Auto Club Recap and Las Vegas Review, Phoenix Preview, and More | Chasing The Cup S2:E5

In this episode of Chasing the Cup, the host recaps the races at Autoclub and reviews the races at Las Vegas. Kyle Busch and John Hunter Niemicek won at Autoclub. William Byron won at Las Vegas. The host discusses the coverage by Fox, improvements and things that need to be fixed. Austin Hill, Kyle Busch, and Chase Elliott won in the Xfinity, Truck, and Cup series respectively. The host also talks about Haley Deegan's struggles and the news about Alex Bowman and Ross Chastain. Finally, the host mentions Chase Elliott's injury and Josh Berry as his substitute. Hello everyone and welcome back to another episode of Chasing the Cup. I'm your host Will England and in this episode I'm going to do a quick recap of the races at Autoclub and I'll review the races from this past weekend at Las Vegas. I'll also go over the news and I'm going to preview this weekend's races at Phoenix. But first, let's do a quick recap of Autoclub. Kyle Busch won the Cup race at Autoclub getting his first win with RCR and John Hunter Niemicek got his first win of the season with Joe Gibbs Racing and both races were very good. There was plenty of side-by-side racing 3 and 4 wide but after those two races there will be no more racing at the Autoclub Speedway on that configuration and it's sad to see it go but I hope the short track puts on equally good shows. Now let's take a look at the results from Las Vegas. William Byron picks up his first win of the season in overtime and he's followed by Kyle Larson his teammate who was leading in the final closing laps until the final caution came out. Alex Bowman finishes 3rd, Bubba Wallace finishes 4th, Christopher Bell finishes 5th, Austin Sendrick finishes 6th, Martin Truex Jr. finishes 7th, Justin Haley finishes 8th, Kevin Harvick finishes 9th, and Daniel Suarez rounds out the top 10 and this race was a little underwhelming but still pretty solid you could pass and there were times where it was racy on restarts but there were periods of long green flag runs and everything got spaced out and I think there was some dirty air in the mix because of the cold front moving through Las Vegas and as we saw from Martinsville cold air seems to amplify dirty air but overall still a good race but we need to talk about Fox. In my opinion there are some things that they've definitely improved on such as the graphical glitches I didn't really see any graphical glitches that really interfered with the coverage meanwhile last year they were everywhere and earlier this year they were too but they have seemed to clean that up a little bit and also the pre-race shows are better because last year it was super cringy but this year it hasn't been as cringy so those are two improvements but there's also some other things that I did not like and the first is commercials I think it's because of the prior knowledge of Fox doing football because their new producer worked with Fox's college football coverage and usually when you cover college football or the NFL you front load commercials because there's not really that much going on in the first half of the game but NASCAR is different you don't really need the front load commercials in NASCAR because there's action throughout and I know a lot of people will complain about the cartoon graphics but the cartoons are a Fox boardroom decision because they have them for the NFL as well it's just a Fox thing we'll just have to deal with it until someone in the boardroom decides to make a creative change but something that seems to be way off was the booth this week Mike Joy is definitely past his prime he's not bringing the energy that he once did in the late 90s and early 2010s it seems like he's nearing the end of his career kind of like how Ken Squire was in the closing years of his career if you watched any NASCAR races from the 90s on TBS or CBS until Mike Joy took the gig and also Clint Boyer and Danica were also not helping especially since Mike and Clint were interrupting Danica and I think Danica did a better job than she did the last year but it seemed like that she would get interrupted by Clint or Mike so I don't think that Mike and Clint have really developed their timing with Danica yet but she did bring in more energy than Tony Stewart did the past couple of weeks so that's a positive but Fox really needs to improve their coverage because there are plenty of things that they need to fix there's some things that you can't really fix and there's also other things that are good but the stuff that you can fix easily you need to fix next up for the Xfinity race Austin Hill chases down Chandler Smith in the closing laps and picks up the victory and he's followed by Justin Allgaier in second Chandler Smith who was leading in the closing laps fades to a third place finish Kyle Bush his teammate finishes fourth Josh Berry finishes fifth John Hunter Nemechek finishes sixth Sam Mayer finishes seventh Riley Herbst finishes eighth Sheldon Creed finishes ninth and Daniel Hemrick rounds out the top 10 and the Xfinity race was pretty solid there was plenty of side-by-side racing it was also a little sprint up too but it seemed to be a lot closer than the cup race probably because it was a little warmer and man what a finish I could tell that Austin Hill was gaining because he was gaining pretty quick and I knew that he was going to get him when we reached three laps to go so I got off my seat and watched it happen he made the pass and Justin Allgaier followed in behind and got the victory very good job by Austin Hill and overall a pretty good Xfinity race and now let's go to probably the most chaotic race of the weekend the truck series Kyle Bush gets his first truck win of the season and he's followed by Zane Smith in second Ben Rhodes in third Corey Heim in fourth Ty Majewski in fifth Christian Ekis in sixth Carson Josevar in seventh Chase Purdy in eighth Grant Enfinger in ninth and Jake Garcia rounds out the top 10 and that race was a mess in the first half in those first two stages it was so close and people were constantly getting into each other and it was just wild and chaotic but then after the final caution for cause the race went green the rest of the way and Kyle Bush just stank up the show like he always does and now we gotta talk about Haley Deegan she finishes 32nd due to a wreck on the final lap of stage two she got put into a bad situation and she bounced off a couple trucks and that sent her going around it's just one of those recent deals but I saw a lot of Haley Deegan blackpilling on Twitter I mean a lot of people were using the black pill to heat on her calling her Gannica and all this stuff but guys it's the second race of the season she still has time to turn this thing around but there are some things that she seems to be struggling with Daytona's Daytona but Las Vegas although she had a fast truck because she qualified in the top five she fell like a rock at the beginning of the first stage and fell out of the top 10 and even fell out of the top 20 I mean something was off and thanks to some savvy pit strategy she was put in position to compete for some stage points in the closing laps of stage two but then things got chaotic and she was put four wide and she got in an accident so something seems to be up I don't know what her problem is but she seems to have problems with restarts not sure if it's because of her lack of aggressiveness or she hasn't really found her groove with restarts but she is losing a ton of spots on these restarts I don't know what is causing her to fall back so far but these restarts are her Achilles heel she needs to learn that she needs to be aggressive on those restarts to be honest she's fine when everything's single file and spread out but when it comes to restarts she's struggling with those and that's where she's getting all caught up in these wrecks all the time sometimes it happens under green but it's mostly on restarts and starts like for instance Las Vegas last year she is yet to finish a Las Vegas race in the trick series even though she finished 13th in her Xfinity series debut last year so Haley you need to be more aggressive I don't know why you're not being aggressive even your crew chief told you to be aggressive you didn't listen to him you got to be aggressive or stuff like that happens you need to claw your way through the pack on those restarts if you want to contend for the win not falling back in the middle of the pack and getting caught up in someone else's mess if Haley is able to figure out the restarts I think she'll be fine she has the raw speed to compete in the top 10 and I think she might be able to compete at tracks that are talent-based I think she might do well at Coda and short tracks like IRP because look at the track she's got in top 10 so far besides Talladega they've been at Gateway which is an intermediate but it's more like a driver's track because you have to break in the corners and Mid-Ohio which is a road course so I think she'll do good at these racetracks but mile and a half and super speedways she has struggled although she has figured out how the aerodynamics work at mile and a half she has yet to finish in the top 10 at one of these cookie cutters she was able to survive Talladega last year but every other super speedway race she's been taken out of contention and so overall a solid weekend for Las Vegas two races were pretty good in a request in the truck series in the first half and then a snooze fest in the second half but overall a good weekend for Las Vegas and so with that out of the way let's get to the news Alex Bowman in LA will once again showcase the Best Friends Animal Society as the co-primary sponsor for their car at Phoenix and they've done this since the start of 2021 and Bowman of LA have teamed up to donate $362,000 to Best Friends and its network partners Ross Chastain would like to consider running IndyCar one day maybe he'll be up for the Indy Double one year it'd be cool for him to do it then next the big news from this past weekend and that is Chase Elliott has been injured in a snowboarding accident and this past weekend Josh Berry was his substitute and he'll be his substitute probably for the foreseeable future so many people have been saying that maybe the drivers should not be doing extracurricular activities and in my opinion that's kind of being hypocritical because I know a lot of people complained about Christopher Bell not running on dirt this year because of health and safety reasons and then when Chase Elliott gets injured they're like he should have been doing that well you've got to live your life you need to relax a little bit now snowboarding is pretty extreme but Chase Elliott is experienced at it and he knows what he's doing he knows what the dangers are and it was just an accident I'd say Christopher Bell knows what he's doing on dirt as well but Joe Gibbs seems to be a little scared about that because of Tony Stark's injuries throughout the years but I think that's just Joe Gibbs meanwhile Chase Elliott gets to do what he wants because Hendrick has been more lenient in recent years he wasn't very lenient back in the 2000s but since Kyle Larson has come along and Rick has let him run dirt races he's been pretty more lenient about drivers extracurricular activities so I hope Chase Elliott is able to heal and come back as soon as possible but he should not be rushing this because it is possible that he could make it worse. Enviro X-Treme will be sponsoring Tori Lajoie Inspire Motorsports in three races this year front row will have a third car at Talladega for Todd Gilliland. Todd Gilliland is already not running full time for front row he'll be filling up some of the other races with Rick Rare and it looks like he'll get another chance at Talladega for front row in a third car but it won't be in the 38th. And some breaking news today Ryan Weber will make his first start in Xfinity series since 2003 at Phoenix with NBM Motorsports. Ross Chastain is the favorite to land Anheuser-Busch sponsorship after Kevin Harvick retires which is bad news for storehouse racing fans. He gets this is returning to sponsor Ty Gibbs in six races this season. Kenny Wallace and John Roberts will be hosting a race day revival at Bristol for the dirt race. Next is the Fontana TV ratings Fox got a 2.48 rating and 4.315 million viewers which is down a tick from a 2.61 rating and 4.570 million viewers. It is a little bit of a decrease but I don't think it's really that much but it's clear that more and more people are ditching traditional TV for streaming and I hope NASCAR with this new contract is able to figure out something with streaming whether it is Amazon Prime or something else. They need to update their business model when it comes to television. And finally NASCAR has announced a new rules package for short ovals and road courses. These changes include a two-inch rear spoiler as well as some tweaks underneath the car which include the removal of three diffuser streaks, engine panel streaks, and trimming the diffuser's outer fencing. And all of these changes were run together during the second day of testing at Phoenix earlier this year and according to Dr. Eric Jacuzzi it will basically add up to about 30 percent downforce reduction and quote we're now in a downforce level that we haven't been at since pre-2000s for sure like mid-90s. I'm not sure about that part but it's definitely going to be a lot less downforce so it'll be interesting to see how they run at Phoenix because they'll be the first race where it will be. It'll be at all road courses and all of the ovals that wet weather equipment can be used at. It cannot be used at Bristol and Dover because of the banking and plus really the only problems with those tracks are with Goodyear. And so that's it for this week's news and now it's time to preview this weekend's races at Phoenix. The Trek series once again has the week off so we're kicking it off with the Xfinity series with the United Red Bulls 200. The race will be 200 laps and 200 miles and the race will be on March 11th at 4 30 p.m eastern time. And so for my pick I'm going to go with Josh Berry. Josh Berry's been pretty good on the short flat ovals. He only has one win at Martinsville but he's very good at short tracks and short flat ovals. I think he's going to do really well at Phoenix. I think he'll win at Phoenix. And finally for the cup race we have the United Red Bulls Work United 500. The race will be 312 laps and 312 miles and the race will be on March 12th at 3 30 p.m eastern time. And so for my pick for the cup race I'm going to go with Kyle Larson. Kyle Larson won the championship in 2021 by winning at Phoenix and he's been pretty good at this race track. I think this weekend Larson will get his first win of the season by winning at Phoenix. And so that's going to do it for this week's episode. If you enjoyed it please like and subscribe for more. If you're going out to Phoenix this weekend I hope you have a good time and if you're not have a good time wherever you are. And a reminder that this is the first race with the new short track package and there will be some extra practice to get used to this new package and I hope it really does well at Phoenix. So anyway that's it for now and I'll see you next week.