Chevy has been in a bit of a tizzy over what to run as its next Sprint Cup car, with Ford and Dodge both switching to complellingly sexed-up versions of their production offerings. GM has already ruled out the Camaro, even for the ponycar-riddled Nationwide Series, over some snobbery about compromising the Camaro's "classic lines." And as for the sedan-like offerings you usually see in stock-car racing, Chevy is out of options: its long-in-the-tooth Impala is the only car they've run since 2007, and the production version is FWD and frankly boring (well, so is the Camry, though that hasn't stopped Toyota from running it in NASCAR. Though that's another story...)

Enter the RWD, V8-powered Holden Commodore, Australian equivalent of the now-defunct Pontiac G8. The G8's return as a Chevy-badged item has been in the works for some time now, and showed up most recently on US soil as the non-civilian Caprice PPV cop car. Now, Chevy has promised a civilian "SS Performance Sedan" based on the Commodore/G8 (owner forum already up and running here), and is expected to announce today that a version of this car will run in NASCAR's top series. Stay tuned for updates. Via NASCAR Examiner.

Watch Sean Kennedy hit 257.7 miler per hour after the jump! Awesome!

Watch Russian rally driver Evgeny Novikov roll his car shortly after driving through a fence, which ripped off his roof vent. As the car fills with clouds of dust, the diver has trouble seeing and wrecks massively. Luckily no one was hurt, dispite the fact that the navigator put his hands up over his head while they rolled. These new rally cars are tough! Video after the jump! Via Bangshift

On the heels of sexy new NASCAR reveals by Ford and Dodge, the spotlight is on Chevy to come up with the next mind-blowing Sprint Cup car design for the 2013 season. But what will it be? GM has confirmed they're retiring the venerable and consecutive-championship-winning Impala from Sprint Cup competition, and say they're going to be running "a new nameplate" in NASCAR's top series going forward. But do they mean an entirely-new Chevy altogether, or just one that's new to NASCAR? Jalopnik speculates it'll be the excuse Chevy's been looking for to bring back the Caprice. Even more incredibly, NASCAR analyst Bob Pockrass figures it could be the Holden Commodore, which GM is rumored to be making available to US markets as early as 2014. I'm guessing Chevy's new Sprint Cup car will either be one of their best-sellers like the Malibu or the Cruze, following the mid-size lead set by Ford with its Fusion or Toyota with the Camry. Alternately, we could luck out and get the Camaro. GM has always been glitchy about the possibility of a Camaro in NASCAR, and seriously missed the boat on fielding a NASCAR Camaro in the Nationwide Series when all the other manufacturers were rolling out their most badass ponycars. The last time I bugged the GM brass about the possibility of a NASCAR Camaro was at the LA Auto Show in November, and they would neither confirm nor deny. Will the Camaro finally get its chance to run in Sprint Cup, or will Chevy be running something else in 2013?

Following the precedent set by Ford with its hot new NASCAR Fusion, Dodge unveiled a muscular Charger that'll be running Sprint Cup during the 2013 season. Dodge enjoys the distinction of being the only Cup car that's based on an actual RWD V8 civilian version, but the reveal also comes at a problematic time for the manufacturer: with Penske Racing having just announced that it'll be leaving Dodge for Ford, the only Charger in the field is run by independent Robby Gordon. SRT Motorsports chief Ralph Giles says all options are on the table, including pulling Dodge from the series altogether. What do you think, does Dodge have a future in NASCAR? After seeing this new Charger, I kind of hope so. More info at NASCAR.com, pics via Autoblog.

Motorsport is an expensive passion. It takes a great deal of time and money just to get to the starting line. It takes a great deal more to cross the finish line first. However, there is one clear path for club racers to climb their way into a professional race series with only modest expense: the Mazda Motorsports ladder.

I've decided to throw my hat in the ring and give it a shot this year. My objective: to win a national championship and get invited to the Mazda Shootout. The winner of the Shootout gets a full factory sponsored ride in the MX-5 Cup for the following season. Getting to the shootout will be a feat in itself so I'm going to keep my sights on that goal and then I can figure out what to do once I get there. This blog will chronical my progress through the racing season.

As you likely already know, this Sunday is the Great American Race: the Sprint Cup season opener at Daytona, NASCAR's Superbowl, the Daytona 500. And I couldn't be more stoked: it seems like it's been a couple of years since I got to watch the 500 from home instead of from the track, and while nothing beats being there, I'm definitely looking forward to breaking out my traditional Daytona race-day spread of Fritos and Bud Lite and watching the entire thing flag-to-flag in HD. Of course, there's already been a whole series this week of events, exhibition runs, and qualifying races at Daytona leading up to the big race. And judging from the chaos that's unfolded over the last week, including an electrifying Budweiser Shootout last Sunday, a cut-throat couple of Gatorade Duels on Thursday, and a wreck-filled Craftsman Truck Series race last night, I would guess that this year's 500 is going to be nothing short of mind-blowing. There've been some key changes made to both the cars and the rules, including the advent of fuel injection, and the cutting off of in-car radio communication between drivers. This latter move will short-circuit that two-sies tandem draft that characterized superspeedway racing last season, and break the pack up again so it'll literally be anyone's race. The second-tier Nationwide race is underway right now on ESPN: all I know is that Danica Patrick qualified on the pole, and I haven't let myself look at it since the start because I'm DVR'ing it to watch the whole thing later. So if you already know who won, don't tell me! The 500 itself will be on Fox tomorrow starting at noon Eastern/9am Pacific. Check out NASCAR.com for the latest.

NASCAR's much-anticipated move away from carburetion will be happening this year. But the cars will get a throttle body setup, so the casual observer will barely know the difference, and Holley will be supplying the TBI units, so at least there'll be a familiar "face" under the hood. The Sprint Cup cars will also get ECUs and O2 sensors for the first time, courtesy of McLaren and Bosch, respectively. As a gesture toward "modernizing" the vehicles, and making them more "relevant" to today's beige commuter pods (something that observers are always inexplicably clamoring for), it's hardly a credible move, seeing as they're using throttle-body which as far as factory applications go is the most archaic (and the most carburetor-like) form of fuel injection. What do you think, is this the right move for NASCAR? Hit the jump for the Holley's press release, and for a clever Q-and-A on the subject, check out this msn article.

Sprint Cup Fords'll be wearing some new stickers going forward, as Ford will be replacing the old multi-blade-razor-grilled Fusions (as seen in the last pic after the jump) with a revamp that mirrors the current model-year car. It's actually a little more than just a nose-cone swap, since Ford had to enstensively reconfigure the body to reflect the new-Fusion lines while staying within the NASCAR-mandated template. Everyone's been carrying on about how good it looks, and in particular motorsports journos and photogs who were on hand at Charlotte Motor Speedway to watch it turn its first laps today say it's even hotter in person. The drivers also love it. I'm not 100% sure what to think of it myself: I haven't been paying that much attention lately, but I was kind of under the impression that we might still eventually see a Sprint Cup Mustang, a reworked and better-looking version 2 of the one they're running in the Nationwide Series. I'm also not entirely sold on the new Ford fish-mouth design language that defines many of the current models. What do you think? More pics below the jump, full story at NASCAR.com.

The guys over at VWVortex are reminiscing about pre-1988 NASCAR, the point at which many agree that things started to go seriously downhill. It's all pretty old hat by now that modern NASCAR racing doesn't have nearly as much to offer the car enthusiast, that stock cars aren't stock cars anymore, blah-blah-blah, but many of us can also generally agree that there was a point somewhere back there in the mists of time, maybe when we were just little kids, when we flipped on the TV and were absolutely blown away by the larger-than-life, seemingly lawless beat-n-bang action we witnessed in NASCAR racing. It'd be nice to have some of that wonder back, but in the meantime, there's some great back-in-the-day pics of the badass race cars they used to run in this thread on VWVortex.