Gross Bombs: NFL Props for Week 16
Josh Gross
Following William Byron’s victory at Darlington, NASCAR leaves South Carolina and heads to North Wilkesboro for 125 miles around a track that hasn’t been on the schedule for nearly three decades. Therefore, let’s wrap up action from this past Sunday’s Goodyear 400, review numbers from last year at Darlington, and assess some expectations for the NASCAR All-Star Race.
Goodyear 400 Wrap-Up
When the playoffs begin later this fall, let us try our best to remember how the final box score of the Goodyear 400 in no way reflects the actual race.
With roughly 16 laps remaining, Kyle Larson was en route to another victory before Ryan Newman wrecked. Up until this point, Larson had been a nonfactor for the majority of the race before working his way forward and ascending to the lead after the final green flag pit stops in which he erased a 1.5-second gap to Ross Chastain via a fast pit stop. However, the caution came out and chaos ensued.
On the first restart, Martin Truex Jr. inexplicably (running fourth) ran high up into Joey Logano and caused a multi-car wreck behind them. Truex had been the strongest car for the majority of the day, leading over half of the laps, taking full advantage of his starting position and No. 1 pit stall. After the wreck, Truex’s car was still running but with a flat tire, Truex couldn’t move, and his day was over.
On the next restart, Kyle Larson and Ross Chastain started across from one another and Chastain did what he does best — go full throttle without care to the consequences taking himself and Larson into the wall and ending the day of the second and third best drivers that afternoon. Chastain ended his day while Larson managed to finish in 20th despite heavy damage to his left front fender.
On the final restart, in overtime, William Byron drove right past Kevin Harvick (who had plenty of damage from the wreck involving Logano and Truex) and grabbed another win for 2023. Looking at the loop data for this race, the discrepancies between average running position, position with 29 laps remaining, and final position look more like a race from Talladega or Daytona than Darlington. However, this is why Darlington has its various nicknames it has the propensity to claim several drivers in one swoop. However, this time around, Sunday’s contenders were taken out by their own foolish driving and not because they danced too close to the wall coming out of turn four.
North Wilkesboro Raceway
As stated above, NASCAR heads to North Wilkesboro Speedway this Sunday for its annual All-Star Race. No points will be on the line this Sunday — just cold hard cash to the winner.
Over the course of the past few seasons, the host venue for this event has jumped around from Charlotte Motor Speedway (1.5-mile intermediate), to Bristol Motor Speedway (0.5-mile steeply banked oval) during the 2020 pandemic-impacted season, and then Texas Motor Speedway (1.5-mile intermediate) the last two years to little fanfare. In reality, NASCAR could have held this event at a drag strip and gotten more enthusiasm out of drivers and fans then going for a third-straight season to Texas.
The peculiarity with North Wilkesboro being used as the host site is exactly what I stated above — this track hasn’t held a sanctioned NASCAR event in nearly three decades! 1996 to be precise, when Terry Labonte won in the Spring and then fellow Hendrick Motorsports driver Jeff Gordon won in the fall. Due to the age of this track (hosting events since 1949) and its miniscule size for fans and suites (compared to the cookie-cutter intermediate tracks that were being built at the time), North Wilkesboro lost both of its races following 1996, and soon after became a ghost track as nature slowly started to reclaim this historic venue.
For 14 years, the track sat vacant until it started hosting minor-league racing events for USAR and ASA, but after just one season, these races ceased and the track started reverting back to its decay. However, in 2019 an effort was led by Dale Earnhardt Jr. to clean up the track’s surface from debris and weeds in order for IRacing to come in and begin scanning the track so the track could become part of its track database. This was part of a larger effort to revitalize North Wilkesboro and get it back in running order — an effort that was made viable by the 2021-2022 state of North Carolina budget that allocated funds to North Wilkesboro and gave Speedway Motorsports Incorporated (the owners of NWB) the funds to reopen.
In late 2022, the track saw its first racing action in over a decade with modifieds and the CARS Tour racing in August and is now slated to host its first NASCAR action since that 1996 season.
Expectations for the NASCAR All-Star Race
With no active drivers having seen this track in their racing careers, the only way drivers will have had a previous feel for this venue is with time spent in the simulator — something we’re going to assume drivers are doing of their own desire as this is just an exhibition race. However, a few drivers have already announced that they will be competing in Saturday’s Trucks Series race at NWB — a 250-lap race that will run longer than Sunday’s All-Star event. Thus, practice time is going to be key going into this race.
The other mitigating factor is the track surface. Obviously, it’s been a few decades since NWB has seen a fresh coat of asphalt or concrete (1981 to be precise) and with this surface left to weather for multiple spans of years, this venue is going to be about as abrasive as a track could hope to be on tires. Combine that with the short nature of this venue, just 0.625 miles long, and this race could really setup for the drivers who qualify well to hold position all day while the drivers who race their way into the main feature, via the three open races prior to the All-Star race, are going to have to abuse their tires and their competitors in order to move forward.
