Texas Review, Byron and Gibbs Penalties, and Talladega Preview | Chasing The Cup S1:E30

The host reviews the races from Texas and previews the upcoming races at Talladega. The Texas race had tire blowouts and lackluster racing. Two drivers, Ty Gibbs and William Byron, received penalties for their actions on pit road. The Xfinity race was slightly better than the Cup race, with Noah Gregson winning his fourth race in a row. The host also discusses various news items, including podcast deals, TV ratings, and driver updates. The upcoming races at Talladega include the Truck race, Xfinity race, and Cup race, with the host making predictions for the winners. Hello everyone, welcome back to another episode of Chase the Mecha. I'm your host, Ludwig, and in this episode, I'm going to be reviewing the races from Texas. I'll also go over the news and I'm going to preview this weekend's races at Talladega. But first, let's take a look at the results from Texas. Tyler Reddick gets his third win of the season, followed by Joey Logano in second, Justin Haley in third, Ryan Blaney in fourth, Chase Briscoe in fifth, Eric Jones in sixth, William Byron in seventh, Brad Kieslowski, the pole sitter, in eighth, Kyle Larson finishes ninth, and Denny Hamlin rounds out the top ten. And although this race was better than the All-Star race, this race still sucked. It was still bad. This race showed more flashes than the All-Star race because there was plenty of more passing throughout the field, but not very much up front. But this was still just awful because you still had the one and a half good lanes because the PJ1 made it impossible to run up toward the middle and the top. And then you had the dozens of tire blowouts, which ended a bunch of drivers' days. And it has really affected the points. And those tire blowouts almost hurt Cody Ware because he had a head-on collision into the wall and then came down pit road and hit pit road wall. He almost went through that gap in the wall and went head-on into the opening of the pit wall. That was scary. And there were several big fires caused by big wrecks from all those blowouts. And finally, we got to talk about two big penalties from this race. So let's talk about the Ty Gibbs one first. So while on pit road during one of the cautions, Ty Dillon comes out of his pit stall right beside Ty Gibbs and he runs into him because I don't think Ty Dillon knew he was there. Just one of those recent deals on pit road. But then Ty Gibbs decides he wants to door slam him on purpose. And in the process, he almost wipes out someone else's crew members and almost a NASCAR official. And that was just a stupid move on Ty Gibbs' part. Why would you do that? Pit road is a very dangerous place. You can't do that. I don't know why NASCAR didn't say it at first. But luckily, they're enforcing this. Although too late. It probably should have been enforced at the racetrack. Maybe park Ty Gibbs or something for the race because he's not running for cut points. He's just running for 2311 for owner points. He is not running for a driver's championship. He has not declared driver points. So I think he should have been parked for the rest of the day after that if NASCAR caught it. Now I want to talk about the William Byron one with the rivalry between him and Danny Hamm one. So basically what happened is that William Byron got squeezed into the backstretch wall coming off of turn two. That seems to be common because there's a lot of drivers that seem to get squeezed up there. And Danny got squeezed up there too by Larson, I believe. And he was not happy about it. And now Danny did the same thing to Byron. And a couple of laps later, the caution came out for a driver going around. And then under caution, William Byron comes in with a hot head of steam and dumps Danny Hamm one under caution. After the incident, Danny is hot. So he drives back up toward the front to Byron and he tries to wreck Byron under caution. Luckily, his crew chief was smart about it and told him not to do it. And then Danny Hamm one fell back to where he was. But NASCAR apparently was not paying attention instead of their folks seeing on the other spin at the time of this incident. And they didn't go back there and review it until a lot later. I mean, come on NASCAR. What are you doing? You gotta keep your eye on what's going on besides just focusing on the spin. You gotta focus on what's going on across the racetrack. If you see that, you gotta call it out. You should have told Byron to go to the tail end of the lead lap on the restart. But they didn't do anything until yesterday along with the Ty Gibbs penalty, William Byron has been fined $50,000 and he was docked 25 points. And that's probably because he admitted it on camera that he was going to do it on purpose. He said I was going to go and do it on purpose but he didn't mean to spin him out. So he basically admitted that yeah, I did that on purpose. I didn't mean to do it so violently, but I did it on purpose. So NASCAR, you gotta pay attention to what's going on on the racetrack. And Byron, you gotta calm down buddy. We still got two more races in this round. And now with this penalty, you've been dropped to the other side of the cut line because of your actions. Try not to get into any altercations with Danny. Although Danny might try to get his payback at the Roval, we'll see. And so overall, a bad race for Texas. Because of the tire blowouts, the lackluster racing, and the stupid things that these idiots want to do under caution. And finally for the Xfinity race, Noah Gregson makes history becoming the second driver to win four races in a row. He's also behind a record set by Sam Ard back in 1983, followed by Austin Hill in second, Ty Yibbs in third, AJ Ommendanger in fourth, Riley Herbst in fifth, Josh Berry in sixth, Sheldon Creed in seventh, Sam Mayer in eighth, Ryan Sieg in ninth, and CJ McLaughlin rounds out the top ten. And so basically this race was just about the same. It was still pretty bad, but it was slightly more entertaining than the cup race because there wasn't as many tire blowouts. But the PJ1 still affected the Xfinity cars, and it made for still lackluster racing, but hey, it was still better than the cup race. And I'd like to give a shout out to Nicholas Sanchez, who finishes 11th behind CJ. He showed some real promise during this race. Of course, he is your Arca Series points leader, and although he had a pretty bad debut at Bristol, he showed some real promise at Texas. So I'm excited what this kid can do. And to be honest, I'd like to see with KBM coming to Chevrolet, if he moves up to take the 4 or the 18 or whatever the 18 will be, because he is part of the Chevy family, so he could move up to run trucks full time for KBM, unless he decides to stay in Arca for another season and runs part time for Kyle. But to be honest, I'd like to see what he can do in a truck full time for a couple of seasons, because this kid's got some talent. And so overall, an average Texas weekend, and of course, it's just bad overall for any NASCAR weekend. And it continues to show that Texas Motor Speedway is the worst track on the NASCAR Cup Series schedule. And so with that out of the way, let's get to the news. Dale Earnhardt Jr. and Dirty Rome Media have struck a seven-figure podcast deal with Cadence 13 as part of a broadcast media expansion, according to Axios' Sarah Fisher. Jimmy Johnson is one of two drivers interested in running the Memorial Day Double soon, and could be driving cut for Track House, and he'll probably run for Ganassi in the 500. Next is the Texas TV ratings. USA Network averaged 1.9 million viewers for the race on Sunday, which is down from the same weekend at Las Vegas, which got slightly over 2 million. And this is probably because of both the rain delay, as well as the late season dip of TV ratings thanks to the NFL. Both Charlotte and Talladega have opened their campgrounds for Hurricane Ian evacuees, which is hitting the west coast of Florida as I'm recording this video, so prayers to those down toward the Tampa Bay area and all that to help you get through this. After the incident on Sunday for Cody Ware, he's expected to run again this weekend at Talladega and says there's no issues besides some torn ligaments in his foot. Parker Klickerman will be running at Talladega in Xfinity Race this weekend with Big Machine Racing. Kurt Busch remains hopeful that he'll race again this year, as he continues to recover from his concussion. John Pardee will be performing the pre-race concert on Championship Sunday at Phoenix. Buffalo Wild Wings and Cobble Enterprises will be sponsoring Timmy Hill at Talladega. Chase Purdy will be running a Ole Miss paint scheme at Talladega. Bubba Wallace and NASCAR will be hosting Bubba's Block Party at Railroad Park in downtown Birmingham on Friday. GMS Racing and Jack Wood have geared up with Logitech Racing at Talladega and Homestead. Bailey Curry will be running a Terry Labonte throwback paint scheme at Talladega. Auburn Head Basketball Coach Bruce Pearl will serve as the honorary starter for the Yellowwood 500 at Talladega. Jimmy Johnson will retire from full-time racing after this year. His goal is to spend more time with his family and run some big events, maybe even have a return to NASCAR. Junior Motorsports is still considering a move the cup, according to Kelly Earnhardt Miller, who has now taken the role as CEO. The first possible driver that could run for Project 91 next year is Shane Van Gisbergen. He is well known for his 2020 Bathurst 1000 win. The second driver possible of doing the Memorial Day double is Kyle Busch, as McLaren Racing is interested in having Kyle Busch to run the Indy 500. Ryan Vargas and JDM have teamed up with the NASCAR Reddit community at Talladega. Next is the Bristol TV ratings. USA Network got a 1.07 rating and 1.776 million viewers, according to Adam Stern, which is down from a 1.20 rating and 2.20 million viewers last year on NBCSN. And although the race was the most viewed motorsport event that weekend, Anna Turay was only 100,000 behind because it aired after an NFL game. So I have no idea, but this year has been bad for TV ratings during the postseason. I'm not sure if it's NBC's fault, but something has to be done because this is just getting ridiculous. And finally, Joe Gibbs Racing has swapped the pit crews for the 11 and 18 teams. Because the 11's pit crew has been quite off, meanwhile the 18's pit crew has been really good, so this is probably a smart swap. And so that's it for this week's news, now it's time to preview this weekend's races at Talladega. Starting off with the truck race, we have the Talladega 250. The race will be 100 laps and 250 miles. And the race will be on October 1st at 12.30pm Eastern Time. And because this race is such a crapshoot because it's Talladega, I'm going to go with Hayley Deegan. Hayley Deegan has shown some promise, and she's been pretty good at these plate tracks. Although she has been involved in the big one twice. She got wrecked out out of Talladega last year because of two cars tandem drafting on the outside. The front car got turned right in front of the truck that Hayley was pushing, and that destroyed the front of her car. Then she got involved in the big one earlier this year at Daytona. Meanwhile her only other start, she basically spun out by herself, which was her first super speedway start in the truck. But this time, I think this could be your best chance to win. I think this time, I think she will win at Talladega. Next up for the Xfinity race, we have the Sparks 300. The race will be 113 laps and 300.58 miles. And the race will be on October 1st at 4pm Eastern Time. And so for my pick, I'm going to go with Trevor Vane. Trevor Vane got his only cup win at the Daytona 500, and he's pretty good at these plate races. Jeff Gordon once said that Trevor was his preferred drafting partner, probably because of their similar styles. And so I think with his experience on these plate tracks, I think he'll get the victory at Talladega. And finally for the Cup Race, we have the Yellowwood 500. The race will be 188 laps and 500.08 miles. And the race will be on October 2nd at 2pm Eastern Time on NBC. And so let's take a look at the weather for the Cup Race. On Sunday, there will be tons of clouds and sun, with a high of 72 degrees Fahrenheit. Winds will be north to northwest at 8mph, and there's a 25% chance of rain. And so for my pick, I'm going to go with Brad Kieslowski. Brad Kieslowski has shown more speed in the past couple of weeks than he has all year. And he's done pretty good at this racetrack. And so I think this time, Brad Kieslowski will get his first win driving for himself, and he will win at Talladega. And so that's it for this week's episode. If you enjoyed it, please like and subscribe for more. If you're going out to Talladega this weekend, I hope you have a good time. If you're not, have a good time wherever you are. And I'll see you next week.