Aggressive Strategy?
The drivers that made it to this point are here for a reason and mostly because they weren’t as aggressive as others in some key moments during this postseason. Whether it’s not pushing the car to places it shouldn’t be in, or lifting in sketchy moments or even to a more conservative approach in air pressures, the key to advancing in this year’s playoffs was determined by playing it safe.
Now that we’re down to 8 drivers left, most are saying the aggression has to match the round. It’s time to ramp it up. You absolutely have to go for broke now. Being conservative won’t get you to the final four.
However, in a round to where you have to be perfect, how do you balance the aggression and perfection?
Being too aggressive on tire strategy could have a repeat of Texas last year and if a playoff driver now has that in this round, forget about making the Championship 4 without a win. However, not being aggressive and too conservative can force an elimination this round too because top 10’s are likely going to cut it.
So where’s the balance?
For a track where tires are going to be a subject line again, I’m curious to see how aggressive these 8 drivers truly are.
In this round, there’s really no margin for error if you want to take at least one of the wildcard spots. A bad start to the round Sunday in Vegas could be forcing a must-win at either Homestead or Martinsville.
Is Winner Championship Favorite
Six times has the winner of the 7th playoff race gone on to win the title later that season including in each of the last two seasons – 2007 Jimmie Johnson (Atlanta), 2011 Tony Stewart (Martinsville), 2016 – Jimmie Johnson (Martinsville), 2018 – Joey Logano (Martinsville), 2021 – Kyle Larson (Texas), 2022 – Joey Logano (Vegas).
Last year, Joey Logano had the rare advantage as well as being the only driver from the Round of 8 to spend the last two weeks knowing that he’s racing for a championship in Phoenix. He won the third-round opener in Las Vegas. With Kyle Larson winning in Homestead a week later, it meant that Logano came into Martinsville (the cutoff race) as the only one still knowing that he’s racing for a championship. Why would the other 7 dream of Phoenix when they first have to get to Phoenix?
“We’ve had three weeks to think about our race car and how we want to play the race out, how we want to run practice,” Logano said a year ago in this moment. “We’ve had the opportunity to really, really dive deep into Phoenix, so we’ll take that to our advantage and move on.
“Well, it’s really nice because it’s even a bigger advantage than it was when we were racing in Miami because the car has to leave sooner now, right? We had to leave Wednesday noontime to get here on time.
“If you imagine, like, you got to be really prepared because if you race Sunday and you finally realize you’re in, then you have Monday, Tuesday. Wednesday you better be done with everything.
“In that time, the driver has to go do media, the driver has all these other things they got to do on top of that. There’s not time to prep the correct way, whereas our team, we’ve had a couple weeks to really focus in 100%, at least 95%, on Phoenix.
“We had a conversation about Miami. Yeah, sure, sounds good, let’s do it. What about Phoenix? That’s how our conversations were, as they should be. The only one that matters is Sunday.”
That backs up what he said a couple of weeks prior after scoring that South Point 400 win.
“Doesn’t hurt,” Logano said then. “I think it means a lot, if I’m being honest. I think it does. I’ve lived this story once where you really just kind of — you’re not last minute trying to throw together a championship car for Phoenix because you’re trying to build so many other ones. It just gives the team time to really start focusing on a car that can put us in the position to win.
“If you only have so much time in the day, you got to prioritize, you’re going to prioritize to get yourself in the Championship 4 first. Now that we did that, we’re going to have 100% of our time to Phoenix.”
In saying that, you could in theory approach the final two weeks of the third round differently which could also be a detriment.
“We approach them to win, just like we always do,” Logano said on his approach over the next two weeks. “Same meetings and prep like we always do. I just assume that we’ll probably focus a little bit more on Phoenix at this point.”
So does that make Sunday’s race winner the championship favorite?
It could be easy for the winner to fall into that trap of letting loose the last couple of weeks. Not having to worry about points or wins or anything truly could keep them into a dangerous position of falling out of that competitive fire. For drivers everyone else, they’ve had to fight the entire postseason to make it here. They’ve not had the luxury of letting their guard down like Sunday’s winner will for the next two weeks.
Can you just flip that switch all the sudden back to the highest of levels and match the other three in Phoenix?
“Of course it means a lot, particularly to win that first race in the final round of the Round of Eight I should say, because it lets the team, at least the 22 car team, I won’t say relax a little bit, but use the two following races, which they did at Homestead and last Sunday at Martinsville, to, I’ll say, fine-tune the game, to rehearse, to a certain extent, for Joey to stay sharp,” said Walt Czarnecki of Team Penske last Fall.
“He and I talked about it before the race. Believe me, he wasn’t sitting back. He wasn’t waiting. He wanted to stay sharp. He wanted to stay in the game, so to speak.
“That’s what it really allowed us to do. That’s without having the tension of gosh, we’ve got to do something here at Homestead or something here at Martinsville to make the show.”
Can Ford’s Take It To HMS/Toyota?
It’s no secret, when you come to the four annual stops between Las Vegas and Kansas, you’re going to have to go through Hendrick Motorsports and Toyota’s in general if you want to win on these 1.5-mile tracks. However, can the Ford’s have a repeat of this race last season?
Ford drivers went 1-4 and led 85 of 267 laps that day. While they’d admit that these are not their strongest tracks, they’ve done what they had to do in these races to get by.
What happens this time around?
Toyota’s led 319 of 534 laps in the last two Kansas spring races and 177 of 535 in the Fall. Hendrick Motorsports led 164 of the same 534 laps in the pair of Kansas spring races and 262 of the 535 in the Fall.
In Kansas 1 in 2022, Toyota (171 of 267 laps led) went 1-3-4-5-6. HMS went 2-9-16-29 after leading 64 of 267 laps. In Kansas 1 this year, Toyota (148 of 267 laps led) went 1-4-8-9 while HMS (100 of 267 laps led) went 2-3-7-25.
For the last two Fall races, Toyota (94 of 267 laps led) went 1-2-3-5 and 1-2-8-14-32-36 (83 of 268 laps led). HMS went 4-6-8-11 (116 of 267 laps led) and 4-6-10-15 (146 of 268 laps led).
For Vegas, it’s just as good. The last two spring races, Toyota led 123 of 541 laps while HMS led 292 laps themselves.
In Vegas 1 of 2022, Toyota led 107 of 274 laps while HMS led 51. This past year, Toyota went 4-5-7-11 and led 16 of 271 laps but HMS led 241 of 271 in going 1-2-3 for the race, 1-2 in Stage 1 and 1-2-3 in Stage 2.
Combined, that’s 415 of 541 laps led in the spring Vegas races.
En fuego.
It’s just last year’s playoff race didn’t go like they had thought that it would.
HMS failed to lead a single lap. They went 11-13-21-35 in the race. Toyota did go 3-5-7 but led just 34 laps.
Which is why I’m wondering if the door is open.
What can Ryan Blaney and Chris Buescher most notably do? Can they steal a win?
Blaney has eight Top-7 finishes in his last 13 starts in Vegas. His last two though were 28th and 13th. At Kansas this year, he finished 16th and 12th too.
Buescher was 27th and 15th at Kansas this year and 17th and 27th in his last two Vegas starts. They may need to do what they did in Texas in the last round and gobble up as many stage points as possible.
William Byron finished 1st, 2nd, 2nd in the last round and dominated this past spring here to the tune of sweeping both stages, leading 176 of 271 laps and winning. On intermediate tracks this season, he’s finished first, third, first, second, eighth, fourth, 15th and first respectively.
Kyle Larson has three consecutive Top-2 finishes in the spring race including a 2021 win at that and runner-up after 63 laps led this spring. Larson was also second in both stages as well. At Kansas, a like track, he was second and fourth respectively this season too. On intermediate tracks this season, he’s finished in the Top-4 in five of the eight races but if not for a crash while battling for the lead at Texas after leading nearly 100 laps and the same in the spring race at Darlington, he’d be 7-for-8.
Denny Hamlin won the 2021 Fall race, was 11th this past spring and has four Top-5 finishes in his last six Vegas starts. Also, he has finished fourth, second, first, second in his four Kansas tries with the Next Gen and was fifth in the last round at Texas.
Christopher Bell has three of Top-10 finishes in his last four Vegas starts including a fifth place run this past spring too. It could be four straight if not for being an innocent bystander in the Kyle Larson vs. Bubba Wallace on track spat last October. Bell finished fourth in Stage 1 and was running up front when he was collected in their feud. On a like track at Kansas, Bell also was fifth and third last year and 36th and eighth this year. He was fourth in the last round at Texas. He has three Top-8 finishes in the last five races on the season.
Martin Truex Jr.
Martin Truex Jr. is thanking his lucky stars that he had such a strong regular season to net him 36 playoff points. He’s had to lean on them in each of the first two rounds. He’s finished 18th, 36th, 19th, 17th, 18th, 20th this postseason. He’s led no laps. In fact, if you go back to the regular season finale at Daytona, he’s finished 17th or worse in all seven races.
With 9 wildcard spots available into the Round of 12 and 5 into the Round of 8, Truex had enough of a playoff point advantage to squeak by. But, there’s only one guaranteed wildcard spot to the final round this time. I don’t think he can just lean on those playoff points to get to Phoenix.
Which means he needs to start better. For Darlington, he finished 18th. For the Round of 12 opener at Texas, he was 17th.
Can he just magically turn it around? Can you go from a 17th place at best car consistently for over a month to a race winner in a pressure packed playoff situation?
It would be ironic that he has been this bad in the playoffs then go out and win the first race of the Round of 8 and advance to the Final Four as a result.
Las Vegas is a better suited track for him to do so at though. Truex has 11 Top-8s’s in his last 12 Las Vegas starts. He was sixth and fifth respectively at Kansas last season and eighth and 36th this year. He’s had a Top-8 finish in four of the eight intermediate races this season too.
Then it’s to Homestead to where he has 3 top 2 finishes in his last 5 and would have been 4 if not for an issue on his final pit stop a year ago.
Martinsville winds the Round of 8 down with Truex winning 3 of the last 8 there.
With 2 intermediate races and 1 on a short track, can Truex capitalize is the question.
At one point, Truex was a 1.5-mile master. Among his first 19 race wins, 11 of them were on these tracks. 2 more were at Pocono and 1 at Fontana. He had just 1 win on a track that’s 1-mile in size or shorter and that was his first career win at Dover.
Over his last 14 races wins however, 10 of which were on tracks 1-mile in length or shorter. His only wins since the end of 2019 were 3 at Martinsville (2019, 2020, 2021), 2 at Richmond, 1 at Phoenix (2021), 1 at Dover (2023), 1 at Loudon (2023), 1 at Darlington and 1 at Sonoma.
Owners Race
For some reason, this isn’t getting much attention but with NASCAR’s Most Popular Driver going for this championship still and not on the drivers side, I expect it to. Hendrick Motorsports has 2 drivers on the drivers side of things and 3 in the owners side championship hunting. But the owners race pays the bills and where the money is won.
Coming into this weekend, William Byron (+25), Denny Hamlin (+16), Kyle Larson (+8) and Chris Buescher (+5) are above that cutline. Christopher Bell (-5), Tyler Reddick (-5), Ryan Blaney (-7) and Chase Elliott (-19) are below.
Elliott’s No. 9 Chevrolet is in over Martin Truex Jr’s No. 19 Toyota. That’s because while Elliott missed 6 races due to injury including this being the first one this spring, plus a race for a suspension, they had drivers still in that car.
Josh Berry finished 29th, 10th, 18th, 2nd, 27th in it. Jordan Taylor was 24th in COTA. Corey LaJoie was 21st at World Wide Technology Raceway. By having this ride still in those 7 races, the 9 car accumulated points still.
Then with Elliott having 12 top 11 finishes in the last 17 races since the return from the suspension including results of 2nd, 32nd, 4th, 8th, 6th, 7th, 11th, 7th, 9th since the Indy Road Course, he’s done a great job of keeping this ride going for an owners championship.
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