From a NASCAR Fan’s View
The NASCAR Cup race tonight won’t be just another Saturday night under the lights. The name of the track may have changed, but the racing at this place will be the same. After all, even with the name change and some really nice upgrades, it will still race like the Atlanta Speedway, and you know what that can mean. Yeah, that’s right. It means it will still race like the old name it had, Atlanta.
Wow! If you paid attention to the qualifying yesterday, it was pretty obvious the Fords showed up with speed to spare. The top eight qualifiers were all Fords and that could spell trouble for the rest of the field tonight. Of course, there will be a lot of laps to run before we know just how much trouble it will actually be.
Joey Logano is sitting on the pole to lead the field to the green flag tonight. As I said, behind him are seven more Fords, one Chevy and one Toyota. If you put much stock in qualifying times having a lot to do with how the race might go, then it is possible the Fords could have a dominating night.
Do I think it does? Not really. Too many times, we have watched the top qualifiers either drop like rocks from the start or end up back in the pack after the first pit stops and having to work their way back to the front for much of the race. Sometimes, they never challenge for the win again. Sometimes, it isn’t because they can’t make up the distance. It is because they get caught up in somebody else’s problem.
I admit the Fords have looked good lately, especially after yesterday’s qualifying. Whether or not they have finished all that well isn’t the question, at least, not from my view. The question is, how will they do in tonight’s race under the lights?
A quick look at the lineup shows there are a number of drivers who didn’t qualify all that well. From my view, one in particular is last week’s winner, Denny Hamlin. He and his number eleven Toyota qualified a surprising thirty-third. That was quite unexpected considering how he ran last weekend. In fact, the fastest Toyota in qualifying was Chase Briscoe. He starts in the tenth position. The next closest Toyota is Ty Gibbs starting sixteenth. Shucks, even Christopher Bell didn’t qualify all that well. He starts twenty-eighth. He usually shows up near the front by the end of a race, but tonight’s race might be more of a challenge for him to do that.
It seems to this fan, the Hendrick Chevys are in a sort of slump, which usually seems to happen at this time in the NASCAR season. Now, I’m not saying it always happens, but it is noticeable that they often start off the season qualifying well and running good enough to win several races.
Well, at least a couple of them do. I don’t know if you noticed but the two with the wins are William Byron with one and Kyle Larson with three. Byron is the points leader at the moment and Larson is second. Both have had their struggles in recent weeks, especially Larson. He hasn’t been qualifying all that well, and he has struggled to finish up front. Racing luck seemed to turn on him since his poor performance trying to do the double at the Indy 500 and the Coke 600 at the end of May. If it could go wrong, it definitely has for him.
Alex Bowman started off the season running consistently, but has recently struggled with finishes and no wins yet. Chase Elliott has been finishing very consistently, but he has no wins either. I would say these two Hendrick drivers are very hungry for a win and it could happen in tonight’s race. Well, both of them can’t win, but one of them could.
As I look over the lineup for tonight’s race, I see a bunch of drivers hungry for a win and a lot of them could. There are some relatively new drivers, looking for their first win, and there are some that have been around for a while, looking for a definite spot in the playoffs with a win. Any one of them could pull off a victory tonight and it doesn’t really matter much where they start. It only matters where they finish…
Hey, this is Russ and that’s my view… See ya next time…
All views expressed are strictly the opinion of the writer
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Rusty Norman, Nascarfansview.com and Justafansview.com
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