Kansas Race Review and Analysis
Racing in the sunflower state! The Nascar Cup Series visited the heartland state of Kansas City, Kansas at Kansas Speedway. Kurt Busch in the Jordan Brand car takes home the checkered flag! This is Busch’s 34th career win and first of the 2022 season. Along with this, 23XI Racing picked up their second win as an organization, this is the first win with the #45 car. Kurt Busch joins Austin Cindric, Kyle Larson, Alex Bowman, Chase Briscoe, William Byron, Ross Chastain, Denny Hamlin, and Chase Elliott as the locked-in drivers for the playoffs.
(Kurt Busch Post Race)
Coming into today, 23XI Racing was fluctuating performance wise. From pit road mishaps to promising days that lead to an unfortunate ending, and to just bad luck overall, this 2022 season has been rough. This afternoon at Kansas Speedway this second year team finally broke through for their first win of 2022. A major rebound for Kurt Busch as he came into today 21st in points after not finishing better than 16th in his last four races. Busch locks himself into the playoffs and shakes up the overall standings majorly. Continuing the positive momentum for 23XI Racing was Bubba Wallace. After trouble on pit road through today, Wallace drove his #23 up through the field each time. Consistently throughout the day, both 23XI cars were picking off the field one by one. Both cars practiced great, Busch was first in practice on Saturday. Qualifying wasn’t too bad for both cars later that afternoon. Kurt Busch is your winner and teammate Bubba Wallace finishes 10th. An impressive and great afternoon for 23XI Racing at Kansas Speedway.
(Kurt Busch Celebrated in Front of the Crowd)
Let’s rewind all the way back to stage 1, with Kyle Busch leading after 80 laps. Kyle Busch, the younger brother to Kurt Busch, ran in the top 10 all afternoon. Kyle Busch led 18 laps and came home with a 3rd place finish. The stage 2 winner was Kurt Busch, who led 116 laps. During the middle of the second stage, Kurt Busch came charging to the front. Each restart and long green flag run, Kurt Busch contested for the lead each time. He drove his way back up to the front after losing positions on the last pit stop. He passed Christopher Bell, Kyle Larson, and Kyle Busch to claim today’s victory. He took the lead with 8 laps to go and rode off into the sunset for today’s win.
Some notable drivers and teams throughout today’s race were the Joe Gibbs Racing cars, the 23XI Racing cars, Kyle Busch, Ryan Blaney, Ricky Stenhouse Jr., Austin Dillon, and Ross Chastain. All Joe Gibbs and 23XI cars finished inside the top 10, which is impressive. After up and down start for all Toyota cars, today was warranted. They were persistent throughout the day and finished very strong. Joe Gibbs’ four cars finished 3rd through 6th, with 23XI’s cars finishing 1st and 10th. Ryan Blaney was a driver who ran well today. He ran great and finished 12th. Ricky Stenhouse Jr. had an under the radar type of afternoon, he finished 8th. This is a great finish for Stenhouse Jr. he will need to rack up these types of finishes to make a comeback in the standings. Austin Dillon ran well today, with a 13th-place finish. Dillon, who also had a quiet afternoon, ran around 12th place as he was the best Richard Childress Racing car with Tyler Reddick having issues. Ross Chastain for Trackhouse Racing, who is having a career year, ran well today. He led 4 laps in the end but he was a household name as he finished 7th. Austin Cindric, Alex Bowman, Brad Keselowski, and Kevin Harvick finished in the top 15.
Some drivers that had down afternoons were Tyler Reddick, Chase Elliott, Erik Jones, and Daniel Suarez. Tyler Reddick qualified 2nd on Saturday and led 4 laps today. Trouble struck later in the race as a tire went down. What looked like a race winning car, finished 30th. Chase Elliott, who ran up in the top 10 throughout the afternoon, had issues in today’s race. In the last 75 laps, Elliott’s tire went down sending him for a spin. A left rear tire caused Elliott’s day to trend down, he finished 29th. Erik Jones on an odd afternoon finishes 32nd. Jones saw an issue as his right rear tire wouldn’t come off during a pit stop in the middle of today’s race. His crew worked for numerous laps trying to get that tire off. They finally did after some time as Jones’ result plummeted due to another tire issue. Daniel Suarez spun coming into the trioval, he ran with his teammate Ross Chastain in the top 5 until his spin. He finished 33rd, after an eventful race.
In my opinion, today’s race in Kansas was great. This was on the edge of your seat racing all day long. For all of the 400 miles and 267 laps, the action kept unfolding. Tire issues were a problem throughout today’s race as many drivers faced this issue. Leaving Kansas this evening, intermediate tracks with this next-gen car have been stellar. We head into All-Star weekend in Texas with a great first third of the season. Taking all action into consideration, I’d rate today’s race a 9.6 out of 10. Today was a great race at Kansas Speedway.
Leaving Kansas behind we head down south to Texas, for the All-Star race! The Nascar All-Star race is up next with 1 million dollars on the line. Located in Fort Worth, Texas, this track puts on a wild event. Practice and qualifying will look different for the Cup Series as this is an exhibition race. The All-Star Open, for drivers who aren’t locked into the race, will be at 7:00pm ET. Practice and qualifying for the Cup Series main event for the locked in drivers will be Saturday night in Texas. Both the Xfinity Series and Truck Series will make the trip to Texas. Practice and qualifying for their respective Series will be in the afternoon ending in the evening. The Truck Series race will be on Friday night with the Xfinity Series in the afternoon on Saturday. Ross Chastain, Austin Cindric, Kevin Harvick, Kyle Larson, Brad Keselowski, Chase Elliott, Aric Almirola, Denny Hamlin, Ryan Blaney, Chase Briscoe, A.J. Allmendinger, Kyle Busch, Martin Truex Jr., Christopher Bell, Joey Logano, Bubba Wallace, William Byron, Michael McDowell, Kurt Busch, and Alex Bowman are all locked into the All-Star event. Austin Dillon, Corey LaJoie, Tyler Reddick, Chris Buescher, Harrison Burton, Justin Haley, Todd Gilliland, Cole Custer, Ty Dillon, Erik Jones, Ricky Stenhouse Jr., Cody Ware, Landon Cassil, BJ McLeod, and Daniel Suarez will all have to race their way into the main event, they will compete in the All-Star Open. One driver will advance via fan vote as the other three will advance because they won a stage during the Open race. Twenty one drivers will make the field to compete under the lights for the money. For All-Star weekend in Texas, tune in Sunday, May 22nd only on FS1.
( All images credited to https://www.foxsports.com/nascar/cup-series.)
For next week's race information please view the link down below:
https://www.texasmotorspeedway.com/
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