Whether fantasy racing or behind the wheel, success requires avoiding drivers who rack up a lot of accidents and spins.
But identifying the drivers involved in the most accidents and spins on road courses is harder than at other types of tracks.
Statisticians usually calculate accidents and spins from the caution list NASCAR releases for each race. The sanctioning body classifies the cause of each caution and which cars were involved.
Cautions are up in 2022 relative to last year. The graph below summarizes numbers and types of accidents through 24 races each season.
I dimmed the competition and stage-end caution bars to highlight what we’ve come to call ‘natural cautions.’ Natural cautions include everything except stage-end and competition cautions.
History exposes trends. For example, the graph shows debris cautions falling from 36 in 2016 to 16 in 2017, when NASCAR introduced the Damaged Vehicle Policy.
The largest cause of cautions in any year are accidents. The 2021 season had the fewest accidents (64) since 1986 — which is how far back I have reliable caution data. We’ve tallied 86 accidents this year.
The 47 spins we’ve had are more than triple last year’s 15 spins. The increase in spins is due to the Next Gen car being harder to drive than the old Gen-6 car. Lack of asymmetry makes the current car much harder to ‘catch’ when it starts to turn.
Although accidents are higher in 2022 than in 2021, they’re lower than 2020, when we had 92 at this point in the season.
Is 2022 really high? Or was 2021 abnormally low?
I’m all in favor of NASCAR experimenting with everything from format to schedule — even though their experiments make my job harder. The fewer constants in the data, the more complex the analysis.
The plot below details this year’s cautions by type and race.
The Indianapolis road course statistics immediately jumped out at me.
I didn’t need to look up any data to know there was more than one spin in that race. And definitely more than one accident.
Reviewing the race video convinced me that cautions are not an accurate way to measure accidents and spins at road courses. Road courses are long and spread out. Cars can get safely off-track or return to racing after an incident without the need for a caution.
That doesn’t change the fact that there was an incident.
Counting incidents is admittedly subjective. I included only incidents that caused significant position loss or damaged a car enough to force an unscheduled pit stop.
In addition to the incidents on the official caution list, the 2022 Indianapolis road course had:
The one ‘official’ accident, plus the 10 I counted, makes 11 accidents — more than any other track this year. No track has totaled nine spins in one race, either. And the off-track excursions on a road course would be hitting the wall at oval tracks.
I tallied incidents from the other three road courses this year, again based on video.
I count 19 accidents and 24 more spins this year than official totals, which makes the increase over 2021 even larger.
Until 2017, the Cup Series visited two road courses each season: Sonoma and Watkins Glen. Uncaptured incidents weren’t as important for two reasons. First, road courses were two races out of 29 or more — from 5.5% to 6.9% of the schedule. Second, the year-to-year variation in the two tracks’ numbers was probably small.
But in 2021, road courses made up 19.4% of the Cup Series schedule.
NASCAR replaced four tracks where cautions capture most accidents and spins with four tracks where they weren’t.
The huge increase in spins this year is real. We haven’t had more spins in a season since 2002.
But accident totals are suspect pending going back and counting incidents at road courses in 2021. The drop in accidents from 2020 to 2021 may be due (at least in part) to schedule changes rather than drivers.
The number of uncounted incidents probably doesn’t interest fantasy racers as much as knowing which drivers are most likely to have accidents and spins at road courses.
From my count of incidents at the four road courses run this year, the drivers involved in the most incidents are Bubba Wallace, Ross Chastain, Kyle Larson, Alex Bowman, Austin Dillon and A.J. Allmendinger.
Each was involved in at least five incidents. The number of incidents is greater than the number of races because drivers who have spins or accidents often have more than one in a single race.
Todd Gilliland and Michael McDowell managed to avoid incidents entirely at road courses. Other full-time drivers with minimal road-course-incident involvement include: Martin Truex Jr., Christopher Bell, Tyler Reddick, Daniel Suarez, Chase Briscoe, Justin Haley, Chris Buescher, Ricky Stenhouse Jr. and Corey LaJoie.
Ryan Blaney, currently vying with Truex for the last playoff position open on points, has four incidents at road courses this year.
How does all this information affect choices for Watkins Glen (Sunday, 3 p.m. ET, USA Network)?
Of the list of most-incident-involved drivers, only Chastain has won on a road course this year.
The other three winners are on the least-incident-involved list.
BRISTOL, Tennessee — Aric Almirola will take the green flag in front of eight playoff drivers in the Cup starting lineup Saturday night as the first round concludes at Bristol Motor Speedway (USA, coverage starts at 6:30 p.m. ET).
Almirola, who failed to make the playoff (after re-signing a contract extension for the No. 10 Ford), captured the fourth pole position of his Cup career. His most recent was 47 starts ago (last year at Nashville Superspeedway).
The Stewart-Haas Racing driver became the 14th pole-sitter in Cup this season by turning a lap of 14.946 seconds on the 0.533-mile oval in qualifying Friday.
It was the sixth top 10 starts in seven races at the short track for Almirola, whose previous best in qualifying at Bristol was second.
Retweet to congratulate @Aric_Almirola on winning the pole for Saturday night's race at @BMSupdates. #NASCAR pic.twitter.com/InKjswzQuk
— NASCAR on NBC (@NASCARonNBC) September 16, 2022
Here are the starting positions of the 16 playoff drivers:
Chase Briscoe (second), Alex Bowman (third), Denny Hamlin (fourth), Kyle Larson (fifth), Ryan Blaney (sixth), Kevin Harvick (seventh), Christopher Bell (eighth), Austin Cindric (ninth), Ross Chastain (12th), Joey Logano (15th), William Byron (16th), Tyler Reddick (17th), Kyle Busch (21st), Chase Elliott (23rd), Austin Dillon (28th) and Daniel Suarez (29th).
UNDER THE LIGHTS AT BRISTOL: Details for Saturday’s race
Four drivers will be eliminated after Saturday’s 500-lap race concludes the first round of the playoffs. Only Bell is locked into the second round.
Kyle Busch, Kevin Harvick, Chase Briscoe and Austin Cindric are below the cutline to start the first race on Bristol’s high-banked concrete with the Next Gen car. Busch and Harvick are trying to avoid first-round elimination for the first time in their careers.
Harvick finished second at Bristol last year after winning therein 2020.
Busch has a series-leading eight victories in NASCAR’s premier series at Bristol — most recently in a 2019 win that is among his six top-five finishes in the past eight races there.
BRISTOL, Tenn. — Aric Almirola won his first pole since June 2021 and will lead the field to the green flag in Saturday night’s Cup race at Bristol Motor Speedway.
“We’re showing what we’re capable of,” Almirola told NBC Sports’ Kim Coon.
This is Almirola’s fourth career Cup pole. His last pole was at Nashville in June 2021. He is the 14th different driver to win a pole this season.
Almirola will be joined by Stewart-Haas Racing teammate Chase Briscoe on the front row.
Alex Bowman qualified third. Denny Hamlin will start fourth. Kyle Larson, who signed a contract extension through 2026 to remain at Hendrick Motorsports, completed the top five.
Almirola and Brad Keselowski were the only non-playoff drivers to qualify in the top 10. Keselowski will start 10th.
Daniel Suarez, who is six points above the cutline going into Saturday’s elimination race, qualified 29th. That’s worst among the 16 playoff drivers. Austin Dillon, who is three points below the cutline, qualified 28th.
The Cup race will be at 7:30 p.m. ET Saturday on USA Network. Countdown to Green airs at 6:30 p.m. ET on USA Network.
BRISTOL, Tenn. — Kevin Harvick says that Stewart-Haas Racing should have been more assertive in pursuing Kyle Busch, who announced this week that he’ll drive for Richard Childress Racing next season.
“If it was my move, I would have been way more aggressive in trying to make sure (Busch) was on our team,” Harvick told reporters Friday at Bristol Motor Speedway.
Asked why that didn’t happen, Harvick said: “I’m not in charge.”
Harvick publicly expressed his favor for Busch in July at Indianapolis, saying he would be “100% open” to having Busch as a teammate.
“I know there’s a lot of things that go on around Kyle, but in the end, Kyle is still one of the best that’s ever come through this garage,” Harvick said in July. “There’s a lot of teams that can say that they’ve never had one of those types of drivers.
“He literally could rebuild an organization if somebody took a chance that hasn’t had one of those types of drivers.”
Richard Childress Racing will get that chance with Busch. RCR is experiencing a revival this year. The team’s three victories are its most in a season since Harvick won four times there in 2013.
Both of RCR’s drivers, Tyler Reddick and Austin Dillon, are in the playoffs. Reddick enters Saturday night’s elimination race two points above the cutline and Dillon is three points below the cutline.
Harvick left RCR for Stewart-Haas Racing in 2014, winning the championship that season. SHR has two drivers in the playoffs this season: Harvick and Chase Briscoe. Both are below the cutline. Briscoe is nine points below the cutline, and Harvick is essentially in a must-win situation, 35 points below the cutline.
Since 2019, Harvick has scored 15 of SHR’s 18 wins. Briscoe, Cole Custer and Aric Almirola each has one win in that span.
Harvick’s contract goes through 2023. Stewart-Haas Racing had an opening this season. Aric Almirola announced in January that he would retire from full-time Cup competition after this season.
Almirola was brought back and signed to a multi-year deal in August to help keep sponsor Smithfield with the organization.
Harvick admitted Friday that it wouldn’t have been as simple as just signing Busch this year because Busch owns a Camping World Truck Series team.
With Busch moving to Richard Childress Racing, a Chevrolet team, Kyle Busch Motorsports will field Chevrolets next year but additional details have not been announced.
“There’s just way more that goes into it,” Harvick said of signing Busch. “I’m just the guy giving opinions. I’m not the guy spending the money. There’s just way more dynamics that go into it. Kyle’s situation is complicated, more than most, with his trucks and everything that goes into that with the manufacturer and things like that.”
Harvick admits Busch and car owner Richard Childress make a good pairing.
“Richard loves to win,” Harvick said. “Even when Kyle finishes second, he’s mad and that’s very Richard Childress. Richard may do a better job of covering it up and talking about it.
“Richard Childress is a hardcore racer. He has no intentions to do anything else other than win. I think that the move he just made shows you that.”
BRISTOL, Tenn. — Ty Gibbs will start on the pole for Friday night’s Xfinity Series race at Bristol Motor Speedway.
Gibbs earned his sixth pole of the season with a lap of 122.584 mph. He will be joined on the front row by Josh Berry (122.100 mph).
Justin Allgaier (121.906 mph) qualified third and was followed by AJ Allmendinger (121.852) and Sam Mayer (121.505).
Noah Gragson, who has won the past two races, qualified ninth at 120.984 mph. Landon Cassill, who holds the final transfer spot, qualified 16th. Ryan Sieg, who is 19 points behind Cassill, qualified 10th.
The race airs at 7:30 p.m. ET Friday on USA Network.