Boogity, boggity, boggity. It was Saturday night racing at Kansas, boys. Yes sir, it was the Might As Well Watch Paint Dry 400. Kansas, where excitement goes to die. Kevin Harvick started at the pole and led through to the competition caution. Ryan Blaney led at the re-start and continued to do so right to the end of the opening segment.
Ford has done nothing short of dominating the 2018 NASCAR Monster Energy Cup Series (MENCS) season. Eleven races into the 36 race season and Ford has managed to find their way into victory lane six total times. While it is true that four of the six wins came with Stewart-Hass Racing driver Kevin Harvick, the other Ford drivers in the field have been strong.
Talladega was sweet. That was the kind of action that captured my attention as a kid, watching Wide World of Sports. As Jim McKay so iconically put it all those years ago, “Spanning the globe to bring you the constant variety of sport... the thrill of victory... and the agony of defeat... the human drama of athletic competition.” That was Sunday at Talladega.
Kyle Busch will have a front row seat when the field takes the green flag for Sunday's Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series race after qualifying with the fastest speed of 184.652 mph at Atlanta Motor Speedway. Driving the No. 18 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota, Busch nabbed the top spot from Ryan Newman (184.419 mph) and clinched his first career pole at the iconic 1.5-mile oval.
It looks like the new ride height rule has crew chiefs and engineers scratching their heads about how to make the car handle at Daytona. Thankfully they have a couple of days to run simulations and get a plan together and hopefully bring us an action-packed Daytona 500.
It's time to cycle through the transmission for another edition of Four Gears. This week, our resident NASCAR journalists were asked if other drivers should be as up front as Kevin Harvick was about his pit crew to affect change. They also considered whether John Hunter Nemechek deserves all the flak he's gotten for his last lap move at Canadian Tire Motorsports Park and if he could've handled his last turn differently.
There were those who put on the fire suits, got to be among the big boys, but when it came time to go they might have been best suited to go down the road instead of the track. Instead of being competitors, they were lucky to be participants, saddled in entries that had no hope of being anywhere near the front.
Darrell Wallace Jr., behind the wheel of the No. 54 ToyotaCare Toyota Tundra for Kyle Busch Motorsports, is ready to make the difficult transition from one of the sport’s highest highs, a coveted Truck win at Eldora Speedway, to the trickiness of Pocono Raceway where he will race the Pocono Mountains 150 in NASCAR’s Camping World Truck Series.
The first shoe dropped Sunday morning. It was almost certain when Jack Roush revealed that Trevor Bayne would be driving the No. 6 Ford in 2015. Roush has only had three cars in recent seasons because of the lack of sponsorship, and it was almost unbelievable that he would field four in 2015.
If you want to make the Chase, maybe one should win at New Hampshire. Out of 43 drivers entered and scheduled to make up the field at Loudon this Sunday, a whopping 16 of them have won at New Hampshire. They include the only four-time winner, 47-year old Jeff Burton, slated to drive the 66 Toyota of Jay Robinson.
