On a day that saw several playoff drivers encounter issues, it was William Byron picking up his 6th NASCAR Cup Series win of the season and stamping his name into the Round of 8. Byron led just the final 6 laps of Sunday’s AutoTrader EchoPark Automotive 400 at the Texas Motor Speedway and gave Hendrick Motorsports their 300th career win in NASCAR’s premiere series. 11 of those 300 wins have come right here on this 1.5-mile track including 2 of the last 3 years.
“I don’t know if I can even put it into words,” Byron said. “I was such a Hendrick Motorsports fan growing up as a kid, watching Jimmie Johnson, and became really fond of Jeff Gordon as I got to know him.
“Just thankful for all the people and men and women back at Hendrick Motorsports and Mr. Hendrick for his investment in me and telling me at 17 years old that he was going to take me to Cup racing. Just appreciate everything he’s done for me, and this is awesome. We’re definitely going to enjoy this one.”
Kyle Larson won that 2021 race and was well on his way to giving them win No. 300 instead on Sunday but backed his No. 5 Chevrolet hard into the Turn 1 SAFER barrier after battling with Bubba Wallace for the lead with 19 laps remaining in the opening race of the second round.
“(Wallace) did a good job to stay with me on the restart, through (Turns) 3 and 4 and all that,” Larson said of the incident. “I tried to open up and have my shape into (Turn) 1 and with these cars compared to the old ones, you don’t really get sucked around like that. I wasn’t really expecting it and thought that I would be fine. Yeah, we just went in there side by side and I just lost it.”
Larson had led 98 laps up until that point and took home the stage victory in Stage 2. With JJ Yele bringing out a caution with 25 to go, Larson and 13 others stayed out of the pits due to tires really not meaning much on a steamy hot Sunday afternoon in North Texas. On a day where temperatures soared over 100 degrees, the Goodyear tires held up better than a year ago.
Why give up track position?
4 of the top 7 drivers did though including Erik Jones, Denny Hamlin, Chris Buescher and his teammate Brad Keselowski. They were 2nd, 3rd, 5th, 7th respectively. They knew they had nothing for Larson so why not gamble?
Hamlin would lead them off pit road with he, Keselowski, Buescher and Jones starting 15th, 16th, 17th, 18th.
Bubba Wallace restarted on the outside of the front row next to Larson. He tried to side draft him and put force on the right side of Larson’s car and it worked getting Larson loose in Turn 1 and sending him into the wall ending his day in 31st.
Wallace led the field to the restart but a crash behind brought out another caution. With the next restart, he tried to hold off Ross Chastain but it was William Byron powering his way by and leading the final six laps en route to his first career playoff victory and 10th of his career.
“Man, that’s badass. I finally got a good restart at the end,” Byron said. “But No. 300 for Hendrick Motorsports. Kyle really deserved this one, got to say. Those guys were really fast all day, and hate it for them at the end.
“Man, it was awesome to get our car to the front. I loved clean air. We just fought through traffic all day and our Liberty University Chevy was just tight back in traffic but had good pace. This was one of those hot days, it felt like I was playing football and went through two a days, just wanted to quit. It was a grind it out day and our team was there at the end. I’m really proud of this one as hot as it was and as tough as it was. We’ll take it and go on to the next round.”
Chastain came home second followed by Wallace, Christopher Bell and Hamlin.
Best Cars Didn’t Win
William Byron led 6 laps. Ross Chastain led 0. Bubba Wallace and Kyle Larson combined to have led 210. They finished 3rd and 31st.
Byron’s car came alive with track position towards the end. He was one of 14 cars that didn’t pit on Lap 244. With clean air, he moved even further forward. He was third and had a front row seat to Larson and Wallace’s incident with 19 laps remaining.
Byron bided his time and on the final restart, got by Wallace and set sail.
“We’ve just been kind of steady Eddie through the first three, four races and we haven’t shown any flashes, but today I thought we had a good car if we could have just gotten to the front, and at the end there we were really fast,” he quipped.
Byron started 18th and finished 4th and 15th in the pair of stages. Chastain qualified 5th but was 12th and 8th. Like Byron, he didn’t pit on that final pit sequence.
It paid off for him to net his second top five finish in the last 14 races. He had 1 in the 14 previous weeks.
“Early in the race I thought we were one of the best cars, and I wish we could have raced with those guys,” said Chastain. “We just worked our way back with taking four tires a lot, and some bad restarts on my side, but we had the speed, and we showed it all weekend.
“We did everything we needed to do, and at this race, if you follow the chart for running position is everything that the 1 team is about, and I love it.”
Wallace though says he threw the race away.
“Third time I fooled myself starting on top,” he admitted. “These guys gave me the right information. 14 was tight and he sent it off in there. Wasn’t going to stick, but that’s what he’s going to do. We’re racing for a win. I just hate it. I should have just kept my line into 3, and forced William to get tight. But we’re so vulnerable in these cars, right.
“But just upset with myself. Really needed a win there, and it was a good showing. I don’t know where that puts us. I don’t really care. But I know what I did and I choked.”
Larson, Truex In Trouble
Martin Truex Jr. and Kyle Larson both leave Texas above the cutline. Truex is +19 and Larson +2. But, I wonder if they’re now in trouble.
Truex scored no stage points and was 12th in both stages Sunday in Texas. He only finished 17th.
Larson led 98 laps and was well on his way to a Texas win, but a late race crash while battling Bubba Wallace for the lead put him 31st.
The thing is, both are terrible at the next stop next weekend – Talladega.
Truex Jr. has had just three top five finishes there 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.
Similar for Larson.
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.
Buescher, Keselowski, Hamlin Go Off Strategy At End
For RFK Racing teammates of Chris Buescher and Brad Keselowski, they knew they didn’t have the speed to beat Kyle Larson (98 laps led) or Bubba Wallace (112 laps led) in a final 20 lap shootout for the win. Even Erik Jones had a faster car. With Ford’s having led 2 laps all day and 30 laps in all of the opening round, with a race now shaping up to be won on speed, they were taking a knife to a gun fight.
For Hamlin, he had right side damage after his teammate, Ty Gibbs, got into Hamlin while Hamlin was exiting his pit stall on Lap 75. Both gave up better stage positioning to be among several drivers to pit under the late opening stage caution. Gibbs had already exited his pit stall and was riding down the middle lane. Hamlin exited and had no where to go but into Gibbs. It damaged Gibbs’ car enough to force him with an early exit in 33rd place.
Hamlin luckily didn’t seem too much of a detriment with the damage but it was enough to hamper him against Larson and Wallace.
So, on a day where tires didn’t mean a whole heck of a lot, they all pit under the caution for JJ Yeley with 25 to go. On Lap 244, they’d pit. 14 others stayed out.
Hamlin was 3rd. Buescher and Keselowski 5th and 7th at the time. They’d exit 15th (Hamlin), 16th (Keselowski) and 17th (Buescher). Without much time to rebound, would it work?
Buescher only gained 3 spots to finish 14th. Keselowski would come home 7th. Hamlin was 12th at the time of Wallace and Hamlin’s incident with 19 to go. He was 7th on the final restart with 7 to go and made it two more stops up to 5th.
While it was a net loss decision, it was one they felt they had to each make.
“At the end there we tried some strategy to make something happen and we couldn’t keep green flag conditions for more than a couple laps at a time so we bled off all the laps that we needed to do something and I ended up back there with people that were all over the place all day, running into us on straightaways and just shouldn’t have been around that group,” Buescher said.
Hamlin scored just his 2nd top 5 finish since 2019 here but 12th top 15 finish of the season and 15th top 10. He now has 97 career playoff top 10 finishes and 220 career top five’s. He’s +37 in points after scoring 10 stage points on the day too.
“Today, I thought we had a really fast FedEx Camry until we got the damage,” he said. “Once we got the damage, it just wasn’t as fast as it was before. Still, considering how much damage it had – it was a top-three car. A bunch of carnage happened there in the end, and we avoided it, so we are in a better spot than when we entered.”
Keselowski had 4 stage points but leaves +8 in the standings.
“There were big ups and downs today,” he said. “We ran in the top-10, 10th-12th most of the day. At the end there we pitted and put two tires on at the end. I think we were fourth of fifth but then they kept wrecking so much that we didn’t get a chance to take advantage of it and were only able to get back up to seventh.”
Buescher had 15 stage points, most among playoff drivers to negate the loss of 7 on track spots for pitting. He’s +22 heading to Talladega.
Hamlin can win at any given time on a superspeedway, but has had just one top 10 in his last 10 superspeedway starts. However, six Top-7 finishes in his last 10 Talladega tries also gives me reason of optimism too. He has seven straight top seven’s in the Fall race as well and has scored just the 12th most points on superspeedway’s this season though with finishes of 17th, sixth, 17th, 14th, 26th.
Buescher and Keselowski could shine. They just went 1-2 in Daytona with Buescher winning.
Keselowski was fifth in the spring race at Talladega, 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.
Busch Crashes Early
I felt like this round could be where Kyle Busch shined.
For Texas, Busch had five Top-10 finishes in his last six Texas starts entering this weekend. 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 had 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.
He qualified 7th and had a strong car early running as high as third. But, on Lap 60, he reported that he felt like his right front tire was flat. The team felt like maybe when he got off the racing line it put some marbles on his tires and that he should ride it out until the end of the stage. He dropped 5 spots to 8th before losing control in Turn 2 and backing into the wall which left him 34th in the end.
Busch drops to -17 heading to Talladega.
“The car had good grip in it. We had those couple of yellows back-to-back and we restarted on the outside,” said Busch. “I felt like I had a flat right front and I was going to come to pit road. I second-guessed it and said ‘I don’t think so, man. It’s just something is wrong… something isn’t right, but it’s not a flat.’ And just all on its own, just turned into the bottom of the race track in turn one and it just swapped ends on me. That’s the rear, not the front, not having grip… so I just don’t know.”
Luckily, he won there 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.
Maybe he’ll be okay after all.
400 Miles The Right Amount
Texas being shortened to 400 miles from 500 miles is the right move. A 500-mile race at one of the worst tracks on the schedule is too long. Races would last upwards of 4 hours here. With 100+ degree heat, it would have been miserable if this race lasted another 100 miles.
But, 400 miles made this one far more enjoyable. It felt more condensed and right.
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