Austin Cindric's Consistent Lack of Short Track Speed Means He'll Likely Struggle in All-Star Race

Although Austin Cindric has significantly improved from previous seasons, short tracks remain probably his worst track type and he is unlikely to perform very well in tonight's NASCAR All-Star Race. He starts 16th after finishing 8th in Heat Race 2. In his previous All-Star Race at North Wilkesboro, Cindric actually lost positions from his 17th-place […]

Unexpected Trackhouse Speed May Make Daniel Suarez a Valid Option

Daniel Suárez starts 12th in tonight's NASCAR All-Star Race after finishing sixth in his heat race. Although Trackhouse Racing has struggled for speed all season and they have tended to be slowest on short tracks in recent years, Suárez's teammate Ross Chastain mentioned that the fact that they got more practice time helped all the […]

For Harrison Burton, Making the All-Star Likely As Good As It Gets

Harrison Burton's surprise win at Daytona last year made him eligible for the NASCAR All-Star Race but after losing his Wood Brothers ride, he had no team for whom to race. However, Rick Ware Racing decided to enter him in their No. 51 car to lock themselves into the race. However, expectations should be muted […]

Christopher Bell Finishes Second In Otherwise Subpar Day For Toyota

After a slight dry spell since his three straight wins earlier this season, Christopher Bell had one of his low-key best runs of the season at Kansas. In a race where nearly most of the Toyotas struggled for speed including expected contenders like Tyler Reddick, Bell passed Chris Buescher for second on the opening lap […]

Chris Buescher Has Decent Run At Kansas, But Teammates Outperform Him

After narrowly losing last year's spring Kansas race to Kyle Larson and narrowly losing the pole position for Sunday's race to Larson, Buescher surprisingly fell through the pack and got passed for 10th on the last lap of Stage 1 to prevent him from getting any stage points. He spent almost the entirety of Stage […]

Despite Qualifying Error And Speeding Penalty, Josh Berry Finishes Sixth

Although Josh Berry was forced to start 38th at Kansas after hitting the wall during qualifying, he didn't stay there for long. Berry was the best passer in the race with a pass differential of 38 positions. He got an assist early in the race after A.J. Allmendinger's engine failure when some drivers pitted on […]

Despite Joey Logano's Complacency, Penske Cars Fast Enough For Top-10 Finish

Recent history suggested that once Joey Logano finally won a race in the regular season that he and the No. 22 team would likely ignore the remaining regular season races to focus entirely on the playoffs. However, the Penske cars ended up being so fast in yesterday's race at Kansas that he still earned a […]

Tyler Reddick Once Again Inexplicably Mediocre At One Of His Better Tracks

Tyler Reddick had arguably the most disappointing race at Kansas on Sunday. In a race where most people expected Reddick to be Kyle Larson's primary challenger, he almost immediately fell from his fourth-place starting position with a badly-handling car and was already out of the top 10 by Lap 17. He spent most of the […]

Brad Keselowski Crashes Out At Kansas But Shows First Hint Of Speed

One of the biggest surprises in Sunday's race at Kansas was the unexpected speed of Brad Keselowski after he had shown seemingly no speed for the entire year prior to that. Despite starting 36th ahead of only Cody Ware and Josh Berry (who crashed in qualifying), Keselowski made a lot of passes, driving up to […]

Chase Elliott No Longer Leads Enough To Be Worthy Of DFS Play After Qualifying Ninth

Although Chase Elliott hasn't been terrible this season, he's never seemed so invisible or ignorable before, as even Alex Bowman seems to be faster than him most weeks before some bad luck invariably strikes. Elliott starts ninth in Sunday's AdventHealth 400 and he's pretty much a lock for a top-10 finish as he has only […]

Joey Logano Likely To Look Past Kansas In Preparation For Playoffs

Joey Logano starts fifth at Kansas on Sunday. The track has historically been very good for him, as he won three times there, most recently in 2020. However, in the Next Gen era, he has rarely been much of a race factor, leading only 15 laps combined with this chassis after leading more laps than […]

Ty Gibbs Only Worth Starting In DFS If You Think He'll Lead

After his awful start, Ty Gibbs has been running pretty well every week lately and now sits only 20 points below the playoff cutline, which is really a sign of how weak the bubble is this year. Gibbs missed out on a good finish at Texas despite running well after he got trapped a lap […]

Carson Hocevar A Great DFS Option If He Doesn't Crash

Carson Hocevar won Saturday's Craftsman Truck Series race for Spire Motorsports with relative ease after his similarly-initialed one-time Truck Series rival Corey Heim had a botched pit stop, got trapped a lap down, and then had a penalty for changing lanes on a restart. Although it's not as pronounced as in the past, there still […]

Daniel Suarez Struggles To Convert Strong Qualifying Runs Into Finishes At Kansas

Daniel Suárez earned a rare top-10 qualifying run for Trackhouse Racing this season, and his eighth-place start is only his second top-20 start of the season. Intermediates are one of his best track types, but he tends to do better on the high-banked intermediates than the flat ones. Although he does occasionally lead here, most […]

Will Chase Briscoe Remain Mediocre At Kansas With Faster Cars?

Chase Briscoe continues to be one of the hardest drivers to predict in the Cup Series. He remains a force of chaos and one of the few drivers who could win, have an extremely mediocre run, or crash and few would be surprised by any of these outcomes. Meanwhile, James Small continues to be one […]

Shane Van Gisbergen Passing Time Between Road Courses

Shane van Gisbergen's season continues to meander in an aimless way as he continues to struggle to learn oval racing. Week after week, he is one of the slowest drivers on every oval and it's hard to imagine that changing until it actually happens. 1.5-mile ovals are arguably his worst track type as he finished […]

Texas Near-Miss Makes Michael McDowell Look Better Than He Seems On Paper

After coming agonizingly close to winning at Texas -- a track where he'd never even placed in the top 10 before -- Michael McDowell comes to Texas with momentum and a Spire Motorsports team that seems to have speed on every intermediate track. His Kansas record isn't much better than his Texas record, as his […]

Todd Gilliland Is Consistently Mediocre At Kansas

The good news is that Todd Gilliland has been consistent at Kansas. The bad news is that he's been consistent at an extremely low level as he started between 31st and 33rd and finished between 23rd and 27th in all but one of his previous starts. The exception came at last year's race when he […]

Zane Smith Will Likely Finish Around Where He Starts

Zane Smith earned a 10th-place finish in his last start at Kansas, so he has higher expectations entering Sunday's race than you might expect. He did have his most dominant win in the Craftsman Truck Series at the track, when he led 108 out of 134 laps in the 2022 race. Smith starts 18th on […]

Cole Custer Likely Needs Strategy To Contend At Kansas

Cole Custer qualified 31st at Kansas. Although the track is similar to the defunct Kentucky Speedway where he won in 2020 and he earned his best career finish there 11 days later when he finished 7th, all of Custer's remaining runs have been mediocre since as he usually starts and finishes in mid-pack and lately […]

Too Little Attrition For Cody Ware To Get A Decent Finish At Kansas

Cody Ware qualified 37th and next-to-last for Sunday's Kansas race. He was a half second slower than the next-slowest driver in Brad Keselowski (not counting Josh Berry, who hit the wall). Ware has not competed at Kansas since 2022 and he has never finished fewer than two laps down. At a track where there doesn't […]

Ross Chastain Picks Up Second-Place Finish

Ross Chastain's improved racecraft this year continued with yet another race where he turned a terrible qualifying result into a terrific finish. Chastain started 31st in yesterday's Wurth 400 and was a total nonfactor for the first two stages, but Trackhouse Racing has tended to have the best green flag pit strategy recently as Chastain […]

Bad Pit Strategy And Late-Race Crash Spoil Carson Hocevar's Top-10 Run

Although Carson Hocevar crashed out of Sunday's race at Texas, he actually had a good points day regardless and improved from 26 to 21 points behind the playoff cut line. After winning the pole, Hocevar led the first 22 laps until a caution came out for Noah Gragson's spin. Hocevar's team made the questionable move […]

Erik Jones Improbably Finishes Fifth Despite Speeding Penalty

One of the biggest surprises in Sunday's race at Texas was the speed of the Legacy Motor Club cars, which unexpectedly were the two highest-finishing Toyotas in the race. After a couple seasons of futility, Erik Jones earned his first top-five finish on a non-drafting oval since Kansas in the fall of 2023. Although he […]

Despite Crashing Out At Texas, Michael McDowell Surprisingly Fights For The Win

Michael McDowell is not particularly known for his prowess on intermediate tracks, as he has never finished better than sixth on a non-drafting intermediate, but he improbably had a strong chance to win Sunday's Texas race. Despite qualifying fifth, McDowell did not attract much notice since he was overshadowed by his teammate Carson Hocevar, but […]

Brilliant Pit Strategy Lifts John Hunter Nemechek To Eighth Place

Although the Legacy Motor Club cars have not had much speed in recent years at all, both Erik Jones and John Hunter Nemechek ended up scoring top-10 finishes by weaving their way through the carnage of numerous wrecks. Nemechek actually had a terrible start to the race, starting 28th and sitting outside the top 30 […]

Carson Hocevar Wins First Pole, But Pit Crew Might Hold Him Back

Carson Hocevar earned his first pole position for Sunday's Würth 400 at Texas in his 56th career start. Given the speed he has shown and Spire Motorsports' improved qualifying performance, a pole was probably inevitable at some point, but how will he do in the race? Hocevar earned his first top-10 finish in the Cup […]

DFS Players Should Stay Away From Christopher Bell

Christopher Bell has had a fairly puzzling season to date, as he has won the most races with three (matching his career-best seasonal total) and also became the only driver to win three in a row in a year he's arguably lost some speed. While his average finish of 12.3 is the best of his […]

Ross Chastain's A Must-Start At Texas

Ross Chastain qualifies poorly and gets a good finish. Rise, rinse, repeat. Trackhouse Racing qualifying has been generally terrible this season and yesterday was no exception as Chastain qualified 31st for today's race at Texas. However, he's toned down his aggression and has now developed a plodding, methodical style more reminiscent of Chris Buescher, which […]

Chase Briscoe A Sneaky Option That Could Pay Great DFS Dividends

Chase Briscoe's Joe Gibbs Racing debut has been very anonymous so far as he currently sits 12th in points in a year when his teammates have won five races. It feels by the eye test like he is running substantially worse than he actually has on paper, which may cause him to be overlooked. Despite […]