Kyle Busch Wins 2 of 3 Races

With what’s coming up ahead, I feel like Kyle Busch has a chance to do something special this round. For Texas, Busch has five Top-10 finishes in his last six Texas starts. He won in 2020 even. The car he’s driving now, won a year ago. Out of 32 career starts on this 1.5-mile track, Busch has four wins, 14 Top-5 finishes and 18 Top-10 results. He’s also finished seventh, sixth, first, 11th and seventh on intermediate tracks lately as well.

Then it’s to Talladega. He won at this track in the spring. He’s also scored the third most points (160) on superspeedway’s this season as well.

Then it’s to the ROVAL where he was third a year ago, fourth the year prior and had three Top-5 finishes in as many races to start the road racing season off with including a pair of runner-ups. He was 36th at Indy but was in the top five before an issue. This car was runner-up in 2021.

I don’t know which 2 races he wins, but I think he can pick up multiple wins this round.

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Ford’s Get All 3 Cars Into Round of 8

Ford’s led just a combined total of 30 laps in the opening round of the playoffs. That shouldn’t come as much of a shock because they’ve largely struggled away from superspeedway’s this season. On road courses, Toyota led 148 laps. Chevy 133. Ford? 76.

On short tracks, it was Toyota 558 entering the night at Bristol, Ford 498 and Chevy 394.

So with having Texas and the ROVAL making up 2 of the 3 races this round, you’d probably say I was crazy to see all 3 playoff eligible drivers moving on when 3 of the 4 in Round 1 to be eliminated were also Ford drivers.

However, all 3 drivers fare well at Texas and/or intermediate tracks this season.

Chris Buescher hasn’t finished well at Texas in the past but he hasn’t anywhere prior to this season. On like tracks, he’s been solid. That’s all he has to do on Sunday.

Brad Keselowski has four straight Top-10 finishes in Texas (9th, 6th, 4th, 8th) and 12 top 10 finishes in 27 career starts on this track. He was sixth in Darlington, ninth in Kansas and eighth in Bristol in the last round too.

Ryan Blaney is 0-for-14 at Texas. However, Blaney has a top 12 finish in all but one Texas start too. In fact, he has seven Top-8’s in his last nine tries and the only ones that he doesn’t, he led 145 laps in spring race in 2019 before an engine problem and leading 150 laps and sweeping both stages in July 2020 before a late race fluke caution. He won the All-Star race on this track in 2022 and led 29 laps in a fourth place run last Fall. He just won the Coca-Cola 600 this past May too and has four Top-10 finishes in his last five intermediate track starts. The only thing is, he’s not had a Top-5 finish since that ‘600 win and results of ninth, 12th and 22nd in the opening round.

Then it’s to Talladega. All 3 will be the favorites that weekend.

 686 of their 1,808 laps led (37.9%) were on these types of tracks.

Since August, their entire laps led for a race was 68, 54, 17, 110 (Daytona), 2, 27, 1.

Blaney has an astounding four Top-2 finishes in his last eight tries at Talladega including a pair of wins (2019, 2020) at that. On superspeedway’s this season, he’s finished eight, seventh, second, ninth and 36th at Daytona. He’s scored the seventh most points (149) on superspeedway’s this season and has led fourth most laps (77).

Keselowski was fifth in the spring, second in last month’s Coke Zero Sugar 400 and has won six times at Talladega, including the spring of 2021. He was also runner-up that Fall too. Keselowski has the most superspeedway points (188) and second most laps led (116) on these tracks this season with finishes of second, fifth, sixth, second in the last four.

Buescher just won Daytona.

Then at the ROVAL, Buescher’s last five road course finishes last year read: second (Sonoma), sixth (Road America), 10th (Indianapolis) ninth (Watkins Glen) and sixth (ROVAL). This year, he’s finished eighth, fourth, 10th, 11th and seventh on them. If Blaney or Keselowski can win at Talladega then the other should have enough points in the bank to just have a solid day to get by.

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Truex AND Larson Eliminated

Martin Truex Jr’s opening round of the 2023 NASCAR Cup Series playoffs on how much the regular season truly does matter. In a playoff era to where most say you can’t afford any mistakes, well Truex proved that if you have a good enough regular season, you are afford multiple mulligans still.

At least early on.

Truex won the 2023 regular season championship. That granted him 15 additional playoff points. 2nd place gets 10. The difference in 5 was the margin that he was above the cutline on Saturday night in Bristol.

If he doesn’t win the regular season title, he’s tied with Kevin Harvick for the final Round of 12 spot and Harvick’s 11th place finish in Kansas would have won the tiebreaker among the two to propel him forward and Truex instead out.

Harvick went winless in the regular season and the lack of 5 playoff points for a race win also kept him out. So it works both ways and shows that the 26-race regular season means more than you might think it does.

While Truex has a fresh outlook again, moving back to the top of the standings for the second round, I still think he has to be on upset alert.

Truex is 0-for-33 at Texas.

He’s 0-for-37 at Talladega.

He’s 0-for-5 at the Charlotte ROVAL.

If push comes to shove again, he could be in a perilous position.

For Texas, 3 of his last 4 finishes have seen him come home 25th or worse. He was 31st last year. He has just one top five finish in his last 8 Texas tries.

For Talladega, he’s had just three top five finishes since 2007. His last 12 finishes there are 40th, 35th, 23rd, 26th, 23rd, 20th, 24th, 23rd, 31st, 12th fifth, 26th and 27th respectively. He’s only scored the 17th most points on superspeedway’s too. Combine that with being 0-for-64 at Daytona and that’s counting the Clash and Duels and now 0-for-4 at Atlanta, he’s 0-for-105 on drafting tracks.

That could put him coming from behind again on the ROVAL. Granted, he should have won the inaugural race, was 7th in the two races after but since has finished 29th and 17th the last 2 years. He’s also finished 17th, first, 32nd, seventh, sixth on road courses this season. Last year, he finished 7th, 26th, 13th, 21st, 23rd and 17th on them.

That’s why he’s on upset alert in my book.

Same for Kyle Larson. Yes, I think as we sit after the three-race opening round, he’s a championship front runner. But, that’s through the first round. For the second round?

In 2021, he won 2 of these 3 playoff tracks. However, Texas wasn’t in this round. Now, it is.

He finished 9th, 18th, 35th on the same tracks last year. Texas is his best shot at victory. On superspeedway’s, he’s only 1-for-40 for top 5 finishes. In fact, his last five finishes at Talladega are 39th, 40th, 40th, 37th, fourth, 18th and 33rd respectively. For the ROVAL, yes he won in 2021, but he was outside the top 30 last year and has finished 14th, eighth, fourth, eighth and 26th on road races this season too.

The margin for error is smaller in this round with 4 less drivers. That’s why the regular season can only get you so far in the playoffs because you the pool of drivers grows smaller but more talented too.