1. Has Kyle Busch Served Notice That He’s Back?
There’s a big danger in overreacting when a driver has a good run to counter a batch of bad ones. A balance exists between a team turning a corner or just one day of all things going right being an aberration.
Even on a day when Kyle Busch bemoaned how hard it is for the current generation of car to be the aggressor, he finished fourth on Sunday (April 29) at Dover Motor Speedway after starting from the pole position.
Busch now has two top 10s in three races, his best string since last fall when he drove to back-to-back top fives at Las Vegas Motor Speedway and Charlotte ROVAL. It was also his first start from the pole since World Wide Technology Raceway last year, a race in which he won from the pole.
Busch has now put together top 10s at two rather different tracks of late, at Texas Motor Speedway and Dover.
If Richard Childress Racing can keep up that versatility with the No. 8 car, then Busch stands a good chance of being the best car not from the Hendrick Motorsports or Joe Gibbs Racing camps.
2. Did Dover’s Fans Cement The Track’s One-Race Future?
When a track loses a race weekend, it’s easy to assume that the move is one step closer to that facility being shuttered.
Going from two race weekends to one can be a shot across the bow, a sign to a region that perhaps this track is not worth being as much of a part of the sport as it once was.
But a funny thing can happen with that, sometimes.
Not only does one fewer race weekend per season drive demand for ticket sales, but fans can also take it as a personal challenge. In what seems an ancient time ago, Darlington Raceway saw its spot on the schedule challenged. In 2004, its Labor Day date was shifted to November and the next year, it went from two race weekends down to one, its lone date being on Mother’s Day weekend, a time usually reserved to be time off.
I still remember being at a Darlington race in March 2003 and seeing a fan holding a poster saying, “NASCAR can take our tradition, but not our southern dedication. See ya in November.”
Many fans around the Low Country and PeeDee Region took that challenge personally, and fans in the Carolinas went to bat for Darlington which now not only has two weekends again but one on its beloved Labor Day Weekend.
Fans at Dover answered the call in a similar fashion on Sunday.
Since NASCAR and Speedway Motorsports – which owns Dover – do not publicly report attendance, we can only guess what we see, but based on crowd shots, fans near Dover took the prospect of supporting racing there personally, proving that they, after all these years, can still support racing.
Given that and Dover’s uniqueness, it’d be downright silly to have NASCAR minus Dover.
3. Can Bubba Wallace and the No. 23 Team Handle The Kansas Heat?
I’m no meteorologist, so I am not about to guess what the weather will be this weekend at Kansas Speedway.
But what is known is this: Tyler Reddick‘s Talladega Superspeedway win and the Michael Jordan factor put more exposure than usual on 23XI Racing. And with two strong runs soiled by being caught up in other driver’s misfortunes, Bubba Wallace is in need of a run not just for momentum, but to prevent a slide further outside the playoff bubble.
Getting to the postseason minus a race win is doable – Wallace did it last year. But that’s a fire that a driver probably wants to avoid playing with again if they can avoid it.
And that’s where this weekend at Kansas comes in. Wallace and 23XI expect to run well at Kansas. It is, remember, the site of Wallace’s most recent win the NASCAR Cup Series.
Wallace and the No. 23 team need to show up and at the least finish in the top five. If not, the pressure will be turned up hotter than the temperature used to be when NASCAR raced in July at Talladega.
4. Is the No. 34 Team in Need of a McExorcist?
Michael McDowell and Front Row Motorsports had quite a feather in their cap last year, getting a win on a non-drafting style racetrack in a year that they’d have likely been good enough to race into the postseason on points. You can even make the case that McDowell had better fortunes than a majority of the other Ford teams, even those with more resources.
That created a degree of expectations.
But expectations can be a monster, one that you have to feed. If a racing god exists, it’s been standing in the way of McDowell and success this season. After a solid start of this year with top 10s at Phoenix Raceway and Atlanta Motor Speedway, foul fortune has found its way to McDowell, especially recently. McDowell has failed to finish three races in a row, two via a crash.
That puts him 29th in the standings and for all intents and purposes, win-or-bust territory.
McDowell and his team need to get a few finishes in a row to build up some measure of momentum. This team is good enough to make the playoffs. All it needs is a handful of strong finishes to move toward being in a position to do so again, even if it might be via a race win this season.
5. Is Carson Hocevar’s Season Already A Success?
Before this season, Carson Hocevar only had nine starts in the Cup Series. His Spire Motorsports teammate Corey LaJoie had 236.
So going into 2024, Hocevar had the hurdle of inexperience to fight against. So far, however, Hocever has matched that of the veteran leader of Spire. LaJoie’s average start is 24th with an average finish of 23rd.
As for Hocevar? He has barely outperformed LaJoie, starting at an average of 22nd and finishing at an average of 21st. It’s worth noting that bad luck has found its way to LaJoie, especially the late-race carnage at Talladega.
More noticeably. Hocevar, for the moment, is 20th in points, ten markers in front of LaJoie. Last year, Hocevar’s predecessor at Spire, Ty Dillon finished 32nd.
Anytime a new driver is hired, one measure of success is how much they improve performance compared to their predecessor, and Hocevar is doing just that.
Brad joined Frontstretch.com in 2020 and contributes to the site's 5 Points To Ponder column and other roles as needed. A graduate of the University of Georgia's Henry W. Grady School of Journalism and Mass Communication, he has covered sports in some capacity for more than 20 years with coverage including local high school sports, college athletics and minor league hockey. Brad has received multiple awards for his work from the Georgia Press Association.