NASCAR Sprint-Cup Series
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CUP: Track Attack
‘New’ Kansas Speedway hosts sixth race in Chase today…
Mike Hembree  |  Posted October 21, 2012   Kansas City, KS
Kasey Kahne will start from the pole for the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series Hollywood Casino 400 at Kansas Speedway. (Photo: LAT Photographic)
After Saturday’s Kansas Lottery 300 Nationwide Series race at Kansas Speedway, track owners across the fruited plain might be putting down new asphalt on their speedways.

Saturday’s 300-miler was a crackerjack of a race, even though it ended as something of a fuel-mileage contest.

Ricky Stenhouse Jr. won by coming back from a two-lap deficit and being in the right place when several drivers, including leader Kyle Busch, ran out of fuel in the closing moments.

Beyond the drama attached to those proceedings, the 300 showcased some dynamic competition, particularly over the final segment as drivers battled for position while several also watched their fuel pressure gauges anxiously.

Perhaps more importantly for today’s Hollywood Casino 400 Sprint Cup feature, the newly repaved track seemed to offer enough racing room to provide spirited competition – if the driver challenging for position was willing to take a chance on the outside, or by nosing in on the inside.

Many were, and the passes often worked. Of course, the race also produced a record 12 caution flags, an indication that the surface can bite.

“It’s definitely still really, really treacherous,” said Busch, who will start fourth in today’s race. “You can be on the outside of a guy and a guy can try to pass you on the inside, and you can hold him tight and about wreck him.

“It’s just a one-lane race track. It will take a couple of years to spread out. We’ll see how tomorrow unfolds.”

Jack Roush, owner of the Ford Stenhouse drove to Saturday’s win, said he expects a better landscape today.

“I think the race track got better as rubber built up on it today,” Roush said. “I think it was better after the ARCA race (Friday night) than it was before. I think the second groove will open up, and it will be the kind of Kansas race we have been used to with a little more grip.”

If the track doesn’t cooperate and passing is difficult, the burden of the race will fall on those working pit road. Pit strategies and decisions on tire changes and fuel stops could be critical.

Those matters will be of particular importance to the drivers who enter the race, the sixth in the Chase, at or near the top of the championship standings.

Brad Keselowski enters the race in the lead, holder of a seven-point edge over Jimmie Johnson and a 15-point margin over Denny Hamlin.

Keselowski will start 25th today, while Johnson is seventh and Hamlin ninth on the grid.

Mike Hembree is NASCAR Editor for SPEED.com and has been covering motorsports for 30 years. He is a six-time winner of the National Motorsports Press Association Writer of the Year Award.
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