Marc Marquez travels to Assen this weekend hoping a victory at the 2016 Dutch Grand Prix can extend his cushion at the MotoGP summit, with Jorge Lorenzo and Valentino Rossi tight on the leader's heels. The Spaniard hasn't won a race since placing first at the Grand Prix of the Americas back in April, but thankfully for him, consistency has been a rare commodity among just about all MotoGP riders this season. Rossi is the current Dutch champion and wrested Marquez's Netherlands title off him last season after a fierce head-to-head between the pair, and he's hoping to seal back-to-back wins 12 months later. Read on for a preview of the weekend's timetable leading into Sunday's race, complete with a preview of which top riders to keep an eye o...

For the third year in succession, Jenson Button is set to play a lead role in Formula One's driver market. The 2009 world champion survived two near-misses in 2014 and '15, but this is likely to be the season Button's time at McLaren-Honda comes to an end, with the team's excitement about reserve driver Stoffel Vandoorne common knowledge. Should Button lose his seat alongside Fernando Alonso, a place at Williams could allow him to postpone his retirement, and the British driver has admitted a return to the place where his F1 career started could be an option for 2017. With his McLaren contract not due to expire until the end of next year, Alonso is almost certain to drive for the team in 2017, but he has once again been discussing his event...

The biggest story from the European Grand Prix in Baku, Azerbaijan, was not Nico Rosberg's win, nor Sergio Perez's unlikely podium; it was the backlash against the FIA's ban on radio messages from teams giving advice to their drivers. Mercedes' Lewis Hamilton and Ferrari's Kimi Raikkonen both had engine problems and grew increasingly frustrated when their engineers could not say how to fix them. After the race, several drivers shared their displeasure with the regulations. Fortunately, there is an easy compromise. Just as the new qualifying format was reversed once it became apparent that it was not working, the radio ban could be rolled back to the 2014 version, where driver coaching in areas such as gear selection and braking points was b...

The term "road-course ringer," or specialist, doesn't have the same connotation it once did in NASCAR. Where once Sprint Cup teams entered extra cars and put road-racing specialists like Boris Said and Ron Fellows in the field at the series' two road courses, Sonoma (California) and Watkins Glen (New York), now the term mainly refers to Cup regulars who are particularly adept at road courses. There's AJ Allmendinger, for instance, who won at Watkins Glen on August 10, 2014, and made the Chase that year as a result. He led 29 of the 90 laps that day. "That is why I enjoy the road courses, which has always been my background," Allmendinger said. "I feel like, as a driver, you can make just a little bit more of a difference." Sunday's Cup rac...

NASCAR returns after a week-long vacation and it felt good. Like, really good. And here we are, back on the west coast, for the Toyota/Save Mart 350 for the first road-course race of the season. Ten turns, 1.99 miles of asphalt snaking all over Northern California’s wine country. A year ago at this event, the Kyle Busch Summer Dominance Tour began when he won his first checkered flag en route to the top 30 and, eventually, the Sprint Cup Championship. "This is awesome. Just unbelievable," Busch said in Jordan Bianchi’s SBNation.com story. "I can't say enough about my medical team, everyone who got me back in shape and back on the race track." Busch may need a different kind of medical team now. The past four races have seen him ...

After seven races of almost complete radio silence, Formula One finally saw the light in Sunday's European Grand Prix at the Baku City Circuit. When, at the beginning of 2016, it became apparent the restrictions on pit-to-car radio would become tighter this season, Mercedes boss Toto Wolff told Motorsport.com's Jonathan Noble how the crackdown would be positive for F1 and lead to a number of "freak results." With Nico Rosberg and Lewis Hamilton winning all but one of the first seven races, when the insight provided by frequent team-radio messages was taken away from spectators, that prediction has proved to be wide of the mark. And after those regulations severely hindered Hamilton's progress in Azerbaijan, where the three-time world champi...

With the longest straight and tightest sequence of corners on the calendar, the Baku City Circuit would have left several Formula One drivers feeling uncomfortable on Sunday afternoon, but Nico Rosberg wasn't one of them. Starting from pole position, the Mercedes driver dominated proceedings to register his fifth victory of the 2016 season before admitting he felt completely at ease with his W07 on a track that invited and punished innocent errors. As Rosberg felt at one with his car, Lewis Hamilton would have felt alien to his after suffering an engine-mapping problem during the race. The three-time world champion took as many as 12 laps to resolve the issue and has criticised the increased radio restrictions implemented at the beginning o...

Nobody could touch Sam Hornish Jr. on Sunday afternoon at the Iowa Speedway in Newton, Iowa. Hornish led 183 of 250 laps en route to a dominant win in the American Ethanol E15 250.   The three-time IndyCar Series champion had the result wrapped up well before the finish. Nothing short of a mechanical failure was going to prevent him from getting to Victory Lane for the fourth time in the Xfinity Series. Ty Dillon came in second, finishing 1.444 seconds off the leader, while Brad Keselowski was 2.085 seconds back in third place: Despite finishing seven laps down, Erik Jones maintains his spot atop the Xfinity Series standings, per ESPN.com: The win caps off a wild week for Hornish. The 36-year-old hasn't completely retired from auto r...

Nico Rosberg claimed his fifth victory of the 2016 Formula One season in Sunday's European Grand Prix at the Baku City Circuit in Azerbaijan. After failing to finish in the top three since his last win in Russia, the German finally returned to the podium after dominating from pole position at F1's newest track, where Mercedes team-mate Lewis Hamilton could only recover to fifth after a disastrous qualifying session on Saturday. Joining Rosberg on the podium were Sebastian Vettel, who maintained his strong recent form and showcased his leadership skills by overriding Ferrari's pit call, and Sergio Perez, who registered Force India's second podium finish in three races. On a day Kimi Raikkonen was hit with a five-second time penalty and Red B...

NASCAR driver Mike Wallace was hospitalized on June 17 after three men allegedly assaulted him following a concert in Charlotte, North Carolina. Wallace's brother, Kenny Wallace, posted a photo of the aftermath Sunday (Warning: image is graphic): According to Tom Jensen of Fox Sports on Sunday, Mike Wallace and his daughter were leaving a Rascal Flatts concert when they were confronted by the unnamed men. Wallace was beaten by the three men and kicked "repeatedly," and his daughter was injured when she tried to stop the attack. Joe Bruno of WSOCTV.com passed along comments from Mike Wallace on Monday, who said "he was in the parking lot and said the question that prompted the attack was, 'How did you like the show?'" At that point, accordi...