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 stages. 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.
Toyota’s
Toyota has 4 of the 8 playoff drivers left and 2 of the 4 are below the cutline entering the day. The other 2 have the final 2 spots above it. However, Toyota will start 1-2-3 on Sunday. Toyota has also won two of the last four Homestead races including four of the last six and five of the last eight.
Can they be beaten? Can they hold onto the top starting spots? 8 of the last 10 Miami winners came from the top 5 of the starting lineup.
Martin Truex Jr. rolls off from the pole and has 3 top 3 finishing spots in the last 5 tries on the 1.5-mile track. He was leading coming to the final round of stops last year.
Tyler Reddick starts 3rd and 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.
Denny Hamlin and Christopher Bell have a little more work to do. Hamlin starts 11th and Bell in 13th.
Hamlin swept both stages and the win in 2020 and was 11th and seventh the last two years. He’s had great cars at Darlington in each of the last two years as well and if not for a loose wheel, was likely to win the Southern 500.
Bell has one Top-10 finish in three Homestead Cup tries (11th last year) and was also sixth, fifth, 14th and 23rd respectively in his last four Darlington starts too. Bell mentioned that this track over the years hasn’t been great for him.
For Reddick, this may be his best shot at making the Championship 4. Where Bell struggles here, Reddick struggles at Martinsville. With this track being basically made for him, he has to capitalize.
Not as dire for Truex but he just needs to keep this momentum going. After going through a stretch of 7 races without a lap led or a finish better than 17th, he finally led laps last Sunday in Vegas after qualifying in the top 5 and finished in the top 10. While a puzzling pit call kept him from fully maximizing the day, it was a start to turn this ship about around. With a pole on a track he’s been good at, a top 5 finish is a must.
Can Larson Win Again?
Kyle Larson said on Saturday morning that he didn’t focus on Phoenix once this past week. Despite the rare advantage as being the only driver among the 8 remaining that’s championship eligible to do so, he instead turned his focus to Homestead.
“Obviously it’s nice to win and lock in, so you can focus on Phoenix,” said Larson. “At the same point you really can’t look too far ahead of yourself. There’s still two other races before then. I put a lot of pressure on myself going to Homestead. I want to have a great run there. I want to dominate honestly. I want to win both stages by 15 seconds and win the race by 30 (smiling). That’s my goal. … I just put a lot of pressure on myself and our team to not get complacent and treat every race like it means something.”
Larson has 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.
Plus, if he wins on Sunday, he keeps this advantage for another week.
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 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.”
If Larson can win on Sunday, that forces the other 7 drivers to still have to focus on Martinsville and not Phoenix yet.
Then, he won the last race at Martinsville this past spring. He was runner-up in this playoff race a year ago. What if he wins that race too?
“I’m glad I won and locked in, but I like that now I can go to Homestead, Martinsville and just race,” said Larson. “You’re not really focused on points. You can be a little more aggressive now, trying to, yeah, just win really is the goal. At the same point, you don’t want to piss anybody off before we get to Phoenix, so that’s also a goal, is to race everybody fairly and not be a part of the story really the next couple weeks, other than winning would be great.”
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 and starts inside the top 10 on Sunday. Keselowski was fifth last year, starts 4th this year and was fourth and sixth at Darlington this season as well. 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.
Don’t count out Bubba Wallace either. He’s a Toyota (stats above), quickest in practice and second in qualifying.
That’s why I can see 1 of them winning on Sunday.
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.
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