2022 Silly Season Recap, Season Preview, and Clash Preview | Chasing The Cup S1:E1

The first episode of Beastie's Singing the Cup podcast covers the 2022 Silly Season recap and season preview. The host discusses driver changes and expectations for each driver. The next-gen car and schedule changes are also highlighted. News stories include NBCSN shutting down, LGB Coin sponsorship, Clash performers, Hall of Fame inductions, Eric Almarola's retirement, and the deaths of important figures in the sport. The podcast concludes with a preview of the Bushlight Clash, including event information, weather forecast, and the host's picks for the race. Hello everyone and welcome to the first episode of Beastie's Singing the Cup. I am your host Will England and thank you for listening to this episode. This week I will do my 2022 Silly Season Recap and Season Preview. I will also go over some news stories that happened over the off season and I will preview the clash at the Coliseum. So let's get started with the 2022 Silly Season Recap. Alright, so I have the NASCAR website up and I will go over the driver changes numerically. So let's start with number one. The number one was previously driven by Kurt Busch at Chip Ganassi Racing and he drove that car from 2019 to 2021 and now he has left for other opportunities and Chip Ganassi has sold his team to Track House Racing and so they now took the number one team and the driver will now be Ross Chastain. So my expectations for Ross Chastain is to improve from last year. Last year he was not very competitive probably because he was limited by the equipment but I still want to see how he can improve. He is known for his talent and what I want to see is if he can put his talent on display. He doesn't have to win but he has to show improvement from last year. So next is the number two. Brad Keselowski previously drove the car from 2011 to 2021 but he decided to become a team owner this year. I'll discuss that in a little bit but replacing him will be Austin Sendrick who is the 2020 NASCAR XFANTY Series Champion. So what I want to see from Sendrick this year is that I want to see him finish races. Last year he ran pretty well. He ran top five but last year he was running part time so he couldn't really finish races how he started them. So I want to see this year is see him finish consistently in the top five and be a competitor all year. Next up is the number six which was previously driven by Ryan Newman but Ryan Newman has decided that he is going to mostly run other things like late models and midget cars and all that. So this year replacing him will be Brad Keselowski and he will also be part of the ownership at Roush Finway. He is now a minority owner at that team and the team has been renamed Roush Finway Keselowski Racing. So what I want to see from Brad Keselowski is improve from last year as well as build up his new team. He was sort of behind compared to 2020 so I want to see him improve because he was off last year. I want to see what he does with this brand new team of his. Next up on the list is the number 16 of Koleg Racing and they previously ran a bunch of drivers and it's going to be the same thing this year but it will be with a couple new guys behind the wheel. AJ Allmendegger will return to the team and he will run 14 races but the new driver of the number 11, the Xfinity Series Daniel Hemrick who is your defending Xfinity Series champion will run 8 races including the duels and then Noah Gregson will also be part of that ride and he will run 14 races. And so what I want to see from all of these drivers is see how competitive they are. AJ won last year at the Indy Road Course and so what I want to see this year is how Hemrick and Gregson won. Hemrick didn't perform that well at RCR and was replaced by Tyler Reddick in 2020. So what I want to see is how these drivers perform and I want to see Noah Gregson because he hasn't made a cup start yet and I want to see how he can do in cup. Next up on the list is the number 21 car which was previously driven by Matt DiBenedetto but Matt DiBenedetto was released from the team after his performance with the team. He was not getting that much out of the car because it basically is a fourth Penske car so the Wood Brothers decided to replace him this year. Austin Centric was going to originally go to the 21 but when Kiezwalski moved to the 6 they had Centric go to the 2 and originally we all thought that the 21 would go to Matt DiBenedetto again. Well they decided to take a chance on a young new rookie named Harrison Burton and DiBenedetto will go to the Truck Series. So Harrison Burton is the son of Jeff Burton, a former NASCAR Cup Series driver now NBC Sports Analyst. So what I want to see from Harrison Burton is that I want to see him be consistent and stay out of trouble and see how he does in his ride. It's a competitive ride so I hope he does really well. Next is the 31 which is a new team with colleagues new second ride after they bought a second charter from Spire and driving that car will be Justin Haley. Justin Haley is a Cup Series winner he won in 2019 at Daytona. So what I want to see from Justin Haley in his rookie season is I want to see him do well be consistent and stay out of trouble. Next up is the 38 which was previously driven by Anthony Alfredo last year but he decided to take an opportunity for a competitive Xfinity ride at Our Motorsports. So he's being replaced by Todd Gilliland who was coming off a good season from Trucks last year and what I want to see from Todd is him stay out of trouble and run well in that car and he was pretty fast in the tests so far from what I've seen from all the charts so I have hope that he will do well. He's got a fast car he seems to be very fast so I want to see how he does in that 38. Next up is the 42. The 42 last year was a Chip Ganassi number but when Chip Ganassi sold the team to Trackhouse the 42 was brought back to Richard Petty and Richard Petty Motorsports has decided to merge with GMS Racing and now has created a new team of Petty GMS Motorsports and the driver will be who was set to run for GMS full time this year Ty Dillon. Now Ty is the brother of Austin Dillon and the grandson of Richard Childress. One thing I want to see from Ty this year is improvement. He drove the 23 last year in the clash and was kind of a disappointment so I want to see from him is improve. He wasn't that competitive in the 13 which was his previous big ride but now that he's back in the Chevy camp I want to see him do well in that ride. And finally is the number 45 which is a new team that was created by 2311 and driving that car is Kurt Busch. Kurt Busch decided to take this opportunity and move to 2311 to help build up the team. So what I want to see from Kurt Busch this year is see if he can run better compared to where he was at Chick Gnasi. Chick Gnasi's equipment was subpar but he got a win last year but he was eliminated in the round of 16. So what I want to see from Kurt Busch is that if he can compete and do well and get the 2311 their first playoff appearance. One person whose number was not announced was Ryan Priest who will move from JTG Doherty to Stort Hoss Racing as a driver for standby. He will also run part time in Cup, Xfinity, and Trucks with DGR. So what I want to see from Priest is how competitive he can be in a Stort Hoss car. Stort Hoss has some good cars. They were off last year but I hope that they will be competitive this year. So that's it for 2022 Sibley season recap. So next on our list is the 2022 season preview. The first big change this year is the next gen car. The car is very different from previous generations of stock cars because of the spec chassis, the single lug wheels, and rear diffuser. Each team is only allowed 7 chassis at a time. The packages will be a 670 engine package with a 4 inch spoiler at all tracks except for Daytona, Talladega, and Atlanta which will use a 510 horsepower engine package with a 7 inch spoiler. The car was made to drive down car costs in the long term and hopefully improve the racing product compared to the era dependent car of tomorrow and gen 6 cars. The next big change is the schedule. The first big change is that the Clash will move to the Coliseum this year. Now I'll talk more about this at the end of the show. The second change is that Auto Club has returned and they'll have a 200 lap, 400 mile event called the Wise Power 400 on February 27th. The next big change is that Martinsville's lap count for the spring race will go from 500 to 400 laps and it will be 210 miles and it will be on Saturday April 9th at 7.30pm Eastern Time. The next change to the schedule is all the way in June for NASCAR's first event at the Worldwide Technology Raceway also known as the Gateway International Raceway in St. Louis, Missouri. The event there will be 240 laps and 300 miles on June 5th at 3.30pm Eastern Time. The next big change is that the Sonoma Raceway will return to its short layout for its Cup Series event which has produced some great racing in the past and so that event will be 110 laps which is 218.9 miles and the event will be on Sunday June 12th at 4pm Eastern Time. And those are the changes to this year's schedule, at least the big ones. There are many other changes in the schedule lineup. The final change I'll talk about are some changes to the NASCAR rulebook. As part of the introduction of the next gen car, they want the car to be equal for all teams so they really doubled down on trying to keep everything the same by having some steep penalties, even up to $500,000 if you make any big changes to the car and that could also lead to a one-race suspension for your team. So if I were an owner of a team, I would not really mess with that car at all. So that is all the changes that you need to know for this season. So let's get to the news. The first news story over the offseason was that NBCSN shut down. This is probably because NBC was making some budget cuts because of the decline of cable and television. So races that were previously held on NBCSN will move to the USA Network this year. Next up is LGB Coin and you probably know what that means. Brandon Brown originally signed LGB Coin as his primary sponsor. This car did not approve their scheme probably because of the political stuff. They said they did but that turned out to be not true. So LGB Coin will said be a personal sponsor to Brandon Brown and I think most of his cars will be blank this year. So I hope Brandon can find some other good sponsors to fill up that hood space. The next thing will be the performers at the Clash this weekend. Some of the stars performing will be DJ Ski, Pitbull, and Ice Cube. Pitbull and Ice Cube will have their own concerts meanwhile DJ Ski will perform during the cautions. Next on the news we have our recent 2021 Hall of Fame inductions that happened in January. The following drivers were inducted into the Hall of Fame. Mike Stefanik who is a Wheel and Modify champion, Brett Farmer who is a former NASCAR Cup Series driver, and Dale Earnhardt Jr. one of the most popular drivers of all time. All these drivers are well deserving of being in the Hall of Fame. Next up on our list is Eric Almorola's retirement. Eric Almorola has decided that he wants to hang up the helmet because he wants to spend more time with his family. And so that will leave the number 10 car vacant after this year but I think Ryan Preece will take that car. That's probably why he joined SHR in the first place. So Almorola has had a good career. He won three races in the Cup Series and I hope he has a great retirement after this year. And then the final news is sad news which were the deaths of some of the most important people in the sport who died during the offseason. Al Unser Sr., Danny Earnhardt, Bob Krasnowski, and Martha Earnhardt. It's sad to see them go. I hope that their families are okay. And that's it for the news. Now it's time for the Bushlight Clash preview. So I'm going to discuss the information about the event. I'll also talk about the weather and I'll give you my picks. So let's begin with the event information. The Bushlight Clash will be held at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum in Los Angeles, California. It will be this Sunday, February 6th. It will be at 6 p.m. and it will be broadcasted on Fox. There will be practice and qualifying as well as heats and last chance qualifiers. The event will be 150 laps which is 37.5 miles. Now let's take a look at the weather. According to weather.com, around race time it will be 70 degrees Fahrenheit with 0% of precipitation, a humidity of 18%, and wind gusts of 3 mph. So it's going to be some good weather down there in LA. I hope whoever goes has a good time. So now it's time for my picks. So I think the drivers that will be strong during this event will be drivers that are usually the short track ringers. Chase Elliott, Kyle Larson, Denny Hamlin, Joey Logano, Brad Kieslowski, Kyle Busch, all those guys. Some of the underdogs will probably be some guys that are pretty good at short tracks and run pretty good with their equipment. Guys like Eric Jones. I could see them being possibly competing for a top 10. But I have no idea how this event will turn out because of a new car. So that's all I can predict right now. But for the win, I could see many people winning. It's hard to say. And we don't know who the dominant cars are this year. So I'm going to go with Kyle Larson. Kyle Larson was dominant last year and he's very talented. So he might be the winner. But I wouldn't count out any of the other Hendrick drivers like Alex Booman, Chase Elliott, maybe William Byron will be there as well. I guess we'll see what happens. That's it for this week's podcast. And I hope everyone enjoyed. Sources I used were from NASCAR.com, Jayski's Silly Season site, and many other sources like that. So I thank everyone for watching. Please subscribe for more. If you enjoyed this podcast, leave a like. And I hope you have a great weekend. NASCAR off-season has come to a close. I can't wait to begin the season starting this weekend. Take care. And I'll see you next week.