NASCAR at Kansas 2016: Preview, Prediction for the GoBowling 400

Strikes one, two and three against NASCAR is not bringing back Spongebob Squarepants for the spring race at Kansas Speedway.

After the massacre at Talladega this past weekend, a little levity in the form of a porifera parallelogram* could have been the lollypop after a sour doctor’s visit. Alas, we’ll deal in with bowling in the GoBowling 400.

As an aside, a 300-lap race would be the better sponsor for GoBowling, more congruent with the numbers. But who am I?

Four drivers go for a turkey (sorta) in this young NASCAR season. Only six drivers have won races this year with four of them throwing up two fingers. At this point a year ago, we had seven drivers with a win through 10 races.

Showing early dominance, Jimmie Johnson won his third race of the season by taking home the coolest trophy of the year** at this track in 2015.

Now that the drivers have hauled out of Talladega at the speed of fright, it’s on to a more intermediate track for 400 quick miles.

Let’s get this tailgate started.

*: Sorry.

**: NASCAR gets like big ups for its trophies: Miles the Monster, the Martinsville grandfather clock, etc.

By the Numbers: Kansas Speedway

Jonathan Ferrey/Getty Images

GoBowling 400

Place: Kansas Speedway

Date: Saturday, May 7, 2016

Pre-race Coverage: 7:30 p.m. (ET), NASCAR RaceDay, FS1

Green Flag: 7:46 p.m. (ET), FS1

Distance: 267 laps, 400 miles

Defending winner: Jimmie Johnson

Current Driver Standings

Chet Strange/Associated Press

Kevin Harvick jumped back up into the top spot ahead of the 11th race of the season.

1. Kevin Harvick, 351 points

2. Kyle Busch, 342 points

3. Carl Edwards, 337 points

4. Jimmie Johnson, 329 points

5. Joey Logano, 316 points

6. Kurt Busch, 312 points

7. Brad Keselowski, 300 points

8. Dale Earnhardt Jr., 279 points

9. Martin Truex Jr., 274 points

10. Austin Dillon, 272 points

11. Chase Elliott, 271 points

12. Denny Hamlin, 269 points

13. Jamie McMurray, 261 points

14. AJ Allmendinger, 232 points

15. Matt Kenseth, 231 points

16. Trevor Bayne, 228 points

Bold denotes race winner. Italics denotes multi-race winner.

The Still-Too-Early-to-Watch Chase Bubble

Ralph Lauer/Associated Press

Two Above the Line

Matt Kenseth

Isn’t there some small part of you that thinks Matt Kenseth is secretly obsessed with Joey Logano?

Kenseth, who got shouldered out of line at Talladega, took umbrage with Logano tactics. It happened two times, so maybe it’s Logano who’s obsessed with Kenseth.

Either way, Kenseth held his spot in 15th place in the driver standings.

We’ll address these two later.

Trevor Bayne

There’s something about restrictor-plate racing that brings out the best in Trevor Bayne.

Bayne led 22 laps at Talladega, which is awfully encouraging if you’re the No. 6 team.

“It is so refreshing to come to the race track and have a chance,” Bayne said in Nate Ryan’s NASCAR.NBCSports.com piece. “I feel really good about the pieces they are giving me. It is all about the race cars. I’m surely proud of this team.”

With one top five and two top 10s so far this season, Bayne remains in the thick of the Chase hunt.

Two Below the Line

Kasey Kahne

Kasey Kahne had one of the most entertaining second interviews following his second crash at Talladega. Anytime a driver references the very nature of the interview, it’s worth a few laughs, maybe even a guffaw, nay, a chortle.

“I was just trying to finish,” Kahne said during the Fox broadcast. “We had a lot of damage. Our car was all over the track. We lost it and that’s what happened and now I’m doing a second interview.”

He was audibly and visibly bummed by his result because he felt his No. 5 car was humming along.

If Kahne et al learned anything from this race, it's that you need to get out front and stay there. It’s the only safe haven at Talladega—a track that has more in common with a monster-truck rally than anything else.

Ryan Blaney

The "Other Rookie" (the rookie being Chase Elliott) is back on the bubble after finishing ninth in the GEICO 500.

Both he and Elliott drove smart and benefited from not getting sucked into the wreck vortex at Talladega.

It’s encouraging to see Blaney get back in the fray here. Prior to finishing ninth at Talladega, Blaney finished 35th at Fontana, 19th at Martinsville, 29th at Texas, 11th at Bristol and 29th at Richmond.

The result in Alabama proves he can seize back momentum on his side. The key now is to parlay it into another positive result in Kansas.

Biggest Movers

Brynn Anderson/Associated Press

Biggest Climb

AJ Allmendinger, up three

AJ Allmendinger couldn’t stand up after the final wreck at Talladega. He climbed out of his car and lay on the ground.

It was a trying day, but a day that saw him climb up three spots to 14th in the driver standings and back into the Chase Grid…for now.

Biggest Fall

Denny Hamlin, down four

Denny Hamlin technically doesn’t have anything to worry about, but he did lose four spots in the standings— the biggest drop out of all the drivers.

Hamlin has been sloppy of late. Pit-road penalties and pit-road snafus have mired him the past few races. Talladega saw him get into a minor accident on pit road. Maybe it was spotter error.

And maybe this is all an illusion, but he seems to suffer from more drive-through penalties than anyone.

Part of that deals with Joe Gibbs Racing cars' efficiency on pit road. We’re dealing with fine-tuned Swiss watches, and the slightest hiccup can send a driver to the back of the field.

That same pushing of the threshold grants these guys great track position too. Live by the sword, die by the sword.

Should Hamlin worry? C’mon now.

Biggest Storylines

Jerry Markland/Getty Images

Dale Earnhardt Jr. Says Relax, People

This last pass through Talladega saw 83 percent of the field crash in at least one wreck. It was the most Darwinian race we’ve seen in some time.

It made people ask the question: How much is too much?

Ask Dale Earnhardt Jr. and he’ll tell you, in not so many words, to put your big-boy pants on and settle down.

"Everybody needs to chill," he said Wednesday on SiriusXM NASCAR Radio’s The Morning Drive (h/t Pete Pistone of MRN.com). "There's no reason for a knee-jerk reaction. See how it plays out the rest of the year."

He went on to say, as drivers, they shoulder much of the responsibility too.

Junior continued:

"

I was one of the guys who spun out by themselves and I wasn’t out there for the rest of the stuff so I have to hold my opinions a little closer to my chest. It’s hard for me to point the finger at anyone. We tried to engineer the plate package in the past and it’s not had good results, so I don’t know if we need to keep changing without knowing what we’re changing and why we’re changing it.

"

No. Nothing needs to change. Maybe drivers need to relax and not get swept up by the moment, but for anyone who has competed at a high level (or driven on Route 1 in New Jersey) that’s next to impossible.

Let’s not forget, this same track back in the fall had the longest green-flag run of the season.

Though this past Sunday’s race was excessive in terms of pure carnage, it was an anomaly that seemed to feed on itself throughout the day.

So water-cooler Dale is right. Those of us who need to chill should do just that.

Is the Feud Over?

By all accounts, the feud between Kenseth and Logano is decidedly not over.

If you ask Logano, he’ll say it is. But after Logano kicked Kenseth around at Talladega, Kenseth said, “I thought we were done with that, but maybe we aren’t.”

And now we return to the track that started it all for these two. Logano, intent on passing Kenseth in the final laps at Kansas last fall, spun Kenseth out when Kenseth thought he had his Eliminator Round passport punched. He never recovered and failed to advance.

You know the rest, so I won’t beat that to death. Google it.

"I don’t think he ran me off,” Kenseth said in Mike Hembree’s USA Today story. “He did run me off. He ran me so far down I couldn’t really lift. I couldn’t get back up the track. It looked like there was no penalty, and we kept racing."

NASCAR will keep its eagle eye and its evil eye—that’s two eyes—on these two this race.

As it stands, both drivers are winless, and Kenseth in particular is in no position for a war. He’s the only JGR driver without a win, so his focus needs to be on that regardless of what he thinks the No. 22 is up to.

To Kansas Goes the Veterans

In Kansas Speedway’s relatively short stint in the Cup Series, the only driver who has won that you’d consider “young” is Logano, who won in the fall of 2014 and the fall of 2015.

Every other driver is what you’d consider tenured. We’re dealing with Hall of Famers: Jeff Gordon, Jimmie Johnson, Mark Martin, Kevin Harvick, Tony Stewart, Matt Kenseth and Brad Keselowski.

Big, big names.

Many of the younger, fresher drivers, post-MTV drivers have been making serious waves this year. Rookies Elliott and Blaney, as well as Austin Dillon and Trevor Bayne are driving well.

But Kansas won’t spring a first-time winner. It will go to a veteran—someone with crow’s feet and maybe a varicose vein or two.

Dark-Horse Pick: Tony Stewart

Jared C. Tilton/Getty Images

Tony Stewart won here back in 2006 and 2009, back when the gray hairs hadn’t yet crept up over his ears.

Can he party like it’s 2009? What with the back and all.

Here’s what I think will really happen: Smoke will reach 30th in the points by the 26th race of the season, that being Richmond—his favorite track. It’ll be win or lose, and he’ll win because—I don’t know—like Gordon winning at Martinsville in 2015 to reach Homestead, these things have a way of happening.

Kansas calls out the veterans. Smoke will be a long shot for sure, but the track won’t be as taxing as Talladega, and getting the heck out of Dodge (Chevy?) in the GEICO 500 in the first 50 laps was the biggest blessing (though Stewart grumbled at the time).

With two wins at Kansas, he’ll need to summon the magic of yesterday to do it. A win will get him 40-plus points closer to the top 30, too.

And the Winner Is...Jimmie Johnson

Jamie Squire/Getty Images

Since veteran drivers win at this track that eliminates the upstarts and young guns, I’m going with a Gibbs car.

By and large, they’re simply too strong at this point in the season.

I want to pick Kenseth; I really do, but I’m afraid he’ll obsess in an unhealthy way over the "Feud with Logano." Kenseth could be going Ahab on us before our eyes.

Calling an audible…No JGR car.

That leaves Johnson, a driver with three-career wins, tied for the most all time at Kansas Speedway with his brah from another ma, Gordon.

Johnson has led 99 laps at this track, and he won it a year ago when Spongebob was all the rage. Now it’s time to record his third win of the year.

Stats are via Racing-Reference.info.