Saturday's motors: Two teams blowing field away in NASCAR Cup
Talladega, Ala. – The Rick Hendrick Express rolls into Talladega Superspeedway, with Joe Gibbs Racing nipping at their bumpers.
Good luck to everyone else in the NASCAR Cup series.
Even at this high-banked madhouse in rural Alabama, which is usually as much of a crapshoot as any track on the circuit, there's already a sense that 2024 is shaking out as a two-team sprint to the championship.
Through nine races, the top six spots in the standings are split evenly between the Hendrick and Gibbs powerhouses. They've hoarded nearly all the wins, too, with Daniel Suarez's pulsating Atlanta victory being the only race that prevented a clean sweep.
William Byron already has three wins for Hendrick Motorsports, while teammate Chase Elliott took the checkered flag a week ago at Texas Motor Speedway. A third Hendrick driver, Kyle Larson, leads the standings and had won three straight poles until he was booted from qualifying Saturday because of an unauthorized change to his car.
Denny Hamlin, who has two wins for JGR and sits third in the points, doesn't see anyone rising up to challenge the front-runners.
“Teams just can't make in-year adjustments like they used to be able to,” he said. "What you’ve got is what you’ve got.”
Brad Keselowski, among the multitudes who are lagging behind, shrugged his shoulders when asked if Hamlin’s assessment was on point.
“I would say the way the formats are for NASCAR right now, with no testing and no practice, it lends itself to when someone gets an advantage, they’re hard to overtake for sure,” Keselowski said.
The 2.66-mile Talladega trioval does provide a better opportunity for the also-rans to make their mark – especially the struggling Ford teams that have yet to win a race.
The Mustang showed impressive speed at both Daytona and Atlanta, which require similar setups to Talladega, and Michael McDowell of Front Row Motorsports added to that optimism by earning the pole position for the race Sunday at 182.022 mph.
He was followed by two more Ford drivers, Team Penske's Austin Cindric (181.739) and McDowell's Front Row teammate, Todd Gilliland (181.401).
“This is a good week for us to get a win,” McDowell said. "There's a lot of great Mustangs starting up there with us.”
Talladega is known for its huge wrecks and chaotic finishes, but McDowell said the Next Gen car has taken away some of the randomness at this place. The idea that one can take the checkered flag merely by avoiding the big crash no longer applies.
“There's a balance,” McDowell said. "You don't want to be the guy making big, bold moves and putting everyone in compromising positions. But you have to fight hard for track position, because you may not get it back.”
No matter what happens Sunday, it already seems clear the champion at the end of the season will come from one of two teams.
“It’s heavily on my shoulders to perform every week," Hamlin said, “because I know I’ve got a team that’s capable of winning every week.”
Xfinity
Nineteen-year-old rookie Jesse Love won the first NASCAR Xfinity Series of his career in a crash-marred, double-overtime finish at Talladega Superspeedway on Saturday.
Love held off Brennan Poole, who pulled alongside roaring into the trioval, and took the checkered flag 0.141 seconds ahead of Riley Herbst. Anthony Alfredo and Leland Honeyman claimed the next two spots, Poole faded to fifth, and one last crash sent Joey Gase spinning behind the frontrunners.
“Let's go playoff racing!” Love screamed over the radio.
Hailie Deegan went into the final restart with a shot at becoming the highest-finishing woman in Xfinity Series history, but she slipped all the way to 12th. Danica Patrick retains the distinction with a fourth-place showing at Las Vegas in 2011.
Pole-sitter Austin Hill – Love's teammate at Richard Childress Racing – won the first stage, led a race-high 41 laps and was at the front of an 18-car train with two laps to go when the usual Talladega chaos erupted.
Parker Kligerman appeared to give Hill a couple of slight taps to the rear bumper, though Kligerman insisted over his radio that he never touched the leader's car. Nevertheless, Hill suddenly went into a spin that ended his hopes of his third victory of the season and sent the race to overtime.
Kligerman was out front when the green flag waved, but that didn't last long. Shane Van Gisbergen appeared to run out of gas and Love got into Kligerman going for lead, sending the the No. 48 car smashing into the wall.
Several other contenders had to duck into the pits for fuel before the second overtime, which extended the race from 113 to 124 laps.
In the end, Love had enough fuel to get to the line, erasing memories of another strong run at Atlanta where he went dry at the end.
Chandler Smith comes in as points leader, but finished 25th.
THE FIRST BIG ONE
Early in the final stage, the first big crash of the day collected at least a dozen cars, knocking four of them out of the race.
Kligerman and Ryan Sieg sparked the incident on lap 65, trading paint when both went for an opening in the middle of the track during three-wide racing through the trioval. That slight bump set off a chain-reaction crash that left cars spinning, sliding and smashing into each other from the outer wall to the inside grass.
“You have to be aggressive,” said Brandon Jones, whose car was too damaged to continue. “The only way be aggressive is to get up front.”
The day also ended for Sam Mayer, Jeremy Clements and Ryan Truex, while several cars returned to the track with significant damage. A.J. Allmendinger kept going with with his rear bumper cover barely hanging on.
Mayer has failed to finish four of the first nine races, but he's locked into the playoff after winning last week at Texas in a photo finish with Sieg.