Championship Weekend

Cup Series:

It should be no shock that Kyle Larson took home the Bill France Cup. He dominated the season: 10 race wins, well over 2,000 laps led and wins on every style of track. Yet, I am still a bit shocked. He rarely had the speed on Sunday and that was a common theme at the 750hp tracks this season. However, with all the chips on the table, his pit crew stepped up and he drove the hell out of that 5 car for the last run. He earned the title.

Throughout the race it looked like a Chase Elliott repeat. He seemed to have the speed to get away and hold on through a run. Sure Larson had the initial speed, but he routinely seemed to fade. Hamlin and Truex had long run speed but never had enough time to catch Chase. Hell, even for the race win at times it looked like Blaney or Harvick may even win the race and leave the title to whomever finished second. And then the last stage through some chaos into the race. Truex was on the lucky end of a pit stop and placed him in the lead. He was able to launch off the restart and it looked like it would be his race and championship to lose - even with Denny Hamlin charging to make things interesting towards the end. Somehow, someway a back-marker car had issues and a late-race caution was about to change the run to the finish. It was money stop time for the four championship teams. As the case has been most of the year the 5 team answered the call and, thanks to Larson's impressive qualifying run and pole winning pit selection, the 5 car went to the lead. At that time, I was confident it would be Larson as the champion. He rarely made mistakes on track this year, he had short-run speed, and everything was coming together for the most dominant season we have seen it at least 14 years. Sure enough, Larson drove away and held off MTJ to snag the win and the championship. Commence celebration (aka Shotgunning Katelyn Larson) for Kyle and the 5 team from HMS.

Xfinity & Truck:

These races could not have gone any more differently than I predicated. I was certain the Truck race would be pure entertaining insanity as that series has been this year. Yet, it was the most mellow Truck race I have seen in a long, long time. Aside from the massive disappointment for JHN and the KBM 4 truck, there is nothing that stuck out from the race. I do hate that Chandler Smith's win was overshadowed, but such things happen on championship weekend. Major props and congratulations to Ben Rhodes and the ThorSport folks for winning the title. And thank you Ben for giving us one hell of a memorable post-race celebration and press conference.

As for the Xfinity Series, even though I was pulling for Gragson (and was confident he could do it coming off a big win in Martinsville), it appeared Cindric would run away with the race and title as Noah and Allmendinger suffered not so great races and Hemric never quite had the umph to get to the lead. But of course there was caution after caution and an overtime run to the flag to end the race. I'll admit. I was 100% certain either something dumb was going to happen to prevent Hemric from winning or Cindric would (as he had been) drive away on the restart and take the win to go back-to-back. But lo and behold Daniel Hemric stepped up and earned the win. Sure, many will say this negates the format and just gives TV what they want. Well, for one, NASCAR would not exist (at least as it is) without TV. So be thankful. Two, who cares? Everyone had to race by the same rules and Hemric deserved it and earned it; not to mention he was consistently near the top all season. Kudos to Daniel and the 18 JGR team for their title!

Photo: Rick Scuteri, AP