Who Can Come Out Unscathed
With Talladega and the Charlotte ROVAL looming, this race has taken on an added importance. It’s a way to control your own destiny and get into the Round of 8 early and not have to worry about the next two weeks. If you can’t pick up a win on Sunday, then you at least need a good finish in order to not be playing from behind over the next two weeks too.
You can’t afford any mistakes and for an opening round that saw several mistakes among playoff drivers, for the ones in the top 12 still alive for this year’s title, you absolutely can’t afford something to go amiss on Sunday.
Martin Truex Jr. nearly found out the hard way in the opening round.
Non Playoff Winner?
Last year, non playoff winners swept the first four races of the postseason including this one. In fact, we’ve actually seen a non-playoff winner of this track in 2 of the last 3 years including Tyler Reddick’s win a year ago. It’s happened five times overall too.
Non playoff winners: 2006 Tony Stewart, 2014 Jimmie Johnson, 2015 Jimmie Johnson, 2020 Kyle Busch, 2022 Tyler Reddick.
Does it happen again on Sunday?
Joey Logano has had 10 top 10 finishes in his last 12 Texas starts including a runner-up just last season. He’s also had two Top-5 finishes in his last three starts on intermediate tracks.
You can even look at someone like Kevin Harvick too. Two of his last three finishes have been 16th or worse here. However, he also has 13 top 10 finishes in his last 15 starts on the 1.5-mile track too. Among those are four top two finishes in his last nine starts there. In the Fall race, he’s won three of the last six years.
You’ve got to think that Harvick isn’t going to spend his whole final season winless. But, with 7 races remaining, you can eliminate some stops that it won’t happen.
Phoenix will go down to a Championship 4 driver. Every year since 2014 the final race was won by a Championship 4 participant.
Martinsville is one of Harvick’s worst tracks.
The ROVAL isn’t a strong suit of his. On road courses this season, he’s finished 13th, 11th, 29th, 23rd, 21st.
Talladega isn’t a likely spot either. He’s only had two top five finishes in his last 22 Talladega starts and has only scored the 19th most points on superspeedways this season too with finishes of 12th, 33rd, 21st, 30th, ninth.
Which leaves Texas, Las Vegas and Homestead as his final 3 chances.
Tires
We saw several tire failures on the last 1.5-mile track at Kansas two races ago including Martin Truex Jr. early on in the race and Chris Buescher late. A year ago, tires were the name of the game at Texas, specifically air pressures.
With a stock car with stock parts in a series to where there’s no real separation between the top teams and the bottom, any sort of advantage to be gained can be the difference in winning or not. An area that has been explored is with tire pressures.
By playing with tire pressures, you’re not doing anything illegal. It’s allowed. However, it’s not advised either to go outside of the limits that Goodyear places on where to run your air pressures at.
While a lot of folks blamed Goodyear, Texas and even the Next Gen for the tire fiasco in last year’s AutoTrader EchoPark Automotive 500, it actually sounding more and more like this was an air pressure problem from the get go.
“It has been widely documented that the balance of the Next Gen car has shifted towards the rear,” said Greg Stucker, Goodyear’s director of racing entering last year’s race in Texas. “On a weekly basis, optimizing tire performance is a key element in having a successful weekend. Air pressure, suspension geometry and shock settings work in unison to get the most out of the tire package. Being aggressive in any one of those areas is certainly a recipe for short-term speed, but the risk vs. reward of those choices can often come back and bite you.
“We work very closely with teams throughout the week and at the track, providing as much data as we can to help them make the right tire choices. We understand that teams are in a constant search for speed, but finding the edge of that envelope is key to finishing races.”
He called his shot and did so days before we witnessed 16 cautions for 91 laps in a sloppy NASCAR Cup Series race at Texas.
The initial indications came back to the tire woes being placed on teams running lower than normal air pressures.
“We’re gaining as much information as we can from the teams, trying to understand where they are with regard to their settings, air pressures, cambers, suspicions,” said Greg Stucker, Goodyear’s director of racing after the race. “For sure I can say without a doubt air pressure is playing into it. We know where a lot of the guys are. Some were more aggressive than others. We know that plays a part.
“I’m not saying that’s the only thing, but it’s certainly a factor, so we’re just trying to understand everything else that is going on with regard to specific teams. We know a lot of guys have not had issues. We’ve had guys put full fuel runs on tires, but, obviously, other guys have had issues. We’ll be working with them to try to sort through that is.”
NASCAR agreed.
“Well, I mean, obviously we saw a lot of tire problems, and we saw a lot of teams that didn’t have tire problems,” Scott Miller said last year after this race.
“We’re working through that. Goodyear is working through that with the teams, working through what the setups were, what the air pressures were, to try to get to the bottom of it.
“There was a lot of teams that reported no problems to us post-race, and they did admit to being a little bit on the conservative side air pressure and being closer to the suggested minimums that Goodyear recommended.
“I don’t really know how to comment on how long a tire should last.
“The top four at least ran 64 laps home. If they can go 64 laps, they have plenty of tires to get the job done.
“We’re all learning about the setups, the tires. Goodyear is learning about the construction, the new wheel. It’s part of a learning — it’s an unfortunate part of a learning process.”
Tyler Reddick’s crew chief last year, Randall Burnett, agreed that they went conservative with their tire setups and it paid off.
“We came into this race a little conservative,” he said. “We got bit at Kansas the other week with one. I think we’ve had four tires go down this year while leading the race.
“R.C. talked to me about it and said, Make sure you keep some air in the tires today. I tried to do that. A little bit more conservative approach this week. It’s a fine line. Everybody knows the speed, pushing the limits of the tires.
“With the low sidewalls, they’re not as forgiving as the 15-inch wheel stuff we had before. It’s a lot finer line, I think.
“I mean, there’s so many things that go into it, right? It’s tire pressure, it’s camber in the tires, it’s where you’re running on the racetrack. More often than not you see a guy that’s leading blow a tire, it’s because he has the cleanest air, the most air, most downforce on his car because he’s out front. Sometimes it overloads the tire.
“That’s kind of where we’re at with them.”
Even Chase Elliott who had a tire end his day on lap 183 agreed.
“I’m not sure that Goodyear is at fault,” he said. “Goodyear always takes the black eye, but they’re put in a really tough position by NASCAR to build a tire that can survive these types of racetracks with this car. I wouldn’t blame Goodyear.”
What happens on Sunday with Talladega and the ROVAL looming? Goodyear is bringing the same left side tire but will introduce a new right side tire this weekend. They made the decision following July’s test that Denny Hamlin, Joey Logano and Daniel Suarez took part in.
“I feel pretty good about it,” Hamlin allowed. “I feel like that tire is very, very different. I think it probably could catch a few teams off guard and not be what they expected, ‘cause it is very different.
“We at least, kind of have a baseline of what that is and we’re going to start to work on it to try to put a fast car on the track next week too. I feel like we’re in as good a spot as anyone going into next week.”
The Ford’s
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. 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.
On road courses, Toyota led 148 laps. Chevy 133. Ford? 76.
On short tracks, it was Toyota 558 entering the night, Ford 498 and Chevy 394. The rest? Chevy 1,998, Toyota 1,444 and Ford 547.
It’s the main reason as to why 3 of the 4 drives eliminated in the opening round belonged to the Ford camp. With just 6 wins this season, they’ve been playing from behind all along.
With that said, what do they do this weekend? If you’re this far behind the other two manufacturers, why not spend the final 7 races testing for 2024? Without much practice these days and testing being so limited, it makes more sense to turn the page to next year.
However, they do still have 3 drivers left in the playoff field and if they can be conservative enough on Sunday and not make mistakes, they very well could make a case to get all three by to the Round of 8.
Martin Truex Jr. is 0-for-33 here, 0-for-105 on drafting tracks and outside of Sonoma, has still struggled some on road courses. Denny Hamlin has just 2 top 5 finishes in his last 10 Texas starts and 1 top 10 in his last 10 superspeedway efforts. He’s finished 17th, sixth, 17th, 14th, 26th this season on road courses.
Christopher Bell swept the opening round poles. He finished 23rd, 8th, 3rd in them. He was 34th at Texas last year, 39th, 5th, 17th in 3 playoff races at Talladega.
Bubba Wallace finished 7th, 32nd, 14th in the opening round but also has just one Top-10 finish in his last eight Texas starts and that came in his first try at that. He’s been 23rd or worse in six of his last seven Texas tries. At Talladega, his win is his only finish better than 14th in 11 Cup tries. His NXS finishes were 31st, 20th, 13th and 13th respectively. On superspeedways this season, he’s finished 20th, 27th, 28th, 25th, 12th. He’s accumulated just the 22nd most points (90) on them. Road courses he says are his worst tracks.
That’s 4 drivers right there. Kyle Larson struggles on these tracks. William Byron has 3 top 5 finishes in his last 15 starts on the season.
The path is there for the Ford’s to strike.
Ryan Blaney is 0-for-14 here. However, Blaney has a top 12 finish in all but one Texas start. 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.
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. For Talladega, he and Blaney have to be the favorites.
Chris Buescher won the regular season finale at Daytona and has been strong on road courses the last year in-a-half. His 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. He should be solid the final two weeks of this round. But at Texas, he was 30th last year.
If these drivers have solid days on Sunday and contend for the win like they should next week, then they may be able to afford an off ROVAL weekend in order to get by.
Can Hendrick Motorsports Capitalize?
Toyota’s haven’t necessarily been very strong here, Ford’s haven’t been strong on these tracks this season and Chevy only has four playoff drivers left. Can Hendrick Motorsports capitalize on Sunday?
Kyle Larson is arguably the hottest driver in the series right now. He won the Southern 500, was fourth in Kansas and runner-up in Bristol.
At Texas, he won both the All-Star race as well as the playoff race at Texas in 2021. He also has three Top-10 finishes in his last five Texas starts and has finished second, second, 20th, 30th, fourth, first, fourth on tracks with this racing package. Larson had an average finishing spot of 3.1 in the opening round with finishes of first, fourth and second respectively.
William Byron was runner-up in 2021 after leading 55 laps. Last year, he led 42 laps and finished seventh. He has been strong with this package this season with finishes of first, third, first, second, eighth, fourth and 15th. Byron had two Top-10 finishes in three first round races but just three top 5 finishes in the last 15 races on the season. 2 of the 3 were wins. He needs a solid day on Sunday and with Ford’s lacking speed on these tracks, he has a shot to contend.
Can these two capitalize on Sunday?
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