(Photo: Jared C. Tilton/Getty Images)
By Aaron Bearden
After each NASCAR Cup Series race, Motorsports Beat will share a piece breaking down the stories and takeaways from the weekend. This is a report on the Dixie Vodka 400 from Homestead-Miami Speedway.
NASCAR Cup Series
Who Won?
William Byron. A dominant final stage was enough to yield Byron’s second career win and first with former Truck Series crew chief Rudy Fugle.
Top Stories
Byron and Fugle break through
Imagine telling a young William Byron five years ago that he would spend time in the NASCAR Cup Series with Chad Knaus — possibly the greatest signal caller of all-time — as his crew chief.
Then telling him that he’d receive an upgrade afterward.
There’s nothing that can be taken away from Knaus’ record and legacy as a crew chief in the NASCAR Cup Series. What he and Jimmie Johnson did for more than a decade at the sport’s top level is borderline impossible to replicate, particularly in the highly competitive era NASCAR’s been in for much of the past 20 years.
But for all of the knowledge and experience he had, the veteran and young star Byron never quite seemed to click. Their lone wins in two years together both came on the drafting-focused Daytona International Speedway, one in a points race and the other a qualifying Duel.
When Knaus elected to take an upper management role at Hendrick Motorsports going into 2021, that opened the door for a fresh face in the organization’s crew chief ranks. The squad ultimately went with Fugle, a beloved Truck Series crew chief whose prior stint with Byron in 2016 yielded seven wins.
Hendrick surely wasn’t the first to consider Fugle for a spot. He was a consistent race winner for Kyle Busch Motorsports regardless of who was placed in his truck each week. But what HMS could offer Fugle that others couldn’t was a familiar relationship with Byron – perhaps his best driver during his days with the Toyota truck program.
It was a pairing that had achieved great success before.
Early signs show that more success could be on the horizon, too.
Byron needed just three races to win with Fugle atop the box, rising through the runner order over the opening two stages and prevailing in a dominant final stage to claim Sunday’s Dixie Vodka 400 at Homestead-Miami Speedway.
The run was easily the North Carolinian’s best in his Cup career to date, coming on a track that tests both adaptability to changing track conditions and managing tire wear on Homestead’s abrasive surface.
It elevated Byron clear of the list of one-time Cup winners and gave Fugle early proof that his decision to risk a move to NASCAR’s top level may prove fruitful.
The pair praised each other after the win.
“(Fugle has) really leaned heavily on Alan Gustafson and all the crew chiefs at HMS to get up to speed and we have the best resources out there, so it’s all about making the most of them,” Byron said. “I feel like for us we just communicate throughout the race. He knows how to push my buttons and get me motivated and get the answers out of me that he needs to make the car better.”
While he’s no longer atop the box, Knaus’ lessons have also played a role in Byron’s early success. He guided Byron through the difficult process of learning how to compete at NASCAR’s top level, helping him work through on-track spats and off-track questions.
Now that Byron’s potentially poised for his true Cup breakout — teammate Chase Elliott’s fourth year provided a step up before his championship ascendance in year five — Fugle has stepped in to help him make the necessary moves to become a contender.
“Chad prepped William to get to this point,” Fugle said. “I could not have done that three years ago. I couldn’t have prepped to learn how to work on Cup cars and prepped William, and then he built a great team.
“I came in, and this was an amazing race team. We’ve got all the right pieces.”
Now we’ll all have to wait to see if they can keep putting those pieces together.
Out of time
Tyler Reddick just needed a few more laps.
Give us 5 more laps?
Deal? Deal.
— RCR (@RCRracing) March 1, 2021
Returning to the site of two Xfinity championship-winning drives and perhaps his best overall Cup run in 2020, Reddick struggled through the early stages of Sunday’s race. But over the lengthy final stage he found his familiar line against Homestead’s blue outside wall and marched forward.
Over the final 58-lap run under green, Reddick launched an all-out assault on the field. He started mid-pack and didn’t crack the top-10 until the final 40 laps, but Reddick started to blitz forward as the tires wore and his advantage on the speed charts widened.
By the time the race hit 25 to go, Reddick was up to seventh. He cracked the top-five with just under 20 laps remaining and closed up a gap of more than 10 seconds to battle Kyle Larson and Martin Truex Jr. for second.
Reddick managed to find momentum and skate past both of them in the final laps, but he ultimately ran out of time to catch Byron. Despite laying down laps that were frequently over a second quicker than the Hendrick Motorsports star, Reddick came 2.777 seconds short of Byron at the checkered flag.
He quickly burst out with frustration over the radio after crossing the line.
Despite tying his career best finish, Reddick wasn’t content. He knew he had a car capable of winning and came up short, chocking his loss up to a slow late restart that mired him too deep in the field.
“When you see how much faster you were than the guys in front of you and you know you’re running out of time, it gets frustrating,” Reddick said. “You can go back and look at one or two things that would have changed the outcome.”
“Yeah, I get it, can’t go back and change it, but we had a really bad start to the year. Second is great, but it’s not going to put us in a great — we’re still way back in the mess, in the mix of it.”
Disappointment aside, the run did do Reddick and the No. 8 team some good. He started 35th and teetered the day with a sizable early gap to make up in the championship standings after a pair of poor results in Daytona.
Sunday’s performance went a small way toward making up for that, leaving Reddick 21 points below the current cutline.
But it’s going to be difficult for Reddick to lean on points when early winners like Byron and Michael McDowell may have already restricted the number of playoff positions open to drivers without wins this fall.
Reddick’s best bet to join the early victors in the postseason is to win. He knows that, and also understands that few tracks offer opportunities to march forward like he did at Homestead to make a victory happen.
“The momentum of being able to get out of the hole and being able to fight through that, you know you can carry that,” Reddick said. “But it’s unrealistic to say that we can go to Vegas and be able to run that much faster than the field. It doesn’t happen there. It doesn’t happen at Texas since it’s been repaved. Doesn’t happen at a lot of the tracks we go to.
“You have to win these races by being very consistent, making the right calls on pit road, and as a driver, staying up front, keeping your track position. You just can’t — you don’t have the options you do at Homestead and other places that we go.”
So consider Homestead a missed opportunity for the two-time Xfinity Series champion and his hungry Richard Childress Racing team.
Playoff parity continues (for now)
The three drivers that have claimed the opening trio of Cup Series races had a combined one win entering the 2021 season.
Now they’re all locked into the postseason, presumably at the expense of other drivers that would have been favorited to claim wins going into the year.
Through a mix of drivers coming of age, teams hitting the right setups and a bit of timely fortune at Daytona, the norm in NASCAR has been cast out in favor of relative unpredictability to open the 2021 season.
This has all been aided by the parts freeze associated with the Next Gen car coming in 2022, allowing smaller teams to close the typically large gap to the sport’s top organizations.
“The rules are the rules, and they haven’t changed in a while,” third-place finisher Martin Truex Jr. said after Sunday’s race. “Everybody is really just trying to work on the same things here each and every week. So it gives you time to work on your stuff and not have to really develop a lot of things.
“The smaller teams definitely get to catch up. We’ll see if it continues.”
Thus far the teams have done just that. Led by Michael McDowell and Front Row Motorsports, which sits fourth in the standings with a win and three top-10s, numerous mid-pack organizations have risen to challenge the usual contenders thus far.
Chris Buescher took Roush Fenway Racing back in time for Stage 1 on Sunday, leading laps and claiming a stage win early on. Teammate Ryan Newman scored a top-10 at race’s end. JTG Daugherty Racing and series newcomers Trackhouse Racing each finished in the top-15.
This has also been reflected in the standings, with drivers like Ryan Preece sitting among the playoff entrants at the moment.
But can this trend continue?
The opening three races added potential for underdog contenders with the chaotic nature of drafting and road course races, along with the tire management of Homestead. Upcoming trips to Las Vegas Motor Speedway and other more traditional intermediate ovals may help the sport’s traditional powers increase their gap for the time being.
Or maybe they won’t. With the way this year’s started, it’s hard to make a prediction either way.
Notes
- Team Penske made a unique strategy play in the final stage, pitting both Brad Keselowski and Joey Logano for tires as others stayed out and ran to the end. It didn’t fully pay off, though. Neither driver cracked the top-15 at race’s end.
- Things went much worse for the third team and sister car, though. Ryan Blaney was crashed into by Aric Almirola and dropped out early. Matt DiBenedetto came home 28th after another disappointing night. The pair are 24th and 34th in points, respectively. It’s still early, but that isn’t promising.
- Denny Hamlin figured to be a contender for a repeat win at Homestead, but lost his track position late due to a speeding penalty on pit road. He made a decent recovery, but only got back to 11th before the checkered flag flew.
- Ryan Newman had a run-of-the-mill top-10 on Sunday, finishing seventh after a solid run. Only it wasn’t actually that typical for his No. 6 team in recent years. That was Newman’s first top-10 outside of Daytona International Speedway and Talladega Superspeedway since the 2019 season finale at… Homestead.
- Cole Custer put together one of the best drives off his young career and was running with teammate Kevin Harvick over the final run of Sunday’s race. So what went wrong? Well, his tires. Late tire works relegated Custer to 23rd at race’s end – a finish not at all symbolic of his performance.
- There was a point in Sunday’s race where Chris Buescher led and Chase Briscoe was two laps down. The pair ultimately finished 18th and 19th – with Briscoe ahead.
- Ryan Preece is still lingering about. The JTG-Daugherty Racing driver in an open ride remains above the playoff cutline in 12th after three races. How long can he keep it up? Will it encourage a sponsor to step up and make his ride a full-time one once more?
Dixie Vodka 400 Results
- William Byron
- Tyler Reddick
- Martin Truex Jr.
- Kyle Larson
- Kevin Harvick
- Michael McDowell
- Ryan Newman
- Kurt Busch
- Alex Bowman
- Kyle Busch
- Denny Hamlin
- Austin Dillon
- Ricky Stenhouse Jr.
- Chase Elliott
- Daniel Suarez
- Brad Keselowski
- Ross Chastain
- Chase Briscoe
- Chris Buescher
- Christopher Bell
- Ryan Preece
- Bubba Wallace
- Cole Custer
- Anthony Alfredo
- Joey Logano
- Justin Haley
- Erik Jones
- Matt DiBenedetto
- Ryan Blaney
- Aric Almirola
- Garrett Smithley
- Cody Ware
- Josh Bilicki
- B.J. McLeod
- Quin Houff
- Corey LaJoie
- James Davison
- Timmy Hill
Stage 1
- Chris Buescher
- Brad Keselowski
- Martin Truex Jr.
- William Byron
- Alex Bowman
- Kyle Larson
- Joey Logano
- Chase Elliott
- Kurt Busch
- Austin Dillon
Stage 2
- William Byron
- Denny Hamlin
- Kurt Busch
- Martin Truex Jr.
- Kyle Larson
- Ricky Stenhouse Jr.
- Kevin Harvick
- Ryan Blaney
- Alex Bowman
- Brad Keselowski
