10 trình điều khiển nascar hàng đầu 2022 năm 2022
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With only
Christopher Bell locked into the next round of the playoffs, the first item on every other drivers’ to-do list is to simply survive
Bristol. The worst thing that can happen to a playoff driver is him taking himself out of the race. The second-worst thing is for another driver take him out. During a discussion of accidents on SiriusXM Speedway, host Dave Moody asked if some drivers tend to run into each other more than they run into other drivers. I suspected they did, but here are the numbers. Never trust
statistics unless you know what data was used, where it came from, and how the claimant arrived at their results. I started with NASCAR’s caution list, selecting all accidents and spins involving two or more cars. For 2022, that totaled 69 incidents involving 280 cars. Incidents at road courses, however, often
don’t cause cautions. Therefore, I added the list of incidents I compiled from analyzing video of the five road course races. That provided 20 more incidents involving 48 cars. I then identified all the pairwise correlations. That’s a fancy way of saying I found all the pairs of
drivers who were in the same accidents. For Ross Chastain, for example, I counted how many times the No. 1 car was in an accident that also involved the No. 2 car, the No. 3 car, etc. I repeated this for each driver. Each pair of drivers’ score is the number of accidents they had in common. These numbers ranged from zero to six. No analysis is ever absolute. So here are the
caveats: I
start by examining how many pairwise collisions each driver tallied in the 28 races this year. Again, a pairwise collision is simply an accident or spin involving both drivers. Two of this year’s rookie class rise to the top of the list. Harrison Burton was involved in 75 pairwise interactions and Todd Gilliland in 70. Being a rookie doesn’t necessarily mean you get tangled up with more cars. Austin Cindric had only 45 pairwise interactions. The third driver in the overall rankings is veteran Denny Hamlin, with a 66. Aside from Burton, Gilliland and
Hamlin, no driver has more than 60 pairwise collisions this year. Six drivers score between 50 and 59. Justin Haley holds the lowest score of all full-time drivers at 19. Other low-scoring drivers are: If collisions were random, then every car would have about the same pairwise collision score with every other car. We already know not to expect that because where cars typically run influences who collides with
whom. Cars that tend to run at the front of the field are more likely to run into other cars that run at the front of the field. The same holds true for mid-pack and back-of-pack drivers. The only exception is at superspeedways because those crashes tend to collect a broader swathe of
positions. The two drivers involved in the largest number of common incidents this year are Cindric and Burton, with a total of six. One-ninth of Cindric’s incidents included Burton. But running position can’t entirely explain this data. Cindric’s average running position is 17.0, which is almost five positions away from Burton’s average running position of 22.9. But playoff driver Austin Dillon has an 18.2 average running position and has no shared incidents with Burton. Cindric and Dillon have no shared incidents, either. Running position can, however, explain the other two drivers that have a high score with Burton. Gilliland and Corey LaJoie each have five shared accidents with the No. 21. LaJoie’s average running position is 25.4 and Gilliland’s is 23.5. But LaJoie has only one shared accident with Gilliland. If this makes your head spin, the diagram below may help. I denote each driver by his car number. The numbers on the arrows tell you how many shared incidents each pair has.  Aside from the Burton/Gilliland and Burton/LaJoie pairings, only two other driver pairs had five mutual encounters. Denny Hamlin shares five accidents each with Elliott and Ryan Blaney. How to survive BristolThe table below shows driver pairs with scores of four or more for each of the playoff drivers. These are the cars each driver should avoid if they are to survive Bristol (7:30 p.m. ET Saturday, USA Network.) Austin Dillon, Kevin Harvick, Tyler Reddick, Chase Briscoe, William Byron and Alex Bowman are not included because none had any scores of four or above. After a crazy rollercoaster of a racing season, the Power Rankings have concluded that a driver and team on top of the world one week can be lost in another hemisphere the next week. The term “momentum” seems to have faded from the NASCAR Cup Series lexicon. The latest to jump to the top of the rankings is Joey Logano, who won last Sunday’s race at Las Vegas Motor Speedway with a late-race surge (and fresher tires). Logano thus became the first driver locked into a Championship Four spot in Phoenix Nov. 6, and he also advanced four spots in the NBC Sports NASCAR Power Rankings to first. MORE: Joey Logano criticizes Bubba Wallace for Sunday race incidentJoining Chase Elliott (five) and Tyler Reddick (three), Logano is in high-flying company as one of only three drivers with at least three wins this year. And he scored one at exactly the right time with a championship-finale spot on the line. NBC Sports NASCAR Power Rankings1. Joey Logano (No. 5 last week) — Logano punches his ticket to the Phoenix championship run and his pursuit of a second title. 2. Denny Hamlin (No. 2 last week) — Hamlin finished a solid fifth at Las Vegas and is plus-6 points to the cutline entering Homestead-Miami Speedway. He has had six top 10s in the past seven races. 3. Chase Elliott (No. 1 last week) — Elliott was mysteriously absent from the jousting at the front Sunday at Las Vegas and finished 21st with no laps led. 4. Ross Chastain (No. 9 last week) — Chastain lost Sunday’s race to a surging Joey Logano but showed power, leading a race-high 68 laps. 5. Chase Briscoe (No. 6 last week) — Briscoe continues to defy the doubters. He finished fourth at Las Vegas to extend his streak of top-10 runs to four. 6. Ryan Blaney (No. 3 last week) — Blaney ran into a series of issues Sunday (including his anger at other drivers) and slumped to a 28th-place finish. He remains in the championship hunt but is minus-11 to the cutline. MORE: Playoffs frustrating Blaney, Elliott7. Christopher Bell (No. 4 last week) — Bell was an innocent victim of the Bubba Wallace–Kyle Larson brouhaha at Las Vegas. Damage from that accident left him with a 34th-place finish and an eighth-place spot in the Round of 8 standings. 8. Kyle Larson (No. 7 last week) — Larson had a strong car at Vegas, but contact with Bubba Wallace led to all sorts of drama (and a few shoves), and Larson parked with a 35th-place finish, one spot in front of Wallace. 9. William Byron (No. 8 last week) — Byron finished 13th at Vegas and was generally absent from up-front racing. He’s minus-6 to the cutline entering this weekend. 10. Tyler Reddick (No. 10 last week) — Reddick isn’t waddling like a lame duck in his final weeks with Richard Childress Racing. He led 32 laps at Vegas and finished sixth. Spire Motorsports announced a two-driver lineup of Corey LaJoie and Ty Dillon for the 2023 NASCAR Cup Series season. LaJoie, 31, will return for his third consecutive season with the team. He is ranked 31st in the points standings and finished a career-best fifth in the March 20 race at Atlanta Motor Speedway. He also led a career-best 19 laps in his No. 7 Chevrolet during the July 10 race at Atlanta before crashing in a battle with Chase Elliott for the victory on the final restart. This will be the fifth consecutive season in NASCAR’s premier series for LaJoie, who has five top 10s in 197 career Cup starts. Ryan Sparks will remain the crew chief for LaJoie and also has been promoted to the team’s director of competition. Sparks and LaJoie joined Spire as a duo after being paired at GoFas Racing in 2020.
“With another year under our belts and a notebook on the new car, I know we can have a solid season and get that first win,” LaJoie said in a release. “It’s cool my buddy Ty is joining us as well. It will be nice to have a full-time teammate in the No. 77.” Dillon, 30, will join Spire Motorsports after spending the 2022 season in the No. 42 Chevrolet of Petty GMS Racing. He is ranked 29th in the points standings with a season-best finish of 10th in the Bristol Motor Speedway dirt race. The 2023 season will be Dillon’s sixth full time on the Cup circuit. He ran for Germain Racing from 2017-20 with a career-best finish of third in the Oct. 4, 2020 race at Talladega Superspeedway. Kevin Bellicourt, who has been the crew chief for Spire’s No. 77 the past two seasons, will be Dillon’s crew chief. In 199 Cup starts, Dillon has two top fives and seven top 10s. He has finished a career-best 24th in the points twice (2017, ’19). Dillon also has three victories in the Camping World Truck Series (where he finished second in the 2013 standings). He won the July 26, 2014 race at Indianapolis Motor Speedway as a rookie in the Xfinity Series, where he finished in the top five of the standings in three consecutive seasons. “I’m thankful for this opportunity, a new beginning with a very hungry team that is excited for the future,” Dillon said in a release. “Spire Motorsports has been growing year after year when you look at the way that Corey and the No. 7 team has developed to be competitive. The organization is heading in the right direction and I’m excited to be a part of bringing the No. 77 up to where Corey has been running. Hopefully we raise the whole level of competition together.” Spire Motorsports will have two full-time drivers for the first time in its history. The team started with the 2019 Cup Series season with eight drivers splitting time in the No. 77 Chevrolet. Justin Haley delivered the team its first victory in a rain-shortened race July 7, 2019 at Daytona International Speedway. LaJoie became its first full-time driver last season, and the team expanded to a second full-time car in 2022 that has been shared by four drivers. “There’s little doubt that we raised some eyebrows when we entered the sport as race team owners,” Spire Motorsports co-owner Jeff Dickerson said in a release. “We knew that we needed to learn how to crawl before we attempted to walk and eventually run. We’ve been quite fortunate to build a strong foundation for Spire Motorsports over the past several years. That’s a testament to the people of Spire Motorsports, and Corey LaJoie, Ryan Sparks and Kevin Bellicourt have been the bedrock of this organization. “The next step in our progression is to add an equally capable full-time driver for the No. 77 team and we’ve found just that individual in Ty Dillon. Clearly, the path that (fellow Spire Motorsports co-owner T.J. Puchyr) and I have taken to be here today has been atypical. We have great respect for our contemporaries in the sport, and we are humbled to be among them. Collectively, we’ve been fortunate to serve a lot of functions and roles in racing over the past 20 years. That allows us to have a great appreciation and perspective of what it takes to be successful in this super-competitive environment. We’re very proud of what every member of the organization has helped us build.” Former NASCAR champion Joey Logano was critical of the actions Sunday at Las Vegas Motor Speedway by Bubba Wallace, saying the 23XI Racing driver could have cost Kyle Larson his life. After Larson squeezed Wallace’s No. 45 Toyota into the wall on Lap 95, Wallace moved down the track and hit Larson’s No. 5 Chevrolet in the right rear. Larson slid up the track into a heavy driver’s-side impact with the outside wall after contact with playoff contender Christopher Bell. After the drivers climbed from their cars, Wallace walked down the track to yell at Larson and push him several times. “The retaliation is not OK in the way it happened,” Logano said Tuesday during “The Morning Drive” on SiriusXM NASCAR Radio. “If he spun him to the infield, maybe it’s a little better, but right-rear hooking someone in the dogleg is not OK. I don’t know if everyone realizes how bad that could have been. That could have been the end of Kyle Larson’s career. That to me was what was on the line. Or his life. That is the worst spot to get right-rear hooked into a corner. The dogleg is pretty sharp. When you come in and hit the angle that he hit, in a way, he was lucky to hit (Bell) a little bit to soften it a little bit.
“(Larson) might have flush-hit that thing in the side. And then game over. There’s no room for that. You can’t do that. If it’s under caution and you’re banging doors. I don’t know that that’s OK, either, but at least you’re not putting someone’s life at risk. … I don’t like using cars for a weapon. “If you’re that mad, just get out and fight him. That’s fine if that’s what you really want to do and that’s how you want to handle it. That’s fine. You can make someone’s life hell if you want to racing them, but do I think just straight up blasting them into the wall is OK, no. Because the consequences are way bigger than just a race, and you’ll live with regret the rest of your life. That’s the bottom line. If you seriously injured somebody in retaliation for something that wasn’t huge, I don’t think you can live with yourself after that. I don’t want to take that risk.” Wallace apologized for the incident Monday night. NASCAR could announce penalties as early as Tuesday afternoon. Logano won Sunday’s race to advance to the Championship Four at Phoenix Raceway. Josh Berry will return to the JR Motorsports No. 8 Chevrolet for the 2023 NASCAR Xfinity Series season. The team announced Berry’s return Tuesday, two days after he won at Las Vegas Motor Speedway and earned a spot in the Xfinity Championship Four Nov. 5 at Phoenix Raceway. MORE: Winners and losers at Las Vegas Motor SpeedwayBerry, 32, has won a career-high three races this season in the No. 8 car, scoring at Dover, Charlotte and Vegas. In 52 series starts with JR Motorsports, Berry has earned five victories, 17 top-five and 32 top-10 finishes and claimed a spot in the Xfinity playoffs in his first year of eligibility. “We’ve been lucky to have Josh spend so much of his career with JR Motorsports. He’s been successful at every level for us,” said team co-owner Dale Earnhardt Jr. in a statement released by the team. “He’s performed well and won races in our cars, and now he’s contending for NASCAR championships. He established our Late Model team as a championship-caliber program and is now contributing to our Xfinity program. And I couldn’t be more proud to have him back at JRM in 2023.” Berry began with JR Motorsports in 2010, when he campaigned all across the Southeast with the team’s Late Model team, earning 94 victories. Combined with his NXS victories, Berry is just one win shy of 100 career wins under the JRM banner. MORE: NBC Sports NASCAR Power Rankings“JR Motorsports has always been my home as a racer, and I’m proud to return to JRM and the No. 8 team for 2023,” Berry said in a team statement. “When I came here, it was as a Late Model driver and mechanic, and when I got the opportunity to race full-time in the NASCAR Xfinity Series, it was a dream come true. We’ll race for a series championship next month, and that’s nearly full-circle for me with the team.” The team said sponsors will be announced later. |
