By Roy J. Akers– www.skyviewsports.net
This is the third running of the Brickyard 400 since the road course experiment during COVID. Kyle Larson and Bubba Wallace won the first two races. Spire Motorsports and Carson Hocevar and Daniel Suarez will blanket the front row.
Time to Drop the Green Flag
Stage One (Laps 1-50)
Carson Hocevar leads the field to green and within five laps, he leads his teammate by nearly three seconds. Austin Dillon and Chase Elliott pit by lap 23 for adjustments. Hocevar conserves fuel and Suarez closes the gap. Hocevar pits on lap 32 for fuel and most of the field has pitted. Denny Hamlin is your leader. Hamlin surrenders the lead on lap 40 with Reddick pacing the field until he pits, putting the rookie Corey Heim in lead position. Larson blows a tire on lap 54 along the backstretch hitting the wall and his day is done. A one-lap shootout with Ty Gibbs in the lead. Gibbs wins the stage with CoreyHeim second. Toyota has five drivers in the top-ten. Thirty- four drivers of 39 are on the lead lap. Hocevar leads the most laps with the first thirty-one.
Stage Two (51-100)
Ty Gibbs leads the field to green on lap 55, Michael McDowell is 2nd. There have been six leaders in the race. Chase Elliott blows a right side tire (lap 60) and the race stays green. Gibbs, like Hocevar in S1, goes out to a 3.218 lead on lap 71 over McDowell. Gibbs pits on lap 75 and Heim goes to the lead. Several drivers pit in the top-5, including McDowell and Hocevar. With nine to go in S2, It’s Heim, Hunter Nemechek and Josh Berry during green-flag pit cycling. Lap 95 sees Daniel Dye blow a left-side tire and he has damage causing the second caution for cause in the race. With cycling, Ross Chastain is your leader. The racetrack debris is being removed and Chastain wins the stage.
Final Stage (Lap 101-Finish)
Three Toyotas will lead the field to green with Gibbs out front. Hamlin and Heim run 2-3.Cars run single file along the front stretch. Green flag pit stops are looming. A caution for debris is called on lap 115. Most drivers will pit. Hamlin, Heim, and Christopher Bell are 1-2-3. Blaney is punted into the wall by Hunter Nemechek, spilling nine cars in the largest wreck of the day. Blaney is racing Todd Gilliland for $1M and has a damaged racecar. The race restarts on lap 126 and Heim puts a dynamite move on Hamlin for the lead. Heim would never be betteredand has won his second NASCAR race. Heim wins by 0.287 seconds over Christopher Bell. Todd Gilliland finishes 24th to win the In-Season Challenge.
The Checkered Flag
With four laps remaining under green, Corey Heim in the No. 67 Field & Stream Toyota leads Christopher Bell by 0.34 seconds and Joey Logano by 0.73 seconds. The race has featured 15 lead changes among 11 different drivers through five cautions for 27 laps. Heim wins his second race on the season. Corey, drivers dream of winning here at Indianapolis. You’re just 24 years old. I’m sure this one is top of the list. What was going through your mind in the final few laps?
COREY HEIM: “Yeah, that was a damn handful. I was hanging on for dear life once the shade went down and the pace picked up. My car got really loose. And I had never really been in a lot of clean air throughout the day, so that was the hardest I’ve ever fought in my life to just make sure I focused on exits and kept them in dirty air.
I’m pretty out of breath. That was a workout. It was a dream come true. Winning at the Brickyard. That’s unbelievable. Thank you so much, fans, for coming out here. Caught a break early with the pit cycle. And just executed all day. Made no mistakes. My team, 23XI did a fantastic job with my Field & Stream Camry. First race with Field & Stream too, that’s awesome. First race, first win, so we hope we can keep it going.”
They Said It…
Kyle Larson, No. 5 Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet – Sidelined by damage sustained in an accident in the closing laps of Stage One as a tire went down on his No. 5 HendrickCars.com Chevrolet. You guys had the car and the strategy. The team had told you to start to push it just a little bit.. is that what happened, or was it something else?
“We just had a tire let go. I wouldn’t say pushing it had anything to do with it. I was only going three-tenths quicker than I had been with saving fuel. It was just a little bit of bad luck, I guess. I’m proud of this No. 5 HendrickCars.com Chevrolet team. We qualified 10th and did what we had to do to gain the track position to get to the lead. We executed all of that really well. There was still obviously a lot of the race left, but I feel like we were positioning ourselves within the race and within the strategy to set ourselves up well to go after a win. It’s a bummer, but we’ll get back after it at Iowa (Speedway).”
We saw you trying to hunt down the 67. How many times did you think you were going to be able to get to him?
CHRISTOPHER BELL: Honestly, I didn’t think I was going to be able to get there at all. My guys were telling me he was going loose. I knew really that was going to be my only opportunity, was a mistake from him. I knew whatever it was, 35 laps, was a very long run. I just needed one bobble. If he had one bobble, I was going to be able to get there.
Yeah, he did a great job. He showed excellent mental toughness. Put together 35 really good laps. I didn’t have an opportunity.
Fantasy Picks
Gibbs and Hocevar qualified well with Hocevar being on the poll. Larson and Briscoe qualified 10-11 and Larson won this race in 2024. Blaney starts 13th. Bubba Wallace, last years winner qualified poorly. Briscoe is from Indiana and would swap all eight of his CUP victories for one Brickyard win.
What’s Next
OFF Week Then
