On August 5, 2018, there was no dejection and there was no "Elliott was his own worst enemy." Instead, to the thunderous applause of a sold-out crowd in attendance at Watkins Glen International, he took the fight to and passed points leader Kyle Busch for the race lead, he led the remaining 63 laps, drove his No. 9 Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet to and over the limit and held off defending series champion Martin Truex Jr. to finally win for the first time in the Cup Grand National Series.
If we determine who is an actual contender, versus being just a pretender race in and race out, based on an average 20th place result, our field would be reduced to 22. Add William Byron and Jamie McMurray to the bottom of our list, and that is all you need to be concerned about.
1. Kyle Busch: Busch pulled away on a restart with three laps to go and cruised to the win in the Gander Outdoors 400. "I tied Tony Stewart with my 49th Cup win," Busch said. "One more win and I can finally say, 'Well, passing him in the buffet line is out of the question, but at least I passed Tony in the standings." Note: The quotes in this article are fictional.
We all tune in for the potential excitement, but the storylines set up the race. At Pocono, we witnessed Jimmie Johnson make his 600th career start. We wondered if the Big Three would dominate yet again. We also wondered how the bad boys, and maybe a few bad girls back at the shop, would fare after 13 cars failed post-qualifying tech.
Another race, another win for one of the Big Three. Twenty races down and just seven individual drivers with a tick in the win column. That means, at most, 13 drivers could have a victory by the time they decide who makes the Chase. Something tells me we will not reach anywhere close to that number of winners.
Watching Loudon on Sunday was a whole lot like watching Shawshank Redemption. I have seen bits and pieces of that movie, maybe, a couple of dozen times or more. The first half of the New Hampshire race had me watching nothing but our favorites of this year over and over and over.
On Wednesday, the pick-up trucks race on dirt at Eldora. Some figure we need some dirt track racing in NASCAR. The fact is that in these times such a race would be a novelty, just as Eldora is, but does it need to be a feature in Cup?
Kentucky. Lord, please not Kentucky. It is a track I have no affinity for, but I will be watching on Saturday night. It is all due to NBC. If you watch the broadcast, and still can not stand NASCAR, it is just not for you. If you do watch it and have any love of the sport, you will stick around. The boys and girls make it damn hard to skip forward, no matter how much you try.
Elliott powered around the 2.5-mile track in 46.381 seconds (194.045 mph) to win the pole position for Sunday’s Coke Zero Sugar 400 (7 p.m. on NBC, MRN and SiriusXM NASCAR Radio) by a whopping .24 seconds over Hendrick Motorsports teammate Alex Bowman (193.046 mph).
