With just five rounds punched out of the NASCAR calendar, there’s still 21 races for the stars of the NASCAR Cup Series to solidify their spots in the Playoffs.
Their next opportunity? Homestead-Miami Speedway.
A 1.5-mile asphalt utopia, progressively banked to allow drivers to press their luck with their left-front tire wrapping around the apron or their right-rear tire ripping along the fence.
Formerly the site of NASCAR’s championship race, Homestead holds sentimental value in the hearts of fans, drivers, and teams alike due to that past gravity, a gravity it’s maintained through its superior racing product.
With an underdog rising to the occasion and biting off a piece of the Playoff pie for himself, only 13 spots remain ripe for the taking by the 33 hungry drivers.
400 miles, 267 laps of speed, discipline, and creativity await in the Straight Talk Wireless 400.
Last Week at Las Vegas…
In the Cup Series’ first trip to a true intermediate track this season, a track-record 32 lead changes displays a different picture than the race that played out last Sunday.
Passing around the 1.5-mile trioval proved challenging as 9 cautions slowed the field for 53 laps, making restarts one of the ripest opportunities to pass, and to wreck.
Case in point, a backstretch melee between some of the top cars with 72 laps to go started when drivers went four-wide and inched closer to each other until disaster struck. Ryan Blaney’s Pennzoil Ford finally muscled its way to the front only to squeeze into Noah Gragson and Bubba Wallace and end his own day.
To make matters worse, Austin Dillon, Ricky Stenhouse Jr., and Erik Jones all got a piece of the accident as well, virtually ending any hopes of those drivers coming home with a solid result.
Gragson’s day wasn’t over as the hometown kid brought out the final caution of the day when his No. 4 Beef a Roo Mustang lost a tire and smashed into the turn 2 wall, ending his bid for a maiden victory.
This caution came out at an opportune time for much of the remaining lead-lap cars as they dove onto pit road for fresh rubber while several contenders lost out due to the timing of the yellow.
Sitting on the front row coming to the restart were two drivers that many wouldn’t have expected with 20 laps to go: Daniel Suárez and Josh Berry.
Suárez took a tremendous launch on the restart to pull out to a modest lead, but his Freeway Insurance Camaro chattered on the bumps in turn 2, shooting his car up the track and opening the door for Berry’s Ford.
A duel transpired over the next few laps as Berry tried to make his car stick on the low side to get the advantage while Suárez hauled the mail on the top to get the run down the straights.
In the end, Berry planted his foot to the floor, completing the pass on the Trackhouse entry on his way to his very first NASCAR Cup Series win in the Pennzoil 400.
A big win for Berry proved even bigger for his race team, Wood Brothers Racing. In conjunction with Harrison Burton’s Daytona heroics last summer, Berry’s win gave the Woods their first back-to-back winning seasons since 1986 and 1987 with Kyle Petty.
For a more detailed breakdown of this race, my colleague Jey dropped a sick recap of last Sunday’s action.
This Week in NASCAR
According to FOX Sports’ Bob Pockrass, Ryan Blaney, William Byron, and Chase Briscoe participated in a Goodyear tire test on the Charlotte oval on Tuesday and Wednesday.
During the week, a major grass fire broke out in the Homestead area, just miles away from the track. Concerns over the races’ viability were briefly raised, but thankfully, emergency services are working ardently to combat the blaze, which was labeled by the City of Homestead as 65% contained as of 2:00pm yesterday.
Over in the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series, an exciting race broke out on Homestead’s aged track surface among the 34 drivers that entered the race, chief among them being 2021 Cup Series champ Kyle Larson.
Riding into the event with the No. 07 Chevy Silverado for Spire Motorsports, Larson kept up with the series regulars in the top-5, seemingly the second-best truck of the night behind Corey Heim’s Safelite Tundra.
It was when Layne Riggs vied for the lead that Larson’s chances went up in smoke as the dirt-racing extraordinaire drifted into Riggs’ door in turn 1, sending the No. 07 for a spin.
Restarting the race in 22nd, Larson picked his way through the field over the final 40 laps, and with Heim’s engine giving him troubles over the last handful of laps, Larson took huge bits out of the gap.
With four laps to go, Riggs inherited the point from an ailing Heim; the swap in position would be short-lived as Larson whipped around Riggs’ Loves Ford F-150 with two laps to go to claim the victory at Homestead.
As for the Xfinity Series, I wrote a recap of that race that went up earlier today.
In other news, Jey and I concocted a new weekly column, a power rankings of the 10 best NASCAR Cup Series drivers, so if you’d like to see that, here’s a link.
The Race
Today’s Straight Talk Wireless 400 will be broadcast on FOX Sports 1 with Mike Joy, Clint Bowyer, and Kevin Harvick in the booth.
A 400-mile, 267-lap affair, the race will be split into three stages ending on the following laps: 80-165-267.
As for the average Homestead race, it looks something like this: 6 cautions for 29 caution laps, 19 lead changes, 3,649 green-flag passes (or 15.3 green-flag passes per lap), and a race time of 3 hours and 4 minutes.
The Cup Series seldom dips into Overtime at Homestead-Miami with just one finish going into extra time to reach a conclusion (2016), pushing the lap of final caution back to lap 227 or 41 laps to go.
For a look at the starting grid for the Cup race, here’s a link.
Writer’s Pick
Last week’s writer’s pick was Bubba Wallace. After notching top-5 finishes in both stages, Wallace ran firmly in the top-half of the top-10 and ready to strike on the final run before getting squeezed into the wall with 70 laps to go, ruining his day and dropping him to 28th.
This week’s writer’s pick might be an outlier to some, but he’s no stranger to Homestead-Miami victory lane: Carson Hocevar.
A Cup Series sophomore, Hocevar shook the table a bit in Atlanta, which ruffled the feathers of a few Cup Series elites. This performance came after a rookie season full of gaffes and embarrassing incidents.
Spire Motorsports has admittedly picked up the pace this weekend, giving Hocevar a definitive boost over the equipment he drove the all the way up to eighth by the time the race ended.
As for his winning history here, Hocevar outclassed Zane Smith in the 2023 iteration of this event, a triumph that locked him and his team into the Championship Four.
Pit reporter on Friday, race car driver on Sunday. Look for Carson Hocevar to steal the victory, punch his ticket to the Playoffs, and become back-to-back first-time winners with Josh Berry.
(Top Photo Credit: Jasen Vinlove/Imagn Images)
pitboxpress.com 