LEBANON, TN.: The NASCAR Cup Series holds its second track debut weekend of the season with Sunday’s Ally 400 (3:30 p.m. ET on NBCSN, MRN and SiriusXM NASCAR Radio) at Nashville Superspeedway.
Only five current series drivers have won previously at the 1.333-mile track – Kevin Harvick and Brad Keselowski each won a pair of NASCAR Xfinity Series races when that series competed at Nashville from 2001-2011. Joey Logano also has a previous Xfinity Series win. Austin Dillon won the last NASCAR Camping World Truck Series race at Nashville in 2011 and Kyle Busch has two Truck wins and an Xfinity Series victory.
Certainly, the big name coming into this week’s 300-lapper, however, is Kyle Larson, driver of the No. 5 Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet. He has won the last three races coming to Nashville – the Charlotte 600-miler, the Sonoma, Calif. road course and then last Sunday, the non-points paying NASCAR All-Star Race at Texas Motor Speedway.
Should Larson win at Nashville he would become only the fifth active driver to win three consecutive points races – matching the work of Harvick, Keselowski, Kyle Busch and Logano.
“I’ve tested there before – a couple times in an Xfinity car and I think once in a Cup car,” Larson said of Nashville. “It’s a track where very few drivers have any experience.
“We will have practice and qualifying before this Sunday’s race so I’m looking forward to the challenge of getting up to speed quickly. This team and Hendrick Motorsports as a whole, have been strong on intermediate-type tracks this year, so I hope we can have another strong finish in the Valvoline Chevrolet.”
His crew chief, Cliff Daniels expects the weekend to be a big learning curve for most teams.
“The most relevant things to pull from my previous experience there and Kyle’s testing experience there is the nuance of the track,” Daniels said. “It’s a really unique track geometry. It’s sweeping into turn one but then gets tight off turn two.
“We know the track is going to be temperature sensitive. Knowing that will help us, but we don’t have a pure setup from a race strategy standpoint. We don’t have any data points to go off.”
In fact, only 14 drivers entered this weekend have any experience at Nashville and as Larson noted, there will be practice and qualifying to give the competitors some track time before Sunday’s green flag.
Championship leader Denny Hamlin is among those that have competed previously at Nashville. He holds the distinction of topping the NASCAR Cup Series points standings for most of the season, but he has yet to win a race. His eighth-place work at Sonoma two weeks ago is his 12th top-10 through 16 races – a series-high mark he shares with William Byron. He also has a series-best nine top-five finishes in the No. 11 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota, including five finishes of second or third-place.
The 2014 series champion Kevin Harvick has been similarly shut out of Victory Lane. The driver of the No. 4 Stewart-Haas Racing Ford has 11 top-10 finishes but only four of those have resulted in top five outcomes. His best finish in 2021 is runner-up at Kansas. However, Harvick is a two-time Xfinity Series winner at the Nashville track and is as motivated to hoist a trophy as he’s ever been.
Even without a victory, Harvick’s ninth place position in the points standings appears Playoff-worthy. But with only 10 races remaining to set the 16-driver Playoff field, the intensity is starting to rise.
There have been 11 race winners through the opening 16 races, leaving only five Playoff positions available – at this time – based on wins and points position. Six former NASCAR Cup Series race winners – Kurt Busch (18th), Ricky Stenhouse Jr. (19th), Ryan Newman (23rd), Erik Jones (25th), Cole Custer (27th) and Aric Almirola (28th) – are all below the Playoff cutline. A victory in these last 10 regular season races is increasingly becoming their only ticket to the Playoffs.
Source: Holly Cain / NASCAR Wire Service
