Groovy Hollow Recap
This past race weekend was the most chaotic this season. But, it’s still not time to shut the book on NASCAR’s last road course race of the regular season. So, who were the biggest losers from NASCAR’s weekend at Watkins Glen International?
We have grown very well accustomed to Kyle Larson pulling double and even triple duty during a NASCAR race weekend. Usually, these are in conjunction with Hendrick’s No. 17 Xfinity Series entry or Spire Motorsports Truck Series program, while making a Sprint Car start in the High Limit Series at a nearby dirt track. This weekend, however, Larson pulled double duty, 949 miles away from Cup Series action in New York.
This was Larson’s most miserable double-duty effort this season. Saturday night at the 2025 Knoxville Nationals, after winning on Thursday night, Larson didn’t seem to have much for his competition in the A-Main, ultimately falling short of a fourth win, third in a row, at Knoxville after losing a right rear tire. On Sunday, after this poor finish, Larson started 26th and finished 29th after brake issues saw him head to the garage just seven laps into the race.
This is not really on him, but hey, Kyle, you got the Xfinity Fastest Lap bonus point for your thousands of miles of travel.
The NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series race at the Glen this past weekend saw a few cautions. In fact, the race went from a scheduled distance of 72 laps to 81 and, according to Racing Reference, ran 32.1% of laps under yellow. Despite the chaos, Corey Heim (surprise, surprise) led a majority of laps and took home yet another win. Of course, Heim’s legacy season wasn’t the talk of the town post-race, with fans locked in on the cautions and laughing at the Truck Series.
Look, the Truck Series has had a bad reputation for major, well, let’s just say repetitive crashes in the past, but this season has been rather mild. Now, no one’s saying Friday wasn’t tough; the phrase ‘All that for a Corey Heim win’ comes to mind, but these drivers are young and learning—okay, most of them are young and learning. All this to say things could be a lot worse. At least there wasn’t a multi-car pile-up and extended red flag. Nevertheless, Friday’s race did NOT do a lot to help the Truck Series’ reputation.
Double entry for this one, but it’s been that kind of week.
I’m sure that Jim France, Steve O’Donnell, and anyone else at NASCAR were happy to move on from Iowa’s no-passing, slow pace and repeat winner. Good thing we were going road course racing this weekend. Boy, Sunday was tough… the Glen used to be a winding road of chaos and speed. It’s where Ambrose and Keselowski went head to head, Said Heads cheered on Boris, and Montoya and Harvick fought (kinda, most of us are forgetting how anti-climactic that whole thing was).
What makes the fall of road course racing and short racing in NASCAR even worse is the fact that we get to see what we are missing out on every Saturday. The Xfinity series race was far from perfect, but man, at the end of the day, it was Watkins Glen being Watkins Glen, and no amount of replays from last year’s finish is going to wipe the awful taste this past weekend (and Iowa the week before) left in the mouths of an already fed-up fanbase.
So, where do we begin? Do we go back to Indianapolis, or earlier this weekend, when Hill told Dustin Albino of NASCAR.com that what happened at IMS “was fully unintentional.” Either way, Hill, who has a track record of aggression on road courses, was going to be under the world’s largest microscope this weekend.
All seemed fine late into the race, minus a restart run-in with the 88 on lap 69, the No. 21 was running upfront, in need of as many points as possible, as Hill’s suspension stripped the team of all current and future Playoff Points. But, as we all know well, this did not last, as Hill, a magnet for such incidents, found himself the focus of backlash after, technically, causing a major red flag by, once again, technically, wrecking Michael McDowell.
Whether Hill meant to do this or not, fan disdain for the No. 21 continues to grow while his reputation continues to sink. We will give him props for doing an impromptu interview during the red flag with the CW, facing any hard questions head-on, but it’s a long road ahead for one of the series’ most winning drivers, one that he needs to avoid other drivers on.
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