Bearden Breakdown: AAA Texas 500

By Aaron Bearden, Motorsports Editor

Post-race review and analysis from the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series race at Texas Motor Speedway. 

Who Won? 

Kevin Harvick. He dominated the day in Texas.

Who Claimed the Stages?

Kevin Harvick. By a comfortable margin.

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Familiar faces 

The Big Three’s march toward the Championship 4 continued on in Texas – albeit with controversy along the way.

Kevin Harvick returned to victory lane with the second win of the playoffs for the Big Three. The 2014 champion rarely left the race in doubt, dominating the event and quickly overcoming challengers.

“It was a big day for all of us,” Harvick said. “For me on the restarts and to win the race on the restart late at the end. The guys on pit road had a solid day and gained spots on pit road and Rodney made great calls. All around, just a great day of execution.”

Harvick’s victory continued trends of success both at Texas and in 2018. The veteran brought home his eighth win of 2018, and led more than 75 laps for the fourth time in his last eight starts in the Lone Star State – an impressive feat given that he’d led no more than two laps in any of his 24 starts prior to the stretch.

The win also issued a statement that Harvick’s still arguably the most difficult driver to beat for the championship – a trend that’s persisted throughout the elimination playoff era. The veteran will compete in the Championship 4 for the fourth time in five seasons of the format at Homestead-Miami Speedway.

It’s an impressive feat, and one Harvick doesn’t take for granted.

“Jimmie Johnson hasn’t won a race this year, and isn’t king of the mountain,” he said. “When that type of stuff happens, you see scenarios like that, you have to be real with yourself to say that these are scenarios that you better enjoy because they probably won’t last forever.

“Right now we’ve been fortunate to have been in this position for the last five years.  We’ve capitalized on a lot of race wins, a championship, put ourselves in position to win a few other championships.  Just didn’t all work out. You need to capitalize on every moment, on every fast car, on every chance you have to win a championship because at some point there’s going to be some tougher times in there.”

Attempting to join Harvick as a four-time playoff finalist is regular season champion Kyle Busch.

The Joe Gibbs Racing veteran had enjoyed a consistent drive through the playoffs entering Texas, but he was threatened early in the Lone Star State. A speeding penalty paired with a loose wheel under green dropped the Nevadan two laps down and to the cutoff spot early on.

Busch battled back to the lead lap in the closing moments, but could only salvage 17th at the end of a difficult 500 miles.

“We had a fast car,” crew chief Adam Stevens said. “You speed on pit road, you go to the back and you have a loose wheel under green then lose a couple laps and we just couldn’t get back on the lead lap. Obviously at the very end we did, but it didn’t matter at that point with only a green-white-checkered to finish.”

Martin Truex Jr. encountered issues of his own in his pursuit of a third Championship 4 trip. The defending Cup champion started at the tail, suffered a loose wheel and spent the majority of the race slicing his way through the field on the aero-dependent oval.

In the end the veteran managed a ninth-place run – far removed from his standard top-fives, but a result Truex was willing to accept given the tribulation his No. 78 team overcame to get there.

“I’m telling you, God is testing us,” Truex said. “There’s no question. Had to start at the back, got to the front, hung around there for a while and then had a loose wheel there again. Just a tough day.

“Overall, a good day. Luckily we were able to get up front and get some stage points in the first two stages and then we had trouble, but we had it at least in time to recover.”

While neither driver recovered completely, both Busch and Truex’s salvaged runs left them in great position heading into the Round of 8 finale at ISM Raceway. The duo sit 28 and 25 points above the cutoff line, respectively, meaning they’ll likely advance if they can tally stage points and finish decent in the Arizona desert.

Martinsville Speedway winner Joey Logano has already secured his bid for the championship race to join the current trio of title contenders, meaning the four drivers with the most appearances in the modern winner-take-all finale are all positioned strongly to qualify for the event once more.

All told, the four drivers currently on the right side of the cutoff line have combined for 10 of the 16 championship-eligible positions during the first four years of the elimination-style playoff. That mark is already guaranteed to go up to 12 of 20 in two weeks, and the odds are high that it’ll spike to 14 of 20 if nothing unexpected happens in Phoenix.

The four drivers chasing them — all which will likely need a win to advance — have yet to make a Championship 4 appearance.

Chase Elliott came close last season, losing out on their opportunity at the end of Phoenix. Kurt Busch was the first champion of NASCAR’s debut playoff format in 2004, but has finished no better than seventh in the elimination playoff era. Clint Bowyer nearly won the title in 2012, but spent most of the modern playoff era toiling away with underfunded teams before getting the Stewart-Haas Racing opportunity at the start of 2017. Aric Almirola is in his first season with a championship-caliber team.

The quartet have all won races and enjoyed solid years, but without luck their hopes for a Championship 4 appearance will hinge on their ability to claim a dramatic victory in Phoenix.

Otherwise the odds are high the Logano and the Big Three will maintain the status quo and contend for a championship once more.

Off to a bad start

Jimmie Johnson and crew chief Chad Knaus have enjoyed a long, successful pairing at NASCAR’s top level. They’re among the greatest driver-crew chief combinations of all-time, with seven championships and dozens of wins in their 17 years together in Cup. But their final year has been a winless slog, leaving the pair in search of a final triumph and feel-good moment to cap off their time together.

Their chance to score that victory at Texas was largely over before it began. And here’s the kicker – it wasn’t even their fault. Not entirely, anyway.

Johnson was forced to start from the tail-end of the field on Sunday when his No. 48 Chevrolet failed pre-race inspection two times. The team was informed of the decision shortly before the race, and it went green before they had a chance to challenge the ruling.

Normally that wouldn’t have been an issue, but there was a problem with NASCAR’s ruling. A car had to fail pre-race inspection three times to justify losing their starting position, not twice.

NASCAR had blown a call, and the No. 48 Hendrick Motorsports team paid the price.

“It’s unacceptable on our part,” NASCAR executive vice president and chief racing development officer Steve O’Donnell said in a post-race availability. “Communication breakdown that happened right before the start of the race between kind of our inspection area on the ground and race control where I think there was an assumption that there was a third failure.

“There wasn’t. There was only two. In that case the (No.) 48 shouldn’t have started in the back.”

The mistake pushed Johnson to the tail for the start of the race — though he had already qualified 23rd — and the Californian never truly rose into contention. He spun shortly before Lap 100, causing damage for teammate William Byron.

Johnson rebounded from the early issues to bounce back unto the front half of the field, but managed no better than 15th at race’s end.

“There is no format for the teams to communicate to the tower,” Johnson said of his penalty. “So, whatever the tower says is the way it is. This is just one of a few calls that have been wrong due to that situation.

“I don’t know how they do it. Here we have a minute and a half under caution, but at Bristol you’ve got 30 seconds. I don’t think it’s a perfect environment for them to get it right all the time. Stuff happens.”

Frustration aside, Johnson didn’t place all of the blame for his poor run on NASCAR.

“The rear we didn’t think we was right and it turned out it wasn’t that way, but we lost track position multiple times today for different reasons,” he said. “So, just a frustrating day and we will go to Phoenix.”

Johnson will get two more opportunities to win with Knaus before the signal caller moves over to Byron’s No. 24 team. In the meantime, NASCAR hopes to establish procedures to prevent a similar mistake from occurring in the future.

“At this point what we can do is put processes in place to fix that so it never happens again,” O’Donnell said. “It’s disappointing.  It’s not something you can fix during the race unfortunately.  All we can do is own up to it and fix it.” 

Looking for a fix

Sunday’s race in Texas may not have been the worst of the year, but many felt the 500-mile event to be far from conducive to good racing. The most vocal criticism came from sixth-place finisher Chase Elliott, who pulled no punches in sharing his frustration after being asked about the difficulty passing.

“I don’t know what genius decided to pave this place or take the banking out of one and two,” he said. “Not a good move for the entertainment factor, in my opinion.”

The 1.5-mile Texas Motor Speedway oval underwent a complete repave and restructuring in 2017, dropping four degrees off the banking in Turns 1 and 2 while adding 20 feet of width to expand the section to 80 feet. An improved drainage system was also added in an attempt to avoid future weeper issues like the ones that forced the track’s 2016 IndyCar race to be postponed for two months.

Like most repaves, the racing surface has since proven difficult to compete on. The track had just one lane for the majority of 2018’s two NASCAR weekends, and clean air often proved more valuable than fresh tires.

The tight passing lanes led to late issues between playoff contenders Logano and Almirola in a battle for position on Sunday, with Almirola becoming frustrated after Logano defended the spot aggressively.

“The (No.) 22 just went down in turn three and put it right on my door and about wrecked us both,” Almirola said. “I am not sure. I will have to talk to him.

“He just continues to make things harder on himself. If that is the way he wants to race me when he is already locked into Homestead and we are out here fighting for our lives, that is fine. When Homestead comes around if I am not in, he will know it.”

Logano defended his decision, unsure of what he’d done to cause Almirola’s ire.

“I don’t know what is going on,” he said. “We were still racing at the end of the race and got hit in the left rear in turn three.

“There is no outside lane in three and four. The tire that Goodyear brought here doesn’t allow a second lane to really work so I was just trying to hang strong up there. It is just racing.”

Truex also complained of passing struggles during his various marches through the field, noting the difficulty of overtaking lapped traffic.

“You would lap the same guys and they would run – they don’t understand how hard it is to drive 20 mph faster than them on their left side getting in the corner,” he said. “It gets you loose and it’s a handful. It was hard, this track is tough and it was really, really hard to pass, but we passed a lot of cars so it’s possible.”

Given the passing difficulties, the battle for the race win came down to restarts and clean air. Harvick cleared Ryan Blaney for the lead from the high lane on the final restart and drove off to a dominant win. Blaney had beaten Harvick on the outside lane in the previous restart, leading for several laps as Harvick methodically worked to get under him.

In a two-lap sprint Harvick couldn’t afford to give up the lead again, so he opted to swap restart lanes and power past Blaney for a relatively easy march to victory.

“That last restart I knew I needed to pick the top,” Harvick said. “I wanted to be on the bottom to be safe because the top got such a good side-draft getting into one and the outside groove got rubbered up. I thought if I could keep him from finishing the corner I could drive back by him. It all worked out.”

The sluggishness of Sunday’s race, exacerbated by its 500-mile length, left many pondering what improvements could be made. Many suggested schedule changes or a shorter race length to up the aggression and limit monotony.

NASCAR’s minor tours provided cause for optimism. Friday’s Truck Series race came down to the closing laps, and Saturday’s Xfinity event had a last-lap pass.

It was after those runs that NASCAR believe they may already have prepared a solution.

“I think we’d all agree on the race entertainment quality between Friday, Saturday and Sunday, there’s a difference,” O’Donnell said. “I think we also know we have a new rules package in place next year that again, some of you have not been too positive about.  But there’s a reason we’ve gone to that.

“I think this would be one of the reasons, is the speeds we’re running at this track, the ability where we think to make those changes.  That’s why we put that in place for next year.”

O’Donnell could be correct, but Joe Gibbs Racing’s Denny Hamlin believes it’ll take much more than a rules package shift to improve the racing in No Limits, Texas.

It’s naïve to think the 19 package will fix the one lane racing we saw today. It is a tire/track problem. Tire just flat out do not lay rubber anymore. I’m hoping that when a completely new car is designed we design it around a tire/wheel combination that is correct.

— Denny Hamlin (@dennyhamlin) November 5, 2018

Other Notes

• Kevin Harvick added a new layer to the recent trend of race winners making special memories for fans, inviting Joel Cram III on-track for a selfie he’ll never forget. It turns out the young fan made a lot of appearances during his Texas trip.
• Erik Jones continued his recent stretch of impressive runs with a fourth-place result in Texas. The sophomore has finished fourth in three of his past five races, a stretch that would have placed him in the Round of 8 had he not been eliminated in the opening round of the playoffs.
• Is the No. 42 Chip Ganassi Racing team heading in the right direction? Kyle Larson finished fifth on Sunday, securing his fifth top-five in the past 11 races. He’d managed only six in the 23 races beforehand.
• It would have taken nothing short of a miracle for Austin Dillon and Richard Childress Racing to contend for a championship after the regular season they had, but give the team credit for making minor improvements. Dillon tallied his third top-10 of the playoffs on Sunday, leaving him one away from tying the mark of four he enjoyed during the 26-race regular season.