Written by Gabriel Tsui, Edited by Sharifah Zaqreeztrina
As Christopher Bell completes a dominating weekend in New Hampshire, taking his third win of the season, the field heads west to Lebanon, Tennessee for the 19th race of the season. With the star drivers of Hendrick Motorsports tied for the top spot in the regular season standings, who will come out on top at the end of the weekend?
Track Preview
The Nashville Superspeedway was built in 2001, and has been hosting a Truck Series race and a XFinity Series race up until 2011, where low attendance led to both series leaving the track.
The Nashville 400 replaced the Dover 400 in 2021, but not without a few dramatic moments. It was originally planned to be replaced with a return to the Fairgrounds Speedway, although in a surprising turn of events, the Nashville Superspeedway acquired a spot on the calendar, from 2021 until 2024.
The track is built in the shape of a tri-oval, it has a distance of 1.3 miles (2.1 kilometres), with 14 degrees of banking on the turns. The drivers will race 300 laps around the track, with 90 laps in the first stage, 95 laps in the second stage, and 115 laps to close out the race, totalling a distance of 400 miles (640 kilometres) run around the track.
The race is one of the few races on the calendar where it will be running under the floodlights, with the race commencing on Sunday, June 30th, at 19:00 ET (16:00 PT, 01:00 CET). The weather forecast indicates a possibility of rain, therefore a possibility of a delay.
Race Prediction
As of late, the Fords have been on a roll at intermediate tracks, securing two wins in the last three intermediate track races. After their rough start to the season, they seem to have found their groove in recent weeks, highlighted by their multiple top five finishes in New Hampshire.
They will certainly be looking to get their star drivers such as Joey Logano and Chris Buescher a win and a playoff berth here in Nashville, expanding their playoff lineup and avoiding an unfortunate upset should these drivers, who are dangerously close to the cut line, have a poor end to the regular season.
However, the past record shows this: the Chevrolets have been incredibly dominant at this particular track. They have landed their drivers on victory lane while clinching multiple top ten finishes in all of the years at the track, with the latest winner being Ross Chastain of Trackhouse Racing.
There are simply too many factors in favour of the Chevys, therefore the predictions will be that one of the Chevrolet star drivers taking the win in Nashville, acquiring more playoff points to their advantage and retaking the momentum heading into the home stretch of the regular season.