#all of us want some driver to DNF for our favorite driver to win

[socksracoon10]

look i am not a lando norris fan at all but for the lando fans pls have SOME decorum we're all stressed about the race coming up, we all have our favorite drivers that we want to win I get it, this is a crucial part of the race. At least on my views, i don't want Lando to crash or DNF like yeah it would help max but i wouldnt wish that on my worst enemy so at the same time stop wishing it for max, dont wish that for any driver imo because that's childish and rude on top of all this, lemme clarify max will NOT try to crash into lando on purpose (ive been seeing posts like that)... i fear people keep forgetting that max has matured a lot more than people give him credit for. He raced clean in Brazil, the worst he's done as of late was his classic pushing them off track limits move but any other driver would do the exact same thing at the moment in order to secure their championship. at the end of the day, it's so funny how a number of people that the drivers have never met will go on long rants to tear down another driver. I have my thoughts about lando, I get mad too and I say stuff not ONLINE where others can read. i think we all need to calm down keep our thoughts in our head and if your argument is "b-b-but other people are - but other people are doing it they're saying mean stuff!" THEN BE THE BETTER PERSON??? dont stoop to their level thats all i wanna say at the end of the day youre not their parents, youre not their gf/bf, youre not even an acquaintance... you are a person on tumblr... that they don't know... dont defend them to death, dont whine about them to death just watch the damn race, pray your driver does well and if they say or do something wrong accept that they did something wrong and move on with your life thats literally it ok im done ranting lol (i mightve gone crazy in the tags lol)

[yahoo-from-the-marbles-blog]

NASCAR Power Rankings: Ranking the top four by their title chances

Welcome to the final Power Rankings of the 2017 season. Where has the time gone?

1. Martin Truex Jr. (LW: 2): The season’s most dominant driver is the favorite for the title. Truex outperformed his average at Phoenix considerably on Sunday, finishing third.

While he’s the only driver of the final four who hasn’t previously won a title, Truex has experience in the format. In 2015, he was a part of the final four and finished 12th.

Truex was the underdog in that season. He had won one race — the third of his career and first in two seasons — and his team was getting ready to switch from Chevrolet to Toyota in 2016. A title two years ago would have been a surprise. A championship on Sunday is a fitting end to a great season.

“If I’m the favorite, perfect, I like that,” Truex said. “I think it’s a better position to be in. I was the underdog before and I finished fourth, so yeah, bring it on.”

2. Kyle Busch (LW: 5): If we expect Truex to be fast as soon as practice starts on Friday, is Busch the guy with the best chance to match him? We never really saw what Busch could do at Texas after his lap one contact with Brad Keselowski. And his best finish at a 1.5-mile track in the playoffs this season is 10th.

So if we’re using recent history as our guide, Busch may not exactly be the strongest threat to Truex. But we think Joe Gibbs Racing will have cars with comparable speed to its equipment prepared by Truex’s Furniture Row team. It’s up to Busch’s team to have a race free of mistakes.

Busch finished seventh on Sunday and wasn’t exactly thrilled with his car.

“Great to get a top-10 at least, you know?” Busch said. “That was a pretty dismal performance for our fans, so apologize for that, but, you know, better days are ahead next week.”

3. Kevin Harvick (LW: 2): Here’s another guy chasing Truex who’s had success in this format. A year before Busch won the race at Homestead to win the championship in 2015, Harvick did it in 2014 — the first year of NASCAR’s elimination playoff format.

We sure as hell wouldn’t want Busch or Harvick in our rear view mirrors as the laps wind down. The two drivers are some of the best chasers in the series — just look at what Harvick did to Truex two weeks ago at Texas.

“Three of us have won championships, and Martin has won a lot of races this year,” Harvick said. “The pressure is really on [Truex] and [Busch]. Those guys have dominated the year, and I feel like if they don’t win at this point, they would probably feel like they’ve had a letdown. It’s a lot of fun coming from behind and playing catch‑up and kind of playing that underdog role is much easier than being expected to go down there and win. We expect to win.”

4. Brad Keselowski (LW: 3): Keselowski may be fourth on this list, but we have a sneaking suspicion the team will show a burst of speed at Homestead. And if they don’t, well they’ve proven over the season that they are really good at making chicken salad out of chicken you-know-what.

That chicken salad didn’t exactly taste good at Phoenix, where Keselowski finished 16th. But adequate was good enough thanks to Matt Kenseth’s pass of Chase Elliott, the driver that bumped Keselowski out of the lead at Martinsville three weeks ago.

” I’m a big subscriber that it takes speed, execution and luck to win, and I think we probably had some really solid execution last week in Texas, great speed at Martinsville and luck [Sunday],” Keselowski said. “You know, if you put all three of them together on any given day, you can win, and we haven’t done that in this round, but we had one of each in all three races, and that put us in position to be here.”

5. Matt Kenseth (LW: 9): Kenseth gets to vault up four positions in Power Rankings because of his win and late pass of Chase Elliott. With Sunday’s race at Homestead likely being the last of his career, he’ll run a throwback paint scheme that mimics the car he ran as a rookie with Roush Fenway Racing in 2000. It’ll be crazy to see a Kenseth throwback car from the year 2000 on the track with a Dale Earnhardt Jr. throwback car from the same year on the track.

We’re proud to unveil the @DEWALTtough @mattkenseth tribute car that will race this weekend @HomesteadMiami ! It’s a throwback to the car he raced in his rookie Cup Series season. Thank you Matt! #teaMKenseth pic.twitter.com/YxHVQobG6R

— Joe Gibbs Racing (@JoeGibbsRacing) November 14, 2017

6. Denny Hamlin (LW: 4): Hamlin did exactly what he needed to do to get to the playoff final ahead of Brad Keselowski … and then he got knocked into the wall by Chase Elliott.

It’s fair to argue that Hamlin should have let Elliott by easily when the No. 24 first tapped his rear bumper. After all, Elliott was of little consequence to Hamlin at the time because all Hamlin had to do was stay ahead of Keselowski at that point in the race.

It’s also fair to argue against that. Letting Elliott get past him means Elliott is one spot closer to the front of the field. And Elliott steals the spot Hamlin and Keselowski are racing for if he wins the race. As he almost did.

7. Chase Elliott (LW: 7): If this was the NFL or the NBA, bloviators would have taken to the airwaves Monday morning calling Elliott a choker.

Is that a fair description? No. But Elliott’s inability to close out races is quickly becoming a trend and a trend that’s not getting a ton of attention.

That relative lack of attention is understandable in part because of his run-in with Hamlin. Had Elliott not pushed Hamlin into the wall and the final laps play out as they did — where Kenseth passes Elliott for the lead — the finish is a far more significant event. But it’s also worth wondering if discussion about Elliott’s late-race failures are muted because of his standing in the eyes of many fans.

8. Ryan Blaney (LW: 6): Blaney’s car had qualifying speed but it didn’t have race speed. After starting first, Blaney led the first 11 laps of the race. He never led again. Heck, he didn’t even score any stage points. Not a way to get into the final four.

Blaney finished 17th.

9. Jimmie Johnson (LW: 8): We’re probably guilty of having our expectations too high for Johnson throughout the season. Even though it was clear the No. 48 team wasn’t the best in the garage over the summer and fall months, it was incredibly tough to not count the team out until Johnson hit the wall on Sunday.

Hindsight being 20/20, it was clear from the first round of the playoffs that Johnson and company didn’t have what it took to win the championship this season. We’ll see if the team will in 2018 with Chevrolet’s new Camaro body.

10. Erik Jones (LW: NR): Jones’ fourth-place finish on Sunday pushed him ahead of Clint Bowyer for 18th in the points standings. While Jones won’t catch Joey Logano for 17th — and the best driver to not make the playoffs — that’s a solid season.

11. Jamie McMurray (LW: NR): McMurray finished sixth. He’s tied with Ricky Stenhouse Jr. for 11th in the points standings with 2,200 points.

12. Dale Earnhardt Jr. (LW: NR): Since it’s the last Power Rankings of Junior’s career, he needs to be included. And why not after his 10th-place finish on Sunday. That came after he lost two laps thanks to a flat tire heading into turn 1 — a moment where Junior did a heckuva job keeping the car off the wall.

Lucky Dog: Aric Almirola’s ninth-place finish was his third top-10 in the last six races. He has six top-10 finishes all season.

The DNF: Kyle Larson’s on a terrible run.

– – – – – – –

Nick Bromberg is the editor of Dr. Saturday and From the Marbles on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at nickbromberg@yahoo.com or follow him on Twitter!

Follow @NickBromberg

[yahoo-from-the-marbles-blog]

NASCAR Power Rankings: Truex keeps the top spot after Hamlin's win

Welcome to Power Rankings. As always, Power Rankings are far from a scientific formula. In fact, it’s the perfect blend of analytics and bias against your favorite driver. Direct all your complaints to us at nickbromberg@yahoo.com and we’ll try to have some fun.

1. Martin Truex Jr. (LW: 1): The Truex Jr. playoff point train churns on. After winning the first stage Sunday at New Hampshire, Truex has 29 guaranteed playoff points to use when the playoffs begin in September.

And he also gained another five provisional playoff points with Kyle Larson’s inspection penalty last week. The regular season champion gets 15 playoff points, and the penalty moved Truex into first in the standings ahead of Larson. That means that Truex is sitting on a possible 44 playoff points with seven races to go before the postseason. Can he get to 50?

Truex finished third on Sunday.

2. Kyle Larson (LW: 2): If Larson’s team is blatantly pushing things in the inspection process, it may not be a terrible strategy. Wouldn’t you want to deal with a points penalty and find out where the line is when it comes to certain mechanical and engineering tweaks in the regular season than in the postseason?

But at the same time, the No. 42 team can be inviting extra scrutiny on themselves by failing inspection so often. If you count being unable to get through pre-qualifying inspection at Kentucky as a failure, that’s three inspection failures in eight days. That’s probably a little overboard.

“I think with how fast we’ve been running and all that, NASCAR has kept a closer eye on our team in particular,” Larson said after finishing second on Sunday. “What was going on with the shark fin [after qualifying on Friday] wasn’t anything different really than the other teams tinker with, just trying to maximize their aero performance in their cars. We just got in trouble for it, so had to go to the back.

“Obviously I don’t think it really affected us, which is a good thing, because the little stuff that we got in trouble for so far hasn’t seemed to affect the performance. Just got to keep working hard on the areas of our race car that are legal and find some more speed that way.”

3. Denny Hamlin (LW: 9): Hamlin makes a six-spot jump in Power Rankings because of his win.

While it’s pretty indisputable that Joe Gibbs Racing hasn’t had the speed relative to the rest of the field in 2017 that it’s had over the past two seasons, it’s not like the team has been in a massive slump. Three of its four drivers are in the top 11 in the points standings and Hamlin and Kyle Busch are both in the top five.

All things considered, wasn’t JGR due for a bit of regression after winning 33 percent of the races over the past two seasons? And anyway, Jimmie Johnson’s 2016 is perfect proof that your summer speed isn’t indicative of your playoff performance. Just ask Hamlin, who entered the 2016 playoffs on an incredible run of top-10 finishes.

4. Kevin Harvick (LW: 5): Harvick finished fifth and said it was a great weekend and his team did a great job. But he also remarked, “We know we need to come back with more speed for the playoffs.”

That’s a fair assessment. Toyota teams led 290 of 301 laps and clearly had an advantage over the rest of the field.

5. Kyle Busch (LW: 3): Busch should have been the Joe Gibbs Racing car that won on Sunday. Instead, he sped on pit road during his final two pit stops and finished 12th.

The two speeding penalties conveniently fit the narrative that Busch hasn’t been able to close out races this season. While it’s true that he’s winless, saying Busch has had a hard time closing the deal this season is a bit of a stretch. And it’s an argument that will disappear entirely if Busch gets a third-straight win at Indianapolis on Sunday.

6. Chase Elliott (LW: 4): Elliott finished a spot ahead of Busch in 11th. Because Hamlin won the race, he fell to sixth in the points standings.

Compared to a year ago, 11th is a pretty damn good finish. At this time last year, Elliott was in the midst of a summer swoon that dropped him from sixth to 13th in the points standings.

7. Clint Bowyer (LW: 7): While Matt Kenseth is clearly a beneficiary of Joey Logano’s New Hampshire misfortune, Bowyer is right there with him. Bowyer finished seventh and is two points ahead of Kenseth, who occupies the final spot in the playoffs on points. Logano, meanwhile, is now 54 points behind Bowyer.

8. Jimmie Johnson (LW: 8): Johnson officially started Sunday’s race in second but was the first driver to take the green flag.

Yeah, that was a penalty. Johnson had to serve a pass-through penalty for jumping the start of the race and finished 10th.

“I forgot all about that,” Johnson said of the rule. “I guess I just got it wrong at the start. I went off the flag and forgot that the pole sitter has to be the first one to the stripe; so I’ll take the responsibility on that one.”

9. Ricky Stenhouse Jr. (LW: 6): Stenhouse Jr. finished 14th after some contact with Austin Dillon early in the race that caused Dillon to spin.

10. Brad Keselowski (LW: 12): Keselowski finished ninth after losing track position early because of a faulty jack on a pit stop. He called the finish “reasonable.” It was his third top-10 finish in eight races. In that span, he’s finished outside the top 30 four times.

11. Jamie McMurray (LW: 10): McMurray started fourth but finished 17th. He dropped 24 points to race-winner Denny Hamlin, which allowed Hamlin to jump him in the standings.

12. Matt Kenseth (LW: NR): Kenseth finished fourth after taking two tires on the final pit stops of the race. Had Kenseth taken four tires from the lead when the caution came out he might have won the race. But 12 other cars might have taken two tires as well. Because he was the leader during the final caution, Kenseth and crew chief Jason Ratcliff weren’t in an enviable position.

Lucky Dog: Daniel Suarez finished sixth and is now just 23 points behind fellow rookie Erik Jones.

The DNF: That goes to Jones, who was knocked out of the race after contact on pit road led to a flat tire.

Dropped Out: Ryan Blaney

– – – – – – –

Nick Bromberg is the editor of Dr. Saturday and From the Marbles on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at nickbromberg@yahoo.com or follow him on Twitter!

Follow @NickBromberg

[yahoo-from-the-marbles-blog]

NASCAR Power Rankings: What happens when the top 6 drivers are in crashes?

Welcome to Power Rankings. As always, Power Rankings are far from a scientific formula. In fact, it’s the perfect blend of analytics and bias against your favorite driver. Direct all your complaints to us at nickbromberg@yahoo.com and we’ll try to have some fun.

1. Kyle Busch (LW: 3): Every driver in last week’s top six was involved in a crash during Saturday night’s race at Daytona. Since Busch finished 20th — and was the only driver in the top six to finish in the top 20 — he gets to move to the top spot by default.

If you have any better ideas as to who to put here, feel free to offer them up. But given the way the race unfolded, Busch became our default choice. Busch spun on lap 72, but was able to continue with a damaged car and got his lap back twice.

2. Kyle Larson (LW: 2): It’s a minor miracle that Larson’s car didn’t take off any more than it did when he got airborne with less than 10 laps to go. It appears the hood flaps on his car played a role in keeping the car from lifting up higher, as did the fact that a car didn’t go under Larson’s and catapult him into the air either.

Larson finished 29th, and kept his points lead over Martin Truex Jr.

3. Kevin Harvick (LW: 1): Harvick’s flat tire caused a big crash on lap 107. He lost a tire coming off turn 2 and the accident collected cars driven by Dale Earnhardt Jr. and others.

“It just blew out right in the middle of the corner,” Harvick said. “I hate to wreck half the field. That’s a part of what we do.”

4. Chase Elliott (LW: 5): Maybe we should put Elliott higher given he somehow finished the race after being in two incidents.

He was involved in a lap 99 crash and went skidding through the backstretch infield. Somewhat incredibly, the splitter wasn’t ripped off the front of his car after digging through the soggy turf.

And then on the overtime finish, Elliott went skidding again as the field headed to turn 1. A caution wasn’t called for that incident — he kept going — and Elliott ended up 22nd, one lap down.

5. Martin Truex Jr. (LW: 4): Truex was caught up in a crash that started on lap 72 when Kyle Busch spun.

“I just tried to slow down, but you know you get hit from behind, you hit the guy in front of you – there’s nothing you can do,” Truex said. “When you’re going 190 something and everybody stops in front of you, it’s kind of hard to do anything.”

Because of Larson’s troubles, Truex is down just 18 points in the standings. The battle between the two for the top spot before the end of the regular season should be a riveting one. And worth five playoff points to the winner.

6. Jimmie Johnson (LW: 7): Johnson took the lead on lap 103 and it was easy to wonder if it was going to be a race where he swoops in and takes a win after not leading through the first half of the race.

That didn’t happen. Johnson finished 12th and never led again after leading from laps 103-106.

7. Ricky Stenhouse Jr. (LW: NR): Stenhouse’s win at Daytona means it’s the third-straight year that a driver has won the May Talladega race and the July Daytona race. Dale Earnhardt Jr. did it in 2015 while Brad Keselowski did it last year.

Neither driver won the fall Talladega race that season, but Junior came damn close in 2015 in the chaos that was the Talladega finish that season. Stenhouse is going to be the favorite at Talladega, whether he’s still in the playoffs or not.

“You know, not waiting another year and getting [a second career win] in the same year is really important for us,” Stenhouse said. “I think it’s something that after you win the first one, it was awesome for a week, but then somebody else wins the next week, so it makes you want to continue to win and get back up here in the media center, get back in victory lane, and get everybody talking about your team.”

8. Brad Keselowski (LW: 6): Keselowski somehow spun 3.5 times and didn’t hit anything or anyone while he was involved in the wreck with Harvick, Junior and others.

But Keselowski went spinning after contact in the crash. And that contact caused some damage to the rear axle of the car. Keselowski tried to continue on but ended up parking the car after causing a caution of his own (because of the damage) a handful of laps later.

9. Clint Bowyer (LW: 11): Daytona was Bowyer’s second-straight second-place finish. While that’s clearly a sign of optimism for the team, Bowyer still doesn’t have much wiggle room in terms of making the playoffs on points. Joey Logano, the first driver out of the playoffs as of now, is just 27 points behind Bowyer. And if Matt Kenseth or Logano win before Bowyer does, that cut line to get into the playoffs gets perilously closer.

10. Jamie McMurray (LW: 8): McMurray’s was involved in the lap 72 crash but still soldiered on.

“So we had probably the best plate car tonight that we have had in four or five years,” McMurray said after the race. “We got caught up in that wreck and obviously it killed a lot of speed in the car.”

But McMurray still had some pretty good speed even with a damaged car. While he ultimately finished 14th, he was near the front of the field with a beat up machine in the latter stages of the race.

11. Ryan Blaney (LW: 9): Blaney was involved in the accident that included Larson’s car getting some air. He finished 26th.

12. Denny Hamlin (LW: NR): Hamlin gets the tossup for the final spot in Power Rankings despite finishing 24th. He’s still ninth in the points standings and 56 points ahead of the cut line to make the playoffs.

Lucky Dog: Paul Menard finished third and Michael McDowell finished fourth.

The DNF: Pick a driver, any driver. We’ll go with Cole Whitt and Ryan Sieg, who each had to quit the race less than 10 laps in because of engine problems.

[yahoo-from-the-marbles-blog]

NASCAR Power Rankings: Kyle Larson's win moves him up

Welcome to Power Rankings. As always, Power Rankings are far from a scientific formula. In fact, it’s the perfect blend of analytics and bias against your favorite driver. Direct all your complaints to us at nickbromberg@yahoo.com and we’ll try to have some fun.

1. Kyle Larson (LW: 3): When a guy gets his second win of the season and it vaults him to the top of the points standings there’s no excuse to not have him at No. 1 in Power Rankings.

He said he didn’t have the race’s fastest car either. That honor went to Martin Truex Jr.

“Seemed like whenever [Truex] wanted to get the lead, he hit a nitro button and would cruise up to the lead, then check out,” Larson said. “He was the class of the field.

“I thought [Kyle Busch] was next best. [Matt Kenseth] was better than I was on the long run. I thought we were probably a third‑ or fourth‑place car. To come out a winner, it makes it that much more exciting, I guess. I guess it would be disappointing if I finished outside the top 10 or something. For not having the dominant car, to do everything right to get a win today, was special.”

Points position: 1st Race wins: 2 Stage wins: 3

2. Martin Truex Jr. (LW: 1): Truex agreed with Larson’s assessment that he had the best car. Truex won the first two stages of the race.

“We had the best car out there without a doubt – just inside lane restarts at the end killed us, so just stinks when you have to race like that, you know?” Truex said. “You get just in a bad spot and there’s nothing you can do about it. We seen it the last couple restarts, so just wrong place. Probably should have took two tires that last time we pitted – we took four. That killed us. Just wrong lane on the restart every single time all day long and couldn’t use the best car to win.”

Points position: 2nd Race wins: 2 Stage wins: 10

3. Kyle Busch (LW: 4): Busch once again didn’t talk to media after the race. He finished seventh after he lost the lead to Larson on a restart with 15 laps to go.

Busch’s disappointment is understandable, but it also may be magnified a bit. He’s third in the points standings, though you may not know it from his disappointment after the last couple of races.

Points position: 3rd Race wins: 0 Stage wins: 4

4. Kevin Harvick (LW: 2): Harvick finished 14th after contact with Ryan Blaney.

Blaney had to check up and Harvick got forced into him on the backstretch by Daniel Suarez. But before the incident, Harvick wasn’t a challenger for the lead anyway. He consistently had a car inside the top 15 but not one that challenged for the lead.

“Tight all day long and we could not get it loosened up enough to be able to challenge,” Harvick said.

Points position: 4th Race wins: 0 Stage wins: 3

5. Chase Elliott (LW: 8): We’re not trying to simply be a rundown of the points standings here, but Elliott moves up three spots after he finished second to Larson at Michigan for the second-straight time. Elliott didn’t lead any laps, but he was the fastest Hendrick Motorsports car all day after starting 10th.

Elliott said Larson had to make a mistake if he was going to catch him for the win.

“Once we singled out in line, it’s difficult to pass in a short period of time,” Elliott said. “Sure, I think he would have had to have made a bobble for me to get to him.  He had probably about a second on me. I wasn’t close enough to get to him or make a move.”

Points position: 5th Race wins: 0 Stage wins: 2

6. Jimmie Johnson (LW: 6): Johnson finished 10th after he started at the back of the field because of a practice wreck. We would love to know what Johnson’s crew chief Chad Knaus was thinking after he brought Johnson down pit road for fresh tires after a caution for a trash bag on lap 8.

Knaus pitted Johnson anticipating NASCAR to call a competition caution on lap 20 like it said it would. But after teams pitted, NASCAR moved the competition caution to lap 25. Moving a caution five laps can impact a team’s strategy significantly.

Points position: 8th Race wins: 3 Stage wins: 0

7. Jamie McMurray (LW: 9): McMurray is continuing his season of being fast but not really fast. He’s got the ninth-most stage points, but he’s led laps in just two races. He finished fifth on Sunday.

“It almost seemed like the track was going through a weird transition at the beginning,” McMurray said. “Where you get two or three good laps and it almost was like you catch a gust of wind and have to hang on to the car. You would slide up the race track, but [the team] did a really good job adjusting on it.”

Points position: 7th Race wins: 0 Stage wins 0

8. Brad Keselowski (LW: 5): Keselowski hasn’t won a Cup Series race at his home track in Michigan and never had the track position to challenge for it Sunday. He was constantly around Harvick in that top-15 range and ended up 16th and said the team “wasn’t really where we needed to be.”

Points position: 6th Race wins: 2 Stage wins: 2

9. Ryan Blaney (LW: 7): Blaney had a fast car and helped Kyle Larson get the lead over Kyle Busch at the end of the race with a big push immediately after the restart.

But he fell to 25th, the next-to-last car on the lead lap after that contact with Kevin Harvick because of a flat tire and damage to the car.

Points position: 13th Race wins: 1 Stage wins: 3

10. Denny Hamlin (LW: 10): A day after winning the Xfinity Series race, Hamlin finished fourth. He was second on the race’s final restart, but Larson had the preferred outside lane. As Hamlin tried to dive into the corner under Larson, his car didn’t stick.

“The biggest thing [about not being in the preferred lane] is you try to minimize how many spots you lose versus how much you gain, but when you’re sitting there side-by-side for the lead, you’re going to try to do everything you can,” Hamlin said. “I tried to carry speed in there and obviously got sucked around there and you just try to minimize your losses at that point.”

Points position: 9th Race wins: 0 Stage wins: 2

11. Joey Logano (LW: NR): Logano finished third and announced after the race that he and his wife were expecting a baby later in the year. That’s not a bad Father’s Day at all.

“Yeah, you have no idea how good this feels,” Logano said of the finish. “It’s been a struggle the last month-and-a-half and it’s nice to come here to Michigan, maybe our best race track and be able to overcome a lot.”

Points position: 10th Race wins: 1* Stage wins: 1

12. Matt Kenseth (LW: 12): Kenseth finished 11th and could have finished a heck of a lot higher if he didn’t slide through his pit box twice while entering for pit stops. One of those times happened on the final stops of the day.

Points position: 11th Race wins: 0 Stage wins: 1

Lucky Dog: Dale Earnhardt Jr.’s ninth-place finish was just his third top-10 of the season.

The DNF: Sunday’s race at Michigan had 37 cars. It was missing the No. 55 of Premium Motorsports and the No. 51 of Rick Ware Racing, two cars that typically are multiple laps down at the end of the race or end up behind the wall. But even without those two cars, it was crazy to see that 36 of the 37 cars in the field completed at least 194 of 200 laps. The only car that didn’t was Danica Patrick’s because of her crash.

Dropped out: Austin Dillon

– – – – – – –

Nick Bromberg is the editor of Dr. Saturday and From the Marbles on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at nickbromberg@yahoo.com or follow him on Twitter!

Follow @NickBromberg

[yahoo-from-the-marbles-blog]

Power Rankings: Martin Truex Jr. takes over at No. 1

Welcome to Power Rankings. As always, Power Rankings are far from a scientific formula. In fact, it’s the perfect blend of analytics and bias against your favorite driver. Direct all your complaints to us at nickbromberg@yahoo.com and we’ll try to have some fun.

(Getty Images)

1. Martin Truex Jr. (LW: 2): The sequel wasn’t as good as the original for Truex at Charlotte. Though in fairness, it was like the Godfather II compared to the original. The bar for success was absurdly high.

A year after leading 392 of 400 laps to win his first Coca-Cola 600, Truex led 233 laps. Though he finished third after he was passed by Kyle Busch on the final lap.

The good news is that coupled with Kyle Larson’s woes, the finish was good enough for Truex to inherit the regular-season points lead for the first time in his career. He’s up four points on Larson and has only finished outside 16th once so far in 12 races.

2. Kyle Busch: (LW 8): Busch’s demeanor in his post-race press conference has been well-documented and criticized. Brad Keselowski had this to say, which was followed up by this response by a Toyota executive.

Idk ???? Maybe I should keep my mouth shut. But I was taught to hate losing by working harder next time, not by being disrespectful to others.

— Brad Keselowski (@keselowski) May 29, 2017

I agree with you @keselowski. You should have kept your mouth shut. https://t.co/Dykk5GYMhc

— Andy Graves (@AndyJGraves) May 30, 2017

Yeah, Keselowski could have directly tagged Busch in his tweet instead of being passive-aggressive. But racing fans knew who he was talking about and there’s merit to his point.

Professionally, Busch’s conduct is slightly annoying though expected. After he wins, Busch can be a candid and thoughtful interview. If you want to know the details about something, Busch is generally happy to provide when he’s in a good mood.

When he’s not, well, things like what you saw Sunday night/Monday morning happen. Most of us will never understand the competitiveness that it takes to become a champion in a major sport. But while we grapple to figure out the fire that burns in a competitor after a close loss, it’s also OK to expect the competitor to understand that he’s got a job and income that 99.99 percent of the world can only dream of having and at least understand the real-life context of the disappointment.

3. Kevin Harvick (LW: 4): Harvick finished eighth after starting on the pole. He was competitive at the beginning of the race, but led for the final time on lap 106. The rest of the way he had a top-10 car, but one that wasn’t capable of challenging for the lead.

Most hilariously, he was the victim of Fox’s bad statistics during the 100-minute rain delay that halted the race. Fox attempted to show the top 20 in the points standings at the time of the delay and ended up forgetting Harvick, Ryan Blaney, Denny Hamlin and Brad Keselowski. Fox’s NASCAR coverage is struggling mightily this year in the stats department.

(Getty Images)

4. Brad Keselowski (LW: 1): Keselowski drops three spots after he ran into the back of Chase Elliott 21 laps into the race. The wreck wasn’t Keselowski’s fault, of course. Elliott’s engine blew up — literally — after hitting debris from Jeffrey Earnhardt’s car which had something explode inside of it and litter the exit of turn 4 with debris.

“Somebody broke in front of him and then he ran over what they broke and then he broke, so there were two cars broke in front of me and just oil everywhere,” Keselowski said. “You couldn’t stop and turn. You couldn’t do anything.”

5. Kyle Larson (LW: 3): Larson lost the points lead because he hit the wall during Sunday’s race and ended up 33rd after a tire exploded. It’s the first time all season he hasn’t finished on the lead lap. He’s now four points behind Truex.

“I just hate it that I made a mistake there in Turn 3 and got in the wall,” Larson said. “I was not even running hard up there. I just got loose and then I hit it and it ruined our day”

He should be pretty good Sunday at Dover. He finished second to Matt Kenseth a year ago at the concrete oval.

(Getty Images)

6. Jimmie Johnson (LW: 7): Here’s another guy who’s pretty good at Dover. Johnson was in position for his third win of the season with two laps to go but run out of gas, handing the lead over to Austin Dillon.

It was a good gamble by Johnson. A win would make him the winningest driver in the Cup Series this season and add five points to his tally at the start of the playoffs. Had he pitted, he probably would have finished between 5th and 10th. He ultimately finished 17th. That’s not a huge risk.

7. Jamie McMurray (LW: 6): McMurray had to work his way through the field a couple of times during Sunday’s race. After getting up front the first time McMurray had to make an unscheduled pit stop for a flat tire. He ended up passing more cars and finished 12th.

(Getty Images)

8. Austin Dillon (LW: NR): Sunday’s winner is 21st in the points standings — it’s not that often you see a winner from outside the top 20 in the standings. He’s also the fourth driver since 2000 to get his first Cup Series win in the 600 joining Matt Kenseth, Casey Mears and David Reutimann. Dillon’s hoping that his career is much more like Kenseth’s than it is like Mears’ or Reutimann’s. Though Reutimann won a race the following season.

9. Ricky Stenhouse Jr. (LW: 5): Stenhouse’s consistency continues. He was an unspectacular 15th Sunday but he’s 13th in the points standings, ahead of race-winners Kurt Busch, Ryan Newman and Dillon and also ahead of Matt Kenseth and teammate Trevor Bayne.

10. Denny Hamlin (LW: NR): Hamlin is two spots ahead of Stenhouse in 11th. Crazily, he ranks sixth among drivers who haven’t gotten wins in the first 12 races of the season. Nine drivers have already won, so if the pace keeps up — it probably won’t — and Hamlin stays winless, he’s on the edge of making the playoffs.

We’ll be very surprised if he misses out.

11. Clint Bowyer (LW: 9): Bowyer is 11 spots ahead of Hamlin. He continues to be haunted by his lack of stage points. After finishing eighth in the second stage Sunday night he has 31 stage points — 15 less than Erik Jones, a driver who is nine spots behind Bowyer in the standings.

12. Joey Logano (LW: 10): Logano just didn’t have much speed all weekend. He finished 21st and was passed by Bowyer in the standings.

Lucky Dog: Matt Kenseth’s fourth-place finish is just his third top-10 finish of the season.

The DNF: Chase Elliott, for obvious reasons.

Dropped Out: Ryan Blaney, Elliott

– – – – – – –

Nick Bromberg is the editor of Dr. Saturday and From the Marbles on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at nickbromberg@yahoo.com or follow him on Twitter!

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Power Rankings: Just like Sunday, everyone's chasing Kyle Larson

Kyle Larson couldn’t be caught Sunday. (Getty)

Welcome to Power Rankings. As always, Power Rankings are far from a scientific formula. In fact, it’s the perfect blend of analytics and bias against your favorite driver. Direct all your complaints to us at nickbromberg@yahoo.com and we’ll try to have some fun.

1. Kyle Larson (LW: 1): Welcome to NASCAR’s playoffs, Kyle Larson.

Larson is pulling a Kevin Harvick with his domination of the Cup Series through the first five weeks of the season. Heck, you can make the argument that he’s been even better than Harvick was in 2016.

With his win on Sunday at Auto Club Speedway, Larson’s average finish is 3.8 through the first five races. That’s just a tick better than Harvick, who had an average finish of fourth through the first five races a year ago. Anytime you’re being compared to Harvick’s Stewart-Haas Racing tenure you’re doing something right.

“I think the runway, you know, he’s got a lot of runway,” Larson’s car owner Chip Ganassi said. “We don’t have the engine spooled up yet. We have a lot of runway to go. I think he’s just scratching the surface in terms of what he’s capable of. I have no idea what he’s capable of. I mean, your guess is as good as mine.”

2. Brad Keselowski (LW: 2): Keselowski was a NASCAR yo-yo on Sunday, though the climb back towards the front was much slower than the quick drop to the back.

After starting third, Keselowski was spinning just a few laps into the race because of a flat tire. The tire was busted because of damage sustained at the start of the race when Denny Hamlin’s car didn’t accelerate ahead of Keselowski’s and the driver of the No. 2 got sandwiched between Hamlin and Ryan Newman.

With a bunch of hammers and tape, Keselowski’s team got his car driveable and he took advantage of late restarts to climb through the field and finish second.

“I don’t know if I would have had a shot at Kyle [on the final restart], but I would have liked to have seen,” Keselowski said. “We came from third on that last one and a couple of three-wide passes and what-not. Kyle was smart. He picked the outside lane and kind of pinned me behind a guy that had older tires, so by the time I cleared everybody Kyle was just too far gone.”

3. Martin Truex Jr. (LW: 5): Truex was Larson’s main contender throughout the race on Sunday and ended up finishing fourth after he was passed by Keselowski and Clint Bowyer on the final restart.

The third-place finish may not be what Truex remembers most about the race, however. The biggest memory may be the contact that led to a crash with quasi-teammate Matt Kenseth. Truex’s car slid up from the bottom line on a restart and made contact with Kenseth’s right-rear. The touch sent Kenseth sliding into the inside wall on the backstretch and destroyed his car.

4. Chase Elliott (LW: 4): Elliott was the first driver to head to pit road before the race’s final restart and we’re a bit miffed that he didn’t finish any higher than 10th. It may be because so many cars stayed out on the track before the two-lap shootout.

But we liked Elliott’s strategy. With Larson being so good throughout the entirety of the day, more cars should have taken tires in an attempt to chase after the lead. If you’re not going to play the fifth race of the season aggressively, are you going to be aggressive in the playoffs?

5. Kevin Harvick (LW: 6): Here’s another driver that had one hell of a comeback. Harvick sustained some serious damage to the front of his car when he got into the back of Newman on that kerfuffle at the start of the race. After losing a lap after his team attempted to fix the damage, Harvick got the lap back and ended up finishing 13th. He was proud of that finish.

“I feel like we won,” Harvick said. “Those are the days that championships are made out of right there. To wreck before we even get to the start-finish line, I don’t know exactly what happened in front of me, but, obviously, we got a caved-in grille. [The team] did a great job fixing it. We got some wavearounds and made the car better and made something out of the day. That’s why these guys are who they are and won championships and races because they can make days like that happen.”

6. Ryan Newman (LW: 3): Last week’s winner ended up finishing 15th. Much like Harvick and Keselowski, the damage Newman suffered at the start of the race put him behind immediately.

“Then we battled an extremely tight-handling car that put us a lap down,” Newman said. “We finally raced back onto the lead lap with 19 to go. It certainly wasn’t the finish we wanted but it was a decent recovery.”

7. Joey Logano (LW: 7): Logano finished fifth after starting at the back of the pack because he didn’t get a chance to attempt a qualifying lap. He didn’t qualify because his car wasn’t through inspection in time.

Logano also came back from being a lap down, though he was a lap down late in the race after trying to pit off-sequence from the leaders and getting pinned because of a caution flag.

“We were good on short runs, but would fall off too hard on the long run,” Logano said. “We got caught with the caution while we were trying that green-flag cycle with 30 to go or so. We lost our track position, but were able to get enough cautions and allow us to fight back into the top-5. I thought, ‘Man, we’ve got a shot at winning this thing.’ We were catching them so fast with a newer tire, but another caution came out and we lost some track position on pit road and then we battled back and kept fighting to get back to fifth.”

8. Clint Bowyer (LW: 11): The resurgence of Clint Bowyer is real. Even though teammate Kurt Busch won the Daytona 500, it’s fair to say that Bowyer has had a better start to the year. He’s 25 points ahead of Busch in the points standings and with good reason. His finishes have been better.

“It’s just the opportunity you’ve been waiting on,” Bowyer said. “You know, I mean, everybody knows the situation. You know, this opportunity, this is something I signed up for a year and a half ago. I’ve been chomping at the bit to be with an organization like this, to have an army of people behind you like this, the teammates, the sponsors we have, the manufacturer in Ford, all of that.”

9. Daniel Suarez (LW: NR): After a rough few races to start the season Suarez now has back-to-back top-10 finishes. Much like Elliott, Suarez pitted late for tires and drove through the field to finish seventh, three spots of the driver of the No. 24.

10. Ryan Blaney (LW: 9): Blaney finished ninth after getting a mid-race pit road penalty that put him to the back of the pack. While he’s been good so far this season, he’d be even better if he and his team could avoid the pit road penalties.

11. Kyle Busch (LW: 10): Busch finished eighth and he’s now 10th in the points standings. Much like his teammate two spots ahead of him in the standings, Busch has two-straight top-10 finishes after finishing outside the top 10 in the first three races of the season.

12. Jamie McMurray (LW: NR): McMurray isn’t lagging that far behind his teammate Larson. He’s sixth in the standings and finished sixth Sunday at Auto Club. It’s clear that Ganassi has made organization-wide changes that have paid off at the beginning of the season. The test is now to see if CGR can stay at the top of the heap for the rest of the season.

“Our team and our whole organization has done an amazing job to get to the point that we are,” McMurray said. “It’s not one thing; it’s hundreds of small things. I’m so happy for all the guys at our shop that have worked hard. In our sport, every team works hard; and you’re not always rewarded for it. It’s awesome to be rewarded for all the work.”

The Lucky Dog: Erik Jones had a very late pit road penalty and still ended up finishing 12th. Tires!

The DNF: Poor Kenseth

Dropped out: Kurt Busch, Jimmie Johnson

– – – – – – –

Nick Bromberg is the editor of Dr. Saturday and From the Marbles on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at nickbromberg@yahoo.com or follow him on Twitter!

Follow @NickBromberg

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Power Rankings: Mr. 2nd-place Kyle Larson isn't second

Welcome to Power Rankings. As always, Power Rankings are far from a scientific formula. In fact, it’s the perfect blend of analytics and bias against your favorite driver. Direct all your complaints to us at nickbromberg@yahoo.com and we’ll try to have some fun.

1. Kyle Larson (LW: 5): Is the era of Kyle Larson upon us? While it’s easy to say Larson should have more than one win in his Cup Series career, it’s also impossible to ignore the uptick in his performance since May of 2016.

After finishing outside the top 25 in six of the first 11 races last season, Larson has two such finishes over the 29 races since. And in those 29 races he’s finished in the top five 12 times. That’s a rate of 41 percent. Kevin Harvick led the Cup Series in 2016 by finishing in the top five 47 percent of the time. Larson isn’t too far off and he’s not driving for one of the four Cup Series juggernaut teams either.

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2. Brad Keselowski (LW: 1): Along with most of the leaders of the race, Keselowski pitted for tires and fuel during the race’s final caution flag on Saturday. He ended up finishing fifth, which is a worthy finish given he had a top five car all day. Keselowski did mention the “c” phrase in his post-race remarks, which isn’t a good aspect for a one-mile track that was supposed to be extra slippery thanks to hot temperatures.

“I thought we might have had a shot at getting the win but [Kyle Busch] was just a touch better,” Keselowski said. “We were all real close there. Whoever got the track position was going to run away. The clean air was so important which was a bit frustrating.”

3. Ryan Newman (LW: NR): You had to figure that Richard Childress Racing was going to break its winless streak the way Newman did on Sunday, right? While the team is solidly in the Cup Series’ second tier, it simply hasn’t had the speed that the top teams have had over the past few seasons. Unless RCR won a plate race, it was going to take a strategy call to get the win.

And that was a heck of a strategy call too. Given what we saw on Sunday, don’t be surprised if playoff teams mimic it in November if there’s a late caution in the Cup Series’ return trip to Phoenix.

4. Chase Elliott (LW: 5): As Larson is blossoming, so is Elliott. While it’s hard to imagine that the two will become enemies or start to dislike each other as the years go on, it’s not hard to see a rivalry of sorts burgeoning between the two in the future.

Elliott led 106 laps on Sunday and won the second stage of the race. He finished 12th, however, and as Keselowski said “clean air,” in his post-race comments, Elliott uttered the “t” phrase.

“Even the really good cars had a really hard time getting to somebody, so track position was big as it always is, every week, everywhere we go and that will continue to be the case throughout the year,” Elliott said. “So, if you don’t have it at the end of the race it is going to be an uphill battle I feel like throughout this season. That is going to be a big trend.”

That’s not a ringing endorsement of the increased ability to pass with NASCAR’s lower downforce rules.

5. Martin Truex Jr. (LW: 2): Last week’s winner started 16th and finished 11th. That’s a pretty good way to describe his day too. He didn’t finish in the top 10 in any of the two stages and also got hurt on pit road late in the race when the air hose from Michael McDowell’s car got caught underneath Truex’s.

6. Kevin Harvick (LW: 8): Sound the alarms, Kevin Harvick didn’t win at Phoenix. He didn’t even finish in the top five either. It’s definitely time to panic.

While that’s clearly sarcasm, Sunday wasn’t a good day for Harvick at Phoenix by his recent standards. He didn’t lead any laps for the second-straight race at the track either. Before failing to lead a lap at Phoenix in the fall, he last didn’t lead at the track in the spring of 2013. In the six races in between he led a total of 1,064 of 1,780 laps. Insane.

“We just didn’t ever get it exactly how we wanted all weekend,” Harvick said. “Luckily it is a good race track for us and we were able to battle and use all the tricks of the trade we know to get ourselves up in contention.”

7. Joey Logano (LW: 3): Logano had one of the fastest cars throughout the race. Or at least at the beginning of the race where he won the first stage before starting on the pole.

But a speeding penalty on pit road led to a loss of track position. And based off the comments you’ve seen above, it’s not surprising to know that Logano had a hell of a time trying to get back to the front. It’s easy to reason that his blown right-front tire with six laps to go could have been helped by his need to push harder than normal in an ultimately futile attempt to get back to the front.

“There is not much you can do when the right front blows out.=,” Logano said. “We had a good car in the beginning of the race and then just fell off and got a pit road speeding penalty and it was hard to get back up there. We were getting closer but out long run speed was off.”

8. Kurt Busch (LW: 5): Busch dealt with battery issues all day and ended up finishing 25th after starting 11th. Short and sweet and to the point.

9: Ryan Blaney (LW: 7): Blaney finished two spots ahead of Busch even though he qualified on the front row. He too got a pit road speeding penalty that compounded his handling issues. When track position went away at Phoenix, it disappeared for good.

“About halfway through the race our trackbar stopped working, which was bad,” Blaney said. “That really hurt us. That really hurt from being able to adjust our car throughout the run. That is what we needed. That really sucked when that stopped working. We take for granted those things. Then I sped on pit road and that put us in a bigger hole. We had an issue and then I compounded the issue by speeding and you can’t have that.”

10. Kyle Busch (LW: NR): Depending on what side of the fence you’re on in the Busch-Logano kerfuffle, the caution caused by Logano’s crash that denied Busch a sure win was either cruel or appropriate. Or if you don’t have any strong feelings about the issue, it was simply another “that’s so NASCAR” moment. If NASCAR was scripted — it’s not, commenters — the script of Logano indirectly costing Busch a win a week after Busch tried to punch him would be rejected by producers.

11. Clint Bowyer (LW: 11): What a difference a season makes.

“It was that kind of weekend for us really<” Bowyer said. “Just a little off all weekend long. We got it better Saturday and I really thought we were going to be alright there but we actually ended up racing the way we struggled all day Friday“

Bowyer finished 13th. If he finished 13th in 2016 while driving for HScott Motorsports, he’d have been celebrating.

12. Jimmie Johnson (LW: NR): Hey, the defending champion has made an appearance in Power Rankings. Johnson finished ninth on Sunday and scored the sixth-most points of anyone in the race because he finished in the top 10 in both of the first two segments. It was a solid day for Johnson, though he said he knew he was in a bad spot on the final restart.

“The last restart I knew it wasn’t going to be favorable for us and it just didn’t turn out,” Johnson said. “But a decent performance, probably a top five car or top three car on the long run, just lacked too much on the short run.”

The Lucky Dog: Daniel Suarez finished seventh and Erik Jones was eighth. It’s the first top 10 for each rookie.

The DNF: Matt Kenseth blew a tire and finished 37th, sandwiched between BK Racing stalwarts Gray Gaulding and Corey LaJoie.

Dropped out: Trevor Bayne, Kasey Kahne, Kenseth

– – – – – – –

Nick Bromberg is the editor of Dr. Saturday and From the Marbles on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at nickbromberg@yahoo.com or follow him on Twitter!

Follow @NickBromberg