After a Charlotte racing weekend that was both tragic and hopeful, NASCAR moves on this week to the reality of a long season.
And what a new reality it is.
The regular season is half over—13 races down, 13 to go. And the point standings look quite different from how preseason predictions might have envisioned them.
Tyler Reddick is far out front—122 points ahead of second-place Denny Hamlin. Reddick has five wins. Chase Elliott, the only other driver with more than one win, has two.
The most surprising resident of the points top five is Ty Gibbs, in fourth place with a career-first race victory.
At a track drenched with both emotion and rain, Daniel Suarez won Sunday night and made the biggest move in the point standings, gaining four spots to 10th and suddenly looking relatively safe in the race for the 16 Chase spots.
There will be those who will criticize the Suarez win as not entirely legitimate because of the rain-shortened nature of the Coca-Cola 600 (it became the Coca-Cola 559), but the record books give wet wins the same stature as others, so there is no traction to that thinking. A win is a win is a win.
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Suarez ended the long and tough Charlotte weekend with a moment of magic, celebrating the departed Kyle Busch with a win built in his former team shop.
Elsewhere in the mid-season standings, it is worth noting that Carson Hocevar, Shane van Gisbergen, Bubba Wallace, and Brad Keselowski are in the top 16 (and thus qualifiers for the Chase if the regular season ended today), while Joey Logano and Ross Chastain, drivers most would expect to be top-16 residents, are not.
Ryan Preece holds down the 16th and final Chase spot despite losing 25 points because of a behavioral penalty.
Drivers with zero wins through 13 races include Christopher Bell, William Byron, Kyle Larson, Logano, and Chastain. Bell and Chastain have three stage wins but no actual wins.
The second half of the regular season is scheduled to begin Sunday night with the Cracker Barrel 400 at Nashville Superspeedway in the Music City far suburb of Lebanon. All three NASCAR national series are scheduled there.
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For those sitting uncomfortably below the Chase cutoff line, it will be the first of a diminishing list of races offering the chance to make up deficits. Austin Cindric is 15 points out of the Chase. Logano is minus 29, A.J. Allmendinger minus 49, and Michael McDowell minus 55.
The sadness tied to Kyle Busch’s sudden departure will carry through the rest of the season. The tributes to his life at Charlotte were planned well and exceptionally emotional. Few expected all members of his family to appear at the track before the race, and their presence resulted in a dramatic and tear-filled scene that will be etched in the memory of all who were there.
Now it’s on to Nashville.
Mike Hembree has covered auto racing for numerous media outlets, including USA Today, NASCAR Scene, NBC Sports, The Greenville News and the SPEED Channel. He has been roaming garage areas and pit roads for decades (although the persistent rumor that he covered the first Indianapolis 500 is not true). Winner of numerous motorsports and other media awards, he also has covered virtually every other major sport. He lives near Gaffney, South Carolina and can be convinced to attend Bruce Springsteen concerts if you have tickets.