Michael McDowell led a race high 54 laps on his way to his second Cup win, but a win that puts a lot of pressure on several bubble drivers. While securing his place in the playoffs, he leaves Daniel Suarez, Ty Gibbs, Chase Elliott and Alex Bowman wondering what’s next with just two races to go in the regular season.
I wasn’t sure how this street race in Chicago would turn out. While hoping for the best, I was on the fence not only about the drivers’ ability to not turn this into a crashfest into Turn 1, but also thought this much-hyped event was nothing more than another NASCAR gimmick to drive eyes onto the sport even for a brief period of time.
Martin Truex, Jr. returned to form at Sonoma showing off his road course skills by leading 51 of the 110 laps. MTJ was in the Top 10 in both early stages and was obviously set up for the long green flag runs that occurred.
Back before the 2010 season, then Senior VP of Competition Robin Pemberton uttered those famous words, that now have many fans scratching their heads… Boys, have at it.
NASCAR was accused by many of being too strict and taking away the “rubbing is racing” attitude that fans supposedly loved.
If you watch Talladega racing at all, you know that just about anyone can win the event due to the style of racing. If you watched on Sunday, Kyle Busch was probably not one of the drivers you picked to win. He wasn’t racing in the Top 10 most of the day and the field was bunched up about as tight as you could make it.
Let’s start this off with a huge hand clap for Tyler Reddick as he overcame a difficult track under hot conditions battling an opponent who was better than he was on restarts. Reddick led 41 laps while battling William Byron, who led 28, in a race that saw them seesaw the lead back and forth after starting out on the front row.
With rain canceling qualifying and practice, Kyle Busch started 21st in the 36 car field. That was good for Ross Chastain; otherwise Busch might have led even more laps on his way to his first victory for RCR.
This was the final race on the current track layout at Fontana and it didn’t disappoint. Cars were racing all over the track but having the lead was important to keep clean air on the nose of the car.
Welcome back race fans! Long time to be away from racing. As many of you know, the Rolex 24 Hours at Daytona is the kickoff to the season for me but I have to admit my attention was elsewhere a lot of this young season. After watching qualifying for the 500, I pretty much missed the Duels for the first time in forever.
There have been a fair amount of changes this year leaving me to question just how good the racing was going to be.
If you lead 199 laps of the scheduled 267, you are hoping that you’re pulling into Victory Lane at the end of the contest. Kyle Larson finally did just that but had to get by Martin Truex, Jr. on pit road to do it.
Hate to say I told you so, but I told you so.
Last week I said that Erik Jones was my sleeper driver to turn the tables on the playoffs and he did it in rare form.
