No assists at all, in Trucks and Xfinity I get so mush speed entering high and running the fence at Phoenix, to the point this feels like a track glitch.
While many despise this track, it feels a lot like a WoO 24 dirt race, ripping the fence, making up time with low grip.
in all seriousness, who was really driving the 88 last night?
✅Rips the wall
✅Crazy bold restarts
✅Dooring masterclass
✅Packing in the top groove like in a dirt track
✅Over driving the last lap and losing to a cheatin‘ yoder
I think it’s safe to say that Larson was wearing an Elliott body-suit to babysit the kids of Oreilys last night.
The Brickyard in the evening is beautiful, especially when Cuo doesn’t run this long in this game.
Every season at my favorite tracks I like to run 100% races, with 2X wear. At most large tracks that usually means one pitstop per stage and at least 2 to 3 in the final stage, depending on what track we are at.
this way I can get the best of both worlds as 100% Xfinity races are long enough for me, and see a lot more green flag pitstops as usual as when you run 1x 100% or 2x 50% races with stages, there are no opportunities for a green flag pit stops during the first two stages
even with super low incident frequency, such as 5-10, seems to produce enough natural yellows and strategy as I noticed with the brickyard some of the AI will pit to flip stages if the caution comes out with five to go in one of the two stages.
It’s hard to believe it’s already been five years since the last time we saw a doubleheader weekend for the cup series.
Do you think we could ever see this again outside of Covid or weather delays forcing it? I think this would be something that could be interesting to try at tracks like Pocono, Michigan Dover, New Hampshire or Texas that used to have two dates. Or even Bristol in the fall, if Nascar wants to shift around its spring date to Rockingham. Or Phoenix in the spring to open up another track for the fall chase rotation.
I had no Business winning this race, I was at best 14th on speed, even with a custom setup, dropped tire psi and loose wedge.
An. opportunity came with 36 to go, where a caution came out and no one pitted but me, I was able to stretch my fuel an extra two laps on 2x wear, fuel window is 17 to 18 laps and won when I should have finished 14th. with 30 draft effect
105 in Arca is no joke, I cannot win here with a basic setup like I could in cup in 105 difficultly, witch makes Arca wins more rewarding as I have to out smart the ai, and be consisten, rather then magically having the fastest car like I do in cup at intermediate tracks.
I don’t know if anyone else has had this experience, but for me, the Arca car is my favorite to drive as it is stable, yet challenging. something like the cup series feels full throttle and all grip until it snaps, and the truck can be fine, but can also be a handful.
in general, I think the Arca car is the closest to the Xfinity car since we can’t run that in this game at Michigan and that’s my favorite car
I get that the Chevy body isn’t really doing much right now, and even when the five team performs perfectly like they did at Bristol, they just don’t have a dominating car, which you kind of need to win unless it’s a wild card race.
The question is how realistic do you think is that the team win less the rest of 2026 as they did in 2025 and the first part of 2026 already?
Especially when the five teem bread and butter the last few years were mole & a half’s and it seems like the Toyota have completely taken it over, locking them out if wins by default, and when it comes to road courses, this team has not done well when it comes to the new tire since 2024 (with the exception of the Roval last year) As Hendrick sucked at Watkins Glen and Even tracks like Bristol where Larson got max stage points and laps lead. He wasn’t able to capitalize on the win with guys like Blaney and Ty Gibbs having more speed at the end.
For me unless he wins at Chicagoland because of the experience during the tire test, I really don’t see him winning anything this year just due to how poor Hendrick is running right now relatively, It seems like this team in general as they can’t crack beyond 5-7th place pace unless a strategy falls their like Chase Elliott was able to capitalize on during his two wins
In comparison to other miles and a half type tracks this year. It seems like this car has definitely had its issues. In comparison, Kansas and Vegas were a little more disappointing than usual as I just felt like a dirty air 550 package race at times this race felt different.
Even though this is mostly due to teams beating themselves early in the race, this race had a good balance between “comers and goers”, With Reddick at the beginning, SVG leading for a while while, Larson, with shades of his old self, Briscoe then Hamlin, then Bell, To Zane Smith, making it interesting, Then back to Bell and ultimately Hamlin.
the tires while not perfect. Definitely helped the situation. I like that taking tires mattered. It wasn’t just a fuel mileage race like 2024 was towards the end. Maybe it’s just a coverage, but my opinion this Was one of the better races this year, if not top 3. So far this year cup has felt really dull, and the night felt a little bit different.
don’t get me wrong. I really like this game eight months in, but some tracks feel like with the next gen car really miss real life physics, and some seemed to hit it on the head.
I don’t like at Homestead, Kansas, Charlotte and even Vegas to a lesser extent the top lane is not as usable as like it is in real life, unless you use wall avoidance, due to how sticky they are.
I should be able to pack air carefully and ride exactly on the wall at Homestead, but I can’t. so at most mile and a halfs , I use 55% wall avoidance to simulate that kind of effect.
But at tracks like Nashville I feel like they hit The nail on the head. I like that so I can literally use the top lane and gain a bunch of positions like we see in real life with the cup car.
I like on wheel, You can almost feel the bumps and grooves like a real concrete track, And there’s a lot of off Throttle time compared to me the mile and a half which feel like super speedway races. passing with average set ups is difficult but realistic, As I can’t just blaze through the field and Tire conservation might be a thing.
Dirty air seems lacking, but it is with all tracks in this game. overall, if you reduced a skill range, you can kinda simulate it with how hard it is to pass.
Based on the render we saw last week, I wasn’t impressed compared to his 2022 Coke 600 car. but man was I wrong. this car was glorious under the lights and on camera on Prime.
favorite scheme of the whole field, aside from Elliott’s
the metal flake really set it off, and too bad we will only see it one more time at Chicagoland.
Yes, it’s a bit darker than the original scheme from 2016. But the scheme came out really nice on the cup car.
Personally, I prefer the looks of Xfinity car, but it’s interesting that The scheme looks so much better on the cup car.
it was also cool to be able to add the Xbox logo, definitely a scheme that Dale Junior will have ran 2013 to 2016, as he ran multiple Batman & Superman cars, along with a couple cars with reference to Xbox.
Originally, I was gonna make an Xbox 🤝Batman scheme and might still for my 4th car, but this scheme came out really cool. I wanted to do something different.