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Ep. 28: The 2023 Playoffs are Set - with MRN's Jason Toy and Ryan from ifantasyrace.com
12 Plays1 year ago
A big episode of Cloudy With a Chance of Racing this week, with guests Jason Toy from Motor Racing Network and Ryan from ifantasyrace.com on the show. Jason recaps the weekend of racing at Daytona and Milwaukee and helps preview the Cup Series playoffs, then Ryan breaks down some stats about the playoff field and who is primed to make a deep run over the next 10 weeks. Jake, Dillon, Braxton, and Ryan all give their Pop Up Showers for this week and make their real and random picks for Darlington, and Dillon gives the forecast for Darlington, complete with some remnants of a hurricane that could have some impacts on the race weekend.
You can follow Cloudy With a Chance of Racing on Instagram, Threads, and X (formerly known as Twitter) @CloudyRacingPod. You can follow Jason on X @jasontoy1, and Ryan on X @ifantasyrace.
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Transcript
Introduction and Special Guests
00:00:15
Speaker
Episode 28 of Cloudy with a Chance of Racing. Getting started right now and we have an enormous show for you today. Not one, but two guests joining us here on Cloudy with a Chance of Racing. The first of which is a guy I've listened to and looked up to for a long time. He happens to be from my hometown. We both studied at Marshall University under the legend Dr. Charles G. Bailey, the Hall of Famer.
00:00:39
Speaker
and you heard him this past weekend on the Motor Racing Network at Daytona. It is Jason Toy from MRN. Jason, thank you so much for joining us and welcome to Cloudy with a Chance of Racing. God, you're making me feel old already. Jason, thanks now. I'm glad to be here with you.
00:00:55
Speaker
Well, a lot to get to on the NASCAR side of things with a couple of wild races, a trio of wild races, if you include the truck series yesterday, the Milwaukee Mile.
Daytona Race Recap
00:01:09
Speaker
But the big one was the NASCAR Cup Series on Saturday night at Daytona International Speedway, the finale of the regular season where the 16 drivers who compete for a championship were determined.
00:01:23
Speaker
That race featured a lot of everything, right? There was three wide kind of midway through the race, a couple of hard crashes.
00:01:31
Speaker
Is it really, can we call Chris Busher a surprise winner at this point? The guys reeled off three in the last five, right? Yeah, he has, and he always runs well at Daytona too. And that team is just hitting their stride. I was kind of wondering though, coming on that last lap and having the call out there, he was gonna let old boss man slide up and get that first one of the season. But now they came across the line, what was it, fourth or fifth win of the season, the fourth one of the season for him.
00:01:58
Speaker
They all ran smart races. Brad ran a very smart race that early on, he felt like things were a little too congested up front. He fell back to the back on that first stage and Chris did the same thing. And then they kind of practiced a little bit of how quickly they can get back up towards the front of the field.
00:02:15
Speaker
And they did, they never lost the field and they were able to go back and forth as much as they wanted to. So they discovered something there and then later on the race set themselves up in position to be able to be up towards the front and make some moves and avoid the big wreck. We had the one coming off of turn four, that was the hard impact with Ryan Blaney. And of course, the big wreck there on the back stretch there with Ryan Priest, which only took out two drivers, but that came out a bit packed.
00:02:39
Speaker
It was an eventful evening, I'll say that indeed.
NASCAR Season Surprises
00:02:43
Speaker
And that's one of the great things, that's what you wanna have with an elimination race like that at Daytona. Going into the playoffs, you got the drama built in for really one spot. You had what, 17 drivers that were vying for one spot.
00:02:57
Speaker
watching the different scenarios of how things were happening with that. And it's funny that our pit reporters were talking about listening to the radio and Booty Barker, who's the crew chief for Bubba Wallace, were talking about, okay, don't have to win, but we need to push these other guys to win. We just don't need a new winner. So they were looking at drivers that had already won this season.
00:03:17
Speaker
like a Chris Busch or like somebody that was already locked into the playoffs to push them to a wind if they couldn't get the wind themselves. So, and then you had other drivers like Daniel Suarez that was trying to race his way in and his teammate, Ross Chastain showed he had a very fast Chevrolet. He was able to go to the front. He led up for a little while from a three in the middle of three wide, which was really unique. That never happens too much there at Daytona when you're in the middle of the sandwich.
00:03:41
Speaker
And he fell back and would try to bring Daniel up. And they did that a couple of times and just a little bit too late there towards the end of them to make it happen. But you had everything you wanted to have in a race at Daytona on a cutoff race before the playoffs. Heck, you even had a shuttle launch or a space launch going on on the back on the back stretch during the about just after nine o'clock of the race, too. So it had everything.
00:04:03
Speaker
Well, and it kind of needed everything after what some people would say was a couple of lackluster races at Indy and Watkins Glen that depending on a lot of people's perspectives said that it didn't really have much substance. They certainly got their money's worth on Saturday night, didn't they?
00:04:19
Speaker
Got the money's worth, a lot of things I think, but still the makeup of the car. We're still learning a lot of things on this race car. And that's, and after the Richmond race, they did some testing at Richmond with a different package. And they even took the fuser off the bottom rear of the race car, took that whole thing off to see how it would handle. And I think they've learned some things. They're not gonna implement it now because we're that close to the playoffs. Just gonna kind of run what you're wrong type thing. But next year you could see some changes aerodynamically to help
00:04:47
Speaker
with the road course package but also help with that short track and intermediate package too.
IndyCar and NASCAR Playoff Predictions
00:04:52
Speaker
So because we've seen the best racing this season on the super speedways with this next gen car and also you know tracks like at Michigan you know the big two mile there and we've seen good racing that really good racing at Kansas which is going to be exciting here in two weeks but I think next year you'll see some changes that will make that intermediate short track and road course racing a little bit better.
00:05:15
Speaker
Jason, it's great to talk with you and, you know, with your position, you follow the sport very closely. Looking back, you know, at the beginning of the season to now, what, as were you done with the regular season, what have been some surprises from this
00:05:34
Speaker
year, any specific drivers or teams? I know Chris Busher just winning. At this point, it's not really a surprise because they put together a big year, but just from the start of the season, who has stood out to you as far as surprises?
00:05:50
Speaker
And I say this, and I think just because of what they did in making this team up this year and Richard Childress racing. I mean, I think the addition of Kyle Busch brought them some wins, but I brought a whole change with that team. And you look at what it's done from the top pound with Kyle and then Austin's run well. Hadn't got the wins that anybody's run better this year.
00:06:11
Speaker
But also too, it trickles down to the Xfinity series. They're just their competitive organization that gets up there and runs with them. I'm still impressed with the way front row motorsports is running. Michael McDowell got the wind in Indianapolis, but they have been consistent top 10, top seven, top eight cars every single week.
00:06:29
Speaker
With Michael and then and Todd Gilliland's gotten better a lot better driving that race car, too So I think that's been a good surprise the the one you kind of expected to see a little bit better this year was maybe track house and Success that they had last year with Ross and course Ross has a win this year and raced very well early on in the year And you go back to Darlington after the contact there with Kyle Kyle
00:06:53
Speaker
Larson, it kind of fell back a little bit. He hadn't won this as aggressive. I think that talk he had with Rick Hendrick really opened his eyes and he admitted that on Friday during the media availability too and kind of brought things back in of, okay, how can I be aggressive but not be that guy that's in the middle of everything out there too.
Race Strategies at Daytona
00:07:14
Speaker
And then you look on the other side of things too, Hendrick Motorsports. If they really had one consistent driver there this year, William Ireland, Chase Elliott had the injury, Alex Bowman had the injury. And just look at what they're doing at the racetrack. And Kyle Larson obviously picking up wins too. You expect all four of those cars to be up there and contending. And that's one of the little surprises this year too. And granted, I know the injuries were both things that are away from that race car.
00:07:44
Speaker
But then that comes up another question, how do you balance a life outside of the race car? Do you protect yourself and not do anything else? Like Joe Gibbs Racing, if he'd noticed that Christopher Bell is not driving spring cars a lot lately, he told me it's too much of a challenge to try to get permission to go drive.
00:08:02
Speaker
And especially when you see, you know, Alex Bowman get injured in a sprint car, breaking that vertebrae in his back after a flip. And then of course, Chase broke his on the ski lift, you know, skiing downhill. So it's, where do you get that balance of being able to live life outside of the race car? Yeah, I completely understand that for sure. Also, Jason, so being at the track and elimination type of race like Daytona, are the
00:08:28
Speaker
especially from drivers not in and teams not in the playoff situation like we have with Daytona. Can you notice, you talked a little bit about the drama of the weekend there at Daytona. Can you notice that from being around those teams and things like that on a weekend like we had this past weekend? Yeah, and when they approach it this way and Daytona is kind of its own beast, you always think about that Daytona, Talladega, anything can happen. You can have surprise winners, you can be taken out in the first lap, it could be anything.
00:08:57
Speaker
But knowing that, but the way that some of those teams that were trying to work their way in, they didn't erase how they needed to to that point. So that pressure was put on to them when they got the Daytona. They knew how it's going to be.
00:09:12
Speaker
If they were gonna have the opportunity to get off to the next round, should have performed better in the previous races. And that kinda comes back and bites you a little bit. So when you get the Daytona, it is what it is. You gotta go out there and run. You gotta do everything you can and just, you gotta have the right running car. Ryan Priest, good example. Priest on the pace lap, something was wrong with power steering. He came down pit road when they did the pass through to set the tax and make sure they got pit road speed right.
00:09:39
Speaker
He dumped into the pits and got, they went to work on the race car. He started back to the field and he was running up front. I mean, he truly was up in the top three and then shuffled back a little bit and then that accident happened with him. But it's, you kind of, the old term in racing, you run what you've rung,
XFINITY and Truck Series Highlights
00:09:56
Speaker
and that's what it is. When you get the Daytona, you're gonna have to run what you have and just put your faith in the racing gods that things are gonna work out.
00:10:03
Speaker
Well, let's quit a quick word on the other two NASCAR races of the weekend. The XFINITY series race also at Daytona on Friday night. And there was a big swing and that one in the, the cutoffs, of course, the XFINITY series doesn't start their playoffs for a couple more weeks, but Parker Kligerman has worked his way up into the top 12 qualified position there.
00:10:26
Speaker
with a good run for that 48 car. And then another instance where it seems like that 98 of Riley Herbson that stored Haas racing car shoots themselves in the foot again, some sort of issue that took Riley out with a suspension issue. Well, and that was from contact from one of the accidents in there too.
00:10:46
Speaker
The thing about with Riley this past weekend, he was fast in the Xfinity car and things didn't work out there towards the end for him and got messed up and ended up breaking things and that one accident. But when he got in the cup car and he was up front, he was contending for the lead. He was contending to win stage one, and he said he made a rookie mistake on that. But yeah, it was a good swing in that deal. I think Parker has done a really good job in that big machine.
00:11:12
Speaker
Chevrolet this season. And the thing is about it, he's been consistent and that's the thing. He hasn't got the win there yet, but it's been consistent on where he's been finishing. And granted, road courses are a strong point. He's gonna capitalize on where he can and a thug of the Patrick Dunna, he was crew chief on Friday before qualifying.
00:11:32
Speaker
And he was the way they approach things with Parker when they start off the season. So we can take 13 races in here that we know we can do very well in the road courses, super speedways, Michigan's, those type of things. And find that balance with the other remaining 20 races that they have.
00:11:49
Speaker
and try to be consistent in what they can do there. So yeah, they want that win. But consistency might get them in the playoffs in that top 12. And then anything can happen when you get to that point, especially here in a couple of weeks. So I'll wrap it up with Darlington and then Kansas. And then go racing after that at Bristol in round one. It's a heck of a place to go round one racing. Totally. And Junior Motorsports gets a bit of redemption after kind of a calamity the last time they were at Daytona, taking each other out with Justin Allgaier getting the win.
00:12:17
Speaker
Yeah, they just didn't come away just barely by inches. I mean, if you go back, look at that replay, that was one of the closest finishes ever. And then you look at it across the board for them, Sam Mayer was doing good until that wreck. He was contending for the league. Josh Berry, he was kind of moderate up there running towards the front.
00:12:38
Speaker
And then Brandon Jones actually ran well. He has got the worst luck this season driving that nine car. And when they get a good run, either a Brandon steps on his own toe or something happens on pit road, they get behind, they get caught up in the accident. So that has been a hard pill to swallow there for Brandon making that transition over from JJ Yari over to Junior Motorsports.
00:13:01
Speaker
They had that little problem there in the middle part with consistency during the season for Junior Motorsports. And I think the leaders finally stepped up and he's taking control of basically all four cars in the aspect of kind of guiding these younger kids. And like you said, the redemption, they go back to Daytona the start of the season in February. One time they're towards the N4 drivers in the top five all Junior Motorsports. They all took each other out this time.
00:13:28
Speaker
They were able to get the win and the finish there.
Challenges at GMS Racing
00:13:30
Speaker
And the first time, not the bridesmaid there for Justin Allgaier there at Daytona. And of course, yesterday, the nightcap, or I guess the weekend cap, if you will, with the truck series at the famed Milwaukee Mile. It got to be a feel good story for Grant Infinger and GMS Racing to get the win just a couple of days after it was announced that that shop is closing down at the end of the season.
00:13:57
Speaker
But also kind of taking the worst from Carson Hosevar a little bit, it seems like that 98 of time in Jesky has come back down to Earth after they had some penalty woes.
00:14:07
Speaker
Yeah, they they run well and ties and ties. That was a track that's really good for Ty because he's run the late model there so much. It knows it well, but then again he's been, you know, he go back to IRP a couple of weeks ago when he got that victory there too. So yeah, they're picking up their stride a little bit after. Like you said, that penalty they've had same thing. All of Thor sport. Matt Crafton, who was nowhere to be found early on in the season, got consistency, got into the field.
00:14:33
Speaker
qualified for the playoffs and he had a very good run. Top five, he finished fifth last night there at Milwaukee mile, which he was the only driver returning back to that track that actually ran a truck there at that track when we ran there last. So, which Milwaukee is one of my favorite tracks. I love the fact that we get to go back there and have the trucks. And then he actually had two really good races you had between the Carson Hosebar ran in finger, Grant.
00:14:57
Speaker
There's no quit in him, there's no quit in that team. And when the rumors started happening a couple of weeks ago, that they were gonna be going away, especially after they signed the Toyota deal on the cup side of thing for Legacy Motor Club. A lot of speculation that they were gonna be able to transition over. Well, the problem is Toyota already has
00:15:16
Speaker
too many teams now in the truck series with Tricon garage and those alliances that they have there. So and then Chevrolet, once they made the change in the cup side, wasn't going to support them doing a truck deal knowing they had Toyota on the other side of things. So came down to them, mildly shutting things down. There was some optimism there that things could happen, you know, that they were going to be able to make it work out. I was talking to Jeff Inslee, a grants crew chief and we're at IRP. We spent about a half hour together talking about the football.
00:15:43
Speaker
And there was optimism that things could maybe work out. But I can tell you this, those three drivers that they have at GMS are going to find full-time rides next year. I mean, you couldn't find Grant. We'll be back in the truck series. The great thing with Grant is he brings a sponsor with him. He loves the truck series. He loves the career and the life that it can give him in there. Plus, he can go out and run late models of ARCA when he wants to beyond that. You know, Rajak Ruf is going to be running probably
00:16:11
Speaker
If he's not running the KBM next year in a Chevrolet or rev He might be in the XFINITY series But he very well could he needs I think he doesn't know that you're in the truck series and it could very well could be with KBM because Chevrolet wants to keep you know Chevrolet He's a Chevrolet guy
00:16:26
Speaker
And then Grant, he will find himself with another team, be it a Chevy team or maybe you see him in a Ford somewhere else. But I think they're wanting to go out on high, they're wanting to finish off with a championship, and that's what you do, you don't quit. Even though you know what the fate of the season is gonna have, you don't quit.
00:16:42
Speaker
and continue to go out and look for wins. And they got a good string of racetracks coming up that Grant could do very well at. He can continue on this streak, especially when they get to Bristol here in a couple of weeks on that third race. The other race I was talking about was good was the Arco race that ran before the trucks yesterday.
00:16:59
Speaker
Swallowich, who's the kid, who is Joe Gibbs racing the latest development driver for Toyota, starting to hit his stride. He moved the guy that's been dominant this year in the ARCA Series and Jesse Love. And obviously Swallowich had a faster car and kind of gave him the boot and turns three and four, moved him up the track, went under him and went on to the victory. So those two have had run in so far this year, too. But it was still a very good ARCA race and a full ARCA field, too,
00:17:28
Speaker
Actually, Grant Emfinger finished up in the top five in that Arca race before the truck race.
Scott Dixon's IndyCar Performance
00:17:32
Speaker
He was driving a team, driving for a team based out of West Virginia, which was kind of cool. So, um, not the first time for that, by the way. Yeah. Yeah. Good time for that 97 car. And, uh, it, you know, Kitz Miller, Jason Kitz Miller normally drives that car.
00:17:47
Speaker
What is it, Grant County mulch? Grant County mulch, yeah. So a couple years ago when Infinger got relegated to part-time with Thorsport, he went and ran the 9 for Cody Roarbaugh a couple times. Yep, out of West Virginia.
00:18:03
Speaker
It's neat to see and of course Christian Rose is the other West Virginia car that was running He's had some good runs this year or two and that almost heaven West Virginia car Yeah, he did a great job scoring the tourism getting the tourism dollar on there because that's a pretty good-looking race cars We just need to get a NASCAR track in West Virginia again Yeah, we need to we need to need to have a market that's bigger bigger TV market than what what is our TV market here like 140 or something like that and
00:18:29
Speaker
Yeah, I think because they combine Charleston and Huntington, it's in the 70s, but yeah, you're right. Yeah. Well, I know radio market, it's like 160. But it's, you know, I think there is, somebody has to put the investment into it, you know, and that's the thing.
00:18:43
Speaker
you thought about a track in West Virginia, that's long been talked about here. And somebody's got to put a good handful of money into it and have a good racetrack. You've got to have safer barriers. NASCAR wants those to happen. You've got to have good entrance, exits, interstate access, and all that stuff, too, as well. So it could happen. I always envision the fact that somebody like, and I've done a lot of work with Yona Speedway over the years.
00:19:07
Speaker
if they were allowed to put the investment into that track like they want to, you could host the NARCA series or you could host the truck series there at some point, but that's way, way, way, way down the road.
00:19:21
Speaker
But we'll have to see how it shakes out. I know NASCAR has been looking at some tracks that used to be on the schedule for the truck series to bring them back onto the series here. Possibility like especially out West at Evergreen, which was a great track. But you know, it's it gets kind of hung up on the fact they need to have safer barriers out there. And my contention is OK, you're going to put 16 year old kids in ARCA cars on tracks that don't have safer barriers. Why can't you put a truck out there? You know, so that's just me now.
00:19:48
Speaker
Totally get it. There's a lot of great racing action that happened over the weekend a lot more to look forward to this fall with the playoffs Kicking up in all three series Jason we thank you so much for joining us We've taken too much of your time, but we really appreciate you coming on and and we certainly hope to have you on again soon To talk more about the NASCAR maybe playoffs or preview next
NASCAR Team Changes
00:20:10
Speaker
season as well. But once again, thank you so much Well, by the way, what'd y'all think of the Indy car race? I thought that was pretty good, right? I love that way the perfect for those Indy cars
00:20:17
Speaker
Gateway is a great racetrack. I don't know how Scott Dixon manages to be so fast and burn so little fuel.
00:20:27
Speaker
I was going to say Alex Palos comments after the race. You just said that that's Scott Dixon. Yeah. How are you going to beat that guy? You know, I mean, that's, you know, the best thing that could happen for that series for the other drivers is Scott Dixon says, you know what? I've done enough. I'm going to retire, you know, but he's still young. He's far away from it, but I see. It's very rare that anybody beats Scott Dixon. He is so good. A lot of times that it's something that the team beats itself with them. And I mean, that doesn't even happen very often either.
00:20:57
Speaker
We're quick here before we wrap it up. We can talk about seat shuffle, we talk about GMS, what's gonna happen to those drivers. And you got some shuffling that might happen too of cars to post a bar. A lot of speculation if he's gonna go Xfinity Racing or if he's gonna go Cup Racing next year. I keep hearing a lot more, he's going Cup Racing. And you add to it what he's done with Spire. He's actually gonna be behind the wheel of 42 car this weekend at Darlington.
00:21:21
Speaker
So it kind of gets he gets a good opportunity to see how that's gonna I was gonna look behind that wheel there with legacy He made his Xfinity debut at Darlington, right was fire and ran top five most of the race I feel like yep ran what burn very well and then very very well at Michigan until that accident happened and he still finished solid I have not having a door and that was the thing that got me there at Michigan, but I
00:21:44
Speaker
He's a great talent. He's going to be good. And, uh, you know, it's where it's going to, you got silly season. That's going to happen. You know, cause you're still kind of wondering what's going to happen to Stewart Haas racing. If they're going to stay, if they're going to stay forward or if somebody else changing the forward or something, there's a lot of talk about what's going on there. There's a lot of talk about, honestly, the belief rumors or whatever and kind of follow things 23 11 racing. Are they going to be a Toyota team next year? That's going to be a big deal. And I think a lot of that has to do with.
00:22:11
Speaker
Where the cars come from? Because I think that legacy is coming in and they're going directly through Toyota. You know, they were wanting 2311 to get their cars through JGR. So it's just, you know, they want to go directly with the manufacturer and stuff. So it's going to be interesting to see how that plays out because you notice nothing has been signed yet. Nothing has been finalized yet. And there's a lot of talk that's going on now, granted.
00:22:34
Speaker
Somebody brought up a good analogy on it. Daniel wants to do it for the competition and how they can be a winning team. Michael Jordan, yeah, he wants to win because Michael Jordan's a winner, but Michael Jordan likes to make money too. He wants to see where the bottom line is gonna be and who's gonna give him a better opportunity. So that's gonna be fun. And then of course, I talked to some friends of mine, Nick Yeoman and them in the IndyCar series.
00:22:56
Speaker
There's a lot of seat shuffling going to happen in IndyCar. So there's a lot of drama that's going to happen here. You know, I know IndyCar finishes up in a couple of weeks, you know, when they finish up there at Laguna Seca. And, you know, they finish up pretty quick. So that stuff will start to kind of come to fruition on things and what's going to happen. But the cup series, you're going to wait until, you know, we get past Phoenix before anything can probably finally happen.
Playoff Predictions and Reflections
00:23:23
Speaker
If NASCAR fans think that NASCAR's silly season is silly, they should take a look at IndyCar and realize how silly that is. I read something about formula one's going to be after this year. Who's going to be where? Yeah, that's true, too. I was reading something from Marshall Pruitt on racer.com that something like 16 or 17 of the IndyCar seats were up for grabs. The drivers were free agents after the season. It's insane. And it's a whole deal of how much money do you have to bring to the table?
00:23:53
Speaker
Well, fortunately, we didn't have to bring any money to the table to get you to come on the podcast. Anytime guys, so we couldn't make it happen last week, but if you guys want to. So I'm finishing up the season with format next. I'm at Bristol for the trucks. Oh Talladega and then I go to. Homestead and then I'll be at Phoenix for the championships so we can anytime you guys will talk around there if you want to whatever you want to do, just let me know.
00:24:21
Speaker
Fantastic. Thank you so much, Jason. And we'll be sure to be in touch. Jason Toy on Cloudy with a Chance of Racing. Thanks so much once again to Jason Toy from MRN for joining us to open this week's episode of Cloudy with a Chance of Racing. Now we're on to our second guest of tonight's show. You know him from ifantasyrace.com. He's also at a big presence on social media. I almost called it Twitter, but it's not Twitter anymore. It's X. It's Ryan from Ifantasy Race. Ryan, thanks so much for hopping on with us.
00:24:51
Speaker
I'm happy to be back and you don't even have to remember Twitter anymore because last time, as I revealed, you don't have to, you know, do twitter.com slash I fantasy race. You can just remember oval dot monster, oval dot monster. So I still have that forwarded. Awesome. That's fantastic. Alrighty. So, um, you're the, uh, kind of the expert amongst us, uh, on some of the, the, the racing stats and stuff. So we have our 16 drivers who are in the playoffs now in the NASCAR cup series.
00:25:21
Speaker
Let's go over some of the ones that were surprised perhaps that came in or that made it to the 16 and some that were surprised that did not make the 16. And I guess the biggest surprise that didn't make the 16 has to be the two HMS cars of Alex Bowman and Chase Elliott.
00:25:41
Speaker
I mean, Chase Elliott, I'm making the chase. That's that's probably a disaster for the sport. Chase Elliott, if he would have hurt himself, I mean, he would have easily made his way in. But my personal Chase Elliott prediction is that over the next 10 races, he's become one of the hottest drivers in NASCAR. He's going to be like the preseason favorite for sure next year. I just think he's going to be.
00:25:59
Speaker
tremendously. He's going to get on a tremendous hot streak. I can I can just kind of sense it because, you know, over the course of the chase, so many drivers, they just start to mysteriously fumble all over the place. Like the last two Darlington races for the Southern 500s, we probably had double digit.
00:26:12
Speaker
Drivers who have you know had asterisk mark reports things just happen to drivers in the chase but drivers outside the playoffs They don't seem to have those things happen to him quite, you know, like the playoff drivers do Alex Bowman I mean he started the season red-hot But I kind of maybe cursed him when I was on the show last time because you know I picked him, you know for my Dover pick and then you know We didn't see him for a while after that. So, you know, maybe I did a man getting a little cute right there, but
00:26:35
Speaker
So what you're saying is I shouldn't tag him in the post of this and put that because if something happens to him again where he can't race next week, you might find a very angry Alex Bowman at your doorstep. I mean, he's kind of dead to me after, you know, doing that to me, you know, stiffing me right there. But Alex Bowman not making it. I think that's a tremendous surprise, too, considering he started off the season so hot. You know, he's the points leader for for the time being until he gets points penalty probably was still the points leader when he was, you know, out with injury.
00:27:05
Speaker
Ryan makes a good point there about non-playoff drivers, because just last year, I think the entire round of 12, one of the entire rounds were winners outside of the playoffs. You had Busher, Wallace, and then there was a third. Eric Jones won the Darlington. There it is. Yep. So this first round all had non-playoff driver winners last year.
00:27:30
Speaker
It's it's definitely a possibility, especially like, you know, we've been talking some of these drivers left out of the playoffs that definitely have potential to, you know, be a party wrecker. Yeah. And I mean, being in the playoffs, that's just a tremendous amount of pressure that, you know, that's put on the drivers. Some of them just crumble under the pressure. And you have some drivers that are typical playoff contenders now with Michael McDowell being in there, Ricky Stenhouse teams that, you know, aren't used to that pressure. And then you have both twenty three eleven
00:28:00
Speaker
teams in as well, which will be interesting to see how their success is. Yeah, interesting. Both 2311 cars, both RFK cars, who after a rough season last year and kind of a rough start to 2023 in the first couple of races, I think pleasantly surprised the entire garage area and the entire NASCAR fan base with how those cars have come on here late in the summer.
00:28:31
Speaker
Ryan, I have a question for you on that, the RFK team. So I saw a statistic today that showed the average finishing position of all the drivers. And Chris Busher is the season's second on that list. Is his speed backing up those finishes? Or is it kind of the deal where he's kind of getting fortunate towards the end of races to find that higher finishing position? Well, I think the 17 team
00:28:58
Speaker
comparing them to where they were earlier in the seasons, pretty unfair. But right now, I mean, they've definitely have the lead speed. I mean, nobody handed, you know, we're sure Richmond, nobody handed on Michigan. I mean, he just took out, just took out there and he dominated. But I will note this spring, though, at Darlington, I felt that Chris was sure was the least competitive of the playoff drivers. He finished 10th, but you can get an mark for that one.
00:29:19
Speaker
It's kind of one of those races where everybody crashed, you know, like chaos broke out. He just kept on moving forward. He literally was a lap down in the thirties when stage two, he started stage. He started the final stage in 27th and like a 25th place average running position. So, I mean, that 10th he had that's full school. Totally don't read into it at all. Gotcha.
00:29:39
Speaker
Thank you. Good advice there on the 17 car. But I'll also note though, comparing May to right now, that's probably totally not very fair to him. So I think he'll be a legit top 10 contender this weekend. What do you think about the boss man, Brad Keselowski, finding himself in victory lane? Because now four times in the last year, he's been there alongside his teammate
00:30:05
Speaker
Chris Busher, uh, when do you think Brad Kay finally gets into victory lane? Is it in the next 10 races? Uh, well, everyone's bringing their A game and I don't know if RFK, when it's time for everyone to bring, you know, all their best stuff. I don't know if they necessarily have it, but Brad keselowski, he could potentially win one of these races, though. I mean, Darlington over the last five Southern five hundreds is 6.2 average. He has a 6.2 average finishes, which is tied for being the second best. And you could maybe even potentially say it's tied for being the best cause Kyle Larson didn't race in all five of them.
00:30:33
Speaker
And also, you know, we also think about, uh, Bristol, Brad Kozlowski is one of the best at Bristol and Chris Buescher won there last year. So, I mean, Brad Kozlowski, he's, I think he's better at Bristol than Chris Buescher. So he could, he could potentially win there. Obviously, uh, the, the hot three drivers of the season, uh, especially through the meat of the season where Martin Truex Jr. Denny Hamlin and William Byron, is it safe to say that all three of them were a lock for the final four?
00:31:00
Speaker
I actually have all three of those guys in my final four. Should I reveal the, the, the extra one? Go ahead. Cause that's such a good, a good segue for us to, to look back at our first episode at how far off we were. I believe I hope I didn't list this wrong. You know, mistake you guys, but Kyle Larson is my fourth guy, Kyle Larson. Yeah. I mean, he has to be consistent and he has to get through the first round, which is treacherous. The second round, which is also treacherous with Dega in there. But when he gets, he gets to the third round though. I think he's gonna be a lock to get there.
00:31:29
Speaker
I mean, Vegas, I mean, he's capable of doing great things at Las Vegas. I mean, you should have won there, you know, this spring homestead. We know what he can do at homestead. I mean, he, he thoroughly dominated the competition. Martin'sville. He won there this spring. I mean, if he gets to the third round, I think he's a lot to make it. And also, and also if we mix to find around after those three races right there, you'll probably be the favorite because he's going to have tons of momentum heading into it.
00:31:51
Speaker
Well, you make a good point that the homestead is now back into the playoffs after a couple years not being in that final 10 races there earlier in the season. So that's definitely a track where a driver can control his own destiny with how well his car is driving, where he places the car. You bring up a good point there.
00:32:10
Speaker
Dylan or Jake, you want to go ahead and list off? So Jake went back basically got listeners and said and wrote down who all we predicted in our opening show would be in the final four. And so now we thought it was a good time to look back at that. So Dylan or Jake, do one of you want to go ahead and reveal your your your top four and see how we're looking there?
00:32:35
Speaker
Dylan's looking a little better than me, so Dylan. Yeah, so I have Hamlin, Larsen, Blaney, Kyle Busch, which I'm confident about two of those. Blaney and Kyle Busch is who I'm kind of worried about. And another question for you, Ron. We didn't really get to this when you're talking, but we, and it's kind of funny because they're kind of flying under the radar right now, I think, Pinsky. So with Logano and Blaney,
00:33:01
Speaker
They have, at least I don't think, have shown much in terms of speed in recent weeks. Is that something that they could flip a switch in the playoffs? Are these tracks aligned with their driving styles, or how is that going to work potentially? I actually have both of those guys getting booted out in the second round, both of them. I mean, the second round, the drivers, we actually have listed for getting booted out of there is Kevin Harvick, Kozlowski, Logano, and Blaney. So a lot of Fords going on that round for me.
00:33:29
Speaker
Interesting. I mean, they're capable of doing good things that they got obviously, but they might not. Yeah. No, you're right. That's a good segue to my preseason final four, because I have two Fords in it. And I picked Hamlin, Elliott, which we know won't happen, Logano, and Harvick. I'm not as confident, but three or four.
00:33:55
Speaker
Still alive, I guess, is decent in my champion. In Dylan's preseason champion, we both pick Hamlin, which I think can very well happen. We've seen him make the championship four so many times, it seems like, and he's falling short in the final race. But I definitely will see Hamlin in the championship four. But I guess I picked Elliott. I guess if I had to pick another driver to fill in
00:34:25
Speaker
that space probably William Byron. So I guess my reformed final four is Hamlin, Logano, Harvick, and Byron. At least you have your champion who is still alive. Unlike our friend Steve, who couldn't be with us tonight, Steve had his final four as Tyler Reddick, Denny Hamlin, Ryan Blaney, and Chase Elliott.
00:34:54
Speaker
And he picked Chase Elliott as his champion. So Steve is definitely going home empty-handed from this one. But here's a good one. In February, when we made those predictions, we had no way of knowing that
00:35:09
Speaker
two or three weeks later, that Chase Elliott would end up with a broken leg and be out for a handful of weeks, or that that team would be penalized a ton of points in for car infractions. So with what we knew at the time, I think Chase Elliott was a good pick. And honestly, the stats kind of back it up, Brian. Chase Elliott seemed pretty consistent in that same post that Dylan cited a moment ago. Chase Elliott had the fifth best average finish this season at 13.2.
00:35:39
Speaker
So if you could have done that throughout the entire season and not missed six, seven races, he'd be squarely in the playoffs. I mean, I don't have my rankings for me, but I probably had, you know, chase Elliott, probably number two. I mean, nobody knew he was going to, you know, do snowboarding. I mean, that's, that's a unique one, you know, for going out for so many races, but obviously nobody knew that, but I mean, he had a great regular season, really. He didn't win anything, but I mean, he was one of the most consistent drivers, really. I mean, sure. He crashed a few times, but.
00:36:08
Speaker
I mean, he was great. It was a great relgars season for him. So my championship four, I predicted a few months ago was Danny Hamlin, Chase Elliott, Ryan Blaney, and Tyler Reddick. So the same four as Steve, but I had Blaney as my champion. Interesting that a lot of us had Blaney, you know, I feel like it was a lot of hype with him pre-season and how he kind of finished some of last year.
00:36:33
Speaker
He was so consistent last year. It seemed like even though he didn't win very much, he was right there at the front of the field. And so you say, okay, they've got things kind of figured out. And then, I don't know, early in the season, you usually could say, okay, it's Ford's kind of behind a little bit on their program. Chevy and Toyota have made some advancements there.
00:36:55
Speaker
But look at the summer, you got Buscher winning three, you got McDowell winning a race. You can't really point to that, uh, to that, that Ford trope being a, uh, being kind of excuse for Penske anymore. Penske is just off their mark right now. Well, Blamey did have that surprise one in the Coca-Cola 600. I mean, that's kind of surprise speed, I would say. Yeah.
00:37:18
Speaker
Definitely the surprise, but I think it's very easy to say that's probably more of an anomaly than a trend, right? I mean, you didn't do that again. Very true, yeah. So as we look forward to the playoffs, Ryan, is there any dark horse you think who can make a strong run? Of course.
00:37:37
Speaker
Chris Busher has unbelievable momentum going right now. Is there another driver who could make a deep run and surprise some people and shove some of the favorites out early in the playoffs? I can't really say I really like a Cinderella. I mean, but I do like some some Bracka Busters though, I'll tell you. Okay. Like one driver who I think maybe might be a Bracka Busters, I think Ross Tristan could go on the first round.
00:38:03
Speaker
I mean, sure. Ross Chastain, you know, runner up last year, but Chastain hasn't had three straight top 15s since May. Yeah. I mean, he's only starting four points above the cut line. And I mean, obviously he's kind of a do for, you know, a lock essentially in each round to, you know, have like kind of like a buzzkill result and underperform. I mean, he clearly hasn't had it since, uh, you know, his Darlington sit down. And I don't think you can just flip the switch and, you know, get back to who he was at that time.
00:38:30
Speaker
Yeah, I've been filling out my bracket or whatever we want to call it on the NASCAR website. And actually, I did have Ross out in the first round as well. I've definitely seen that, where he's seen that regression in the past. I could see him running well at Kansas, though. And that's the only reason why I think he could have a great performance there, maybe get a couple stage wins or something like that, or if not win the thing. But the other two tracks, I don't have much confidence in him right now. Ryan, yeah.
00:39:01
Speaker
I want to get your thoughts on the guy who just snuck in Bubba Wallace. He won at Kansas in the fall last season. Do you think that he has a chance to make a run? Me for the first round? I don't think so.
00:39:16
Speaker
I have them either getting out in the first round or the second round. For my first round, I have Stenhouse, McDowell, Chastain, and Wallace getting out right now. I kind of flip-flop between Wallace and Harvick, but Wallace is certainly capable of doing some good things in the first round. He finished fifth this spring at Darlington. I mean, performance-wise, he's been a top-ten contender for the last three straight races there. We all know what he did at Kansas last fall, and he was great this spring. I mean, a lot of fourth-place finishes at 1.5-mile checks this year.
00:39:41
Speaker
And at Bristol, Bristol is one of his better tracks out of the non super speedways. He's certainly capable of getting through the first round. I am nervous though about, you know, him being under pressure. It seems to really get to him in my opinion.
00:39:55
Speaker
yeah that'll be that was something to keep an eye on because but what has been one too at least to an outsider's perspective crack under pressure speaking of pressure a to go back to ross chest in for a moment because after you mention that darlington sit down aside from nashville the one anomaly there uh... uh... ross has been more of a wall though where's waldo he's been off the map and it's like they've had uh... you know been caught up in other people's messes they've just been flat out slow
00:40:24
Speaker
for the entire summer. They certainly underperformed and they need to they need to flip a switch because I mean they got a they're in big big trouble in my opinion. Yeah and I mentioned that a few podcasts episode to go that it's just you know I thought early in the season before he had that sit down that he did show speed and that's what the biggest thing for me is yes he was driving aggressively but I
00:40:51
Speaker
I still think he had speed. And I don't think he's the team showing that right now, which is kind of interesting, him losing his aggressiveness. I thought they practiced well to this one thing. I know, especially last year when he was running well at times, he would say, I'd run out there for 5, 10 laps. I wouldn't even have to put out a 20-lap run. I would feel that the car was good after those short amount of laps and we could just save our stuff. And we're not seeing that. He's not even practicing with good speed either.
00:41:20
Speaker
You know, that regression is really, really concerning, I think, for track house, because halfway through the season, you would have said, man, you could see him and Suarez potentially making a run. But that's not the case at all now. Certainly a lot. A lot of moving parts in the 10 race playoffs, could see some surprises, could see some upsets. A lot of drivers, they all have it in their own ballpark at this point, and we'll see which ones
00:41:49
Speaker
can rise to the occasion which ones will crack under pressure. Let's talk a little bit about some other news that's happened in NASCAR. I mentioned it briefly with Jason that GMS Racing announced they are closing up shop on the truck series side also closing up
00:42:04
Speaker
their fab shop that built a lot of trucks, chassis, and Arca chassis, or Arca parts, I should say. So it's sad to see that organization go. Anytime you see an organization closing a store, it's sad for the sport. But also, like Jason mentioned, some of the internal politics of NASCAR with their Cup Series affiliation going over to Toyota and all of that going on.
00:42:29
Speaker
so there's that uh... the news that cars and also are will be driving the forty two car this weekend at the southern five hundred uh... that's a pleasant surprise to see him get an opportunity and be honest he was running great gateway filling in for a cordial joy uh... until that break or issue some excited what he's able to do and hopefully that the car stays together for this time let's see what else uh... do we have in the uh...
00:42:56
Speaker
and some NASCAR news. Oh, it just came out today that Austin Sindrick and Harrison Burton are swapping crew chiefs starting this coming week at the Southern 500. And that will continue into 2024 as well. So it'll be Jeremy Ballins going over to work with Harrison Burton. And whoever do I have that backwards? My link is loading and I will tell you
00:43:24
Speaker
I believe Bolins was a Sinterk's crew chief. Yeah. So Brian Wilson will go to the two car with Austin Sinterk and Jeremy Bolins will go to the Wood Brothers to work with Harrison Burton. So there's a couple of news items there. Anything else that I might have missed over the weekend, guys? Well, I saw something from Adam Stern earlier, a sports business journal about SRX and how they're in talks to host a race in the Middle East.
00:43:51
Speaker
and they would possibly Saudi Arabia or Qatar as soon as the end of this year. So they're in talks to kind of they said it would be just be a standalone invitational according to Adam Stern and the eight US drivers, four host country drivers and four from elsewhere. So that's a 16 car race.
00:44:13
Speaker
Yeah. So, yeah, SRX looking to change a few things. Would that be on an oval or a road course? I personally don't know of any oval tracks in that part of the world, but they do incredible things with new building and stuff over there. So it's very possible they could slap an oval track together in pretty short order. Yeah. I mean, just the idea of it is pretty crazy to me.
00:44:43
Speaker
Also a piece of news too is, you know, the two hard crashes that we had this weekend, the cup series, you know, I don't think there's been an update at the time of this podcast in terms of, you know, what the exact injuries that Ryan priests suffered. Um, but you know, it's good news that he's out of the hospital. I think it just, you know, I see a lot of, again, there's always the debate, you know, how safe is NASCAR. But I think when we look at it, you look at motorsports as a whole, we just had, um,
00:45:11
Speaker
And one of the, I don't know if you guys saw, one of the MotoGP races, Moto1000, they had two people pass away this weekend with an accident they had. There is not a safer form of motorsports, I think, even going down to dirt racing than NASCAR, than the Cup Series vehicle right now. It's crazy that you can see those accidents that are being played. I mean, it was on Good Morning America on our TV show this morning running after my morning show. One of the first videos that they played during their show was
00:45:41
Speaker
the video of Ryan Priest's car barrel rolling through the, you know, infield. So a huge testament, I think, to NASCAR for the safety measures that they made. They're still, you know, they're going to do some work that exactly why his car got off the ground so easily, I think, because that's something, as you know, we mentioned, you don't see that as much with this next gen car. I'll tell you, as a Ryan,
00:46:04
Speaker
It's just an observation of mine. You don't want to be called Ryan and race at Daytona. I mean, it just doesn't work out too well. I mean, you got Ryan Blaney, Ryan priest, Ryan Newman, who had some scary stuff. Scary crashes at Daytona, you know, as a Ryan, I'm not going to be in an automobile going around that track. That's a quite a coincidence there. And we certainly hope that all Ryans can have safe races at Daytona in the future.
00:46:29
Speaker
Um, let's get to our, uh, our pop-up showers this week. Jay, go ahead and start us off. Sure. Uh, you guys have, uh, mentioned it here and that was something on NASCAR Reddit. Um, they came up driver average finish in 2023 and here in the regular season. And it's just number one, Martin Truex Jr. Is average 11.4 going down the line. We mentioned how Chris Busher is number two on the list.
00:46:59
Speaker
That just shows you the regular season. Some other surprising ones was Elliott being fifth, not making the playoffs. And then you have, you know, Bubba Wallace and Tyler Reddick almost identical as teammates. Bubba, 16.8, Reddick, 16.9. And you go a little bit further down the list and
00:47:22
Speaker
You know, you just got to point out that steward house racing is has been disappointing You know chase brisco who we're talking about cinderella's made a cinderella run last year You know, I don't think anyone expected him to you know, make it as far as he did I mean just he didn't show I think nearly as much speed as anyone expected this season Yeah, average finished 20.8. I'm a roll of 21.7 Ryan priests
00:47:48
Speaker
22.2. So that stat is just my pop-up shower. As we finished the regular season, you kind of look back at what was, and there are certainly a lot of surprising numbers from that. My pop-up shower, I wasn't able to go to a race this past weekend, a local dirt track, but Lake Cumberland Speedway hosted the 12th annual Harold Hargrove Memorial.
00:48:18
Speaker
Great late model dirt race and Josh rice who has won there previously this summer He's kind of a younger guy from Northern, Kentucky He I think is going to be a big name in late model dirt. He is a great great driver So look for his name to be popping up some or maybe some national dirt races as well in the future It's a
00:48:44
Speaker
It's always good dirt racing, it seems like in Kentucky this summer. And you really dug up and covered a lot of that, Dylan. Oh, and also Kenny Schrader is coming to Richmond Raceway here in Kentucky at the end of September, last weekend of September. He's going to be racing there. And also, I wasn't on the podcast last week, but I was at Richmond for that race that they had last weekend. And I heard a cool story about Tony Stewart once racing at the track. And it was before he really got his shot.
00:49:13
Speaker
He wasn't quite a cup driver yet. And I guess he got crashed by one of the local favorites and just threw a massive fit. And the traffic track photographer was telling me they got to see the angry Tony Stewart before the nation got to see angry Tony Stewart. That's a good one there. I have a couple of pop-up showers. One thing we didn't mention in our news segment, which we absolutely should, is Kurt Busch has announced his retirement from NASCAR.
00:49:42
Speaker
It's kind of long been expected that would be the case after he had to get out of the seat partway through last year I hate that he couldn't go out on his own terms, but it sounds like he is officially retired from NASCAR racing So congratulations on a great season to the 2004 Cup Series champion Kurt Busch My pop-up showers. I got a couple of them in Indy car world. So I
00:50:05
Speaker
Uh, disappointing to hear that Simon Paginaw will be out for the rest of the IndyCar season after he had that vicious practice crash at mid Ohio, left him with post-concussive syndrome, it seems like, uh, or symptoms, I should say. And, uh, and so he will not be in the, uh, his, his, uh, Meyer Shank racing car for the rest of the season. So two more races at Portland and Laguna Seca. And then also interesting, uh, report from racer magazines, uh, Marshall Pruitt.
00:50:35
Speaker
on IndyCar exploring the idea of a charter system or a franchise type system like what NASCAR has for its top teams. I think it's interesting that the IndyCar operations are now trying to get some sort of guaranteed revenue for their entries and their efforts to make the races just like NASCAR teams have gotten in recent years.
00:50:59
Speaker
That almost makes me wonder if a plan like that comes together in the next couple of years, if any of those ideas are brought forward for possibly the revamp of the NASCAR charter system that's supposed to happen after the, or sometime in the next, by the end of the 2024 season, we'd hope. So there's a couple of things caught my mind for sure, caught my eye for sure. And we'll keep an eye on those as well and see how it has any impact on NASCAR, especially the charter system or charter type system being floated around in IndyCar.
00:51:29
Speaker
Let's take a look now at our race picks from Daytona. In our actual picks, Jake had a great run. He had Brad Keselowski who finished second to his teammate, Chris Busher. Keselowski actually the high point earner for the week at 45 points.
00:51:48
Speaker
another good run for Dylan. He had Chase Elliott who finished fourth, which was three spots not good enough to get himself into the playoffs. 37 points for Dylan in that one. I had a 12th place run from Bubba Wallace.
00:52:03
Speaker
Bubba did enough to get into the playoffs, he didn't necessarily have to get in there and mix it up and risk his car and not making the playoffs, but Bubba in at 12th place with 30 points. And then Steve had Ryan Blaney, who as we mentioned just a few moments ago, had a very hard impact into the outside wall at Daytona, 36th place finish for Blaney, earning just one point. So our season long standings look like this at the end of the regular season.
00:52:33
Speaker
Dylan with 898 points, so he has a 99 point lead over Steve. Jake is in third place with 770 points, so he's 29 points behind Steve. Then I find myself in the cellar.
00:52:50
Speaker
seven hundred fifty six points uh... fourteen behind jake after uh... what is that now my six six consecutive race outside of the top ten uh... couple uh... top fifteen so an eleventh and a twelfth in there but when everybody else is getting top tens if you're not getting top tens you're falling behind and that's exactly the same boat i find myself in uh... steve gets first pick and uh... we knew steve was not going to be on this episode and
00:53:19
Speaker
I kind of admit we kind of dropped the ball and getting a hold of him to see who we wanted to pick. So we'll accept a duplicate this year. So that moves on the next pick to myself I suppose with the 12th place finish. So I would, man I don't know who to go with here. I kind of have a strange feeling this could be a Denny Hamlin race so I'm just going to go Denny. Am I way off base there Ryan or are you nodding in agreement?
00:53:49
Speaker
I have Denny Hamlin number three, so I can't disagree. OK. OK. Dylan, you're up next. See, I want to go Toyota, but the fact that Chevy won this last year with Eric Jones, it has me one to go Chevy. So I'm going to go William Byron, not really a surprise pick at all. I think he could win that easily. I wanted to go Chase Elliott, but I can't pick Chase Elliott.
00:54:16
Speaker
like three out of the last four weeks. So I'm going to go Willie B. All right, Willie B. Jake, who are you taking? Well, I was leaning Hamlin. I will go Truex, as being one of the title contenders makes a statement early.
00:54:43
Speaker
I want to say Toyota, this one. So I'll go Truex. So where, Ryan, where did Truex and Willy be line up in your rankings for this week? I had Truex number one and I had William Beyer number five. Okay. Okay. So solid top five guys. Who's number two? What was that? Who's number two then? Number two is Kyle Larson. Okay. Yeah. I'm surprised none of us picked Larson.
00:55:11
Speaker
Then to round out my top five, those two X Larson, Hamlin, Bush, Byron. Okay. Also, I think we should say where Braxton is at. I don't know if we mentioned that. We don't have a live studio audience. There's no clapping in the back. It was some really interesting cheering going on. Interesting. So just like a couple of weeks ago when I was doing the podcast from the Canadian Open tennis tournament in Toronto.
00:55:39
Speaker
I am at the U.S. Open, which is one of the four grand slams in tennis. So I'm currently in a broadcast booth in Arthur Ashe Stadium, which is the largest tennis stadium in the world. And the loud cheering you hear is because there's an American playing right now in a teenager cocoa golf on the women's side. So so that's the the applause you have heard off and on throughout this. And honestly, it's time out a couple of times where, you know, it sounded like it's like a like a laugh track, like an audience track.
00:56:09
Speaker
It would have been really funny if it would have timed out for his applause after I said something stupid. That would have been good. Or good if it's applause after we said something brilliant, one of the two. Ryan, who would your pick be? Yeah, that's what I was about to ask. Well, last time since I was on here, I got cute. Obviously, I'm not supposed to pick the same people that other people picked. So I go down the pecking order, so I was down to Bowman last time.
00:56:36
Speaker
Maybe I'll do it in BQ and I'll just pick Larson, you know, number two, don't blame me. You know, if he crashes or anything bad happens, he's actually had problems in the last three races here. So hopefully he's due to have an incident for your race. Actually his last four incident for your races here, you spend a second, second, second, and third.
00:56:53
Speaker
And this break, he probably could have won, you know, if he didn't have his run in with Ross Chastain, his race wasn't even instant free before that. He actually had a slow pit stop early in the race. I dropped him back to the twenties and then he drove all the way up to the front. I mean, he had commanded the lead of the race on the final green flag pit cycle. If Ryan Newman didn't decide to crash and, you know, bring in late chaos, which Ryan Newman's back, unfortunately, you know, you know, I think Kyle Larson would have won. Well, I will say what's interesting is we've had so few cautions over the last three races.
00:57:21
Speaker
It'll be interesting, I doubt it, but if that trend continues into Darlington, which is known for having, you know, it's fair share of caution. Well, think about this way, you know, it's one thing to not have cautions at road courses or surprisingly not have cautions at Daytona. You can't
00:57:43
Speaker
If you have no caution to very few cautions at a track whose nickname is literally the track too tough to tame, that tells you everything that you need to know about the problems with this race car.
00:57:54
Speaker
And we all seen how last year played out super late chaos, chaos throughout the whole race. I mean, it just, it just goes up the love to the next level, the chaos and the playoffs. I mean, easily double digits amounts of, you know, playoff drivers in the last two Southern 500s having problems. I mean, it would probably be problems off the charts. I mean, like I said earlier, Christopher sure literally in 27th finished 10th this spring. I mean, I think Harrison burton finished six. So I think that tells you something about, you know, how wild the race was.
00:58:31
Speaker
It was two years ago. That was the one where he had to run in with Chase Elliott. And then Chase got up and kind of intentionally blocked him, right, in the low watching lane. Kevin Harvick actually did have a problem this race last year. He had one of those, I like to call it the random Ford fires. Yeah. Oh, yes. Oh, that's right. Because he was eliminated after the first round last year. I think that was one of the bigger surprises. He was like mid pack of the 16 drivers, I think. And then he was eliminated after. I knew it was one of the races he had some sort of issue. Yeah, he definitely did have a random fire last year.
00:58:37
Speaker
the true that
00:59:03
Speaker
So let's take a look at our random picks from this past week where it was kind of a struggle bus for all of us. So I led the way with Michael McDowell finishing 13th and getting 24 points. Jake actually finished second amongst us with Cole Custer in the 51 car finishing 19th and getting 18 points. I don't think that was Cole Custer. I thought it was.
00:59:31
Speaker
I got to look up exactly because I was following it a little bit during the race To look on good old J ski at the Finishing order it was the 51 car no matter what
00:59:47
Speaker
JJ, okay, there we go. Dylan was one position back in the 99 car with Daniel Suarez. I know that Suarez was for sure in that vehicle, getting 26 points. I guess Daniel got some stage points in there. And then Steve, coupled with his bad luck on the actual picks, having Blaney finished 36th, Blaney's teammate, Austin Sindrick finished 37th.
01:00:15
Speaker
So in the random standings, I have a commanding lead, literally 161 points, 131 points, excuse me.
01:00:26
Speaker
uh... no action that's less than that because jake is in second so hundred and uh... twenty three points is my lead over jake and random dylan is third with five hundred sixty four points just eight points back there and steve in the cellar with five hundred and thirty uh... so let's get our random spins going first at darlington and first up will be uh... steve and i'll get the camera going while i'm doing this uh...
01:00:55
Speaker
Dylan you have quite a lengthy forecast for this week. So go ahead and get it Yeah, luckily the you know, the race is on Sunday You know and not there's not a lot of activity during the week obviously never is during NASCAR But the hurricane was now tropical storm getting ready to strengthen into a hurricane I'd alia there. It's gonna make landfall somewhere around the Big Bend of Florida Monday, excuse me, Wednesday and
01:01:18
Speaker
it is monday um and then that will trek up the coast so bring a lot of rain four to six inches potentially rain to darlington wednesday thursday so luckily that's going to be on out of here by saturday and into the weekend and it should be actually really really nice but it'll be interesting to see you know if there's any you know damage to the facility or stuff like that because there's going to be some at least tropical storm force wind gusts there um so uh that'll
01:01:44
Speaker
That may hold things up in terms of, you know, the TV crew getting set up and stuff during the week, but it shouldn't impact the war racing at all. And then, uh, Ryan, you said, you mentioned earlier that you had a, uh, bonus pop-up shower this week. Yeah. Shameless self promotion, I guess for myself, but, uh,
01:02:05
Speaker
This week is actually going to mark, I'm going to call it the 11th anniversary. I could get more aggressive and call it 12th or 13th, but I'm going to call it the 11th to be on the conservative side for the modern weekly format of top tier elite, front runner rankings, and mid pack predictions for the free note for the weekly posts, for the weekly content on drivers, the core content, getting segmented into three posts, basically the modern format set this week back at Chicago.
01:02:28
Speaker
back when Chicago was the opening playoff race. So it's been a long time. That's been a minute. I have one more spin to do here and I'll release the random results. I know it's been a huge point here. People really like that. Ryan's anniversary. It's the fans wanting Chicago back on the schedule. Hey, there you go. Okay. So,
01:03:01
Speaker
So you got the first spin and he got the defending winner, Eric Jones. Next up was Dylan, got Tyler Reddick, playoff driver. Jake, you got Ryan Blaney. So it could be up or down there. I ended up for the second consecutive week with Michael McDowell, playoff driver.
01:03:27
Speaker
And then, unfortunately, Ryan, I don't think you're gonna do too hot. You ended up with Chase Briscoe. Hey, I mean, if he crashes, you know, I probably won't be here next week. Hey, actually, you know, what's funny is it was very close to being Bowman, actually. No. I mean, they're both pretty bad, you know, this year. Briscoe is just the next level of bad.
01:03:56
Speaker
They have both certainly had their struggles here in 2023. So the Lady in Black, we have the weather report from Dylan. I'd be curious to see if there's any potential flooding issues. We saw that the SRX race at Thunder Road in Vermont ended up being canceled because of flooding. The rains had moved out, but it has lost so much destruction that it
01:04:20
Speaker
It's kind of insensitive to host a race in that area right afterwards, right? So it makes me wonder if something like that could possibly happen in the Carolinas. Certainly don't wish it to happen, but it's definitely on the radar on possibilities. One thing I will say, South Carolina can't hold more water than, say, the Northeast. So I'm not too worried about it being that bad. Four to six inches of rain will cause some flooding, but I don't think it'll be enough to
01:04:49
Speaker
cause significant issues there for Darlington at least. So that's one positive I'd say. And Darlington's a little inland, right? Yes, it's a little bit. So it's not any danger of a storm surge. Definitely not. If it was a danger of a storm surge, we are in trouble. That's very true. We have one heck of a storm surge.
01:05:10
Speaker
already it will it's been a uh... a fantastic episode of claudia the chance of racing a big thank you once again to jason toy from mr and for joining us earlier big thanks to ryan from i finish the race for coming on as well and sharing his insights into uh... some of the drivers who are often the top sixteen for the nascar cup series and uh... of course uh... jake and dylan as well well uh... we back next week after the southern five hundred uh...
01:05:37
Speaker
Let's hash this out real quick while we're on here. Are we going to do a Labor Day recording or are we trying to do Tuesday next week? Just so the listeners know. Let's probably try to do Tuesday.
01:05:49
Speaker
Tuesday it is. We're going to celebrate Labor Day weekend and enjoy the Cup Series race on Sunday and have a good Monday off. And then we'll be back with you next Tuesday for the next episode of Claudio with a Chance of Racing. So once again, I am Braxton Crisp. Thanks so much to Jason Toy and Ryan from IFN Eastern Race for joining us. Also for Jake and Dylan. Have a good night. We'll be back with you next week on Claudio with a Chance of Racing.