From a NASCAR Fan’s View
Texas Motor Speedway is next in the program for the cup teams and it looks like it will be more than interesting. It does look like the Chevys came with speed and that is proved by Carson Hocevar running a very fast qualifying lap and William Byron qualifying second a hundredth of a second behind him and starting on the outside pole. That makes one wonder just how long the closeness of the lap times will last and which ones will be able to make up time later on the runs.
In fact, there are six Chevys qualified in the top twelve starting spots and three Toyotas and three Fords. To make it even more interesting, the qualifying times for the top twelve, in particular, are very close and that means there isn’t much room for error. Anyone’s error.
Carson Hocevar took his first pole in his cup career and it was definitely a fast lap. William Byron almost topped him but actually was about fourteen hundredths slower. You and I both know that qualifying times generally don’t matter too much but it was impressive. At Texas, it could mean the difference between winning and losing but I don’t want to jump ahead just yet.
Just taking a quick look at the top ten tells a rather vivid story of how this one might shape up. There is only seventy-five thousandths separating the ninth-place starter from the pole winner. That means we’re likely going to be in for some very close racing when it comes down to this one and can only mean one thing. Strategy is going to play a very important role for the one or ones that will have a chance to win.
I’ve been wondering about a few of the drivers and what’s really going on. Ryan Blaney has not had his usual consistency. He has either had good luck or bad luck and mostly it has been bad. For someone that usually ends up running at or near the front when the laps are winding down, he has had more bad finishes than good.
Christopher Bell is another. He started out the year in a very good way. After all, he had three wins in a row and then, well, for lack of a better way of saying it, he has kind of dropped off the map lately. He hasn’t been running up front like he has in the past. What happened? Well mostly from this fan’s view, he has been in all of the wrong places at the right time. How many DNFs has he had this season? Yeah, that would be two and the season is only really ten races in. (Well, that’s not counting the clash and the two duels at Daytona.) Sure, I know he sits fifth in the points but his performance lately hasn’t really been up to his norm. If it hadn’t been for those three wins, he would be much further down in the standings.
Another one that catches my attention is Chase Elliott. He hasn’t qualified well and he generally hasn’t run up front so much. Something has always happened to hold him back from being up front but his is in fourth place in points but he just hasn’t shown that much speed to be running at the front. He is another one that I consider to have been in the wrong places at the right time. I’m thinking he might turn things around soon but when that will actually be is unknown at this time.
William Byron is one of the biggest surprises to this fan. He won Daytona and he hasn’t won since. I can’t say that he hasn’t had speed but I will say he has struggled a bit at times even though he is the points leader. He has shown a lot of consistency and he has actually shown up with speed. He just hasn’t won since that Daytona win.
To me as a fan, Kyle Larson is probably the one that surprises me the most. He is either running up front or in the back and has led the most laps so far this season. At the moment, he sits second in points and he and his teammate William Byron finished side by side hooked to the bumpers of Austin Cindric and Ryan Preece last weekend. Cindric finished first, Preece second, Larson third and Byron fourth. It was definitely a close race but it didn’t finish the way he and Byron would have liked.
Any way you look at the race for this afternoon, Texas Motor Speedway will tax the drivers to their limits and their crew chiefs will be under the gun to come up with an excellent strategy and the crews will have to be flawless. If everything goes the way they plan, I believe the winner could possibly come out of the top ten qualifiers.
Now which one is a whole different story. In other words, I don’t have any idea…
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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