The NASCAR Sprint Cup drivers will be hoping to bag a trophy when the series gets back to racing in the Duck Commander 500 at Texas Motor Speedway.
The teams had the Easter weekend off after battling on the short track of Martinsville Speedway. Now they head to Texas where everything is bigger (as they say). The drivers will race around the mile-and-half track with plenty of room to race.
However, that room can also provide plenty of room to make a mistake if the handling of the car is not right. The result of that mistake can lead to a driver’s hope of winning at Texas going up in flames. With the race starting in day and ending under the lights, the teams will be facing the challenge of keeping up with the changing track conditions to prevent that from happening.
With the NASCAR Chase Grid format, a win at Texas this weekend can mean advancing to the Chase later this year for a driver that has not yet won in the first six races of the NASCAR Sprint Cup season.
With that in mind, here are the ten drivers with the best driver rating at Texas Motor Speedway.
#1 – Matt Kenseth – 105.9 driver rating – 2 wins
#2 – Jimmie Johnson – 105.7 driver rating – 4 wins
#3 – Greg Biffle – 100.9 driver rating – 2 wins
#4 – Tony Stewart – 98.4 driver rating – 2 wins
#5 – Carl Edwards – 95.9 driver rating – 3 wins
#6 – Denny Hamlin – 93.5 driver rating – 2 wins
#7 – Jeff Gordon – 93.2 driver rating – 1 win
#8 – Clint Bowyer – 91.4 driver rating – 0 wins
#9 – Dale Earnhardt Jr. – 91.1 driver rating – 1 win
#10 – Martin Truex Jr. – 87.7 driver rating – 0 wins
Obviously Matt Kenseth and Jimmie Johnson have a good chance at collecting the win at Texas being the two drivers at the top of the list. Matt has yet to win this season and Jimmie has a single win for 2015.
Greg Biffle could really use putting his high driver rating at Texas to use this weekend. He has not scored a win for 2015 and is currently in 20th place in the point standings which means his is OFF the Chase Grid right now. If he can find a way to get his third win at Texas he would vault over several drivers to land in the all but guaranteed category for a Chase berth.
However, the two drivers that my gut are telling me to watch this weekend are Denny Hamlin and Martin Truex Jr. when the green flag waives at Texas.
Denny is mid-pack in the top ten driver ratings above. However, he has two Texas wins and was the winner at the last NASCAR Sprint Cup race Martinsville before the Easter break. With extra time to prepare to build on the momentum of that win I think Denny will be a factor at the end of the race this week.
Martin has been having a solid start to his 2015 Sprint Cup season. He has been there at the end of the race with a chance to win multiple times. His six top ten finishes in the first six races is why he is currently third in the point standings. He has not won yet this year nor has he won at Texas yet. I feel like this could be the weekend that Martin puts an “X” in both of those boxes on his stat sheet.
Hopefully we don’t have a repeat of last year’s rain-out of the Sunday race pushing the race back to Monday. Hopefully we DO have a repeat of any exciting race for the fans to watch. At least this year if there is a rain-out of the scheduled time for the race Saturday night, there would be the chance of getting it in on Sunday before it would get pushed out of the weekend.
We will find out who bags the trophy in the Duck Commander 500 NASCAR Sprint Cup race at Texas Motor Speedway Saturday, April 11th starting at 6:30pm central time.
By: Buck Stevens
