Five thoughts after Sunday’s NASCAR Cup Series playoff race at Homestead-Miami Speedway …
1. Taking Stock
Imagine if the NFL had a variety of field dimensions — and one type of layout produced far more entertaining and competitive games than the others. Now imagine if the NFL announced it would continue to hold the Super Bowl on one of the less-desirable fields, year after year, because the host city was nice.
That’s NASCAR and Phoenix Raceway, which next month will welcome the Cup Series championship race for the fifth straight year. It’s already been announced as the home of the 2025 championship, too.
And yet sitting right there is Homestead-Miami Speedway, the ideal NASCAR racetrack. Homestead was the host of NASCAR’s season finale from 2002-19, generating many memorable championship moments, and for the last three years has held a crucial Round 3 playoff spot. It’s a venue held dear to many hearts in the garage area because it offers the rare combination of pure racing plus a compelling show.
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Of course, here’s the part where you’re reminded NASCAR is removing Homestead from the playoffs and giving the track an irrelevant date next March.
In April, Homestead’s city council said it was putting together a bid to bring the title race back to South Florida. You would assume that includes all sorts of financial incentives, if not outright cash, to lure NASCAR back.
Here’s an idea instead: The bid consists of a single sheet of paper, and with the only text a YouTube link to Sunday’s race. No caption needed.
Some of you may be thinking: Wow, this guy says Homestead should host the championship race again. Bold take! That’s about as original as saying the Car of Tomorrow was ugly.
Forgive me, but it feels necessary to keep beating the drum until this mistake is rectified. What we saw Sunday at Homestead was racing perfection; it had everything anyone could ever want from a NASCAR playoff race, and it proved exactly why the track is worthy of hosting NASCAR’s biggest moments.
NASCAR has designed a Next Gen car that may get criticized at some types of circuits, but certainly not 1.5-mile tracks. Time after time, the Next Gen has shown it races better on intermediates than any other car in NASCAR history — and it’s not particularly close. NASCAR should do everything it can to take advantage of this unique situation and showcase the car’s strength to the highest degree.
If a 1.5-miler even has an average show these days, it feels like a letdown. And Sunday was certainly anything but average.
The final three laps at Homestead were led by three different drivers — incredible for a non-drafting track — each of whom needed a victory to clinch a Championship 4 berth. The winning driver, Tyler Reddick, was in third place when he took the white flag.
For a long stretch of Stage 3, all seven playoff drivers who were not locked into the championship were running in the top seven spots — and accounting for three distinct race strategies. Drivers had multiple lines on which to race and used them to create a track-record-breaking 33 lead changes (four shy of the all-time NASCAR intermediate record and the most on a non-drafting oval this season, except for the bizarre Bristol tire wear race).
I’m sure St. Louis and New Hampshire, the two tracks moving into the playoffs next year, will be lovely in the fall. But Homestead deserves to be in a featured spot on the NASCAR schedule — now and forever — and preferably as the championship race.
INSANITY!! 😱😱😱
TYLER REDDICK WINS AT HOMESTEAD! #NASCARPLAYOFFS pic.twitter.com/YX631hRiS8
— NASCAR (@NASCAR) October 27, 2024
2. What If?
Here are some alternate storylines we’d be talking about today had a few things unfolded differently.
• If Reddick doesn’t pull off one of the all-time great playoff moves: There was consideration to word this item as “If Ryan Blaney doesn’t give Reddick the top lane,” but that seems like a major case of Monday morning couch-racing. After all, who could have possibly foreseen a car on older tires at Homestead somehow finding the grip and speed against the wall like Reddick did, essentially defying the laws of physics to win the race?
In the moment, I actually thought Reddick was carrying too much speed and might take out both himself and Blaney, handing the win to Denny Hamlin instead. From this view, Blaney didn’t make a bonehead move by any means; he was running the lane best for his car coming to the checkered flag. It’s just that Reddick knew he had to throw a Washington Commanders-like Hail Mary to win, and it worked. But the result is instead of being locked into the Championship 4 and having a chance to defend his title, Blaney now heads to Martinsville in a must-win situation (which is what Reddick would have faced if the move failed).
• If Kyle Larson doesn’t spin to bring out a caution while racing Blaney for the lead: You could look at this one several different ways, because a successful execution of this pass would have locked Larson into the Championship 4. But it also probably cost Blaney a win (the caution is what allowed Reddick to have new life, after all) and also was the key strategy break Reddick needed to make it to Phoenix. That was a highly consequential moment for these playoffs, and we’ll likely be able to look back on it after Martinsville with a fuller understanding of how it impacted the championship field.
• If Reddick crew chief Billy Scott doesn’t go with a longshot pit strategy: Here’s an interesting one to consider. Reddick wasn’t going to win the race, so Scott had him run long in hopes of getting a caution before the No. 45 car’s fuel tank ran dry. It didn’t happen, but Larson’s spin shortly afterward still put Reddick in position to restart on the front row. But what if Reddick had pitted when everyone else did and was in fifth or sixth place instead of first? The front row for that restart would have been Blaney and Hamlin. Even though Hamlin still got the lead, could the No. 11 car have pulled away and had more distance over Blaney (he ultimately got passed with two laps to go)? Maybe Blaney would have won instead, but Reddick certainly would not have.
3. NASquirks
As noted by Trey Ryan on X, Reddick’s victory was only the second time in the last 53 races that a NASCAR Cup Series polesitter has gone on to win the race (William Byron also won from the pole at Circuit of the Americas in March). In other words, the polesitter has won fewer than four percent of the races over the last season and a half in NASCAR.
It’s not unusual for the pole winner to come up short in NASCAR; even in the pre-Next Gen, there were many seasons where No. 1 qualifiers only won five races per year. But just two in 1.5 years seems a bit extreme.
Of course, much of that is due to how NASCAR races are run: Crazy four-wide restarts, a pair of mandatory cautions per race, a close field with virtually identical cars and plenty of alternate strategy plays.
But how does that compare to, say, IndyCar? That’s another competitive spec car series, after all. In the last 53 IndyCar races, the polesitter has won 10 times — so roughly 19 percent of the time.
Naturally, the numbers are wildly different in Formula One. In the last 53 F1 grands prix, the polesitter has won a whopping 28 of 53 races — or 53 percent of the time. It’s far from automatic, but the pole in F1 is still often a great indicator of success.
4. Championship 4cast
In this space throughout the playoffs, we’re taking a look at the current power rankings for the Championship 4 and comparing them to our pre-playoff picks (Christopher Bell, Tyler Reddick, Kyle Larson and Ryan Blaney).
1. Bell (pre-playoffs: 1; last week: 1): This guy is quietly having an incredible playoff run. Bell’s average finish in the eight playoff races so far is 5.5, which is on pace to rank No. 6 all time; four of the current top six went on to win the title in their respective seasons. That said, he’s still not locked into the championship race.
2. Reddick (pre-playoffs: 2; last week: not ranked): We dropped Reddick from our Championship 4 projections after his disastrous Las Vegas incident last week, but apparently that was premature. Now that he’s made it to Phoenix and given 23XI Racing its first-ever title race berth, he could very well win the whole thing.
3. Larson (pre-playoffs: 3; last week: 2): It seems inconceivable the best overall driver of the season (six wins compared to three for the next-closest competitors) might not even make the championship race after entering Sunday with a 35-point margin to the cutoff line. But Larson now heads to Martinsville seven points out of the Championship 4 and needing a strong performance — if not a win — to move on. We’re not ready to give up on the No. 5 team’s chances yet, so he stays in this slot for now.
4. Joey Logano (pre-playoffs: not ranked; last week: 4): As expected, it was a quiet weekend for Logano (he finished 28th) since this race was irrelevant for the No. 22 team. It’s all about whether Logano and Paul Wolfe can figure out how to find the speed to beat the likes of Bell at Phoenix (if Bell makes it), but we’re still skeptical.
5. Best of the Rest
• AJ Allmendinger (eighth): What in the world has Allmendinger figured out at Homestead? He’s finished third, fifth and now eighth in the three Next Gen races there — the latest being Kaulig Racing’s best finish of the season on a non-drafting oval. Whatever the secret is, Allmendinger is the only driver with three top-10s in the last three Homestead races and is tied with Bell for the best average Homestead finish during that time.
• Carson Hocevar (ninth): Hocevar has continued to turn the Rookie of the Year battle into a blowout, posting his sixth top-10 finish of the season on Sunday and at times running as the best non-playoff driver. He ranks 21st in the point standings, just behind huge names like Kyle Busch and his mentor, Ross Chastain. Oh, and Hocevar is only 21 years old and driving for a team on the rise.
• Ryan Preece (10th): It’s tempting to think the Stewart-Haas Racing cars wouldn’t be very competitive at this point in the year. The organization as we know it will cease to exist in a few weeks, and with Chase Briscoe no longer in the playoffs, there doesn’t stand to be much reason to keep putting in the required effort to field competitive cars. Well, except for pride — which seems to be a major factor for this group. SHR drivers finished 10th, 11th and 12th on Sunday — tying the team with Hendrick Motorsports for the most drivers in the top dozen finishers. And Preece led the way, setting a new career high with his fifth top-10 finish of the season.
(Top photo of Tyler Reddick celebrating Sunday’s win: James Gilbert / Getty Images)
