When the inevitable question came, Formula One's latest boy wonder dealt with it as well as he possibly could. As deputy team principal Claire Williams mused, per Sky Sports, the team were "really, really excited" as they announced their 2017 driver lineup on Thursday morning, confirming teenager Lance Stroll would replace the retiring Felipe Massa at the end of this season. The new partnership between Stroll and Valtteri Bottas, she declared, would mark "a new chapter in Williams' history," generating renewed interest in a team who have been all too easy to overlook over the last two years. Yet the question—the question that needed to be asked—risked darkening the mood slightly, and there was no easy way of putting it. Wa...

After seeing major names such as Brad Keselowski and Martin Truex Jr. exit the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series in the last round, drivers have two races left to avoid suffering the same fate. The next step in the process comes Sunday at Texas Motor Speedway, with Jimmie Johnson and the rest of those alive leading the way into the AAA Texas 500. Johnson won the most recent race, the Goody's Fast Relief 500, putting the other seven drivers left standing at a disadvantage before the Chase field gets halved. Here's a look at everything to know about the event.         Viewing Details Where: Texas Motor Speedway, Fort Worth When: Sunday, 2 p.m. ET Watch: NBC Live stream: NBC Sports Tickets: ScoreBig.com       &nb...

NASCAR heads to Texas this weekend with just three races left for the AAA Texas 500. Austin Dillon took home the pole during Friday's qualifying session.  Dillon led the way with a stellar run around the track at 192.301 mph. He will be followed by Joey Logano, Kevin Harvick, Brad Keselowski and Kyle Larson in the top five.  Here are the full qualifying results from Friday's qualifying at Texas Motor Speedway: Dillon's pole marks just his third on the NASCAR Sprint Cup circuit, with Richard Childress Racing posting footage of the elated youngster after his triumph: The 26-year-old is still in search of his first career victory at this level after 22 top-10 finishes. His best finish this season was at Talladega in May, when he ca...

Lance Stroll will become the second-youngest driver in Formula One history when he makes his grand prix debut with Williams at the beginning of 2017. The 18-year-old Canadian has been chosen to replace the retiring Felipe Massa after dominating the FIA European Formula Three Championship in 2016. And Stroll has expressed his excitement ahead of his debut season, as well as dismissing the idea that he is nothing more than a standard pay driver. Stroll will be partnered by Valtteri Bottas, who will begin his fifth season as a Williams driver at next year's Australian Grand Prix. The Finn's solid performances in recent years had seen him linked with a move to bigger team, with Renault expressing an interest as this season progressed, but Botta...

I bet you didn't know that Johnny Herbert once (jokingly) tried to climb into a bathtub with future Formula One world champion Mika Hakkinen while they were sharing a hotel room as Lotus team-mates. Maybe you didn't want to know that, either, or it feels like too much information, but Herbert doesn't hold much back in his new autobiography, What Doesn't Kill You..., out November 3 from Transworld Publishers. The 52-year-old, Essex-born Herbert has been in the spotlight since his teenage years, and the broad strokes of his life are well-known among racing fans. His promising karting and junior career was derailed by a horrific accident at a 1988 Formula 3000 race at Brands Hatch. In the midst of a lengthy, difficult rehabilitation, he f...

Lewis Hamilton is in the midst of what would be a historic comeback, should he be able to catch his Mercedes team-mate, Nico Rosberg, for the Formula One drivers' title. Historic, but not altogether unprecedented. With four races remaining this season, Hamilton trailed Rosberg by 33 points, with 25 available for a victory. Two straight victories for the Brit, with his team-mate following him home in second each time, has reduced the gap to 19 points—but there are only two races left. It might sound like an impossible task—and with Rosberg's near-bulletproof reliability thus far, it might be—but history should give Hamilton some hope. The scoring systems have changed over the years, with race wins worth nine points, then 10...

One lightning-quick stop does not a pit crew make. Not even statistical rankings separate the men from the boys. The best pit crews in NASCAR rise to the occasion. On long days at intermediate tracks, passing on the track can be especially difficult. The difference between winning and losing can often be traced just as readily to the positions gained on pit road. It's often not a matter solely of efficient work but rather the right call: two tires, or four or fuel only. The best crew chiefs are not often geniuses, but they share a virtue just as rare. They possess a knack for thinking clearly amid bedlam, the same gift of great head coaches on sidelines, courtsides and third-base boxes. They are clever and quick-witted. The modern era forev...

Sebastian Vettel turned Formula One's radio airwaves blue in Sunday's Mexican Grand Prix at the Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez. Having been restricted to just one podium finish in 10 races, the four-time world champion had seemed set to make a welcome return to the top three in Mexico, where he pressurised Red Bull driver Max Verstappen into an error in the latter stages. That should have been enough to guarantee a podium finish, but Verstappen's refusal to gift the position to him saw the Ferrari driver launch an astonishing outburst, with F1's referee even coming in for some criticism. A post-race penalty for Verstappen meant Vettel did stand on the podium after all, but he too was stripped of third place after another stewards' investigati...

At long last, Jimmie Johnson's destiny beckons. Only two drivers in NASCAR history have won seven titles. As for those two, Richard Petty and Dale Earnhardt, opinion is divided as to which was the greatest of them all. Johnson has six. Five were in a row, which no one else has even approached. Winning at Martinsville Speedway on Sunday means that Johnson, a friendly, hardworking guy with the name of a friendly, hardworking guy, is poised for stock car racing immortality. As he said to NBC Sports after winning the Goody's Fast Relief 500, "I have been trying to ignore this conversation about seven [championships], but now I can't. We're locked in." The Chase for the Cup schedule has races ahead in Fort Worth, Texas, and Avondale, Arizona (...

So what would you do if you were Kevin Magnussen? Would you commit your Formula One future to Renault, a team who will have a more competitive car next season but have spent much of 2016 trying to get rid of you?  Or would you take a chance on Haas, who have offered you the security of a multi-year contract and an opportunity to grow and finally realise your true potential? That is the dilemma facing the Danish driver as this year's edition of silly season edges toward its conclusion, with Magnussen having several options to remain in F1 in 2017. The driver market is beginning to intensify, but the biggest move of all may occur on the engineer market. Rumours linking technical boss Paddy Lowe, one of the men behind Mercedes' success in...