Hey kids, it’s time for your favorite drunk puppet cooking and interview show weekly racing preview here on the Hooniverse, where a muppet knocks back straight gin and calls his guests ****s we tell you who’s racing and where they’re racing this weekend. It’s a good one with a big international championship headed to Indy, NASCAR on a road course, sports cars in sports car paradise, all the drag racing you can continue ignoring, and racing at odd times for Americans because of time zones. To get the scoop and set your watch for some middle-of-the-night race watching because the puppets can’t wake before noon (it’s in their contracts), click through the jump.
Pro tip: Keep this page open all weekend or bookmark so you have all the resources handy. Want more information on a series mentioned below? Click here for Hooniverse’s Massively Oversized Guide to Motorsports 2015, which will tell you all you need to know (and then some).

SCTA: Bonneville Speed Week

Sadly, Speed Week has been canceled for the second consecutive year on the salt flats of Bonneville. Consider this a major bummer, as uncharacteristic summer rains have thinned the salt, making it impossible to run the normal seven-mile or even an abbreviated four-mile course. Hopefully, the weather improves and the salt thickens next summer so the speed freaks can get their fix on the gleaming, reflective Utah salt.
 

MotoGP: Indianapolis Grand Prix

Grand prix motorcycle racing returns to the United States for the second time this year after the round at Circuit of the Americas earlier this year. Valentino Rossi still leads the championship by 13 points from his Yamaha teammate Jorge Lorenzo. Rossi ended Lorenzo’s five-race winning streak at Assen two races ago and defending championship Marc Marquez took home the last round’s win at Sachsenring. Marquez still trails the Yamaha riders significantly, but a three-point gain would put him third in the championship by overtaking Andrea Iannone, who has shown consistently on a resurgent Ducati. Iannone looked early in the season like he’d get Ducati’s first win since 2010, but the surging  (and healed) Marquez and his teammate Dani Pedrosa are again consistenly besting the Italian riders.
MotoAmerica returns to action for the first time following the horrific crash in the final race at Laguna Seca where Spanish riders Bernat Martinez and Daniel Rivas Fernandez both died in the startline crash of that race. It was a somber punctuation mark on a summer that has been tough on motorcycle racers. Nevertheless, the series’ inaugural season moves on under American racing legend Wayne Rainey’s watchful eye and with Cameron Beaubier and Josh Hayes tied in the Superbike championship, the final four rounds (including this weekend’s) should be excellent.
Links: MotoGP site. IMS site. Event page with schedule. Entry list. Season points. Live timing.
Support race(s): MotoAmerica. Moto2. Moto3.
Coverage: Sunday @ 2 p.m. ET on FOX Sports 1. Moto2 – Sunday @ 1 p.m. ET on FS1. Moto3 – Sunday @ Noon ET on FS1. MotoAmerica – Streaming on MotorTrendOnDemand.com (See schedule for times).
 

NASCAR Sprint Cup: Cheez-It 355 (Watkins Glen International)

Both of NASCAR’s top two series visit historic Watkins Glen this weekend. For Sprint Cup, it’s the second of the series’ two road courses and if it’s anything like the last few years, it will be one of the most exciting races on the calendar (which makes one wonder consistently why there are so few road courses on the schedule). Last year saw A.J. Allmendinger secure his car, which runs fro the small JTG Daugherty Racing team, a spot in the season-ending Chase. It was a great story and expect Allmendinger—who is an accomplished road racer—to be among the frontrunners. Tony Stewart certainly looks to be on the backside of his career and may even hang up his helmet soon, but with five wins in 14 starts at The Glen, he and four-time winner Jeff Gordon will both want this win badly. Sonoma winner Kyle Busch has looked unbeatable lately and his drive on the California road course looked stupendous. And of course, the Chip Ganassi Racing cars of Kyle Larson and Jamie McMurray benefit from scads of setup data gleaned from the CGR’s years of sports car racing at The Glen.
While this is the last Sprint Cup road course race, it’s also the first of three for the Xfinity Series. They’ll race at Mid-Ohio next weekend and Road America two weeks after that (with a visit to the bullring at Bristol in between). If there’s a time to watch the second-tier series, this month is it.
Links: Sprint Cup site. WGI site. Event page. Schedule. Entry list. Season points. Live timing.
Support race(s): Zippo 200 (Xfinity Series)
Coverage: Sunday @ 2 p.m. ET on NBC Sports Network. Xfinity Series – Saturday @ 3 p.m. ET on NBC SN.
 

Tudor United Sportscar Championship: Road America

While stock cars tackle one of the first American racetracks this weekend, sports cars will race around the other legendary American circuit built in the 1950s. Sports cars and Road America are indeed interwined through American racing legend and with Porsches, Ferraris, and Corvettes still ripping around the racetrack with the Tudor series, it should be a typically insane race around the four-mile circuit. Speaking of sports car history, the brand-new Ford GTs have been testing around Road America prior to the race weekend and damn, does that twin-turbo V6 sound tremendous.
On the the racing, though. With tight points races in all four classes only three or four races left (depending on which class with a GT-only race at VIR next), this one will count big. The race to watch may actually come in Prototype Challenge, where perennial champions Core Autosport have had their apple cart upset by the PR1/Mathiasen Motorsports team. PR1 leads by three points in the driver’s championship while Core leads in the team’s championship by the same total. All that aside, the Daytona Prototypes should all stand on pretty equal footing in the Prototype class with their natural low-drag aero proving very helpful on Road America’s lengthy straights. Similarly, the #3 Corvette Racing C7.R could use a points bump in GT Le Mans, where their closest rivals from Rahal Letterman Lanigan struggle with all-important straightaway speed in the BMW Z4. In GTD, four different manufacturers occupy the top four points positions: Audi (Paul Miller Racing), Aston Martin (TRG-AMR), Porsche (Alex Job Racing), and Ferrari (Scuderia Corsa). Just 10 points separate those four teams heading to Road America.
Links: TUSC site. RA site. Event page. Schedule. Entry list. Season points. Live timing.
Support race(s): Continental Tire SportsCar Challenge. Cooper Tires Prototype Lites. Porsche GT3 Cup USA.
Coverage: Sunday @ 3 p.m. ET on FOX Sports 1. CTSC – Saturday @ 1:20 p.m. ET on IMSA.com. Other series – FansChoice.tv or IMSA.com. Radio only – All sessions with live audio on IMSA Radio at RadioLeMans.com.
 

British Touring Car Championship: Snetterton

The top of the BTCC standings are Gordon Shedden, Jason Plato, and Matt Neal, so everything appears to be in order here. If you’re unfamiliar, Plato and Neal are decade(s?)-old rivals in the series while relative newcomer Shedden doesn’t let anyone throw their (ballasted) weight around. The usual pairing this weekend includes one of the old RAF airfield-based circuits in the UK, in this case Snetterton’s 2.9-mile circuit that twists around itself a couple times and looks like a bit like Cthulhu‘s head after you’ve had a couple of good belts of gin. Should you be on site, mind the gin, lest the Snetterton Tree and Cthulhu track map lead you to predict that Jason Plato’s always-loaded middle fingers bring the End Times.
Links: BTCC site. Snetterton site. Event page with schedule. Entry list. Season points. Live timing.
Support race(s): Ginetta GT4 SuperCup. MSA Formula Championship. Ginetta Junior Championship. Porsche Carrera Cup Great Britain.
Coverage: August 19 @ 7 p.m. ET on CBS Sports Network (Delayed).
 

Super GT: Fuji Speedway 300 KM

The Japanese GT racing series visits Fuji for the second time this year, albeit for 300 kilometers instead of the 500 last time around. Fuji is such a great track with all of the things that produce entertaining racing as a driver and a viewer: a very long front straight into a super-slow corner, huge elevation changes, and technical sections that force teams to balance aero setup between low drag or high downforce. These races really are great and worth watching, but I suspect the best thing you’ll see will come in the lower GT300 class, where Nissan factory driver Katsumasa Chiyo has been absolutely on fire in the GT-R GT3. The GT300 opposition is stiff in Japan, but when Chiyo’s in the car, just watch as much of it as you can.
Links: Super GT site. Fuji site. Event page. Entry list. Season points.
Coverage: Streaming live on Nismo.tv on Saturday night/Sunday morning at some ungodly hour…[Makes very difficult time conversion calculations]…I can’t figure it out. But you can watch it in full on the same YouTube channel.
 

World Rallycross: Grand Prix of Trois-Rivieres (Canada)

After the road racing at Trois-Rivieres last weekend, the FIA’s rallycross championship takes on the circuit with their 600 horsepower beasts and door-banging racing. Defending champion Petter Solberg leads the championship by a wide margin and the popular Norwegian remains the favorite at most rounds. Like many WRX rounds, a pair of local drivers will step out of their usual racing idioms and take a shot: NASCAR Canadian Tire Series champion L.P. Dumoulin and former IndyCar racer Patrick Carpentier will each take a crack at the rapid all-wheel-drive beasts.
Links: WRX site. GP3R site. Event page with schedule. Entry list. Season points.
Coverage: Sunday streaming on WRX site.
 

Shannons Nationals Motor Racing Championship: Queensland Raceway

Australian’s traveling collective of championships heads to the paper-clip style road course at Queensland, a relatively short course with only a handful of turns. This presentation, which you can stream live for free, features a huge variety of racing that typically are great wheel-to-wheel action from start to finish. On the docket: V8 Touring Car Series (Not the V8 Supercars), Porsche GT3 Cup Challenge, Australian Sports Racer Series, Kerrick Sports Sedans Series, Australian Formula 3 Championship, Australian Formula Ford Series, Super Six Touring Car Series, and Australian Manufacturers Championship.
Links: Shannons site. Queensland site. Event page with schedules and entry lists.
Coverage: Saturday starting @ 6 p.m. ET on Shannons Nationals site.
 

ARCA Racing Series: Federated Auto Parts 200 (Berlin Raceway)

After a big date on the “Tricky Triangle” at Pocono Raceway with NASCAR, ARCA’s stock cars now head back to their usual short-track haunts, in this case the 0.4375-mile Michigan oval that actually lacks a wall on the back straight. Winning an ARCA championship means managing tracks of all sizes and that will prepare most champions for a jump to NASCAR. Championship leader Grant Enfinger leads by nearly 200 points, which is an immense cushion.
Links: ARCA site. Berlin site. Event page with entry list. Schedule.
Coverage: Possibly streaming for $5 or something on the Berlin site. You’re better off going to Berlin for the $1 beer and $1 hot dogs.
 

NHRA: Northwest Nationals (Pacific Raceways)

It’s a big weekend for drag racing and the biggest series sends its 300 mile-per-hour monsters to echo through the Pacific Northwest at Pacific Raceways. It appears that the Pro Stock teams survived their sudden rules changes and while there’s more to come from that story, the on-track story is that Greg Anderson leads Pro Stock by 47 points over defending champion Erica Enders. Anderson has four Pro Stock championshipos, but the incredible part of the story is that he had heart surgery last year. There’s a lot of that going around with cancer survivor Jack Beckman making the fastest-ever Funny Car run at Sonoma Raceway at the last round.
Links: NHRA site. Pacific Raceways. Event page. Schedule. Entry list. Season points.
Coverage: Sunday @ 2 p.m. ET on ESPN3.com & @ 9 p.m. ET on ESPN2 (Delayed).
 

IHRA: Northern Nationals (U.S. 131 Motorsports Park | Martin, MI)

The IHRA, meanwhile, races in Southwest Michigan this weekend. The Nitro Jam tour has enjoyed reasonable success inasmuch as drag racing can have in the modern motorsports world. Don’t get me wrong; it’s some incredible stuff, but whatever happened to drag racing? It wasn’t that long ago that drag racing was absolutely huge. Anyway, drag racing fans can stream the race live on the web for free.
Links: IHRA site. US131MP site. Event page and schedule. Season points.
Coverage: Live stream all weekend starting Friday @ 9:30 a.m. ET on IHRA site. Delayed highlights on MAVTV.
 

European Drag Racing Championship: Hockenheimring

Drag racing fans across the pond in Yurp can get their fix of nitromethane fumes, as well. Germany’s much-revered racing venue hosts the NitrOlympX (NOX, get it?), which is as Super Xtrem (makes “X” with forearms) as racing can get. Until this week, I had no idea the Hockenheimring has a drag strip, which runs basically parallel to the straightaway leading onto the track’s final turn.
Links: EDRC site. Hockenheim site. Event page. Season points.
Coverage: Delayed highlights on MAVTV.
 

British Truck Racing Association: Silverstone

Britain’s national truck-racing series heads to the country’s most prestigious racetrack, though they’ll run the shorter configuration to try keeping maximum speeds below 100 miles per hour. It does take a while for the races to get uploaded to the YouTube channel listed below, but if you’ve got nothing else going on in your life, throw a race on and watch these five-ton monsters navigate the UK’s race circuits with surprising deftness.
Links: BTRA site. Silverstone site. Event page. Schedule. Entry list.
Support race(s): UK Legends Series. Pick-Up Truck Series.
Coverage: Motors TV on delay and eventually hosted on Digitex TV YouTube Channel.
 

ChampTruck World Series: Virginia International Raceway

What a full weekend of ChampTruck and ChumpCar at VIR! The American truck racing series turns up with races Friday and Saturday, giving more five-ton rig racing on one of America’s most challenging circuits. Intermixed with those races will ChumpCar sprints and the debut of ChumpModel, another sub-series of ChumpCar that will use asphalt late model stock cars around VIR. To cap off the weekend, the series’ annual VIR 24-hour race kicks off at 2 p.m. Saturday.
Links: ChampTruck site. VIR site. Schedule. Entry list. Season points.
Support race(s): ChumpCar 24 Hours of VIR. ChumpModel.
Coverage: Live timing on ChumpCar site and on RaceMonitor.
 

ChumpCar World Series: Portland International Raceway

All the way across the country, ChumpCar will hold a second race with a little less-hectic schedule. It’s a normal two-race weekend with a 12-hour Saturday race and a shorter six-hour Sunday event, which gives a nice balance between lots of racing and the ability for teams to get home in time to go to soul-crushing work the next day.
Links: CCWS site. PIR site. Event supplement regulations with schedule. Live timing.
Coverage: Live timing on ChumpCar site and on RaceMonitor.

 

24 Hours of LeMons: Thompson Speedway

Also on the East Coast, LeMons heads to its first race at Thompson Speedway. It’s a bumper crop and rather than waste your time here, click the preview below to have your time properly wasted.
Links: LeMons site. Thompson site. Event page with schedule. Hooniverse preview. Live timing.
Coverage: Live timing on Specialty Timing site and on Race Monitor.
 
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[Lead image copyright 2015 Hooniverse/Eric Rood | Other sources: MotoGP, NASCAR, SPEED- MOTORS on FOX]