From this point forward, the road to the NASCAR Cup Series championship is paved with a dizzying array of tracks.
The journey begins Sunday at Charlotte Motor Speedway, which has dumped the Roval road course in favor of the longstanding 1.5-mile quad-oval for the Bank of America 400, a dramatically shorter race than May’s Coca-Cola 600 at the track.
Then, in order:
- Phoenix Raceway, a one-mile oval that teams approach as a short track.
- Talladega Superspeedway, a 2.66-mile giant of a track that will be contested under new rules designed to spike the competition.
- Martinsville Speedway, the tiny half-mile that tends to produce a bit of chaos, primarily because of its spot as the Chase’s next-to-last race.
- Homestead-Miami Speedway, a 1.5-mile, variable-banking oval that usually produces great racing and, in the thinking of many in the garage, should host the season finale every year.
It’s quite a gauntlet of track sizes, shapes, and speeds, with some drivers and teams favoring one or two slices of the remaining schedule, while others shine on an entirely different landscape.
Talladega Superspeedway.
The Chase reset after Chase Briscoe’s Sunday win in the Nevada desert leaves Kyle Larson with a bigger point lead and four drivers—Larson, Denny Hamlin, Christopher Bell, and Joey Logano—in decent positions to claim the championship. The remaining 12 Chase drivers are more than a race’s worth of points behind Larson, with Ryan Blaney (80 points behind) and Ty Gibbs (minus 84) the best of that group.
Larson lost a great shot at what would have been his third win in the Chase at Las Vegas, but his remarkably productive playoff run—after a generally sour regular season—continued with a second-place finish. Larson’s Chase finishes—fifth, first, second, first, and second—outshine all other playoff drivers by a considerable margin. His average finish is 2.2. In second place in that column is Austin Cindric with an average finish of 8.0, but Cindric is ninth in points, 128 behind Larson.
Martinsville Speedway.
Looking across the five weeks to come, Hamlin and Logano are the only Chase drivers who have scored wins at all five remaining tracks. Hamlin totals 14 wins at the five speedways, with Martinsville (six wins) his go-to venue.
None of the Chasers has won more than once on the Charlotte oval.
Logano has the upper hand at Phoenix with four career wins, and he and Blaney each have won three times at Talladega. Hamlin (three) and Larson (two) are the only multiple winners on the Chase list at Homestead.
No matter the other numbers and the look of the landscape ahead, Larson is in prime position to repeat as champion. A 40-point lead—the biggest anyone has had during the Chase—is an impressive cushion.
Homestead-Miami Speedway.
Mike Hembree has covered auto racing for numerous media outlets, including USA Today, NASCAR Scene, NBC Sports, The Greenville News and the SPEED Channel. He has been roaming garage areas and pit roads for decades (although the persistent rumor that he covered the first Indianapolis 500 is not true). Winner of numerous motorsports and other media awards, he also has covered virtually every other major sport. He lives near Gaffney, South Carolina and can be convinced to attend Bruce Springsteen concerts if you have tickets.
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