(Photo: Nigel Kinrade Photography)
By Aaron Bearden
Sunday’s race was another wild one for the NASCAR Cup Series field, with the drivers that dominated much of the way falling behind unexpected winners for the second-straight week.
Austin Dillon scored his first victory since the 2018 Daytona 500, leading 22 of the 334 laps then surviving three late restart battles with teammate Tyler Reddick to secure his playoff birth. The result actually marked Dillon’s most “dominant” win, following an opening pair of victories in which he’d led just three combined laps – two in a fuel-mileage Coca-Cola 600 triumph, and one solitary lap in Daytona.
The victory offered another postseason shakeup to the field just one week after Stewart-Haas Racing rookie Cole Custer’s breakthrough victory at Kentucky Speedway, leaving just six positions remaining for winless drivers resorting to points.
Dillon was position to be in that points battle anyway, but his win and the mixed results of other playoff hopefuls resulted in a constricted battle that promises to be dramatic over the final eight races of the regular season.
That wasn’t the only thing to note, though. Here’s a notebook of final takeaways from the weekend that was in the Lone Star State.
NASCAR Cup Series
- Third-place finisher Joey Logano “could not believe it” when his four fresh tires had no effect in the battle with Richard Childress Racing’s top two at the end of Sunday’s race. But he could believe in his team’s progress amid a trying summer. “I feel like we identified weaknesses, and we’ve been working on them to get them better,” Logano said. “Like I said, the progress that we’ve made, it feels really good. We’re not there. I don’t feel like we’re all the way back. We weren’t the fastest car, the 12 (of teammate Ryan Blaney) was the fastest today, but we’re in the ballpark now where before we were running down a lap, 20th or so.”
- Tyler Reddick didn’t quite have what he needed to score the second consecutive win for a Cup Series rookie, but he found validation of Richard Childress Racing’s promise and pace in his runner-up result. “We’ve been looking for validation for a long time, what’s the right way to go, which direction we need to take our cars and team,” he said. “It’s been really hard to search and find that with how much the track position plays into the handling of your vehicle. Today we saw the capability of both of these cars.
- Hendrick Motorsports couldn’t have had much worse luck in Sunday’s race, with three of its four drivers finishing outside of the top-25. The group finds itself in trouble for the postseason because of it, with teammates Jimmie Johnson and William Byron separated by two points on the playoff bubble. The group has won just one stage in the past nine races, and the one that won it (Byron) is the driver currently out of the playoff field. It may take some wins or luck to get all four Hendrick cars locked into the postseason.
- Kyle Busch’s 18-race winless streak might be concerning for his fans, but it isn’t unprecedented. The Nevadan needed 21 races to visit victory lane for the first time at Pocono Raceway in 2017. He went on to claim another four wins and come up just shy of a championship in second at Homestead-Miami Speedway.
- There hasn’t been much Preece Lightning lately, but there’s sure been rain for Ryan Preece and the No. 37 team. The former Modified Tour ace has finished last one each of the past three Cup Series events, with two crashes and a transmission issue during the stretch. The runs have dropped Preece’s average finish to 26.9, nearly four spots worse than the 23.1 he managed last year.
- Bubba Wallace remains a fringe playoff contender after a quiet 14th-place effort in Texas. While he’s earned more a spotlight with his push for racial equality off-track, Wallace’s three top-10s and 18.9 average finish has him poised for his best year statistically by a sizable margin.
NASCAR Xfinity Series
- When Kyle Busch was disqualified from Saturday’s victory, it gave Austin Cindric his third-consecutive victory in the Xfinity Series. Cindric is the first series regular to accomplish the feat since Busch’s pseudo-teammate in Cup, Christopher Bell, managed it in 2018. Before that it took a peek all the way back to Dale Earnhardt Jr.’s second Xfinity Series season in 1999 to find such a stretch of dominance from a series regular.
- Noah Gragson was a target of controversy once again on Saturday, being called out by team owner Dale Earnhardt Jr. from the NBC Sports booth after crashing Riley Herbst in the early stages of the race, then later crashing himself in a battle with eventual winner Cindric. Herbst hinted at future issues for the pair of Las Vegas natives in the future, saying “He’s got a lot more to lose than I do, so we’ll see what happens.”
- Herbst’s crash continued a difficult stretch for the trio of Joe Gibbs Racing prospects in the series. In the past six races he, Harrison Burton and Brandon Jones have combined to total eight DNFs, including at least one in each race.
- After a difficult start to the year, Michael Annett has found his form in recent weeks. The Iowan’s fifth-place run on Saturday was his third in the past five races, with the other two results also top-10s. Annett has an average finish of 6.4 over the past five weeks and has risen to eight in the standings.
- Brandon Brown only had one top-10 entering the 2020 season. He has four this year, including one on Saturday that helped him extend his playoff cutoff advantage to 31 points.
- Both David Starr and Tommy Joe Martins reached rare success on Saturday, with Starr matching his best result outside of a superspeedway in 13th and Martins scoring his best intermediate result in 15th.
- Justin Allgaier has led 417 laps and claimed seven stage wins this year, but both a win and his usual double-digit top-five pace have eluded him thus far. Allgaier’s 13.6 average finish to date would be his worst since his first full season in 2009 if it continues through the end of the year.
- Allgaier’s issues have been representative of JR Motorsports as a whole. The team has won 50% of all stages (16/32) so far, but only has victories in 12.5% (2/16) of the races held thus far. That’s allowed drivers like Chase Briscoe and Cindric to take a commanding advantage in playoff points with the postseason slowly drawing near.
NASCAR Gander RV & Outdoors Truck Series
- With Saturday’s win in his final start of 2020, Kyle Busch has claimed eight of his 10 Truck starts over the past two seasons. That follows a stretch of four years in which he “only” won nine of 20 starts, or 45% of all attempts. The Nevadan has nearly doubled his win rate in the past couple years.
- Christian Eckes continues to improve in his first full season with Kyle Busch Motorsports. The Toyota prospect has four top-eight finishes in his past five starts, just one fewer than he had in 15 prior runs with the series.
- Last fall Stewart Friesen made himself a title contender with a breakthrough win in the penultimate race at Phoenix Raceway. But he hadn’t scored a single top-five in the eight months since before Saturday’s fourth-place run. Time will tell if he can march back into playoff contention.
- How weird has this Truck Series season been? Since the start of the year, only Cup Series regulars Kyle Busch and Chase Elliott have finished top-five in their first start after a race win. Each week seems to bring a different cast of contenders. Sheldon Creed finished 16th one week after his Kentucky Speedway win.
- Matt Crafton’s third top-five in eight races actually isn’t off from his normal pace, with no more than eight in any season since 2016. The veteran is just paying the price for his two finishes of 35th or worse, which has dropped his average finish to 15.1 – a mark Crafton hasn’t had in a full season since his 17.8 average result in 2002.
- Johnny Sauter’s 13.9 mark is similarly atypical, marking his worst mark in any full-time season thus far. His worst year overall was a 13.8 average finish in 2012.
- NHRA transplant Tanner Gray’s had a quiet first year with DGR-Crosley, but before Saturday’s transmission issues he’d made the most of his year by completing every lap in six-consecutive races. His only DNF for a crash this year came in the unpredictable opener at Daytona International Speedway.
- Austin Hill and Grant Enfinger have effectively swapped roles this year in the Truck Series. Hill’s DNF on Saturday was his lone finish outside of the top-10 in eight races, matching Enfinger’s similar run from last year’s regular season championship run. Hill has no wins but leads the standings with 300 points based on his consistency, a mark 31 points below Enfinger’s similar effort last year. Enfinger sits seventh in the standings, just as Hill did last year, but has a guaranteed playoff spot with the same Daytona win Hill managed in 2019, as well as a second victory for an extra five playoff points. It’s worth noting that neither driver made the Championship 4 last year, with Enfinger failing to win and Hill’s inconsistency biting him in the penultimate round.
