The NASCAR Cup and NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series reunite near the center of the United States for a spring showdown at Kansas Speedway this weekend. Two-time Cup champion Joey Logano has won three times at the 1.5-mile track, while Truck Series champion Zane Smith is looking to repeat his victory from last year.
Joey Logano: “It’s a track that takes everything to go fast. You have to have great downforce, you have to have great power – everything has to go together to run fast there. To me, it’s one of the truest judges of where you stack up in the field.”
Chris Buescher: “I’ve actually come to like Kansas quite a bit through the years. The track is wearing pretty aggressively and you get different options – we’ll be all the way up at the fence, and we’ll be down on the white lines. Any place like that, I’m starting to enjoy. It’s probably about at the top of my list as far as mile-and-a-halves now that we’ve lost what I’ll call the traditional Atlanta. I do enjoy going to Kansas now, and a lot of it just comes down to the character of the racetrack and the ability to move around.”
Ryan Blaney: “Gosh, it’s our first mile-and-a-half in a long time. I felt like we had a lot of work to do after Vegas, for sure, as a Blue Oval company. I thought we were a little bit behind where we needed to be, but that was super early in the year and we were still kind of learning this new nose we got. I think time off from those places has two sides to it: It’s good that you can spend time and really refine where we need to get better, work on it, but then you also want to test it on the track and you don’t know until you get there. But, I’m looking forward to it. It’s going to be a good test. Hopefully we’ve improved on the mile-and-a-half stuff and can apply it there.”
KEEP AN EYE ON KESELOWSKI
Brad Keselowski comes into this weekend’s NASCAR Cup Series race looking for his first win of the season, but Kansas Speedway could provide the proper medicine for a trip to Victory Lane. That’s because Kansas ranks as his fourth-best venue when it comes to average finish on tracks that currently make up the 2023 circuit. In 26 career starts at Kansas Speedway, Keselowski has a pair of wins, seven top-5 and 13 top-10 efforts for an average finishing position of 12.1 (same as Darlington). Only Loudon (10.0), Pocono (10.7), and Las Vegas (11.9) are better.
LOGANO GOING FOR FOURTH KANSAS VICTORY
Joey Logano will be looking for his fourth career win at Kansas Speedway this weekend, which would be a personal best. Logano currently has three career wins at five series tracks, including Kansas, Las Vegas Motor Speedway, Michigan International Speedway, Phoenix Raceway and Talladega Superspeedway. He won for the first time at Kansas in 2014, and then did it again one year later in a well-documented battle with Matt Kenseth that resulted in contact as the two entered turn one with five laps to go. That controversial finish marked Logano’s second straight playoff win and led to a sweep of the round as he took the checkered flag the following week at Talladega. His last Kansas win came in 2020 when he led the final 45 laps to beat Kevin Harvick across the finish line and clinch a spot in the Championship 4.
SMITH GOING FOR KANSAS REPEAT
Zane Smith, driver of the No. 38 F-150 for Front Row Motorsports, is the defending winner of this weekend’s NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series race. Smith posted his third win of the season in dominating fashion as he led 108-of-134 laps, including the final 39 after getting the lead from Corey Heim. Smith had to endure a restart after Dean Thompson brought out the caution for spin, but the 2022 series champion got the jump with eight laps to go and never looked back for what was his sixth career victory.
TOP OF THE CHARTS
Ford drivers continue to hold down the top three spots in the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series standings as Ty Majeski looks to extend his advantage at the top for a fourth straight race. Majeski has been on a roll of late, having finished fourth or better in each of the last four races and has only one finish outside the top 10 (11th at Atlanta) in seven starts. The ThorSport driver took the points lead after a fourth-place run at Texas Motor Speedway and has slowly increased that edge from three to its current margin of 26 over second-place Zane Smith. Ben Rhodes is third overall, trailing Majeski by 49 points.
