An annual trip to the upper Appalachian Mountains awaits the stars of the NASCAR Cup Series, returning to NASCAR’s most unique oval circuit.
First, let’s rewind to last week where a pack of 40 angry drivers got behind the wheel for America’s most aggressive, high-speed traffic jam: the second annual Grant Park 165*.
The asterisk* is to signify that this race — much like its predecessor — came up far short of its scheduled distance at just 58 laps and 127.6 miles.
Oh, what an interesting 58 laps they were. Let’s reminisce.
A pair of protestors holding a sign saying, “Bombs for Gaza. Prison for Illinois.”, affixed themselves to the catchfence during the warm-up laps prior to being apprehended.
NASCAR opened the race by encouraging — but not telling — the teams to fit their cars with treaded, wet-weather tires or stick with their bald, slick tires. This is a noticeable departure from previous events where teams had scheduled cautions to make the switch to the wets.
Thus, the race kicked off with differing strategies that changed faster than Superman in a phone booth, several drivers making the switch to the wets before the end of the first stage.
Shane van Gisbergen rose to the peak of the scoring pylon, putting his immense talent on display and taking the fight to NASCAR’s best. His strong showing led to a stage 1 victory, and that’s where everything changed.
Zane Smith stayed out during the caution to lead the field to green. One problem: the rain picked up.
Cars scattered as they sprawled out in search of grip on the front straight. Not long after, the race was pretty much over for top-10 runners Daniel Suárez and Bubba Wallace.
In the resulting chaos, Alex Bowman forgot to engage his windshield wiper. He found out that the spray was thick and needed to be dispersed, but he fiddled with it at a bad time, plunging into the #23’s right-rear corner in turn 2. Wallace stopped his #23 JuJutsu Kaisen Camry in front of an unsuspecting Suárez, halting both cars.
Later that lap, Chase Briscoe mounted a charge down the backstretch until his car broke traction early on the entry to turn 5, caroming into the tire barriers and collecting betting favorite SVG.
The reigning winner of the event appeared poised to repeat in the Windy City, but an ill-timed tap from Briscoe’s Ford sent the Wendy’s Saucy Nuggs Chevy into the concrete wall, resulting in a 40th-place finish.
NASCAR realized the rain was more abundant than they were equipped for and red-flagged the event. Nearly two hours of moisture delayed the event until cars hit the track, causing the series to do something they’ve not really done before: a timed race.
Since it was unlikely for NASCAR to finish the scheduled distance, the City of Chicago gave the drivers and teams until 8:20pm local time to finish their race. If the race is not completed by 8:20pm, the leader will be given an additional two laps to end the race and declare it official.
Ty Gibbs controlled the next single-file restart for a few fleeting moments before Christopher Bell took the top spot on lap 31. The lead would be short-lived as pole sitter Kyle Larson joined SVG on the DNF list, hydroplaning into the turn 6 wall, demolishing the front end of his car.
Racing resumed on lap 38 with the time ticking away, though the stage did progress to the end without another yellow interruption. As such, drivers and teams pitted for slick tires before pit road closed, unwittingly trapping themselves in the field for the next restart.
That meant the leaders were the drivers who stayed out for the caution had the chance to stay out since the countdown clock dwindled down toward the single digits. Joey Hand defeated Alex Bowman for the second stage victory, the first stage win of the part-timer’s career.
Green light brightened up the dour atmosphere, a far cry from the doom and gloom in the skies above. A horde of 700HP machines growled to life, and it came down to a battle between Bowman and Hand.
The Hendrick Motorsports man that hopped in Jimmie Johnson’s old seat found trouble in adapting to the NextGen car and a new crew chief last year while healing from concussions in late-2022 and a spinal fracture sustained in a spring car crash back in May. Both incidents sidelined the 31-year-old Arizonan.
Bowman’s aged wet tires felt like a ticking time bomb for the drivers on dry tires, helmed by Christopher Bell and Tyler Reddick. Bell became a victim of Fast Car Syndrome where his ultra-fast Craftsman Camry was foiled and thrown into the garbage after contact with Martin Truex Jr. late in the going.
Reddick avoided all the unnecessary drama and buried his head into this seat, squeezing every last fiber out of his Goodyear tires in his pursuit of Bowman.
While Reddick’s Air Jordan Toyota sat six seconds back of Bowman’s Ally Chevy when the countdown clock expired, his shoe-themed car flew through each turn on fresh dry tires, stomping through the course like a runaway dinosaur.
The lead dwindled to just three seconds when the white flag flew, and it even got to nearly a second before Reddick pushed too hard into turn 5, scraping the inside wall on corner entry and ending his chase.
Reddick held on for second while Bowman seized the day on the Chicago street course, ending an 80-race winless drought (Las Vegas spring, 2022) and scoring his first win with crew chief Blake Harris.
It wasn’t without some mild controversy as Wallace nudged the side of Bowman’s car on the cool-down lap, frustrated with how Bowman disposed of him early in stage 2. Bowman was a good sport about the whole deal, apologizing to Bubba and his team multiple times on-air for ending their race prematurely.
The News
Various altercations both during and after the race were placed beneath the NASCAR microscope this week, but only Bubba Wallace was penalized, receiving a $50,000 fine for post-race contact with Alex Bowman.
In a similar vein, Chase Elliott sideswiped and brake-checked Daniel Suárez following contact in the race. Strangely, this was only worth a “talking to” from the higher-ups.
Looking forward to next season, Front Row Motorsports announced that Noah Gragson will pilot one of the team’s three full-time entries for 2025 and beyond.
The multi-year deal keeps the second-year Cup driver out of Las Vegas in the Ford camp for the foreseeable future, and Gragson hopes to keep much of his #10 team from Stewart-Haas Racing together.
The Track
Designed by two-time Indianapolis 500 winner Rodger Ward, Pocono Raceway resides in the deep brush of the Pocono Mountains of eastern Pennsylvania.
Ward broke ground on the property in the late 1960s, leading to the track’s grand opening in 1969. 1971 proved to be a big year in the track’s history as the 2.5-mile behemoth attracted America’s premier open-wheel racing series: USAC (now known as the NTT IndyCar Series.)
USAC’s success at the track that came to be known as “The Tricky Triangle” brought NASCAR to New England in 1974 for the inaugural Purolator 500. “The King” Richard Petty’s #43 STP Dodge Charger completed 192 of the scheduled 200 laps before darkness forced the track’s first race to an early end.
Since then, the track has hosted the NASCAR Cup Series at least once a year for the last five decades, but surprisingly, the winningest driver at the track is active and took home a trophy after last year’s event.
Denny Hamlin came out the gate cooking at the strange superspeedway, sweeping his first two Pocono races, and the love affair simply hasn’t let up with the Virginian collecting 7 wins over 34 starts
Taking a lap around the speedway, drivers encounter the strangest track on the circuit when they cross the start-finish line. The 3,740-foot front straight is the longest on the NASCAR calendar, meaning the engines under the hoods of these screaming machines will be at full song before diving into turn 1.
Fashioned after turns 3 & 4 at the now-defunct Trenton Speedway in New Jersey, Pocono turn 1 stands at 14° of banking and spreads out 60 feet from the apron to the outside wall, providing numerous entries and exits to the turn.
Drivers rip through the highest banks on the track onto the 3,055-foot “Long Pond” backstretch where cars fan out three and four-wide on restarts as the draft plays a powerful part in which driver noses ahead on the lead-up to the dreaded Tunnel Turn.
Otherwise known as turn 2, Rodger Ward meant for the turn to mimic the feeling of driving in the turns at Indianapolis Motor Speedway.
The Tunnel Turn grades up to 8° and represents one of the best passing opportunities on the track as cars struggle for grip in the higher grooves.
Cars are then spit out onto the Short Chute — a small straight that only extends for 1740 feet — before sliding into the flat turn 3. Modeled after the Milwaukee Mile, the turn’s 6° of banking tests the mechanical grip of the cars, scooting around the 800-foot turn before ending up back on the home straight.
The frontstretch offers 100 feet of racing surface for cars to scatter until funneling into turn 1, making restarts especially hectic at the 2.5-mile trioval.
Weather & Fast Facts
Today’s race might be delayed a little bit by the wet stuff as rain is projected by AccuWeather to keep falling until after 2pm Eastern time.
Track drying will then commence, but the rather large facility and its aging concrete makes it difficult to push out all the water.
Once the rain subsides, fans should be treated to partly cloudy skies and a high of 85°F at 3pm ET. The temperature will taper off a bit to 80°F by 7pm when the race will likely be reaching its conclusion.
By the numbers, here is how the average Pocono race plays out over the last 10 years: 7 cautions for 29 laps, 14 lead changes, 2806 green-flag passes, 2 hours and 53 minutes runtime, a 20% chance of Overtime, and an average lap of last caution falling on lap 136.
Pre-race festivities kick off at 2:30pm Eastern time on USA Network with the green flag due to fall near 3pm. The Great American Getaway 400 will run for 160 laps, split up into three stages ending on laps 30-95-160.
This means you should prepare to be strapped in for a three-hour race, so don’t setup anything until after 6pm Eastern if you intend on catching the end of the race.
One final point of emphasis: though the NextGen car’s struggles with dirty air have been widely documented, both races with the sport’s seventh-generation model featured over 3000 green-flag passes, tallying over 29 passes-per-lap in the 2023 iteration of this event.
The Odds
Hendrick Motorsports driver Kyle Larson (+500) tops this list provided by the fine folks at DraftKings. The former Cup champ lacks a W in his 16 previous starts at the Tricky Triangle, letting one seep away when a tire went flat on the entry to turn 3 on the final lap during his title run, giving way to teammate Bowman.
The Elk Grove, California native waited out the rain storm last week only to see his #5 Valvoline Chevy windshield deep into the turn 6 tire barriers. Without the possibility of racing in the rain this week, Larson and Cliff Daniels look to right the ship and take the series’ wins lead with a long-awaited Pocono win.
Not far behind Larson is fellow dirt racing ace Christopher Bell (+700). The 30-year-old from Norman, Oklahoma managed a top-5 in his first ever race here in 2020, and he’s maintained a solid record at the track, logging top-10s in half of his six Cup starts.
Much like Larson, this year’s Coca-Cola 600 champion is chasing down the series wins lead as he remains deadlocked with Larson, Denny Hamlin, and William Byron at three. At a track where a fourth turn doesn’t exist, Bell hopes to change things by making a fourth turn into victory lane.
Last among 2024 winners is Tyler Reddick (+850). The 23XI pilot elevated his game late in the going in Chicago, blasting through the field on slick tires before falling short on the last lap when the Corning, California driver tagged the inside wall of turn 5.
Second place is starting to become a bitter pill to swallow for Reddick and his #45 crew, and at a track where they came home second last year, keep your eyes on the Talladega winner to use his boss’ wisdom on the way to taking the crown of the Keystone State.
Of the non-winners of 2024, Martin Truex Jr. (+700) and Bubba Wallace (+3000) stand out the most.
Truex re-entered the Cup Series zeitgeist at Pocono in 2015 when he piloted the #78 Furniture Row Chevy to his third career Cup Series win. Since that day nine years ago, the New Jersey boy has pushed that total to 34 wins, and it wouldn’t shock me to see the #19 in victory lane for win #35 at one of his (many) home tracks.
Wallace stands out as an interesting pick to those of you reading this and the oddsmakers, but don’t be fooled — Bubba has been great here since joining 23XI. The 30-year-old driver holds a 9.5 average finish at Pocono after moving to Toyota in 2021, and in need of a win, look for Bubba to make a big splash on Sunday.
Writer’s Pick
Last week’s writer’s pick was Shane van Gisbergen, and thanks to NASCAR’s poor decision-making and a collision with Chase Briscoe’s car, the Kiwi finished dead last with a wrecked Saucy Nuggs Camaro.
This week’s selection is the betting favorite: Denny Hamlin (+400).
Already a seven-time winner here, Hamlin displayed his brilliance at the Tricky Triangle early and often, sweeping the races here in his rookie year of 2006 and crossing the line first in each of his last two trips.*
*(Hamlin and then-teammate Kyle Busch were disqualified for putting clear tape on the front fascia of the car.)
Denny’s 2024 season has been riddled with controversies and dust-ups, nothing out of the ordinary really for the cagey 19-year veteran, but he has lost his way when it comes to finding victory lane, going over two months since his most recent win at Dover.
Yielding an absolutely brutal right side on his race car, Hamlin knows better than anyone how to dominate at the Tricky Triangle, and I look for him to extend his already-impressive Pocono record on Sunday.
(Top Photo Credit: Logan Riely/Getty Images)
pitboxpress.com 