Going Forward Following Daytona

The Daytona 150s were some of the best racing of Speedweeks and will be among the most competitive events of the season


The Winston Cup season of 2020 is now underway with the Daytona 500 and going forward the Cup tour has something to look back on with Speedweeks.   Some quick takes on the race where dreams can be made but where they also go to die -


Chevrolet's ballyhooed new car ultimately didn't deliver.    The 150s showed promise for the Chevrolet with its redesigned front, and Ryan Preece in Brad Daugherty's 47 led 24 total laps - but almost none of them happened after the race was postponed with twenty laps in to Monday afternoon.  Chase Elliott led 23 laps but he's a driver who can never advance beyond doing less with more, and he didn't deliver when it mattered either in his 150 or the 500; in fact Hendrick Motorsports as a group personifies the continued weakness of the Chevrolet camp as William Byron won his 150 but crashed in the 500, Alex Bowman qualified on the front row and led in his 150 but faded and was mostly MIA in the 500 (finishing 24th), and Jimmie Johnson led three laps and contended for a long time but ended the 500 in 35th. 

Only two Chevrolets finished in the top ten and neither got there because they were all that good or even decent at all - Brendan Gaughn, whose racing career never really recovered from collapsing at the end of the 2003 Truck season, and Kyle Larson, like Elliott a less-with-more underachiever whose commitment to Winston Cup now can be seriously questioned.   The rest of the Chevy fleet didn't even do that well - RCR saw Austin Dillon run decently all week but with only 12th to show for it, Bubba Wallace finished an eye-opening fifth in his 150 but his car never really sucked up in the draft or pushed anyone, RCR's new rookie Tyler Reddick didn't look like an improvement in the 8 over his predecessor, and Stenhouse's JTG-Daugherty teammate Ryan Preece looks like a drafting failure.



Analytics racing doesn't work.    The Busch Clash was an "analytics race," to quote Kurt Busch, and the first segment of the 500 looked like one as well, one that left everyone from drivers to media confused as to the purpose.   The Toyotas forfeited the first segment before finally going for the lead, as Denny Hamlin and Kyle Busch combined to lead 93 laps.   In the end the analytics approach accomplished nothing.



Toyota's strength in lack of numbers isn't succeeding because it's a good strategy.   Toyota deliberately backs only one organization - Joe Gibbs, with its satellite deal with Bob Leavine's team and Christopher Bell.  There were thus five Toyotas in the 500 and only one finished higher than 18th.  The notion that Toyota is succeeding because it limits its backing to one organization is seriously debatable; it seems absurd that Toyota would struggle if it backed two or three organizations, notably when JGR and the Barney Visser team were nose to nose for championships in the 2016-18 period, combining to win 45 races.  If anything there truly is strength in numbers.



Joey Logano is Ernie Irvan.   The Busch Clash began Joey Logano's roller coaster week.   He swerved into Kyle Busch and wiped out a number of cars, and one of them was teammate Brad Keselowski, who was angry enough to lash out afterward.   Logano then won his 150 in a terrific sidedraft fight, then took out a bunch of cars in the final laps of the 500 before getting wrecked himself a few laps later.   It's always what he's been since the infamous January 2009 NASCAR Toyota All-Star Shootout at Irwindale Speedway. 

An interesting side note; since joining Penske Logano and Keselowski have each won 21 races.




So the Winston Cup tour heads to Las Vegas, most of the field hoping something better develops of it.