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On this week’s Frontstretch Happy Hour, hosts Trey Lyle, Michael Massie and Dalton Hopkins are joined by sports reporter Matthew Schwartz to talk about the Kyle Busch–Chase Briscoe incident as well as the aftermath of Ross Chastain‘s playoff-spoiling win at Kansas Speedway.
Chastain became the 17th different winner of the 2024 NASCAR Cup Series weekend. With two wild card races coming up at Talladega Superspeedway and the Charlotte Motor Speedway ROVAL, the quartet predict how high that number can go and how good parity is for the series.
The gang also set up what a non-playoff driver winning in the Round of 12 opener will do for the remainder of the playoffs. Could it lead to a top driver of the year missing the cut?
The guys dive into what happened between Busch and Briscoe when the former was trying to lap the latter at Kansas. Was it just a racing deal, or did Briscoe cross a line as a car getting lapped?
It was announced on Tuesday (Oct. 1) Carson Kvapil will drive for JR Motorsports full time in the NASCAR Xfinity Series next year. With Kvapil, Connor Zilisch, Christian Eckes and more joining an already stacked series, the Happy Hour guys debate if 2025 will have the deepest field since Cup drivers started getting limited.
It was also announced this week that Netflix’s Full Speed, the show that follows around the Cup playoff contenders, would return for a season 2. In the bonus segment, the quartet describe what they would want Netflix to see if they were a driver the camera crew was following.
Watch the whole show below or listen to the audio version wherever you get your podcasts.
A Graduate of Virginia Tech in Sports Media and Analytics, Trey Lyle has been covering NASCAR since 2021 as the producer of the Fast Lane with Ed Lane on VTRN Sports 93.3 FM in Lynchburg, Va.
Trey joined FS in 2023 to cohost Happy Hour and help out on the podcast front as the producer for Brining the Heat with Bryan Nolen. Now, he oversees the entire podcast operation for Frontstretch.
Michael Massie joined Frontstretch in 2017 and has served as the Content Director since 2020. Massie, a Richmond, Va., native, has covered NASCAR, IndyCar, SRX and the CARS Tour. Outside of motorsports, the Virginia Tech grad and Green Bay Packers minority owner can be seen cheering on his beloved Hokies and Packers.
Dalton Hopkins began writing for Frontstretch in April 2021. Currently, he is the lead writer for the weekly Thinkin' Out Loudcolumn, co-host of the Happy Hour podcast, and one of our lead reporters. Beforehand, he wrote for IMSA shortly after graduating from Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in 2019. Simultaneously, he also serves as a Captain in the US Army.
Follow Dalton on Twitter @PitLaneCPT
The incident happened with 32 to go. The last car on the lead lap is supposed to race to stay on the lead lap. There was no guarantee that Kyle was going to lead the last 32. Kyle could have waited a few turns and found a better way to get past him. If it was 10 to go, I could see what Kyle was saying about letting the leaders race.
If NASCAR is going to have this stupid in-season tournament to decide the championship then the race leaders are going to have to deal with lappers racing them to keep their playoff hopes alive. It would be totally different if Chase Briscoe were racing for nothing except a lead lap finish, but staying on the lead lap in that situation could save the rest of his season.