Those chasing Kyle Larson for the NASCAR Cup Series championship might be tempted to look with dismay at the respective career statistics of the top competitors at Phoenix Raceway, site of Sunday’s Freeway Insurance 500 (3 p.m. ET on USA, PRN and SiriusXM NASCAR Radio).
Among the top six in the Chase standings—Larson, Denny Hamlin, Christopher Bell, Chase Briscoe, Ryan Blaney and Joey Logano—the driver with both the best average start and best average finish at Phoenix is Larson.
In 24 starts at the one-mile track in the Sonoran Desert, Larson has posted an average starting position of 6.8 and an average finish of 10.0. He has finished either third (four times) or fourth (twice) in his last seven races there.
Comparatively speaking, though, the defending series champion is on the short side when it comes to victories at the track. Each of the remaining top five, with the exception of Briscoe, has more Phoenix wins than Larson.
Logano, the runaway leader at Phoenix with four victories, is sixth in the standings, 92 points behind Larson. Bell, Blaney and Hamlin have won twice each at the track. Larson got his only Phoenix victory en route to his first championship in 2021, the year before the Gen 7 race car debuted in the series.
Briscoe’s lone win at the track came in the first Gen 7 race there in the spring of 2022.
In a quote often misattributed to Vince Lombardi, UCLA football coach Red Sanders once said, “Winning isn’t everything—it’s the only thing.” In a NASCAR Chase context, winning is the only thing that assures the victor of gaining a significant chunk of points.
With two straight victories, Briscoe has come from the cheap seats to fourth in the standings, 65 points behind the leader. On Sunday, he’ll try for a third consecutive win in a season where two fellow Toyota drivers, Tyler Reddick of 23XI Racing and Joe Gibbs Racing teammate Hamlin already have manufactured streaks of three in a row.
The only problem for the pursuers is that time is starting to tick away. Realistically, to catch Larson, one of the other contenders will have to win multiple races in the final four and hope the Chase leader encounters the sorts of problems he has scrupulously avoided in the first six races of the postseason.
Briscoe, however, is not ready to concede the title.
“I feel great about all the tracks we’re going to,” he said. “Phoenix is where I’ve been able to at least win my first Cup race, so I feel confident going there. Even just in the 19 car, stats-wise, I would say we have been one of the worst cars—if you just look on paper at the finish.
“But we have passed so many cars and went from the back to the front I don’t know how many times. I think we’ve blown five tires in two races there. So, the end result doesn’t always show great, but we’ve been really fast there.
“Talladega we were able to win last year. Martinsville to me is the big question mark for our group. We’ve been okay. We’ve just been a seventh-to-10th-place car, and we’re going to have to be better if we’re going to go and contend.
“Homestead is a place I feel really good about. Just going to have to go perform the next four weeks.”
— NASCAR Wire Service —