The Biggest NASCAR Storylines to Watch Ahead of the Sylvania 300
We all knew, from experience, that the Chase carries with it a certain sense of pressure. The Chase, at large, is 10 races, but it really isn’t. It’s three-three-three and ONE.
And with the debut in Chicagoland long gone and only one driver (Denny Hamlin) safe from the perils of elimination, there are only two races left for 11 other drivers to gain clearance into the Contender Round.
The Challenger Round may very well be called the short-track round. The next two races are at one-mile tracks (Loudon and Dover), so it’s onto New Hampshire for the second race of the Challenger Round where some most drivers need to get busy in New England.
Read on for a selection of this week’s top storylines.
Joey Logano Loves Loudon
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A year ago, Joey Logano won the Sylvania 300, making it back-to-back wins for Team Penske in the first two legs of the Chase.
There’s something about Loudon that resonates with Logano. He finished fourth earlier in the year and earned his first career win at New Hampshire Motor Speedway.
Logano is one of the favorites to win the Sprint Cup* and his unbelievable consistency in 2015 is a testament to that. An average finish of 8.5 from a starting position of 7.0 is all the proof you need.
Joseph Shelton of BeyondtheFlag.com wrote:
"His title chances are the best they’ve ever been largely in part to the fact that Logano has been able to effectively balance patience and aggressiveness. He doesn’t take any unnecessary risks with his equipment which has to make crew chief Todd Gordon a happy camper. This isn’t the Logano of old. This is a Logano who is bent on establishing himself as a threat to Kevin Harvick’s reigning supremacy.
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Now’s not the time for risky business, and Logano seems level-headed enough to keep his eyes down the road. His confidence will be riding high at New Hampshire and a win sends him along with Hamlin to the Contender Round.
*: Dear NASCAR, Can we address the non-cup-iness of the Sprint Cup? Your trophy is two flags. This is like the Stanley Cup being a puck and two hockey sticks. Love, Brendan
Much Ado About Restarts
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The restart earning the most attention* dealt with Jeff Gordon and Kyle Busch. In a few words, the restart came under review when it appeared Gordon, who was in second place down on the inside, appeared to launch before Busch.
Gordon did, or Busch held back, or…who the heck knows?
Restarts have been a big issue of late with drivers moving before the zones or before the leader engages. Despite reviews—or no reviews at all—the drivers appear to get away with whatever they want so they keep pushing the limits.
Gordon said in Kenny Bruce’s NASCAR.com story:
"I started to roll a little bit and he decided not to go. When we got to the second set of hash marks (indicating the end of the zone), I just went, knowing that's the rule. I don't know if he spun the tires or what happened there. It seemed like he was trying to get a penalty put to me by not going.
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Restarts seem like the easiest fix the sport has. If NBC can show how fast the cars are moving in real time, that’s the only information you need to see if a driver got the jump on the leader.
Additionally, lasers in the restart zone could further push the level of accuracy, maybe even an audible trigger in the cockpit that signals to the drivers that they can accelerate. That would take away all equivocation and a drive-through penalty can be assessed within seconds.
Then there are others, like FoxSports.com’s Larry McReynolds, who prefer human error. He writes:
"While I've heard pretty much every suggestion under the sun of how to fix it, I'll be honest, I don't have the answer. I do think NASCAR has to get consistent with its calls. In Major League Baseball, if an umpire is consistent with the area that he calls balls and strikes, teams get comfortable with it.
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Can we put a stake in human error? Please?
*: It got the most attention, but it didn’t have the greatest impact. The Jimmie Johnson-Kevin Harvick restart could ripple through to Homestead.
Though He's Not a Chaser, Kyle Larson's Getting Hot
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Kyle Larson ranked first of all non-Chasers at Chicagoland, taking seventh place.
A year ago at Loudon, Larson was runner-up to Logano. He may not be in the Chase, but he’s in better form than most of the Chase field, especially Chase bottom feeders Clint Bowyer, Paul Menard and—gulp—Kevin Harvick.
Much has been made about Larson’s sophomore slump and deservedly so. He had that fainting spell at Martinsville and missed the race. His lone pole at Kentucky came because rain cancelled qualifying.
The No. 42 team qualified well all year (12.5), but never could carry that speed through race day (19.0 average finish).
That trend has turned around of late. The last three races saw him finish 10th, 12th and seventh. The silver lining to not being in the Chase is that it grants him a pressure-free way to approach these final races. He can’t be any more out of the Chase, so he can just drive.
With Chasers possibly getting too aggressive because of the pressure, it could open up opportunities for the opportunistic, and right now Larson fits the bill.
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Look Who's Atop the Sprint Cup Standings: Matt Kenseth
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It’s not Denny Hamlin, winner of Sunday’s myAFibRisk.com 400, who sits atop the Chase standings. That honor, fleeting as it may be, is Matt Kenseth, the most unassuming driver of all the Joe Gibbs Racing pilots.
Places one through four are all JGR drivers setting the table for what could be, however unlikely, an all JGR Homestead. Are there four better drivers right now than Hamlin, Kenseth, Busch and Carl Edwards?
Maybe you can argue for Logano with a dollop of Kurt Busch, but beyond that it’s JGR’s Sprint Cup to lose.
“They just continue to show they are the group you are going to have to beat to win races, and probably the group you are going to have to beat if you want to win the 2015 NASCAR Sprint Cup championship,” wrote FoxSports.com’s Larry McReynolds.
And on top of that heap of spoils rests Kenseth, winner of four races in the regular season. The 2003 Sprint Cup champion never gets too high or too low, and rarely—if ever—makes a mistake. He may be the JGR car to beat over the next nine weeks.
We all know the pressure will keep building and his even demeanor could be the X-factor while others melt down around him.
Kevin Harvick Will Get Heated
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If what happened between Jimmie Johnson and Harvick during—and after—the race took place at, say, Phoenix in March, the two probably bro-hug it out.
But this is the Chase and Harvick has been quite public about not making any friends. Now that he’s in 16th place and must win one of the next two races, Harvick effectively unfriended Johnson on Facebook.
“We can win anywhere,” Harvick said in Jeff Gluck’s USA Today story. “We could have won today. It’s just a matter of putting a couple days together and being able to come back to victory lane.”
Throughout much of the NBC Sports broadcast prior the race at Chicagoland, commentators and drivers spoke of not making mistakes, that you can’t win the Chase early, but you can lose it.
Harvick made a fatal error by not pitting after Johnson slammed him and as NASCAR.com’s Kenny Bruce wrote:
"There was no way of knowing how significant the damage to Harvick's car was after the contact with Johnson without coming to pit road. But why take the chance? Why put your entire season in jeopardy when a trip to pit road would have alleviated any concerns for both driver and crew?
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Harvick’s car was fast enough to overcome being a lap down, but his team choked. Johnson, who doesn’t escape blame here, put the No. 4 team in a bad position, so it was incumbent upon Rodney Childers, Harvick’s crew chief, to take one step backward to move Harvick ahead five. Now they’re 22 steps back, as in 22 points behind 12th place, with even more pressure mounting at the following two tracks.
Harvick? Angry? Angry Harvick? He wins this week.
All stats, unless otherwise noted, came via Racing-Reference.info.
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