William Byron had the strategy to not pit with everyone else and take the lead on Lap 197. He just needed a caution to come out to put him on the leaders’ strategy. It paid off too. Corey LaJoie brought out the caution on Lap 234 which forced everyone back down pit road for the final time.

Byron and his Hendrick Motorsports teammate Alex Bowman both took two tires on the final stop which wound up hurting them.

Bowman, passed Byron on the ensuing restart, but the 11th and final caution came out for John Hunter Nemechek with 26 laps remaining in Thursday nights NASCAR Cup Series race at the Kansas Speedway. On the next restart, Kevin Harvick snuck by both and took over the lead for the first time of the night on Lap 246. He had the clean air up front.

But, Denny Hamlin was just vastly better.

Hamlin, was chasing Harvick down and eventually caught up on Lap 254. The Joe Gibbs Racing driver would lead the final 13 laps en route to his fifth victory of the 2020 season and 42nd of his career.

“He (Harvick) got loose there and when you get in clean air, I think it was probably the first time he was in clean air all day,” Hamlin said. “I saw him get loose and I saw kind of blood in the water there, so we just ran him down.

“We just did a great job of getting it right when it really, really mattered. This is how you win them.”

The Virginia native led 153 laps in his win at the Kansas Speedway last Fall and backs that up with leading a race-high 57 of 276 laps in earning his third career win on the 1.5-mile track.

“We needed a miracle,” Harvick said there at the end. “Our Busch Light Apple Ford Mustang was really loose. We got a couple good restarts and had a couple good laps but we were in trouble there regardless if it didn’t just keep going yellow.

“Our guys did a good job keeping us in the fight all night but we definitely have some work to do.”

Brad Keselowski led 30 laps himself in his No. 2 Ford to come up just one spot short. Keselowski, finished second for his second top two finish in his last three Kansas tries and third top six in his last four starts there overall. The Team Penske driver now has 13 top 11 finishes in his last 14 starts on the season.

Keselowski, says that the ending came down to the final restarts but he just didn’t have enough for Hamlin when it mattered.

“Really came down to the last few restarts, who got the clean air, who pushed who,” said the second place finisher. “Just couldn’t quite get in front of Denny.  I was a little bit faster than he was once we were up to speed, but not anywhere as fast as he was getting up to speed.

“Once he got the clean air, he was able to defend.  That was the story of our night.  Proud of our effort.  Won a stage.  We’re doing the right things.”

Martin Truex Jr. would finish third in his No. 19 Toyota for his second top three finish in the last three races and his sixth top six in his last seven Kansas starts.

Harvick, faded to fourth in his No. 4 Ford for his sixth consecutive top five finish on the year and his sixth top four in his last seven night races at Kansas while Erik Jones rounded out the top five in his No. 20 Toyota.

Joe Gibbs Racing Finally Shows Some Promise

Joe Gibbs Racing has struggled for much of the 2020 season. Yes, Denny Hamlin has five wins now and looks like a legitimate championship contender, but the rest of his teammates just have looked lost.

Credit that to the lack of practice during this pandemic. This group combined to win 19 of the 36 races run a year ago and put three cars in the Championship 4. This season, they’ve won just six times in 19 tries. They clearly are off.

But, Thursday night showed promise.

Erik Jones noted that it’s not so much the lack of speed for them, it’s just that everyone else has caught up to what they had a year ago.

Still, they showed speed in Kansas. All four cars finished with points in both stages including a 1-2-3 result in Stage 1. For Stage 2, they went 4-5-7-8. In the end, Hamlin notched another win while Truex and Jones came way with top five’s. They led a combined 153 of 267 laps.

Busch’s incident late in the race derailed his race winning hopes but he still finished a respectable 11th in the end.

Truex Starting To Heat Up

Martin Truex Jr. said a couple of weeks ago of his runner-up at the Kentucky Speedway that he felt like that finish would go a long way for them. He felt that they were back. The speed was there as he started last after failing pre race inspection and on a day where everyone struggled to pass, there he was up front.

Unfortunately, he was caught up in a crash last Sunday in Texas. On Thursday night, that speed was back again though as the Joe Gibbs Racing driver was third and eighth respectively in the two stages run at the Kansas Speedway, then backed that up with bringing his No. 19 Toyota home in third place.

That’s two top three finishes in his last three starts on the year and as he notes, he had a top three car at Texas before being wrecked.

Truex, is starting to heat up at the right time now too. He has six top six finishes in his last seven Kansas starts overall.

Kyle Busch Gets 1st Playoff Point, Doesn’t Get Finish He Deserved

It’s hard to believe that it’s July 23 and Kyle Busch just now scored his first playoff point on the season. Yes, the defending NASCAR Cup Series champion had as many playoff points accumulated this year as you and I.

Then, he goes out and wins Stage 1 of Thursday night’s race at the Kansas Speedway en route to his first point scored for the postseason. That’s a very big deal as the drivers that he’s going to be competing for a championship against this Fall have scored several.

Denny Hamlin has 28 playoff points already. Kevin Harvick has 22. Brad Keselowski scored his 15th with a victory in Stage 2. Joey Logano has 14 with Chase Elliott scoring 10 himself. That doesn’t factor in their bonus points for their point standing after race 26 too. As an example, Harvick would net an additional 15 playoff points for winning the regular season championship. That means he’d have 37 playoff points as of today. Busch, has one.

That’s a large advantage for those drivers when points are reset each round and Busch will be trailing them by a lot. Where this is big is, Busch is still winless this year in 19 starts. In fact, he has just one win in his last 41 starts. At this rate, he’s going to have to win in the later rounds of the playoffs if he wants to make it to the Championship 4 for the sixth straight season.

A win appeared to be on the horizon on Thursday night before his No. 18 Toyota skated into the Turn 4 wall late in the race which brought him down pit road for new tires. He was running third at the time of the incident. He’d rebound to finish 11th as the finish isn’t indicative of how much speed he had in Kansas.

Harvick’s Top 5 Streak Continues

Kevin Harvick had the lead on the final restart. He made a power move by Alex Bowman for the lead on Lap 245. With clean air, would he get his fifth win of the season? Unfortunately for him, he couldn’t.

His car just wasn’t good enough to capitalize.

Harvick, said his car wasn’t ideal in the handling department which is why he faded from first to fourth over the final 20 lap run.

“We just didn’t have a very good night,” Harvick said. “It wouldn’t turn into the corner and dead sideways in the middle of it. We got to the lead, we just went dead sideways after 4-5 laps. We were just holding on and hoping for another restart because that’s about all we had in it for a couple of laps.”

Harvick, now has six straight top 10 finishes on the season now and six top four results in his last seven night races at Kansas. He hasn’t finished outside of the top 10 on the season since Homestead back on June 14.

“We try to stay in there and dig all night and try not to make any mistakes,” Harvick continued. “If you do that and have good pit stops, you’ll have a good night.”

Almirola Keeps Rolling

Aric Almirola is happy to keep this recent trend going, but he’s starting to get frustrated to have not ended a now 60 race winless streak. On Thursday night, Almirola brought his No. 10 Ford home sixth for his eighth consecutive top 10 finish on the season.

That’s the longest streak of his career as five of those results were inside the top five even.

“I’m pretty eager to get a win,” Almirola said. This race team has been doing a great job. A long time ago I would have given everything to just get a top 10 and to be running where we’ve been running. But, when you start tasting victory and you run up front and race around those guys, you want to seal the deal and go to victory lane.”

Almirola notes that while he was one spot shy of a top five at Kansas, his car just wasn’t good enough to win anyhow.

“Tonight we were just a little bit off,” Almirola continued. “We just didn’t have as good of a car as we had the last several weeks. We just keep chipping away at it and keep building that points buffer to the cutoff. Which is nice but we just want to get a win for playoff points. I think we’re capable.”

Keselowski Keeps Momentum Going

Brad Keselowski has been quietly good this season. In fact, since the COVID-19 break ended (15 races), Keselowski has been in the top 11 for 13 of them. Furthermore, the Team Penske driver has a top 11 in every race for the last month including four straight top 10’s now.

Keselowski, had a fast race car in his No. 2 Ford Thursday night in Kansas. He finished fifth in Stage 1 but passed his teammate Ryan Blaney for the stage win in the second segment.

He’d have track position for the ending and come home runner-up for his second top two finish in his last three Kansas starts and third top six in his last four there overall.

“This is as good as we’ve been on the mile-and-a-half’s,” said Keselowski. “We’ve been really consistent. This is good, a nice midweek race, leading laps, leading stages. Just short of the win.”

Keselowski, has 15 playoff points now, third most in the series. He also has five stage wins, tied for most overall.

Logano’s Rough Post COVID-19 Season Continues

Joey Logano thought that last weeks third place finish at Texas was a potential start to a resurgence this year. See, Logano has made 15 starts now since we’ve returned to race during this world wide pandemic and in those races, only two of them were top five results.

Unfortunately, despite leading the first 27 laps of Thursday night’s race, Logano had a pit road penalty and never recovered. He finished 17th in Stage 1 and 11th in Stage 2. Then, on Lap 175, he appeared to have a right front tire go down on the restart and shot up the track in Turn 2 into the outside SAFER barrier. He collected four other drivers and ended his night early.

Logano, was credit with a 35th place result. He’s finished outside the top 10 now in six of his last eight starts including the only two inside the top 10 being a 10th place run in Indy and the third in Texas.

He’s finished 15th or worse in seven of the last 11 races overall and now has five finishes of 15th or worse in his last seven Kansas starts too.

Playoff Bubble Had Interesting Night

The race for the final few wildcard spots in the NASCAR Cup Series standings are getting tighter and tighter now. Thank Cole Custer and Austin Dillon’s wins the last few weeks for that. Then, also factor in Matt DiBenedetto and Clint Bowyer combining for zero stage points, and you get an even tighter bubble heading to the final seven races of the regular season.

On Lap 175, Joey Logano appeared to cut a tire and shoot up the track in Turn 2. That was on a restart so it collected several drivers, one of those being DiBenedetto. The Wood Brothers driver entered the night being 14th in the playoff standings. He leaves with a 36th place result. That’s his third finish of 17th or worse in his last four starts on the season which is leaving him ticked off. He went from +51 in the standings to +35.

“I couldn’t tell what was going on,” DiBenedetto said. “I just tried to go low. I saw guys checked up off of two. I didn’t see it. I just got clipped in the right side. Nothing I could do different. I am not going to lie. I am pretty frickin irritated. We have had garbage luck the last couple of weeks. The Menards Dutch Boy Ford Mustang was fast and we deserve better. We are racing for the playoffs and this is just annoying.”

Then, Jimmie Johnson was collected with some crash damage and could never get his car right. He ended his night early in 31st. The seven-time champion has five straight finishes outside of the top 15 and seven straight outside of the top 10. He hasn’t won a race in 114 races now and lost 20 points as he went from +2 to -20.

Bowyer had a terrible early part of the race in finishing 16th and 21st respectively in the two stages. His car came around in the end but he still finished 14th. He moves around DiBenedetto for 14th and is +42 now, gaining six points on the event.

Byron, stole a top 10 to move from two down to 10 points up. Tyler Reddick got five much need stage points in the first stage to come in -10 heading to New Hampshire. Erik Jones’ fifth place run and five combined stage points move him around Johnson into 18th (-12).

Bubba Wallace is 20th right now -100, shaping up a six driver battle for three spots right now.

JTG Daugherty Racing Has Another Tough Night

JTG Daugherty Racing entered Thursday night’s race at Kansas with their heads down. Ryan Preece had finished last in each of the last three races and his teammate Ricky Stenhouse Jr. had faded from inside the top 24 of owners points down to 25th. That meant that he no longer would get a 13th-24th place starting spot. The best he could do was 25th.

He got lucky and drew 25th this week.

Unfortunately, a mechanical failure took him out early as he finished last in 40th. That’s the fourth straight race now a JTG car was bringing up the rear of the finishing order.

“Yeah, for sure,” Stenhouse said on Wednesday on if the team morale is frustrated right now. “I was thinking back earlier today, Pocono was kind of uneventful for us and we were average. I felt like we learned things for Indy and then we never really got a shot to try that and see how our car was going to be at Indy with the pit road accident. Going to Kentucky, we were really loose and had our issues. And then at Texas I felt like we had a car capable of running around 10th to 12th. I think we were up to 14th and slowing getting our track position and then got caught in that wreck on the front straightaway; not to mention, both of us got caught in that wreck.

“At the Bristol All-Star race, we definitely weren’t as good as what we wanted to be, but looking back at the Bristol race earlier this year we were really good around the top of the race track, and that never really came in until very late into that All-Star race. I wasn’t there for the Open, but yeah, it’s been a little bit frustrating, but everybody is still working hard. I feel like we know what we’re capable of. We’ve just got to have things work out just a little bit better for us.

“I feel bad for Ryan (Preece) because this has kind of been his whole season of having good runs going and things happen. For us, we were both in that same wreck on pit road at Indy and then we were both in the wreck on the front straightaway at Texas. So, it’s pretty frustrating, but our speed is where we want it to be, and I’m looking forward to building on that speed at Kansas.”

Unfortunately, that speed was never shown as Stenhouse has now finished 15th or worse in six straight races.

Stenhouse said that racing during the pandemic has affected them and their chemistry still. With having to distance, he still hasn’t seen all of his guys on a consistent basis yet because there’s not a need to send everybody to the race track. A lot of the guys are staying back at the shop.

“I’ll go to the shop and sit in my car, but only when the road crew guys are there that I see on the weekends,” said Stenhouse of the situation. “And so, that’s been kind of a struggle. At the beginning of the year, I was at the shop a lot and able to kind of be around everybody, but when you’re doing things with limited people, I think we saw some struggles at the beginning of getting back racing that cost us some points and some good finishes. But I felt like we’ve rebounded well and had some strong runs. There’s times that you struggle when you get to a race track like Kentucky, I felt like we struggled a little bit. We were a little too loose and never could really get a handle on the race car in the race. That’s something that like during practice, we could have gotten a hold of and made our cars better.

“But everybody else has that opportunity that if you practice, to do that same thing. So, I don’t really know if your position really changes a lot but everybody gets that opportunity. So, it’s been interesting to just show up to the race track and go racing.”

The saving grace for that though has been him being able to bring his crew chief from RFR over in Brian Pattie. That’s at least a huge benefit of having that comfort to bounce ideas off of.

“Yeah, it’s been great having Brian,” Stenhouse continued. “Obviously, he’s learning a new team and new cars as well. This time period that we’re in right now obviously would probably be a lot easier if we were still together at our former team just knowing the car over the last few years and kind of knowing all the ins and outs of it. Those are things that Brian, as a crew chief, had to learn kind of the hard way with a few things, and then myself also, having to learn some of those things. We know what balance trim that we like at these race tracks, but that was based off of our old race car. Now you’ve got a different one. Sometimes things don’t correlate and transition over as smoothly. But, I’m definitely glad to have him over in my corner. I think he’s one of the best out there and I know that the more time he has on the race cars, the better we’re going to be.”

Still, he and Chris Buescher basically flip flopped rides and both are having similar seasons.

“For me, I see a lot of opportunity to get more top 5’s and top 10’s, especially on these 1.5-mile race tracks,” Stenhouse said in comparing the two. “I feel like our cars are really good there. Looking back at getting back to Bristol, I feel like we still have a shot to win at Bristol, a better shot that probably I would have had before. I feel like that car that I had there, earlier in the year was one of my best. We still have room for improvement on landing the balance that we want at some of these race tracks, but I definitely see a lot of opportunity to run more consistent and further to the front than what we have so far this year. And, I’m excited for it. I believe in everybody at JTG Daugherty Racing. They’re working hard and they’re pumped-up and excited for the speed that we’ve had so far.

“People probably thought we’d kind of struggle for speed given all the circumstances and switching seats and teams and all that, but I feel like we probably on one hand, a few times this year have probably exceeded expectations and kind of surprised people. And then on the other hand, we’ve got to get more consistent with that. So, I’m looking forward to the second half of the year, for sure.”

Stenhouse notes that they’re definitely building toward next year now too. He says when the news came out that NASCAR would still be running these current cars, “you’re still learning a lot and trying to make sure that going into next year you have your best foot forward since we’re not switching cars.”

They’re still learning and trying to get everything aligned for next year, but there’s still opportunities for this year too.

“When you look back at this weekend in Texas, I felt like we were a 10th or 12th place car,” Stenhouse noted. “When my teammate and I got in that wreck, we landed; we flew back early, obviously, both out of the race; and we landed, and I heard the No. 3 team (Austin Dillon) won. And, I’m like dang. We out ran them all race. So, there’s opportunities. You’ve just got to keep fighting. You never know how these races are going to play out. You’ve just got to keep putting yourself in position. I feel like we have speed that we can run inside the top 10 at these 1.5-mile tracks. And if you’re inside the top 10, you never know what will happen (with) race strategies and different pit calls. We’ve still got Daytona there, looming in the future that it would be cool to win, and you’d put yourself in the Playoff there. So, we’re still working hard and looking for wins as well.”

A few weeks ago, his boss Brad Daugherty said that he felt like their cars are better this year now anyways.

“I think we’re a little ahead of last year,” said co-owner Daugherty. “We felt like the last 2 years, we build our own race cars and have some really smart people working really hard. We thought last year, we had race cars that were really good, really, really good. For us, being a midsize smaller team, when you go out and go toe to toe with these big guys, you go in the top 15 you’re having a good day. When you get in the top 10, you’re having a great day.”

Daugherty noted that their past struggles have always been on 1.5-mile tracks. These circuits are NASCAR’s bread-and-butter right now and ones that are difficult for smaller teams like theirs to compete up front on.

“What we’ve seen, the struggles have been when you go to the 1.5-mile’s and everybody has a lot of redundancy with simulation,” Daugherty continued. “It’s tough for us because we get out engineered a lot of times at the big race tracks.”

But, what is pleasantly surprising them is that this year, they’ve been up front on the mix on these tracks. Two of Stenhouse Jr’s three top five finishes have come on 1.5-mile tracks in fact. He was third in the second race of the year in Las Vegas and fourth in the second Charlotte race in May.

“This year, we’ve seen our race cars compete and be in the mix on the 1.5-mile’s,” said Daugherty. “We had great race cars at Bristol, felt like we could run in the top five and finish in the top five at Bristol. Even at Talladega. When you go to Talledega, those Hendrick engines and Hendrick horsepower is stout. The car was slick and fast. Had enough downforce for stability and Ricky could really maneuver the car.”

Now, the their only potential problem is, tempering Stenhouse Jr’s aggression. He admitted last month that he has to do a better job of that. In the past, he’d press too hard instead of letting the car come to him. Now that he may not necessarily have race winning cars but maybe a Top 5 to Top 10 car, he just needs to maximize those days.

“We’re excited,” Daugherty said of the future. “We think we can win a race or two with Ricky. We’re putting a lot of pressure with him to do so. We think he’s capable in our stuff.

“We think we have an opportunity. Hopefully we can get to the playoffs this year. We’re going to work really hard. We know with Ricky, we got the aggressiveness we need on restarts. There’s going to be some trials and tribulations with that but we can live with that.

Stenhouse agrees.

“I feel like we are definitely capable of running in the top 10,” Stenhouse said. “I hope we can continue to run top five and contend for wins.

“But I definitely feel like we can run top 10 with everything that we have right here. We have to do that – we have to limit my mistakes, limit the issues that we’ve had and just have good, smooth, solid nights, and I think we can run top-ten.”

Top Stat

Hendrick Motorsports got two top 10 finishes on Thursday. They had no top 10’s in four of their last five races, so it was good to see them get back in there. But, they’ve still only led 78 total laps in the last six races on the year too.

Top Quote

“The restarts are just wild because we have no horsepower, so it takes us 45 minutes to get going,” a frustrated Matt DiBenedetto said after his crash on Lap 175.

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