Texas Motor Speedway is unique among 1.5-mile intermediate tracks in the sheer number of cautions that the track brings out. On Wednesday I wrote about the history of chaos in the Cup Series at Texas. Two of the past three years have seen 14 natural cautions (plus two stage cautions). The 2023 race “only” had nine natural cautions. This compared to an average of just three to four cautions at other intermediate tracks.
We have already seen this twice this weekend in the Truck and Xfinity races. The Truck race had 11 cautions over 174 laps. The Xfinity Series followed this up with another 11 cautions over 208 laps. Both races featured overtime finishes. In short, it was the sort of chaos we normally expect from a superspeedway event, not a 1.5-mile intermediate track. I expect to see more of the same today.
That said, despite chaos, I expect track position to be critical. In practice yesterday passing was extremely difficult. Joey Logano complained that he couldn’t pass at all. Ryan Blaney was significantly faster than cars ahead of him, but still needed almost 10 laps to make a pass.
Based on this I am looking for head to head matchups where one driver is starting well ahead of the other. Which brings me too…
Despite his complaints about being unable to pass, Joey Logano showed some decent long run speed in practice yesterday. His five lap average was nothing to write home about, at 28.978 seconds per lap. His 20 lap average though was eighth best among the 22 drivers who made such a run. Logano’s 20-lap average was also just .2 seconds slower per lap than his 5 lap average, while 20 lap leader Austin Cindric had lost almost .3 seconds between his 5 and 20 lap averages.
Unfortunately for Logano, his Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Year (in which he has only one Top 10 finish) continued in qualifying. Going out sixth Logano was unable to make any real speed. As such he will line up in 27th later this afternoon when the race goes green. This puts him behind all of the other Penske/Wood Brother’s cars. Most critically, it puts him 20 spots behind Josh Berry, who will line up 7th.
Berry has had an up and down year on intermediates himself. He got his first career Cup Series win at Last Vegas in March. He then qualified second at Homestead, but got spun on pit road while running inside the Top 10. Berry was never able to recover from this and ultimately finished 17th. At Darlington he was again running inside the Top 10 before an incident with Tyler Reddick ended his day.
Despite poor finishes in two of the three intermediate races, as noted, Berry was running well in both races at the time of his incidents. When comparing the two drivers at the three intermediate races in 2025, they are neck and neck. Logano has a slight edge on Berry in laps run inside the Top 10. Logano has completed 53% of his laps in the Top 10, to 49% for Berry. Berry has a slight edge in average running position at 12.15 to Logano’s 12.31. The two drivers are also within .1mph of each other in incident adjusted speed, with Logano having the slight edge in that catagory. Ultimately, the two drivers are running about equally so far in 2025.
At Win The Race our 20,000 simulations have Berry winning this matchup over half the time. Given the starting positions of the two drivers and the overall performance on intermediates in 2025, I’m willing to accept the risk of chaos and back the driver who is starting ahead at plus money. I have one unit on this bet and would bet it down to even money.
