The Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series is heading into its eighth race of the season and while Chevrolet has made a lot of progress in that time, they still haven’t managed to find victory lane yet. In fact, their performance has been so far off lately that they aren’t even in the manufacturer’s championship picture at this point in time.
Beyond that, Chevrolet’s best finish this entire season is a second-place effort by Chase Elliott at Martinsville Speedway, which doesn’t bode well for the manufacturer’s program at intermediate tracks this season. It could even mean that Chevrolet misses the Playoffs for the third straight year in a row.
Interestingly enough, no Chevrolet driver seems to be immune to the problem at this point. While some believe it is the new aero package, that still doesn’t explain why they had to play catch up last season too. Furthermore, it doesn’t explain Toyota and Ford’s advantage with the new package.
NASCAR officials took six cars to the wind tunnel for testing after Sunday’s race at Texas Motor Speedway, which could be a sign that NASCAR is interested in knowing why Chevrolet is at a disadvantage and what can be done to level things out.
With that being said, however, Chevrolet has gotten progressively better over the course of the 2019 season and despite some mistakes, are getting closer and closer to being in contention. Take Kyle Larson for example, who had the spring race at Atlanta Motor Speedway locked up, but was taken out by a speeding penalty.
Then there was Chase Elliot, who despite starting up front at Phoenix, made a lane change before reaching the start-finish line at the beginning of the race and had to go the back. He would ultimately recover to finish 14th, but the incident took him out of contention for what could have been a win.
Another example was William Byron, Jimmie Johnson and Kurt Busch, who all found themselves in the top 10 after Sunday’s race at Texas. If nothing else, it was a huge momentum
Will they win though? Believe it or not, with Chevrolet’s best showing being at a short track and two short track races coming up, the answer seems to be yes. Above all that, There is also Talladega, Dover
As for making the final four, that question is a lot harder to answer, but will ultimately depend on whether Chevrolet can win, continue to be consistent and stay away from the bad luck that has thrown them for a loop throughout this season.
