KANSAS 1
Saturday, May 4 — NASCAR Craftsman Series, 8 p.m. ET (FS1)
Sunday, May 5 — NASCAR Cup Series, 3 p.m. ET (FS1)
The month of May kicks off with the first of two trips this year to Kansas Speedway, where the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series returns to action on Saturday night. That will be followed on Sunday afternoon by the NASCAR Cup Series. Ford has 15 combined wins at the 1.5-mile facility.
LOGANO GOING FOR FOURTH
KANSAS VICTORY
Joey Logano will be looking for his fourth career win at Kansas Speedway this weekend, which would be a personal best. Logano currently has three career wins at five series tracks, including Kansas, Las Vegas Motor Speedway, Michigan International Speedway, Phoenix Raceway and Talladega Superspeedway. He won for the first time at Kansas in 2014, and then did it again one year later in a well-documented battle with Matt Kenseth that resulted in contact as the two entered turn one with five laps to go. That controversial finish marked Logano’s second straight playoff win and led to a sweep of the round as he took the checkered flag the following week at Talladega. His last Kansas win came in 2020 when he led the final 45 laps to beat Kevin Harvick across the finish line and clinch a spot in the Championship 4.
ONE OF BRAD’S BEST
Brad Keselowski comes into this weekend’s NASCAR Cup Series race looking for his first win of the season, but Kansas Speedway could provide the proper medicine for a trip to Victory Lane. That’s because Kansas ranks as his fifth-best venue when it comes to average finish on tracks that currently make up the 2023 circuit. In 28 career starts at Kansas Speedway, Keselowski has a pair of wins, seven top-5 and 14 top-10 efforts for an average finishing position of 12.3 (same as Michigan). Only Loudon (9.8), Pocono (10.9), Las Vegas (11.6) and Richmond (12.0) are better.
JOEY LOGANO: “I believe Kansas has become the best racetrack for the Next Gen car. You look at how wide the racetrack is and the racing that is there, the groove has moved around as it has weathered over the years since it’s been repaved. It’s been a really good race track for these cars, so I look forward to going there for sure. It’s definitely one of those tracks where it takes everything. Downforce is king. Horsepower is a big deal. You’re on the gas a lot. You’ve got to have a car that’s versatile enough to run the bottom on restarts and also be versatile enough on the long run to where you can move up or down to make passes, so the car that can do a lot of different things pretty good is usually the one that is the strongest.”
CHASE BRISCOE: “I feel really good about Kansas and just where our mile-and-a-half program has been. Texas was really good for us and at Vegas we were pretty good, too, so I feel like if we can take some of those things and apply it to Kansas, we’ll be in a pretty good spot. Honestly, I just need to survive these next two weeks and see where we stand from a points standpoint.”
NOAH GRAGSON: “I feel like Kansas is pretty good. Those tracks where they’re a mile-and–a-half and you have progressive banking you have options. You can go to the bottom. You can go to the middle. You can go to the top. It seems like we do well up against the outside wall, but it gives you options to move around, so I think those kind of mile-and-a-halves are really good for the Next Gen car. I noticed at Vegas and Texas that we had good speed in our Mustangs, so that’s been a lot of fun. That’s more of our bread-and-butter this year, so I’m super excited for the next handful of weeks.”
CHRIS BUESCHER: “Kansas is one of those that even after the repave on the Xfinity side, I was there very shortly after that, was really good at that point and then as its aged and moved around and gotten a lot of character I still love it. I still think it’s a really good racetrack. It’s got a lot of different options. You can run top to bottom. It’s got character and I think that’s always a big hitter for me is when we go places that they’re not too smooth or they’re not too clean-cut, I like that. I think that just creates options. I think about the old Atlanta. That was my absolute favorite mile-and-a-half, and you look at Kansas now that Atlanta has been repaved and it’s starting to slowly take that spot.”
JOSH BERRY: “I think Kansas just races really well with the Next Gen. I think just having the different lane options – top, middle, bottom, against the fence, the restarts are crazy – I think it just puts on a really good race there and Kansas is unique. It’s kind of to the point where it’s starting to age and wear the tires a little bit, so there’s that side of things. You’ve got to be conscious of how you’re pushing the tires and sliding the tires, which is more fun as a driver just to know you have to pay a little bit more attention to that, so I just think all of those things together it just puts on a good show.”
ON THE MARK
Ford went to Victory Lane for the first time at Kansas Speedway on Oct. 9, 2005 when Mark Martin took the checkered flag in what was a Roush Fenway Racing runaway with teammates Greg Biffle and Carl Edwards finishing second and third, respectively. Martin led a race-high 139 laps, including 81 of the final 83 circuits, to win by one-half second. It marked the second time in as many months that RFR swept the top three spots, a feat it did two more times during that season. In addition, the victory ended up being Martin’s last with Ford. His 35 series wins with the manufacturer ranks third all-time behind leader Ned Jarrett (43) and second-place Bill Elliott (40).
CALLED DUE TO DARKNESS
A couple of rain delays and impending darkness couldn’t keep Greg Biffle from winning a shortened Lifelock 400 on Sept. 30, 2007. The race was delayed for more than three hours and NASCAR decided to shorten the distance from 267 laps to 210 laps when it became evident there wouldn’t be enough daylight to finish. Biffle passed Kevin Harvick on lap 274, but when Juan Pablo Montoya blew a tire to bring out the caution with four laps to go it appeared he would have to survive a green-white-checker finish in order to win. NASCAR, however, decided to end the race under caution due to darkness. The win was Biffle’s first of the season and snapped a 32-race winless drought.
CRAFTON A TOP 10 FIXTURE
Matt Crafton enters this weekend’s race at Kansas Speedway eighth in the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series standings, but being in the top 10 isn’t anything new to the veteran Ford driver. Crafton is currently on a streak that has seen him in the top 10 for 52 consecutive weeks and 73 of the last 74 dating back to the 2021 season-opener at Daytona International Speedway. In 27 career starts at Kansas Speedway, Crafton has a career-best three wins, including one with Ford in 2020, and 14 top-10 finishes.
FORD NASCAR CUP SERIES WINNERS
AT KANSAS
2005 – Mark Martin
2007 – Greg Biffle
2010 – Greg Biffle
2012 – Matt Kenseth (2)
2014 – Joey Logano (2)
2015 – Joey Logano (2)
2018 – Kevin Harvick (1)
2019 – Brad Keselowski (1)
2020 – Joey Logano (2)
FORD NASCAR CRAFTSMAN TRUCK SERIES WINNERS AT KANSAS
2003 – Jon Wood
2004 – Carl Edwards
2006 – Terry Cook
2007 – Erik Darnell
2020 – Matt Crafton (2)
2022 – Zane Smith (1)
