The man is rocking. Four wins in twelve races. Only three finishes outside the top ten all year. Constant contention. Kevin Harvick is on a tear, and while Denny Hamlin’s been hanging right there with him, there aren’t a whole lot of others right now who are consistently competing with that veteran pair. Chase Elliott and the Penske Fords (Joey Logano, Brad Keselowski, Ryan Blaney) have been the next tier, but they’ve got catching up to do.
As the race wound down, it was looking like it would be Hamlin extending his wins lead (and since wins help drivers start the playoffs with more points than their competitors, his projected playoff lead as well). But then, this happened:
The wreck, inside of ten laps to go, was the result of a blown tire, something that happened all day.
It happened to Ryan Newman:
It happened to Erik Jones:
It happened to William Byron:
That, combined with a shortage of competitive racing up front, has some Twitter folks hating on the Brickyard. And while I share the concern that sending drivers into the wall that hard is a bad idea, it seems like the better solution might be making the wall a little extra-soft. The Brickyard is a cool name for the track, and drivers seem to care about this race, and cars on fire make for great television, and if you’re going to introduce uncertainty, having tires randomly shred themselves is one way to do it. Just saying.
The race was more than blown tires, though. Matt Kenseth finished in second, showing he’s one to keep an eye on in the playoff pursuit even though he’s 28th in the standings right now, having come out of retirement part-way through the season when Kyle Larson got himself kicked out of the 42 car. Aric Almirola grabbed another top five finish, his fifth straight, to stay atop the points ladder among winless drivers. Bubba Wallace grabbed another top ten. And though there were few dramatic lead exchanges in green flag racing, we did get this from Harvick:
While this pass was happening, Blaney was spinning out and hitting the wall himself, finishing off a bad day for the Blaney team. Early in the race, we got a rare pit road pileup, with one of Blaney’s tire changer’s legs smashed between two cars at one point:
Thankfully, the crew member is going to be alright, but a wild moment, to be sure, and just minutes after Kyle Busch seemed to either answer the question of whether he’s upset with Blaney from Pocono or pretend to answer the question to get in Blaney’s head:
All in all, lot going on. Glad everyone’s ok. Kevin Harvick and Denny Hamlin are dominating. Lot of season left.
