This weekend may not have delivered the most memorable Kansas moments; nonetheless, the track delivered another weekend worth talking about. But, if you missed all that action, here’s a look at what the NASCAR community took away from NASCAR’s first trip to Kansas this year.
Jumpscare or not, a flip was the least of any expectation that NASCAR fans had entering this weekend. But, nonetheless, just a few laps into Saturday’s NASCAR O’Reilly Auto Parts Series race at Kansas, Carson Kvapil went up and over on the backstretch at Kansas.
While it was a flip, a wreck in the early portions of the OAP Series race is usually not the highlight of the race weekend, but this weekend was far from one that will be remembered for the on-track action from Sunday.
Last week, Denny Hamlin made some rather tame comments about Kyle Busch on his podcast. While Busch’s former teammate was brutally honest on the fall off of both the No. 8 team and Busch as a whole, he didn’t exactly tread new ground.
Still, as the fans say, Kyle Busch did a Kyle Busch, meaning he said something out of frustration during an interview that caused drama off track. Kyle’s performance didn’t do much to help his case, as the No. 8 finished the race running 35th, four laps down.
One of the biggest talks of this past week was Trackhouse Racing owner Justin Mark’s comments about the team being in a “rebuilding” year. While the team had major hopes ahead of this season, this appears to be the case, as road course ace Shane van Gisbergen has shown to be the only real strength on track for the team.
This weekend didn’t help their efforts, as all three Trackhouse cars failed to finish within the top 20. Furthermore, the team now has no drivers within the Chase cutoff line of 16th and above.
Say what you want about overtime, it does produce some noteworthy moments. But, this has come at the expense of some memorable wins, and, in Denny Hamlin’s case, he has lost out on several trips to victory lane had NASCAR’s late race caution rules not been in place.
With this weekend’s race, the most recent addition to his list, it might be easy to call foul on the part of NASCAR. Still, Denny’s title hopes are still in the mix, as he has more points than any driver through the last three races and still made the trip to Victory Lane with 23XI.
While Kansas is usually known for its incredible NASCAR Next Gen Car racing, this weekend was rather lackluster. For the most part, the conversation around this weekend is mostly about things off track and pre-existing storylines in Trackouse racing.
Now, this may be a trend with the spring race, as it felt similar to the one last season, but it does draw questions about NASCAR’s return to Chicagoland. As Kansas’ sister track, Chicagoland seemed like a perfect fit for a return, but if the racing shows to be similar to this past weekend, will it maintain such love from the NASCAR fanbase?
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