1. Tyler Reddick is in Dale Earnhardt Territory
Did I write the above header just in case someone read it and got outraged enough to think “this guy is comparing Tyler Reddick to Dale Earnhardt” to see if they would keep reading? Admittedly, yes.
The thing is, other people have already made that observation in the wake of Reddick’s Kansas triumph. His fifth victory in the first nine victories of the NASCAR Cup Series season is an impressive feat that no one has pulled off since The Intimidator did it back in 1987.
The fact that it’s been almost 40 years since Earnhardt’s hot start means it’s not easy to do. It takes a level of speed, consistency and, let’s face it, luck that isn’t easy to come by.
When a team is on that kind of a heater, things have a tendency to break its way. That was the case at Kansas, because it sure looked like it would be Denny Hamlin in victory lane as the laps waned in the heartland, but a late caution led to an overtime restart, and Reddick was able to take advantage.
Reddick started from the pole, so it’s not like he came out of nowhere. It just wasn’t a dominant performance, as he led only 10 laps and had to overcome some mechanical annoyances to boot.
What Reddick did to Christopher Bell in OT might have been a move Earnhardt would have tried with a win on the line. It’s hard to think of too many other similarities between the two men, but they’re now linked together by this incredible level of early season success, and that’s not something anyone would have expected when the year began.
2. NASCAR Drivers Might Be Giving Each Other Too Much Respect in 2026
Plenty of fans (and Frontstretch staffers) were looking forward to the first 2026 trip to Kansas, and why not? The racing there has been excellent over the past few years, turning into a real showcase for the Next Gen car in ways that most other tracks couldn’t claim.
While the NASCAR O’Reilly Auto Parts Series race was a thriller, the Cup Series race didn’t reach the same heights. The same race in 2024 earned the highest score ever in Jeff Gluck’s good race poll, so the bar is high, but this year’s edition was a much tamer affair, and it feels like that’s been the case for at least the last month.
Maybe part of the problem is how few cars have been forced out of the action as of late. According to our own stats wizard Stephen Stumpf, only six drivers total have recorded DNFs over the past five Cup races, the lowest number in any five-race span in the long history of Cup.
While that reflects a welcome absence of mechanical failures, it also suggests Cup drivers are racing each other exceptionally clean. Of course, there have been any number of times where the NASCAR community hoped for more respect between racers, and no lack of gnashed teeth over cars that end up junked for silly reasons.
Yet there’s something to be said about too much of a good thing, and the thing in this case is respect between drivers. It’s easy to point the finger at the car or the lackluster horsepower increase as causes for duller than expected racing, and they deserve their share of the blame. But it’s at least worth wondering if maybe Cup drivers should be willing to elbow each other aside just a tad more, especially with the checkered flag in sight, even if it means a few more of their cars aren’t running long enough to see it.
3. The Common Thread Between Lagging Chevrolet Teams? It’s Under the Hood
Hendrick Motorsports has been just fine so far, with its non-Alex Bowman drivers now sitting fifth through seventh in points. They only have one total win, but Kyle Larson and William Byron figure to find a way to change that before too long. HMS should be fine, and Spire Motorsports at least has two of its drivers in the 16-man Chase field at the moment.
The same benefit of the doubt can’t be extended to Chevrolet’s other three multi-car teams. Zero Richard Childress Racing, Kaulig Racing and, most surprisingly, Trackhouse Racing cars are in the top 16 in points. Their problems aren’t identical, but two things are clear: They don’t have top-notch speed, and they’re all running ECR Engines.
Drawing a correlation there could be a tad unfair, because ECR has powered champions in NASCAR and other racing series for years. The track record over time is excellent.
It’s also a long season that tends to change with the seasons in unpredictable ways. Right now, what can’t be argued is that the ECR Chevy teams are off the pace, and that’s something that’s probably keeping a lot of the people who work for them up at night.
4. Is the Future of the O’Reilly Series CUV Racing?
Longtime NASCAR fans know all about the sport’s stock car roots, but the TL;DR version is that car manufacturers used to like the idea that people could see cars on the track on Sundays and then go buy them on Mondays. Today’s product pays only the loosest lip service to vehicles that consumers can purchase and drive, and the days of NASCAR reflecting product lines that dealers serve up are long gone.
Or perhaps not.
Needless to say, the early reaction to this trial balloon, if that’s indeed what NASCAR EVP John Probst was floating, has not been pretty. Read the replies to that post to see why; fans are adamant that the O’Reilly Series has the best current racing in the sport, so messing with success is an unpopular concept.
That doesn’t mean that there’s no logic to it at all. Cup Series cars are just that, and the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series is self-explanatory. O’Reilly just has other cars, the kind that look identical to Cup cars to non-fans.
Switching to CUVs (that’s crossover utility vehicles, which are small SUVs built on car frames) would give the middle NASCAR series its own identity, one that just happens to coincide with the exact kind of vehicle that’s so prevalent on roads everywhere. It might not be a popular move and definitely not one I’d make right this second, but it’s not hard to imagine the sport’s manufacturers pushing for this somewhere down the road.
5. This Might Be the Most Interesting NASCAR TV Ratings Report in Recent Memory
Even if you aren’t the type to obsess over TV ratings and demo numbers — and there’s a very strong argument to be made that in the back half of the 2020s, the raw numbers are somewhat meaningless compared to their previous importance — it’s probably worth paying attention to the Kansas ratings when they arrive later this week.
That’s because Bristol Motor Speedway ratings made history, and not the good kind. Less than two million people watched the Bristol Cup race, the first time this century that could be said.
By itself, it’s hard to say that the number has much statistical significance. Viewership for all kinds of TV shows and broadcasts continues to decline over time as alternative, easily accessible forms of entertainment proliferate. Two million is an arbitrary signpost.
The better question is how many more people would have watched if the race was on FOX instead of FS1. That still matters; this season’s FOX races averaged around four million viewers before the switch to FS1. FOX and NBC have many considerations for which races they put on network TV versus cable, but the events on cable seem to be suffering steeper declines.
Add in the races on Amazon Prime and TNT in the middle of the season and the ratings picture gets even muddier. All that said, if the Kansas ratings are much higher than Bristol since the race was back on FOX, it’s going to open up a new round of debate over both the wisdom of NASCAR splitting its race inventory so many ways and the choices of FOX and NBC to shift so many events to cable.
Excessive comercials are killing the ratings. The same ones over and over. I have a 60″ screen, but I watch the race on a 13″ screen in the upper left. And the volume is jacked up. Sometimes I turn the volume off and leave it off. Paying for a special channel is not an option.
I’d agree it hurts the ratings. Even worse, now every camera angle, every update, every cutaway is sponsored by someone. I understand advertisers mostly pay NASCAR’s bills, but it has reached a point where it seems 90% of the coverage is ads. I noticed yet again this week, the broadcast said they weren’t going to commercials due to Toyota sponsoring some coverage, then they went to ads shortly thereafter. I no longer watch any racing live, other than F1, because F1 has no commercials.
I’ve recently cancelled my cable, and the races I can’t get streaming, I use an antenna. Most races are on services I already had, so I’ll only miss a couple of FS1 races the rest of the season.
I set up a HD Homerun tuner and a Plex server to DVR off of antenna. It’s been wonderful so far. An old antenna I had kept for emergencies, an old PC to run the server software and store recordings. No monthly bill to pay, though I did have to pay a one time fee for the full Plex server package, and buy the Homerun tuner. It pays for itself within a couple of months of having cancelled my TV subscription.
The Plex server offers the option to delete commercials in any recordings. I don’t even have to fast forward. They’re just gone. And I can watch recordings not just on any TV computer or phone in the house, I can also watch anything from my server remotely. Hell, the CW looks better off antenna anyway, as it has less signal compression than cable had.