NASCAR Cup Series

Who needs to recover this weekend?

Published Apr. 16, 2012 1:00 a.m. ET

Larry McReynolds

What’s interesting about last Saturday night is the races at Texas Motor Speedway have a history of long green runs. That said, the race also has a history of late-race cautions.

In the NASCAR Sprint Cup race Saturday night, one with only two cautions including one for debris, everyone showed what can happen with the combination of caliber drivers, teams and cars that are being prepared.

Stop and think about the race pace of going into the corner at 190 mph, inches apart from each other, and there were only two cautions all night long. That’s simply incredible.

Now on the flip side, without the cautions, teams didn’t get as many opportunities and time to work on making their cars better. That forced changes on green-flag stops. It was one of those nights when you had to be pretty mistake-free on pit road or it would come back to haunt you.

Not everyone escaped pit road without incident. There were three guys, in my mind, that got behind and never could get caught back up — Carl Edwards, Kevin Harvick and Kyle Busch.

In Carl’s case, he had to come back to pit road before the restart on that last caution because of a loose wheel. Harvick’s No. 29 bunch had a bad pit stop under one of those two cautions and never could get back to the front. Busch, who finished 11th, had an issue during one of the green-flag stops with an air hose under the right front tire.

I continue to be impressed with Michael Waltrip Racing. Martin Truex Jr. sat on the pole and led a lot of laps. He finished sixth. Fifty-three years young Mark Martin, who ran in the top five most of the night, ended up in third. That whole MWR group has to be getting antsy because I think it is close to sending one of its cars to Victory Lane.

The other interesting story coming out of Texas is that it marks our seventh race of the season and we have six different winners. It’s also the same thing for the pole positions. Now that’s a big story. You might consider the caliber of teams that have been shut out of the first seven races an even bigger story.

Obviously at the top of that list is Hendrick Motorsports. You will find Richard Childress Racing on that list as well. Unfortunately, Carl Edwards’ name is there, too. Kyle Busch is another one who has gone winless in 2012.

Greg Biffle’s win naturally keeps him in the lead in the points. His Roush Fenway Racing teammate, Matt Kenseth, is second and only 19 points back. At least early on, that organization is telling everyone it is definitely gunning for the championship again. Sure, it has lost the title in some close battles over the years, with obviously 2011 being the closest of them all.

It’s also hard for me to believe that we have only six races left in our 2012 NASCAR on FOX part of the year. We have races at Kansas Speedway, Richmond International Raceway, Talladega Superspeedway, Darlington Raceway, the All-Star race, then the Coca-Cola 600 at Charlotte Motor Speedway and finally the race at Dover International Speedway before we hand things off to another network. Look at that list and you will see every track is different. That is going to make for some exciting racing.

So now all eyes turn to Kansas this weekend. Even though it is a mile-and-a-half track, it probably is more similar to Fontana or Las Vegas than it is to Texas Motor Speedway. Texas, which has a little bit of Charlotte Motor Speedway and Atlanta Motor Speedway similarities, is really its own animal.

I would say we need to zero in on the guys who ran well at Las Vegas and Auto Club Speedway, while not using the Texas results as an indicator. The perfect example of that is Tony Stewart. He was pretty much out to lunch this past weekend at Texas. Saturday night saw our defending NASCAR Sprint Cup champion finish 24th and two laps down.

Earlier this year, Tony won at Las Vegas and Fontana, plus obviously we saw last year in the Chase for the Sprint Cup how well he did on the other mile-and-a-half tracks.

I do look for Tony to bounce back in a big way Sunday at Kansas.