Who Dominates Early
NASCAR began using stage breaks in their races in 2017, the eventual race winner of the Cup Series race on the South Florida 1.5 mile track has finished in the top five of every stage run. They’re 12-for-12.
Kyle Larson won last year and swept both stagss. William Byron won the year prior and finished 4th and 1st in the two stages. Denny Hamlin won the 2020 race and swept both stages again. Kyle Busch won the year prior and was 3rd and 1st in the two stages. Joey Logano was victorious in 2018 and was fourth and third respectively himself. Martin Truex Jr. was fifth and second respectively in his win in 2017.
Larson vs. Reddick
This track was made for these two. They both like to hang it out and ride the high line. They just went 1-2 in last month’s Southern 500 and I can see it happening again.
Reddick was fourth in 2020 and runner-up in 2021. While he exited early last year for his first result worse than fourth at Homestead, he’s finished second in each of the last two Southern 500’s too.
Larson has also been so dominant on this 1.5-mile track in the past. He has five Top-5 finishes in his last seven starts there including leading 132 laps in a runner-up effort in 2016, 145 more in a third-place run in 2017, 45 laps in 2018 and leading 199 of 267 laps in his sweep last year. He also just won the Southern 500 and restarted on a late restart in the spring Darlington race in the lead.
Coming off of a win in Vegas though, it makes you wonder how focused they are for Homestead now. They have the lone advantage of preparing for Phoenix so you don’t want to lose that if someone else new wins on Sunday.
How The Race Looks
Some may say last year’s race at Homestead was a bit of a snoozer for a while, but I say it was just the byproduct of this type of racing. It’s refreshing. You don’t need to have every race be chaotic which with so many lanes to pass on here and strategy being a potential wrinkle, one could say that this is a great place to rotate the season finale at Phoenix with. Instead of the same place every year, why not switch it up year to year.
They do so in Final Four’s, Super Bowl’s, etc. Why not the final championship deciding race?
While there’s been better Homestead races than last year’s, it’s not like that one was a terrible one either. Still, fans are going to be eager to see how this year’s looks and if it is thrilling, with how the short track package hasn’t delivered, the noise may become louder to move this back to the finale.
In saying that, I do expect to see a lot of passing still.
8 of the last 10 winners came from the top 5 of the starting lineup. However, the drivers last year also warned that despite track position being key here, qualifying on Saturday would be different than the race on Sunday. Just because you were fast in quals didn’t mean you’d be great in the race.
Boy were they right.
6 of the top 8 starters failed to even finish in the top 15 last year. As far as why?
You have to attack the track in qualifying and baby it during the race. The harder you attack in the race, the slower you’ll actually go due to the tire fall off.
How will this weekend look?
Ford’s
There’s two Ford’s left in the playoffs but this race may not go well for them either. Last year, they had just two cars in the top 6 Rows. That carried over to the race. Out of 267 laps, Ford led 0. Ford has also only won 1 of the last 12 at Homestead now too.
Does that hurt Ryan Blaney (-17) and Chris Buescher (-23)? Blaney scored 8 stage points and finished 6th last week in Vegas but still lost 7 points on the cutline in going from -10 to -17. Buescher never was a factor in scoring no stage points and finishing 11th.
However, both are actually pretty good on this track though.
Blaney finished third in 2021 and has been good at Homestead overall in both the Xfinity and Truck Series races too. If not for a mistake last year, he had another Top-5 going. He was fourth in Stage 2. He finished ninth in both Darlington races.
Buescher won Stage 1 in 2021 including 57 laps led on this track. However, contact on a second stage restart ruined his handling which dropped him to outside the top 15. Buescher is at his best on aged tracks and there’s no reason to believe he can’t win on Sunday, especially with the season that he’s having.
Non Playoff Winner
In each of the last 3 years a non-playoff driver won in this round. Kyle Busch won at Texas in 2020. Alex Bowman won in Martinsville in 2021. Kyle Larson won at Homestead last year. You can make a strong case that either they or someone like Chase Elliott or Kevin Harvick finds victory over the next 2 races.
I can’t fathom Harvick going winless in his final season and with the Championship 4 being won every year since 2014 by a final round member, it leaves him just 2 more shots.
He, Busch (2 straight 3rd place finishes on the season), Brad Keselowski (6 top 10’s in his last 8 races) and Ross Chastain (4 top 10’s, 3 in the top 5 in 7 playoff races) are all going to be threats on Sunday.
Busch has six Top-6 finishes in his last eight starts at Homestead including four of which in the top four. He was 10th and ninth the last two years. He was seventh and 11th this year in Darlington. Chastain was runner-up here last year and lined up on the final restart at the spring Darlington race on the front row. He was 5th in the Southern 500. Keselowski was fifth last year and fourth and sixth at Darlington this year. Harvick was only 26th in 2020 but rebounded to score a fifth-place run in 2021 and eighth last year. Harvick also has 14 Top-10 finishes in his last 15 Homestead starts including 18 of his last 20 when going back two decades ago. He was runner-up in the spring Darlington race and if not for bad luck with a caution while running second on pit road, he had a Top-2 going again in the Southern 500.
That’s why I can see 1 of them winning on Sunday.
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