The race was postponed from last night due to weather.
The race begins at 10am under very cloudy skies. The stages are 35-60-65.
They’re riding around immediately. TV is bored on lap 2 and begins the gimmick shots early..
A bit of rain is falling in turn one early on. Unfortunately I don’t have access to nascar.com at the moment so I am going to be reliant upon the babblers on NBC to find out lap numbers. That means I’ll frequently not have lap numbers since they rarely say and the graphics are generally too hard to read to determine the lap quickly.
On lap 20 of 110 Kyle Larson (5) heads to the garage with engine issues.
Larson says the issue may be the timing belt and he had no indication before it failed.
Big crash on lap 30 involving Ryan Blaney (12), ‘Desperate’ Denny Hamlin (11), Christopher Bell (20), Erik Jones (43), Brad Keselowski (6), and several other cars. TV only mentioned Denny, Blaney, and Truex. Very frustrating being dependent on their terrible calls and awful shots to figure out what is going on in the actual on-track event.
Restart on lap of 110 – maybe 34 since they keep saying a one lap shoot out to the end of the stage and the graphic shows one lap to the end of stage one. Useless.
Joey Logano (22) wins stage one easily.
Christopher Bell (20) is out for the day due to damage sustained in the wreck.
Relief – Bunny brought MRN to the party.
Green flag pit stops for the field.
Kyle Busch (18) wins stage two.
After a big crash with 21 laps to go which only Austin Dillon (3) managed to get through rain begins to fall on the front stretch. The race is red flagged as the track drying crew attempts to dry the racing surface. Kevin Harvick (4) said the wreck was caused by racing in the rain.
MRN reports rain has started again across almost all of the track at 1325 eastern.
KHarv (4) and Harrison Burton (21) are out of the race after a 3:19 red flag period.
MRN reports there are only unofficially 10 cars on the lead lap for the final 16 laps of the 2022 regular season.
Restart on lap 144 of 160 with Austin Cindric (2), Austin Dillon (3), Landon Cassill (77), Noah Gragson (82), Martin ‘MTJ’ Truex Jr (19), Tyler ‘TyRed’ Reddick (8), Cody Ware (51), Kyle ‘KyBu’ Busch (18), David ‘Thrilla from Unadilla’ Ragan (15), BJ McLeod (78) on lap 150.
Cindric, Dillon, Gragson, and Reddick are leaving the rest of the field with 8 laps to go.
Basically with six to go it’s Austin Cindric against three RCR affiliated cars.
The front four are single file and staying that way. Boring.
There’s a second pack led by Cassill catching up to the lead pack.
Dillon takes the lead from Cindric.
Cassill, Gragson, Ragan are catching up with Tyler Reddick and Austin Dillon.
The top ten is single file on lap 157 of 160.
Austin Dillon takes the white flag.
Dillon wins.
that wasn’t worth hanging around through the rain delay for.
Unfortunately the competition was lacking in this race. At the end Dillon had an easy go of it since Tyler Reddick couldn’t really race him in a typical manner as a result of his messy silly-season issues, Noah Gragson is driving a RCR affiliated car, Landon Cassill hasn’t consistently been in that position in Cup, nor has Cody Ware, so they had inexperience hindering them to a certain degree, and Cindric doesn’t really have the talent to manage that situation in Cup – though he won the Daytona 500, but that Penske car is generally fast and he can generally keep his foot down if he doesn’t have to act like a talented race driver at the same time.
Noah Gragson (62) finished fifth.
Landon Cassill (77) finishes fourth.
Ryan Blaney finishes 15th six laps down but gets into the playoffs by virtue of where they finished, though Martin ‘MTJ’ Truex Jr (19) finished on the lead lap. Blaney is in the play-offs by 3 points.
The early part of the race they were racing weather. They were logging laps though occasionally a wreck would occur. After a couple of wrecks, as the weather approached, there was some hard racing involving the usual suspects, nothing thrilling. A crash occurred as the rain began to fall. Then we had a long wait for a restart. There weren’t enough laps, nor cars on the lead lap, nor racing talent in competitive cars to have a legit race for the finish. The talent level was light. The car parity was light. The complications due to NASCAR politics was high. The result was Dillon winning with little legit competition making for a very disappointing final race of the season.
The television coverage was god-awful. The video generally does not provide a decent view of the racing action. The graphics look garbled – bad font choice, too much info presented, too many colors used causing the font to be more difficult to read that it would be inherently. The lap number is too small in an attempt to display so many other things. The guys in the booth talk a lot, about all sorts of boring stuff, but rarely about the race in a manner that allows the viewer to have a good idea of what’s happening of interest on track and why. Letarte speaks about driving as though he made his living driving in NASCAR. He did not and is rarely correct in his assessments when doing so.
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- Bubba Wallace to Run #45 for the Remainder of the Season.
- Teams Now Allowed More Time Under Damaged Vehicle Policy.
- Denny Hamlin to Miss Xfinity Race at Darlington; Christopher Bell to Drive #18.
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- Justin Carroll Continues Trucking; Set to Attempt Double-Duty at Bristol.
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- Jeremy Clements Given L2 Penalty, Daytona Win Ineligible for Playoffs.
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- Jeremy Clements Appealing Daytona Penalty.
- Peterborough Panthers investigate tyre failures which force meeting abandonment.
- MotoGP: Impact of Valentino Rossi absence ‘more perceived than actual’.
- Anthony Alfredo Lands Unique Partnership With Richard Childress Racing.
- Joey Logano Has Strong Words for ‘Broken System’ at Superspeedways.
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- Andretti Indy Lights team to test W Series champion Chadwick.
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