The Wide World of Dirt

First, let me just say that this was easily the best race of the year to this point.

I would agree with anyone that says COTA had a fantastic racing product, but my contention is the ending of that race reminded us all of how stupid the field can be.

Yesterday, May 7th, 2023, we got ourselves an ESPN Instant Classic.

This race lasted 267 laps (yay, a regulation finish!), and we witnessed a 400mi intermediate race record 37 lead changes with 12 different leaders.

There was a lot of great racing throughout the field; this is due to the fact Kansas Speedway has become one of the best tracks in NASCAR.

Did I ever think this track would be revered for its racing product? Actually yeah, I’ve felt this way for a while about Kansas.

After the reconfiguration in 2012, we have seen some of the best racing NASCAR has to offer, even going back to the first repave race.

If you’ll remember, this was also one of the only tracks that provided palatable 550hp Cup racing because of its multiple grooves.

We won’t be talking about the horrors of the 2020 fall Kansas race today.

Both of last year’s races saw terrific side-by-side, multi-groove action and produced some great finishes with Kurt Busch’s last win and Bubba Wallace outlasting his boss Denny Hamlin to sweep the season for 23XI.

Speaking of Denny, Chris Gabehart gave that man a piece, a hot rod, a missile, etc. They rolled out on Saturday by putting #11 atop the leaderboard in practice before winning Stage 1 on Sunday.

Denny then swapped the lead with teammate Martin Truex Jr for the first 20 laps of Stage 2 until a poor pit stop by the FedEx bunch put the #11 in the field.

It wasn’t really until the final restart when Hamlin pushed Larson into the lead that the JGR’s longest-tenured driver got a whiff of victory.

In what ended up being the longest run of the day on a very caution-filled day, the final run played out with Larson being stalked by Denny.

A few lapped cars and mistakes could only keep Hamlin at bay for so long before exiting turn 2 on the final lap right next to each other.

What commenced was a game of chicken, not chess.

Using a move Larson is notorious for pulling on other drivers, the FedEx machine slotted his car on the HendrickCars.com machine’s left rear, giving Larson virtually no room between Hamlin and the wall.

It’s a nicer version of what he did to Ross last year at Pocono. He made Larson either lift or wreck, and it’s the final lap.

There will be no lifting.

Larson’s car broke loose as he just about completed the pass, clipping Hamlin’s fender and sliding back up into the outside wall.

This allowed Denny to scoot away for his 49th career Cup victory and his first of 2023.

Going to get ahead of this by saying this was ultimately a racing deal, an unfortunate byproduct of hard racing between two really good drivers.

I still feel like the blame goes more towards Denny because he ran Kyle out of room on corner exit, causing his car to get unstable and ultimately wreck.

Denny is a really smart race car driver that does make infrequent dumb decisions. If you don’t think he knew what he was doing, you are naïve.

He knew he put Larson in an impossible spot, something he remarked recently that Larson does to people quite often.

It almost makes me wonder if Denny may have done this on purpose to prove a point to Larson. Not implying he wanted Larson to wreck, but he gave the #5 the option of lift or crash with Larson ending with the latter.

It wasn’t all bad for Larson though as he somehow limped his beat-up Chevy back to the finish line for a runner-up result.

Other notable performances include William Byron coming back from being several laps down to finish 3rd, Bubba Wallace’s strong 4th-place run, and Joey Logano escaping the midpack to log a 6th-place finish.

Ford’s overall performance has begun to concern me.

None of the SHR cars were a factor in Kansas, and I’m beginning to wonder what tracks they are/will be good at going forward.

As a Kevin Harvick fan, this is becoming extremely frustrating. There are only 24 opportunities to compete, and Kevin was only competitive at Phoenix, where he would’ve won had it not been for a late-race caution.

Penske couldn’t stay in the top-5 as Ryan Blaney fell out of the top-15 by the end of the race while Logano and Paul Wolfe cooked up a good strategy call to improve their end result. Austin Cindric participated, which I’ve said many times this year.

I am not an engineer, but Ford changed noses for the NextGen model during the offseason. Something tells me that might have something to do with it.

Either way, SHR and Penske have hardly been better than RFK this season; in fact, Brad is ahead of Joey by six points. Hell, both Front Row cars are ahead of Almirola and Preece.

If that doesn’t sound the alarm bells for Tony Stewart, then something needs to change at the top of Stewart-Haas Racing.

This is a guy that said he has his hands deep in the day-to-day operations of the team, so is he okay with these results?

The team has not recovered from the switch to the Mustang in 2019, and if it wasn’t for Harvick, they would be basement dwellers fighting to stay on the lead lap.

This cannot continue.

Enough about that, let’s look at my Friday 5 from Kansas to see how they did:

1. Bubba Wallace – 4th

Bubba stayed in the top-10 all day and even led for a bit. There weren’t any pit road miscues to dampen the day, and he came home with a fantastic 4th-place run.

I am curious if Bubba could’ve competed for the win had he been able to get around Chastain sooner in the run and kept up with the top-3, but 4th is cool!

2. Kevin Harvick – 11th

Sigh. Another track Kevin is traditionally strong at that ends in a mediocre result. He couldn’t get stage points and never advanced past 7th or 8th.

Feels a lot like last season where the #4 team didn’t get their act together until the second-half of the schedule. Hoping that’s the case.

3. Denny Hamlin – Winner

Me picking a winner? Two weeks in a row?? A damn dirty shame.

Denny had the best car all weekend, and while it was under dubious circumstances, he claimed his 49th win, tying him with former teammate Tony Stewart.

4. Kyle Larson – 2nd

Another Kansas race, another 2nd-place finish for Kyle Larson. Though I’ve been critical of Larson doing what Denny did to him, I just don’t like when guys race like that under any circumstances.

Larson has nothing to be ashamed of. He didn’t get outmaneuvered or outraced. He did get beat by the better car, but he did well to hold onto his car in the waning laps.

5. Ryan Blaney – 16th

Becoming an all-too-familiar sight to watch the #12 car run well for most of the day and fail to finish with a good result.

I don’t know what Ryan Blaney needs, but he needs to learn how to finish a race. He probably had the best Ford in the field, and he didn’t get a top-15. Not great!

(We won’t be talking about F1 this week because there’s nothing to talk about. Red Bull won, again. Max won, again. Checo finished 2nd, again. The end.)

My god, did y’all see that punch though??????

Was Noah right to be mad? Yes and no.

Though they never made contact, Ross continued to come up while Noah was alongside, and the air from Ross’ car pushing up the track no doubt affected the #42.

Noah then got in the wall, the second time in the last few weeks the #1 car has knocked the rookie out of contention.

In response, Gragson walked up to Ross, pushed him a couple times and got POPPED. Like, actually popped. You can audibly hear it!

I knew he grew up on a farm, but I did not expect that man that is shorter and smaller than me to throw a jab that hard! I was impressed!

I thought we might finally see the Melon Man get the seeds knocked out of him until I saw his challenger.

Noah has a history of getting popped that he only added to yesterday, and apparently, there’s word that other drivers encouraged him to square up!

This has the potential to blow the lid off of the aggression seen by drivers toward Chastain this season, and I, for one, am excited for the coming weeks, especially when the field travels back in time to North Wilkesboro later this month.