TRACK: Kansas Speedway (1.5 mile Oval) DISTANCE: 267 Laps – STAGE 1: 80 Laps, Stage 2: 80 Laps, FINAL STAGE 107 LAPS 400.5 Miles)
WEATHER: RAIN 60%, 90 degrees high

Favorites

Chase Elliott (+500)

Three straight top four finishes and five in his last six Kansas tries. Go for it here.

Martin Truex Jr. (+600)

He swept both races in 2017. He was second and fifth respectively in 2018. Truex, was sixth in last year’s playoff race too. 

Denny Hamlin (+700)

Hard not to list the guy with four wins already this season to go along with being the winner the last time NASCAR came to Kansas last October. Hamlin, has three top five finishes in his last five Kansas starts too. 

Kyle Busch (+750)

He’s had nine top 10 finishes in his last 10 Kansas starts, seven of those nine being in the top five even. His only problem is, he’s only led four laps in his last four Kansas starts.  

Brad Keselowski (+900)

Worth something here. He won this race last year and has two top two finishes in his last three Kansas spring starts. 

Ryan Blaney (+1000)

The speed is there this year. Blaney, may have only been 32nd and 21st in the two races last year, but in the eight previous starts, the Team Penske driver was in the top seven in five of them. 

Sleepers

Aric Almirola (+1600)

Last year wasn’t his best finishes (12th, 23rd) but he was ninth and 10th respectively in 2018. 

Alex Bowman (+2000)

Worth a play here. Bowman, was seventh when he filled in for Dale Earnhardt Jr. in 2016 at Kansas. He was ninth in the Fall race of 2018, second in last year’s spring race and 11th in the October event. 

Kurt Busch (+2500)

Solid sleeper here. Busch, has seven top 10 finishes in his last 10 Kansas starts including a seventh place run in this race last year and fourth in the Fall. 

Erik Jones (+2500)

His teammates are all good at Kansas so why not Jones? He has four straight top seven finishes there. 

Tyler Reddick (+3300)

He has three straight top 10 finishes on the season and three top five finishes, two of which being runner-ups, in as many Kansas starts in the Xfinity Series too. Also, he was ninth in last year’s Cup race there. 

Ricky Stenhouse Jr. (+12500)

We’ve had two straight fluke winners, why not three? Stenhouse, has three straight 11th place finishes at Kansas in the spring race while JTG has vastly improved their 1.5-mile program. 

Chris Buescher (+12500)

Again, why not? He was 10th at Kansas last May. 

Kansas 400 Race Preview

In what could be the final weeknight race of the year will take place at the Kansas Speedway. We’re winding down the clock of the regular season with seven races remaining. Kansas, is an interesting one though, as we currently have nine drivers locked into the playoffs. How many of them elect to throw this race out and use it as a glorified practice session for the postseason visit?

After all, we may not have practice back this year, so what better way to build a notebook for this fall than to use 400 miles of action this weekend as a glorified test session. 

Plus, look for this race to be a wild one anyways. We’ve had five straight different winners at Kansas in the Cup Series but this race has seen eight straight years with a different winner in general. On top of that, starting position matters greatly. Four of the last six Kansas winners have come from the top four of the starting lineup. 

There’s been a different winner in each of the last seven Cup races on 1.5-mile tracks, including all of them run in 2020. If we get another new winner on the season for 1.5-mile standards, then Ryan Blaney, Kyle Busch, Martin Truex Jr., Erik Jones, Aric Almirola, Clint Bowyer, Kurt Busch, Matt Kenseth, William Byron, Jimmie Johnson or Alex Bowman are your best bets to do.

Key Stat

We’ve had eight straight different winners in the “spring” race with Brad Keselowski (2011, 2019) as the only repeat winner in the nine year history of the event. 

They Said It

“Yeah, to a point it’s frustrating when it happens,” Ryan Blaney said last Sunday in Texas about dominating but not winning. “You’re like, ‘Man, bad break after bad break. What in the hell do we have to do to have things go our way?’

“We’ve been capable to win a lot of races this year, it, like I said, hasn’t played out for us. It’s frustrating at the time, but there’s no point in dwelling on things. You just focus on what you need to do and that’s just keep bringing fast race cars. If you keep running up front and leading laps, I hope and I think that things will eventually go our way.”