Pace Laps: NASCAR’s Pole Prosperity, Thorsport Top Dog And Japanese Joy

_Did you miss an event during this busy week in racing? How about a late-night press release, an important sponsorship rumor, or a juicy piece of news? If you did, you’ve come to the right place! Each week, The Frontstretch will break down the racing, series by series, to bring you the biggest stories that you need to watch going forward for the week ahead. Let our experts help you get up to speed, no matter what series you might have missed, all in this edition of Pace Laps!_

*Sprint Cup: It IS Where You Start – That’s Where You Finish* Matt Kenseth’s dominating Cup victory at Kansas, leading 163 of 267 laps hardly came as a surprise. After all, the No. 20 team had already won Las Vegas, establishing themselves as a threat on intermediates and been in contention at virtually every race this year.

Kasey Kahne … The Most Underrated Driver In NASCAR?

I guarantee that if you go on any website that covers the sport of NASCAR—including this one—you’ll see at least one column about how Kenseth’s move to Joe Gibbs Racing was the greatest thing he ever did and that Kansas solidified his dominance and blah, blah, blah…

It’s relevant, no doubt, but what everyone is missing is the second place driver: Kasey Kahne. However, that’s nothing new for the Washington native, who tends to fly under the radar as it is. He’s been in the sport for a while now and has won several races, yet you almost never hear “Kasey Kahne” amongst the weekly favorites to win when all the so-called analysts are making their picks. I’m even guilty of this fact.

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Keselowski Faces Adversity in Kansas, Finishes Sixth Following a week of harsh penalties due to illegal rear end housing in Texas, 2012 champion Brad Keselowski …

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Tracking the Trucks: SFP 250

*In a Nutshell:* Matt Crafton took the checkered flag 0.167 seconds ahead of Joey Coulter to score his third career victory in Saturday afternoon’s SFP 250 from Kansas Speedway. Crafton took the lead with fresher tires for the second and final time on lap 138, and despite numerous challenges from Coulter, he led the final 30 laps to become the 13th different winner in 13 events at the speedway. Rookie Ryan Blaney, Brendan Gaughan and Johnny Sauter rounded out the top 5.

Snitching: It’s the “Self-Policing”

“If you ain’t cheatin’, you ain’t tryin’.”

It’s a mantra you hear echoed in NASCAR rather often, and some people actually mean it! I mean, after all, a sport built on moonshine and running away from police _has_ to be built on integrity, right?

Alas, teams bending and twisting the rules to find an advantage over their competitors is as old as racing itself, NASCAR or otherwise. Yet somehow every time a team is found to have either been out of bounds in NASCAR’s rulebooks or at least close to it, everyone reacts with, well, shock. They’re called a series of nasty names and noses are slightly turned up at their audacity to even think about trying to make their cars faster. How _dare_ they.

Four Burning Questions In Kansas: Judging Fast Speeds And Penalty Appeals

Kansas Speedway is the site of Round 8 of the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series season, but before I get into this weekend’s preview, I feel I would be remiss if I did not express my most profound condolences to all those affected by both the Boston Marathon bombings and the West Texas Fertilizer Plant Disaster. There are no words to express the pain I felt upon hearing of these horrible tragedies, and my heart and all of my thoughts and prayers go out to all of the innocent families that these tragedies struck. Alas, in times like these, the best thing we can do as humans is pull ourselves back up by the bootstraps and get back to doing what we do best. That is exactly what the men and women of NASCAR will be doing this weekend, in the wake of these disasters as we as a nation forge past the atrocities of the past week.