Good news, bad news for NASCAR Cup drivers ahead of Dover weekend
The last eight Cup points races on ovals have been won by a different driver. Those winners have been Austin Cindric (Talladega), Joey Logano (Texas), Kyle Larson (Kansas), Ross Chastain (Coca-Cola 600), Ryan Blaney (Nashville), Denny Hamlin (Michigan), Chase Briscoe (Pocono) and Chase Elliott (Atlanta).
Here is a look at the good news and bad news for Cup teams heading into Sunday's race.
23XI Racing — Good news: Tyler Reddick advanced in the In-Season Challenge and faces Ty Gibbs in the semifinals this weekend at Dover. … Reddick has finished sixth or better in each of the last three races. … Bubba Wallace continues to hold the final playoff spot. Bad news: Wallace has been on the playoff bubble (16th or 17th in the standings) more than any other driver in the Next Gen era (22 times). … Wallace has never finished in the top 10 in 10 starts at Dover. … Riley Herbst, making his first Cup start at Dover, did not have a top-five finish in seven Xfinity starts there.
Dustin Long,
Front Row Motorsports — Good news: Zane Smith has four top-15 finishes in the last seven races. … Smith has the last two top-10 finishes scored by Front Row Motorsports this season, placing seventh at Atlanta and Michigan. Bad news: Noah Gragson has finished 23rd or worse seven consecutive races. … Todd Gilliland has never placed better than 25th in three Cup starts at Dover.
Haas Factory Team — Good news: Cole Custer has never finished worse than 15th in four Cup starts at Dover. … Custer's average finish of 11.5 is his best among tracks where he's had multiple Cup starts. Bad News: Custer has not finished better than 19th in the last seven oval races on the Cup schedule.
Hendrick Motorsports — Good news: Hendrick Motorsports has had at least one car finish in the top 10 in each of the last 25 Cup races at Dover, a streak that goes back to September 2010. … Chase Elliott has four top-five finishes in the last five races. … Elliott has 10 top-five finishes at Dover, his most top-five results at any Cup track. … All six of Alex Bowman's top-10 finishes at Dover have come in his last seven starts there, including five top-five finishes. … Bowman has finished 11th or better in four of the last five races. … Kyle Larson has finished sixth or better in five of his last six Dover starts, including a runner-up result last year. … Larson ranks second in all-time average finish at Dover at 8.2, just off David Pearson's mark of 8.0. … Points leader William Byron ranks first in the series this season in speed and restarts, second in defense and third in passing, according to Racing Insights data. Bad news: Larson's average finish in the last eight races is 19.8, which is 10 places worse than his average finish in the season's first 12 races (9.8). … Byron has only two top-five finishes in the last 10 races.
Hyak Motorsports — Good news: Ricky Stenhouse Jr. has made 384 consecutive starts in. Cup. Bad news: Stenhouse has three top-10 finishes through 20 races this season (he had five top 10s at this point a year ago). … Stenhouse has three finishes of 30th or worse in the last four races.
Joe Gibbs Racing — Good news: Denny Hamlin won last year's race at Dover. … Hamlin is the only repeat winner in the last seven Dover races. … Hamlin has led 542 laps in the last seven races at Dover, most of all drivers. … Ty Gibbs advanced in the In-Season Challenge and goes against Tyler Reddick in the semifinals this weekend at Dover. … Gibbs has six top-15 finishes in a row. … Gibbs' average finish in his last six races is 8.5, compared to his average finish of 21.6 in the previous 14 races. … Chase Briscoe has led 149 laps in the last seven races compared to having led 75 laps in the previous 59 races. … Both of Christopher Bell's top 10s at Dover have come in the last three races there. Bad news: Bell has placed 16th or worse in four of the last six races.
Kaulig Racing — Good news: Ty Dillon, the last seed in the 32-driver In-Season Challenge, is two races away from claiming the $1 million prize. … Dillon is paired against John Hunter Nemechek at Dover. … Dillon has averaged 26.7 points a race in the past three events (he averaged 9.0 points a race in the previous six events). … Dillon has three consecutive top-20 finishes for the first time since August 2022. … AJ Allmendinger has three top-15 finishes in the last five races. … Allmendinger has led 152 laps at Dover, his most at any Cup track. Bad news: Allmendinger was seven points below the cutline after Nashville in June but has lost 43 points to the cutline in the last six races and is now 50 points from the last playoff spot.
Legacy Motor Club — Good news: John Hunter Nemechek goes against Ty Dillon at Dover in the In-Season Challenge for the right to race for $1 million later this month at Indianapolis. … Erik Jones has six top-15 finishes in the last 10 races. Bad news: Nemechek has five finishes of 25th or worse in the last eight races. … Jones has made 99 Cup starts since his last series win, which came in the 2022 Southern 500 at Darlington.
Richard Childress Racing — Good news: Kyle Busch has scored 76 points in the past two races — more than he scored in the previous four races (65 points). … Busch has gained 35 points on the playoff cutline in the last two races and is 37 points back with six races left in the regular season. … Busch leads all active drivers in wins (three), top fives (14) and top 10s (22) at Dover. Bad news: Austin Dillon has finished 19th or worse in the last nine races.
Rick Ware Racing — Good news: Cody Ware has finished 26th or better in three of the last six races. Bad news: Ware placed 34th at Sonoma after losing a wheel for his lowest finish since Bristol in April. … Ware has not finished better than 31st in five Cup starts at Dover.
RFK Racing — Good news: Brad Keselowski has four top-10 finishes in the last eight races after having no top 10s in the season's first 12 races. … Chris Buescher makes his 350th career start this weekend at Dover. … Both of Buescher's top-10 finishes at Dover have come in the last three races there. … Buescher's average start of 10.5 this season is best of all drivers. … Ryan Preece has eight top-15 finishes in the last nine races. Bad news: Preece has never placed better than 17th in eight Cup starts at Dover.
Spire Motorsports — Good news: Justin Haley scored the bonus point for the fastest lap last weekend at Sonoma. … All three of Spire's drivers have won the bonus point for the fastest lap in a race at least once this season. … Michael McDowell has claimed the bonus three times, while Carson Hocevar and Haley have done so once each. Bad news: Hocevar has finished 29th or worse in four of the last six races. … McDowell has not placed better than 17th in 24 Cup starts at Dover.
Team Penske — Good news: Joey Logano makes his 600th career Cup start this weekend at Dover. … At 35 years, 1 month and 26 days, Logano will be the youngest driver to make his 600th career series start (Richard Petty holds the record at age 35 years, 7 months, 23 days). Bad news: Team Penske last won at Dover in September 2012 with Brad Keselowski. … None of Team Penske's current group of drivers has a Cup victory at Dover. … Ryan Blaney has a series-high seven DNFs after he did not finish last weekend's race at Sonoma due to an accident. … Austin Cindric has finished 25th or worse in six of the last 10 races. … Logano has not finished better than 16th at Dover in the Next Gen car.
Trackhouse Racing — Good news: Shane van Gisbergen led 64.2% of the laps run in his victories at Mexico, Chicago and Sonoma. … Ross Chastain's average finish of 5.7 in the Next Gen car at Dover is tied with Chase Elliott for the best among active drivers. Bad news: Chastain has finished 24th or worse in three of the last four races. … Daniel Suarez has only one top-10 finish in his last eight Dover starts.
Wood Brothers Racing — Good news: Josh Berry has finished 12th in three of the last five Cup oval races. Bad news: Berry has finished in the top 10 only once in the 15 races since his Las Vegas victory. … The Wood Brothers last won at Dover in 1981 with Neil Bonnett.
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Indianapolis Star
6 hours ago
- Indianapolis Star
Bubba Wallace envisioned joining NASCAR legends, again doubted himself, then ended 100-race drought
INDIANAPOLIS — Bubba Wallace drove the closing laps of Sunday's Brickyard 400 with a pair of guests in his cockpit. Their voices echoed the dichotomy of emotions the 23XI Racing driver elicits whenever he steps on stage for pre-race introductions: those thundering boos filled with hate, disgust and doubt, and the raucous yells and rhythmic chants of his name that rain down whenever one of NASCAR's most divisive drivers finds successes. Though he's worked in recent years to silence the noise and silo himself off from the world on race days in an attempt to discover an internal calm to help lessen the valleys on bad days and refocus himself on the ones where success seems within his grasp, dueling voices still linger. One: a nagging, irritating and oftentimes successfully demotivating devil in his ear that tells him he's not good enough to be leading the closing laps of a Crown Jewel race — and certainly not good enough to win one. And the other: a snarky, somewhat sarcastic wit that spars back with the simple notion of '(expletive) it, we can do this.' Sunday, with the sport's best talent oscillating between hugging his outside on restarts and otherwise breathing down his neck, Wallace's angel on his shoulder won out. Why the 31-year-old eight-year Cup series veteran still wars with those doubts is an introspective journey for another day. What matters is after a 100-race winless drought — two full seasons and nearly an entire third regular season — and the constant reminders he's yet to secure what would be just his second NASCAR Cup series playoff berth, Wallace can race the rest of this year and well into the future knowing he's taken the next step in his career. He slayed the dragon, snapped the streak and captured his first Crown Jewel with Sunday's Brickyard 400 victory, becoming the first Black driver to win on the IMS oval 'Does anyone know where the goalposts got moved to now? Anybody? Did they get moved yet? Oh, that's right, it was rigged. Of course,' Wallace chided in his post-race news conference, a reference to the ways in which the stockcar world's most high-profile active Black driver is held to what he believes to be either unreasonable or unfair standards by some when he falters, combined with the ways in which his successes are knocked down a peg, too. 'You're gonna have people boo you, and you're going to have people cheer you. I had a guy today call me a 'punk.' Well, punks get trophies, I guess. 'I like to have fun with the fans, and it is what it is, but I really do appreciate the support, deep down, as a guy who used to struggle with the boos and wonder 'Why?' It's just sports, and people are going to have the drivers they like and the drivers they hate, the drivers they want to see win and the drivers they want to see crash. But you've just got to go out a compete.' Entering Sunday's race, Denny Hamlin, one of the co-owners of Wallace's No. 23 Toyota, took notice of what was rounding into a notably impressive race weekend for his 31-year-old driver who had shown flashes on the IMS oval in his career but never quite been able to put it all together. Wallace started Sunday afternoon sharing the front row with Hamlin's own Joe Gibbs Racing teammate Chase Briscoe, and as Hamlin fought tooth and nail to claw his way up from a last-place starting spot earned from a Saturday qualifying crash, he noted the way in which Wallace's No. 23 continued to hang around the top of the pylon. But to be frank, this wasn't his race … until it was, as race leader Joey Logano suffered a blown tire while leading on Lap 134 of 160, Wallace trailing behind in second. All a sudden, the two-time NASCAR Cup series race winner — whose pair of wins had never come over the course of the regular season — held the lead of the Brickyard 400 with the final round of pit stops complete and ticking by. With six laps to go and the field largely strung out, as they so often get around what some in the NASCAR community call the 2.5-mile rectangle that has hosted few race-altering passes not off restarts in recent years, Wallace looked as if he was going to win walking away, leading defending Brickyard 400 winner Kyle Larson by four seconds or more. And then, trundling through Turns 1 and 2, he saw his tires kick up water. 'My last time through, I thought to myself, 'OK then …'' Wallace said. The yellow lights flashed, quickly followed by the red, and down pit lane he drove, reflections on the way in which his breakthrough victory four years ago at Talladega came — via a rain-shortened race fiercely panned by his detractors — quickly, if not briefly, becoming top of mind. ''Here we go again. If it rains (a bunch), then Lord have mercy, Twitter's gonna blow up,'' Wallace remembered he said to himself. 'And then, it changed to this. 'I really want to win this straight up. I want to go back to racing.' So I was content with it going on. Bummed we gave up the lead. 'And then once I saw it was Larson (who he'd be restarting next to), I knew I'd have to roll my sleeves up. He won here last year. He's arguably the best in the field, and I have no problem saying that. I respect the hell out of what he does and how he drives. He pushes us all to be that good, and so to be the best, we had to beat the best today, and we came out on top.' It all sounds so prophetic now, but Wallace said Sunday morning felt eerily different as he roamed the grounds of IMS and readied himself for what in five or 10 years he might look back upon as a career-altering success for the 23XI driver. Derived by daily readings from a micro-meditation book called "The Daily Stoic" and the realities of parenthood with his baby boy Becks born in September, Wallace said he spends much of life nowadays with a reframed mindset that his life inside the cockpit is not his life alone. Whenever this job he gleefully calls little more than a hobby ends there will be a life afterwards — one filled with the joys, weights and responsibilities of parenthood and marriage that already exist. And so sometime in the last 12 to 18 months or so, Wallace said he recalibrated in a way in which managed to become more driven, but also the calmest, most even-keeled version of his professional self — a switch flip that Hamlin noted. 'His peaks and valleys, he shallowed that up to where his valleys weren't as lot, and I think it seems like on the bad days, he's able to compartmentalize that and think about the positives vs. everything sucks all the time, because that's a tough way to live,' Hamlin said. 'We're in a business where if you can win 5% of the time, you're a Hall of Famer. You're gonna lose. This is a losing business, and you've got to find happiness in something other than actually winning. 'When I hired Bubba, I believed in his capabilities — not necessarily the results that he'd shown, but I understood his potential. And then there was a time where we were wrestling with, 'Man, do I want it worse than him?' I can't make him want it. That's going to have to come from within. So what I'm hoping is this shows him that hard work pays off, and hopefully we see more of this.' What was clear within Wallace's internal monologue midday Sunday was this: He wanted it ever so badly, and not just the victory and its monkey-off-back and playoff berth implications, but for what the opportunity of success at the Racing Capital of the World invites. In his speech during Sunday's drivers' meeting, IMS president Doug Boles remarked on how the track was celebrating Dale Earnhardt Sr.'s win in the second running of the event 30 years ago, and how 10 and 20 years after, drivers we now view as modern-day legends of the sport, Tony Stewart in 2005 and Kyle Busch in 2015, triumphed, too. 'I felt different walking into that drivers' meeting and finding a seat by myself, pulling out my phone and looking at my race notes, and when (Doug) was speaking, he mentioned that little caveat, and I thought it was interesting,' Wallace said. ''This could be the start of becoming a legend.' 'Now, I don't think I'm a legend in my own mind. I've got a lot of work to do, but it all starts with days like today.' And so therein lay the confidence that managed to slay the doubts that ever so routinely surfaced as Wallace sat through an 18-minute red flag, followed by the slow trundle of additional caution laps and then not one late-race green-white-checkered restart, but two. As he characterized it, Wallace 'caught everybody sleeping on the initial overtime and wielded a comfortable lead coming down the back straight when his 23XI teammate Tyler Reddick and Zane Smith got tangled up and forced the field into a do-over. Now sitting dangerously low on fuel — so much so that a third restart likely would've forced him into the pits and left him outside the top 20, Sunday's race winner dug deeper into his proverbial toolbox, re-racked and rolled off again. 'Those last 20 laps, it was probably 20 laps of me telling myself I'm not going to be able to do it, and so I found my biggest problem, and that's that if I could shut that off fully, we could do a lot more of this,' he said. 'I really thought this year started out way different than any other, and mentally it has, but here we were in the same spot before the race. 'Is Bubba Wallace going to make it into the playoffs?' Like, 'Damn, dude, is it me?' 'There's a lot of expectations on you to deliver with this team we have at 23XI, with having the right people and the right sponsors. It takes everybody at (the shop) to have days and moments like this, and so there's a certain expectation level to win. To not be able to for almost three years, you really start to doubt yourself and wonder, 'Wow, really is this it?' After this contract is up, is this it?' I still have a couple years left now, but hopefully this gives me at least another year more.'
Yahoo
6 hours ago
- Yahoo
Video Of NASCAR Drivers Reacting To Bubba Wallace's Win Says Everything
Video Of NASCAR Drivers Reacting To Bubba Wallace's Win Says Everything originally appeared on The Spun. Video of NASCAR drivers reacting to Bubba Wallace's win is saying everything on Sunday night. Wallace, driving the No. 23 Toyota for 23XI Racing, took home the checkered flag at the Brickyard 400 on Sunday afternoon. Wallace won the Cup Series race at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. It was his first win in a long time. The veteran NASCAR Cup Series driver last won in September of 2022. He won at the Kansas Speedway, then driving the No. 45 for 23XI Racing. Wallace had a streak of roughly 100 straight races without a win, however, he stopped that on Sunday evening in a major way. Video of NASCAR drivers reacting to Bubba Wallace's win on Sunday night said it all, too. One by one, following his win on Sunday evening, several prominent NASCAR drivers made their way up to Wallace to congratulate the 23XI Racing driver on his victory. It was a classy move by the NASCAR field, as they clearly have a lot of respect - and admiration - for Wallace as both a driver and a man. "Bro hugs all around for Bubba Wallace," NASCAR on FOX shared on X. As ESPN noted, too, Wallace made history. "Bubba Wallace became the first Black driver to win a major race on Indianapolis Motor Speedway's 2.5-mile oval," ESPN wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter, following the race. "Wallace overcame a late rain delay, two overtimes and a hard-charging Kyle Larson to take the Brickyard 400." With the victory, Wallace will get a chance to compete among the sport's best, as he clinched a spot in the NASCAR Cup Series Playoffs. Here's a full look at the NASCAR Cup Series Playoff Point Totals after Sunday's race: Denny Hamlin Kyle Larson Shane Van Gisbergen Christopher Bell William Byron Ryan Blaney Austin Cindric Bubba Wallace Joey Logano Chase Briscoe The NASCAR world will get a chance to see Bubba Wallace competing among the sport's best in the postseason later this fall. Video Of NASCAR Drivers Reacting To Bubba Wallace's Win Says Everything first appeared on The Spun on Jul 28, 2025 This story was originally reported by The Spun on Jul 28, 2025, where it first appeared.
NBC Sports
8 hours ago
- NBC Sports
Long: Bubba Wallace takes pre-race message to heart to claim Brickyard 400 victory
INDIANAPOLIS — Amid the formality of the NASCAR Cup pre-race drivers meeting, Doug Boles had a message for competitors. The president of Indianapolis Motor Speedway noted that this year marked the 30th anniversary of Dale Earnhardt's 1995 victory at the track, Boles then highlighted Tony Stewart's win here in 2005 and Kyle Busch's victory in 2015 at the Brickyard. 'So the people that win on the fives tend to be iconic people in our sport,' Boles said to the drivers. 'Hopefully, you are already right on your way to being iconic or at the beginning of that. And you look back at the Brickyard 400 … and think it started right here.' Boles' message resonated with a driver. The one who bear hugged him after a 420-mile Sunday drive — in a race extended by two overtimes. 'I heard all that you said in the drivers meeting,' Bubba Wallace told Boles after Wallace scored his third career Cup victory and snapped a 100-race winless streak. 'I thought I'm going to be the guy that wins and makes this an iconic event.' A different viewpoint When Denny Hamlin and Michael Jordan hired Wallace to be the team's first driver ahead the 2021 season, Hamlin said Sunday that 'I believed in his capability, not necessarily the results that (he'd) shown, but I understood his potential.' Unlocking that potential was another thing. 'It was kind of a time where we were wrestling like, 'Man do I want it worse than him or not,'' Hamlin said of Wallace. 'I can't make him want it. … That's gong to have to come from within.' Nate Ryan, Hamlin saw Wallace start to show that increased drive the next year when Kurt Busch joined the team and again when Tyler Reddick came to 23XI Racing in 2023 — teammates providing motivation. Even so, Wallace didn't win. His last Cup victory came in 2022. 'We want to win and we put a lot of resources into doing that,' Hamlin said. 'So he's felt pressure. I think he's felt the pressure not only from me but Michael and everyone.' Although Wallace missed the playoffs last year for the third time in four seasons at 23XI Racing, Hamlin said he saw a change in the driver. 'His valleys weren't as low,' Hamlin said. 'It seemed like on the bad days, he was able to compartmentalize that and then think about the positives vs. everything sucks all the time. 'That's a tough way to live. We're in a business that if you can win 5% of the time you're a Hall of Famer. You're going to lose. This is a losing business. You have to find happiness in some other way than actually winning.' The change happened around the time Wallace became a father. 'Putting family first, that's all that matters,' Wallace said. 'Makes things easier. It gives you something to kind of focus onto.' A new voice With the pressure to succeed, Wallace faced another challenge this season. The team hired Charles Denike, who had no Cup experience, to be Wallace's crew chief. From the beginning, Hamlin touted Denike, a former military officer as a game-changer for Wallace. Wallace started the season strong. Winning seemed likely. But then it didn't come. Even after being among the leaders in stage points early in the season, Wallace found himself in the same place he has been in past summers — at or near the playoff cutline late in the regular season. Entering Sunday's race at Indianapolis, Wallace held the final playoff spot by 16 points on Ryan Preece. Adding to the pressure was the weather that changed the weekend schedule for teams. Rain canceled Friday's 50-minute practice, so NASCAR gave teams a 25-minute session Saturday. Even a 2.5-mile track can be crowded with traffic and not give teams a good read on their qualifying setup. With track position key, qualifying carries a heightened importance. But Wallace told Denike before qualifying: 'I don't completely know what I have in the car.' 'This is superstar qualifying,' Denike told Wallace. 'This is what we show up to do.' Wallace qualified second. He would be a contender in Sunday's race. Quieting the doubts Wallace was strong all race. He had the best average running position (4.93) of any driver Sunday and led 30 laps. Denike's strategy kept Wallace toward the front and gave him a shot to win. That forced others to react. When the third stage began 55 laps from the scheduled end, leader Kyle Larson was told not to save fuel. Crew chief Cliff Daniels wanted Larson to build a gap between he and Wallace, who was running sixth after the restart but had had pitted later than Larson and many others ahead. That meant Wallace needed less time for his final pit stop because he didn't require as much fuel as others. Wallace moved to the lead at Lap 143 as others pitted in what became a 168-lap race after the two overtimes. Although he led, thoughts of losing struck him. Why would he think that? 'I wish I had the answer to that,' Wallace said. 'I think that's my biggest downfall. We're all human, and we're all super hard on ourselves.' He found a way to counter those negative thoughts. 'I'm like, (expletive) right, we can do this,' Wallace said. 'It was kind of like the angel and devil on your shoulder. It wasn't all negative. But to even have that thought, it's like, 'Man, come on, focus.'' Dueling a champion Wallace led when rain in Turn 1 stopped the race four laps from the scheduled distance. Most of the track didn't get wet but Turn 1 had enough rain it took NASCAR stopped the race fro 18 minutes to dry that part of the speedway. When the race resumed, Wallace had Larson aligned next to him on the front row. Wallace and Larson ran side by side into Turn 1 on the restart before Wallace pulled ahead at the exit of Turn 2. 'He was first gear on both (of the overtime restarts),' Larson said, 'but the first one, he was just a little bit faster paced for the restart zone. I stayed second gear and he got a launch and I was able to just kind of barely hang on his right rear quarter and then drag him back and kind of pull my momentum.' But it wasn't enough to get by Wallace. A crash on the backstretch gave Larson another chance with a second overtime restart. Wallace had to outduel Larson — who won this race last year — on another restart to have a chance to win. On the second restart, Wallace took the lead easily by Turn 2 on Larson. The difference was a tactical change Wallace made on his restart that Larson could not counter. 'He brought the pace down so slow I had to be in first gear as well (as Wallace) and just kind of launched with him,' Larson said. 'So I had no momentum that time.' As Wallace race to the finish line, there were no negative thoughts. He credits reading 'The Daily Stoic,' a book that states is designed to help make people happier, along with better parents and professionals. 'It just kind of got me in the philosophical mindset today, trying to understand things from a different perspective,' Wallace said. 'Walking out of the motorhome, I felt different. Walking into the drivers meeting and finding a seat by myself, pulling up my phone and looking at my race notes of what to do, what to expect. Doug (Boles) has been a huge supporter of mine, and I appreciate that. 'So when he was speaking, he mentioned a caveat (about the victories by Earnhardt, Stewart and Busch at this track), and I thought it was interesting. He said, This could be the start of becoming a legend. … I don't think I'm a legend by any means. I've got a lot of work to do, but it all starts with days like today.' Hear from Kyle Larson, Ryan Preece, Alex Bowman, Ty Gibbs, Denny Hamlin and Bubba Wallace following the NASCAR Cup Series race at Indianapolis.
