Matt Crossman

Matt Crossman writes about NASCAR by foregrounding people first and competition second. He covers the sport’s top series for the official NASCAR masthead with deeply reported features that dwell on grief, resilience, faith and community rather than only on points, pit strategy or post‑race quotes.

Grief, resilience and the NASCAR community

Crossman’s coverage stands out for how frankly it engages with loss and emotional strain inside the garage. In his piece on how drivers and fans work through grief surrounding Kyle Busch, he uses Busch’s ordeal not just as a news event but as an entry point into how the NASCAR community leans on one another to keep going. He lingers on conversations in motorhomes and infield chapels, the quiet moments between races, and the way fans talk about their own hardships when they talk about a driver’s. Instead of treating grief as a brief subplot to on‑track action, he constructs the entire story around how people process it, turning a single episode into a portrait of the sport’s shared emotional life.

That approach carries through more broadly in how he writes about adversity. He tends to follow drivers, crew members and family members through the before‑and‑after of a hard moment, charting how they got there, what it cost, and what it changed. The result is coverage that reads less like a race recap and more like a character study set against the noise and speed of stock cars.

Feature-driven profiles of drivers, crews and fans

Crossman works primarily in feature formats rather than quick-turn game stories. His NASCAR work frequently takes the form of profiles and reported essays that focus on a single driver, team or fan community and then widen out to show what their story says about the sport as a whole. He is drawn to inflection points—career-threatening injuries, late‑career reinventions, unexpected opportunities—and uses those to explore identity, pressure and legacy.

In these pieces he builds scenes in detail: what the garage smells like at dawn, how a driver carries himself when he steps out of the car after a bad day, the way a crew chief’s tone shifts on the radio under stress. He relies heavily on in‑person interviews and extended conversations, weaving direct quotes with his own narrative voice so that readers hear both the subject’s perspective and the context around it. Fans, track workers and team personnel show up as full characters rather than background noise, which gives his stories a sense of breadth that goes beyond what happens on the racing surface.

Sports storytelling beyond the racetrack

Alongside his NASCAR work, Crossman has built a career in sports journalism that extends well beyond motorsports. He has written longform features and essays across major American sports, often zeroing in on questions of character, purpose and what athletes and coaches carry with them once the lights go off. That background in narrative sportswriting informs how he approaches stock car racing: he treats a race weekend the way a magazine writer might treat a playoff series, as material for a larger story about people trying to do something hard in public.

Because he moves between different sports and formats, his NASCAR pieces tend to avoid insular jargon and instead explain the culture of the garage and pit road in plain language. He is comfortable connecting a driver’s experience to broader themes familiar to general sports audiences—family obligations, doubt, second chances—which makes his work accessible to readers who do not follow every stage or lap, while still giving insiders a sense that he understands the rhythms of their world.

Voice, tone and what to expect from an interview

Crossman writes in a measured, empathetic voice that gives subjects room to be vulnerable without turning stories into hagiography. He is especially interested in moments when public image and private reality diverge: tough‑guy drivers confronting fear after a wreck, veteran crew members weighing retirement, fans wrestling with what the sport means to them after a painful news cycle. When interviewing, he tends to ask open‑ended questions that invite reflection—about faith, family, regret and gratitude—as much as about setups and tire wear.

For sources, that means conversations with him usually go beyond promotional talking points and into personal territory, particularly around how someone handled a difficult experience or turning point. He then folds those exchanges into narratives that emphasize honesty and nuance over hype, aiming to show why a story matters in the lives of the people living it as well as in the box score.