Saturday’s Coke Zero Sugar 400 (7:30 p.m. ET/NBC/MRN/SiriusXM NASCAR Radio) should be the ultimate equalizer for the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series field. See, this race at the Daytona International Speedway this weekend will mark the midway point of the season. Through the first 17 races run, Joe Gibbs Racing and Team Penske have combined to win 15 of them.

The only ones that they haven’t won thus far was on a superspeedway at Talladega in April and last weekend at Chicagoland Speedway. Chase Elliott in his No. 9 Chevrolet for Hendrick Motorsports was victorious that afternoon in Talladega. In fact, HMS finished 1-2 that day. Bowman, won last weekend in Chicago as HMS saw three cars finish in the top 10.

Other than that, the remaining 15 races have been won by either JGR or Penske drivers including February’s Daytona 500. But, the ‘500 was run with a completely different package. They had the old restrictor plates on them. April’s visit to Talladega and this weekend’s trip to Daytona Beach are with the tapered spacers and larger spoiler. It’s a completely different aero configuration than the last trip to Daytona.

That bodes well for the rest of the field.

Despite that, JGR and Penske have combined to win two of the last three Coke Zero Sugar 400’s though and went 1-2-3-4 in February.

Will they win on Saturday night?

Brad Keselowski is among the top superspeedway racers in the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series today. Most consider him the best overall. But, what if I told you that Keselowski has actually struggled a bit lately. Yes, he has six career superspeedway victories to his credit during the course of his career, but his last six finishes on them are 32nd, 33rd, 36th, 27th, 12th and 13th respectively.

Since 2016, he’s only scored three top five finishes, all being wins. It’s literally been checkers or wreckers for Keselowski on superspeedways.

What about his Team Penske teammate of Joey Logano? To me, he’s actually the better superspeedway racer now.

Logano, has four wins in 42 tries compared to Keselowski’s six in 41 starts. Since his Talladega win in 2016, Logano has 11 top six finishes in his last 15 superspeedway starts.

Furthermore, Logano has six top five finishes in his last seven points paying Daytona or Talladega tries. He’s won the Daytona 500. He’s won multiple times in Talladega too. But, one thing that’s kind of eluded him has been a win in the Firecracker 400.

With how well he’s fared on these tracks, look for Logano to vie for his first career Daytona victory in July.

Their third driver in Ryan Blaney has two top five finishes in his last nine superspeedway starts.

So, if Penske is going to win, it will be Logano.

For JGR, well they may have their hands full despite finishing 1-2-3 in February.

During Speedweeks, everyone knew that Fords had strength in numbers. If they all teamed up again, which they tried to do so, they’d be tough to stop. In order to slow them down, Chevy and Toyota had to work together and try to separate the Ford’s up front. If you let them all take the high line and line up in a draft together, it would be game over.

So, Hendrick Motorsports and Joe Gibbs Racing set up an alliance. Yes, two rival manufacturers in Chevy and Toyota worked together to break up the Ford party. It worked too..

But, Chevy was somewhat mad at that too though. They prefer their teams to work together and not to help the Toyota’s. So much so, a prerace meeting before the Talladega race in the spring between all Chevy teams and drivers took place.

It paid off.

Hendrick Motorsports finished 1-2 at Talladega in April.

Toyota’s don’t have the numbers to hang. They will have six cars max in the field but five of which with a chance to win. If Chevy and Ford don’t work with them, then it’s an up hill battle for them to win.

Denny Hamlin does have four top six finishes in his last seven superspeedway starts. Erik Jones has three top eight finishes in his last four. But, the other two have struggled.

Martin Truex Jr. is 0-for-57 on superspeedway’s as his runner-up in this race last year is his only top 10 in his previous 13 starts. 12 of his last 13 have seen him finish 13th or worse.

Kyle Busch has finished second and 10th respectively this year but those are his only top 10 finishes since 2017.

JGR may struggle, so the odds are higher that we see a sleeper team win on Saturday night.