Written by Gabriel Tsui, Edited by Sharifah Zaqreeztrina
After a convincing victory by Ryan Blaney to further strengthen his position in the leaderboard, we head west toward Indianapolis for the 22nd race of the season. As the season is counting down, it will be an interesting race in Indianapolis, with a switch away from the road course and a return to oval racing.
Track Preview
Located in Indianapolis, the Indianapolis Motor Speedway is one of America’s most prestigious racetracks. It is also the oldest track on the NASCAR calendar, being built 114 years ago in 1909. The track first hosted a NASCAR race in 1994, and it has been a recurring figure in the calendar.
The race started off as an oval race, however, in 2021 the organisers switched over to the road course layout to attract more audience. This year, they decided to make the switch back to the oval layout, with attendance continuing to be below average and the poor execution of the road course races.
The track has a distance of 2.5 miles (4.0 kilometres), with a 9.2 degree banking on all four turns. The drivers will race 160 laps around the track, with 50 laps each in stages one and two, closing off the final stage 60 laps, totalling a distance of 400 miles (644 kilometres) driven around the track.
The weather forecast shows cloudy skies but no rain, with temperatures peaking at 28 degrees Celsius. The race will commence on Sunday, July 21st, at 14:30 ET (11:30 PT, 20:30 CET).
Race Predictions
Before the switch to the road course and the next gen cars, Ford has been dominating the track with three victories in a row from 2018 till 2020. Since then, the superspeedway landscape changed quite a lot, with scenes of a single manufacturer dominating certain race tracks has been left behind with the previous generations.
Having said that, I believe the Fords will go on a run this weekend to continue their hot streak. Even though the wins don’t show it, they have been in the forefront in most superspeedway races this season.
With the momentum they are carrying into this weekend, the prediction is that one of the Ford drivers, most likely being Buescher or Blaney, crosses the yard of bricks and heads to victory lane.
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