 20th or worse, including a 41st place showing in this race last year. "What we think of is,'What has made us faster in the past?' and 'What can we do to be faster?' Dillon said this week. "I look at everything I can as a driver, from the lines in the track to the history of the track -- what typically happens, who is good there? We're just going to do our best and try to not leave anything behind. This opportunity is so great. It doesn't happen often." Hamlin -- who currently sits in the final playoff transfer position -- won at Kansas in Spring of 2012, but has had an inconsistent record here. He crashed out of the spring races the last two seasons, taking finishes of 41st and 37th. He was, though, runner-up to Logano in this race last fall. "I think each race you're going to have a handful that are going to have issues -- Kansas I don’t think will be any different and Talladega we know will be crazy," Hamlin said. "That's why we're not out of it my any means, we just have a little hole we have to dig out of."