ONE TO BEAT?
Truex emerges as possible ’21 championship favorite
Hold the phone. After months of parity, we may have finally found our villain!
OK, Martin Truex Jr. is no villain. Who doesn't like MTJ? However, he has won three times this season — two more than anyone else — and appears to have separated himself from the rest of the pack.
After weeks of new winner after new winner, it's clear now: everyone is chasing the No. 19.
"We feel really, really good about that," Truex said of being the only driver with three wins this season. "It was definitely a hot-rod. It looked like all of our cars were pretty good too. Good day for the company."
First gear
Like much of the season, Sunday at Darlington was the Joe Gibbs vs. Hendrick Motorsports show.
Truex held off Kyle Larson for the win, and both teams had three cars finish in the top seven. Poor Kevin Harvick was the lone wolf in the bunch, finishing sixth for Stewart-Haas Racing.
Truex, who led 248 laps, has emerged as the one to beat this season — much like Harvick was last year — but something tells me the boys over at HMS will have something to say about that.
Larson, Alex Bowman and William Byron all have wins, and defending champ Chase Elliott currently sits seventh in the points despite an unspectacular start to 2021.
When Chase eventually finds fourth gear (he will, right?), the HMS vs. JGR showdown down the stretch should be fun to watch.
Second gear
I hate to keep doing this, but man, what an awful season so far for StewartHaas.
Harvick brought home his weekly top-10 at Darlington, but the other three drivers were nowhere to be found most of the day.
Aric Almirola and Cole Custer both wrecked and had a 1-2 finish at the bottom of the leaderboard, while Chase Briscoe crossed the line 11th, which was actually a decent day for him.
Still, the struggles in the StewartHaas camp continue to be baffling as we near the summer stretch.
Third gear
Don't look now, but NASCAR is toying with the idea of slowing down the cars for the upcoming superspeedway trips to Daytona and Talladega.
Discussions are ongoing, said Chief Racing Development Officer Steve O'Donnell, and stem from last month's scary incident at 'Dega where Joey Logano went airborne.
After the race, Logano said superspeedway racing had gotten too dangerous after getting a "roll bar in my head."
“In terms of Joey’s incident, yeah, we’ve done a lot of work on that,” O’Donnell said last week. “We actually just presented it to the drivers. We’re having ongoing dialogue with the drivers. I think, if anything, you can see us take a look at the speeds of the car as we head potentially into our next superspeedway race.”
Fourth gear
Speaking of Daytona, the Speedway announced last week that it would fully reopen its grandstands for the Aug. 28 Coke Zero Sugar 400.
Hard to believe, but we'll soon see unlimited capacity for the first time since the 2020 Daytona 500.
Both Darlington and Kansas made similar announcements, and Atlanta Motor Speedway has already said it will be at 100% capacity for the July race.
I don't know about you, but it certainly feels good to get back to normal.
Don't forget, a year ago right now we were watching to Mike Joy and Jeff Gordon call an iRace on Fox.
Let's never do that again.