NASCAR finishes its opening Florida leg today.
Where It Is:
Homestead-Miami is a 1.5-mile oval. It’s not the worst track, but it isn’t the most exciting, with 1.5-milers generally not offering as much intrigue as superspeedways, road courses, and a few of the short tracks. Still could be fun, though.
When It Is:
Green flag at 3:48 PM EST.
How to Watch:
FOX
Who to Watch:
It’s pretty open. Denny Hamlin (+500) is the favorite, narrowly followed by Chase Elliott (+550). Kevin Harvick (+700) and Martin Truex Jr. (+750) are up there too, as is Kyle Larson (+800). Overall, my impression is that 1.5-milers are fairly vanilla, so there aren’t guys who are great at 1.5-mile tracks like there are strong superspeedway racers, road course experts, or dudes who’ve figured out Bristol and Martinsville. I could be wrong about that, though.
How NASCAR Should Script It:
Can’t stay too gimmicky, especially as we get into the meat of the season. Aim for some good restarts, but set it up for Hamlin or Harvick to get the W. Need some power players to reemerge.
Trucks, Xfinity:
No trucks this weekend, but the Xfinity race was reportedly a good one. Noah Gragson was comfortably in the lead, but David Starr—who was lapped—lost a tire and slid directly into Gragson’s path. After the collision, Myatt Snider (who drives for RCR and is in his first fulltime Xfinity season) won on the second overtime restart. Also, I saw a rumor Myatt is pronounced “Matt,” but I found nothing to back that up. (Clearly didn’t watch, and couldn’t even find a clip of the finish on Twitter, and I looked for like ten minutes—what the hell did Fox and the Xfinity series do?)
