All three of NASCAR top divisions will be in action this weekend at Texas Motor Speedway.
The NASCAR Cup, Xfinity and Gander RV & Outdoors Truck Series were slated to run the last weekend of March until the COVID-19 pandemic forced the rescheduling to July.
See Also: Texas Race Info and Lineups
Kyle Busch, who is still seeking his first Cup race and stage win of the season, will be competing in all three races.
“It’s on your mind that we don’t have that win and haven’t really been in contention to get that win a whole lot this year,” said Busch, who is a three-time Cup Texas winner. “It’s just a matter of a lot of circumstances that it’s been the way it has been for us so far. Hoping we can start the races close to where we need to be on Sunday and have a good run with our Interstate Batteries Toyota.”
Saturday’s Vankor 350 (MRN, 7:30 p.m. ET) will mark Busch’s fifth and final Gander Trucks race of the season while his Xfinity start with be his fourth.
“I’m looking forward to Saturday night at Texas,” Busch said about making his 14th truck start at Texas where he has four wins. “It’s a place where KBM has had a lot of speed the last few seasons. We swept the races last year — I won in the spring and Biffle (Greg) came of retirement and hopped in the truck for a one-race deal and won in June, so I’m confident that we’ll be have a fast Cessna Tundra.”
Busch is one of eight drivers in the field for Sunday’s Cup Series O’Reilly Auto Parts 500 that have won at Texas. Jimmie Johnson leads all drivers with seven wins while Kevin Harvick and Denny Hamlin, who share the season win lead total with four, join Busch as three-time Texas winners.
See Also: Texas Driver Averages
The bubble for the cutoff for the Cup Series playoffs was shuffled up with nine races remaining in the regular season after Cole Custer’s first career win last weekend at Kentucky Speedway.
Hendrick Motorsports teammates William Byron and Jimmie Johnson currently are 15th and 16th, respectively in the provisional playoff standings. Johnson is 24 points ahead of Austin Dillon for the final spot.
“It is a little unique this year because you’ve got Daytona as the final race before the playoffs and anything can happen there,” Byron said. “But you probably don’t want to be close to that bubble, but we’re not worried about points. We’re just trying to perform. And we know if we perform how we need to, it’s going to take care of itself.”
Like Kentucky, Texas is a track that was recently resurfaced and reconfigured. In 2017, the banking at TMS was reduced from 24 to 20 degrees in Turns 1 and 2.
“I’m hoping that we can take some of the things we learned at Kentucky and apply them to Texas,” Custer said. “I mean obviously they’re pretty similar racetracks with repaves and they both have two different ends kind of that are similar. I’m really looking forward to it. It’s obviously a track where they put the VHT, you know, sticky substance down. So that’s going to be changed throughout the weekend like we saw a Kentucky. That’s going to be one of the huge things about Texas I think, but overall it’s trying to make sure you get in clean air and try and get yourself to the front.”
Saturday’s Xfinity Series My Bariatric Solutions 300 will be the first race of the weekend with the green flag set for 3 p.m. ET.
Chase Briscoe, who has won five times this season, leads the standings by 19 over Noah Gragson. This will be Briscoe’s fourth start at Texas. He finished fourth last spring.
“You can carry a lot of speed in turns three and four and then it almost feels like you stop when you get back to turns one and two,” Briscoe said. “The results on the Xfinity side haven’t really reflected where we’ve run during the race, so while the track’s not one of my favorites, I think we’ll have a shot at taking the Ford Performance Racing School Mustang back to Victory Lane.”
The Gander Trucks will conclude Saturday with their eighth race of the season. Austin Hill leads last weekend’s winner Sheldon Creed by 46 in the standings. Hill remains the only driver to finish in the top 10 in every race this season.
“We’ve been right there every week and have put ourselves in a good position in the point standings,” Hill said. “I feel like we should have won the summer race at Texas last year and we were really fast in the spring race but had an overheating issue, so I’m looking forward to going back this weekend.”
