As expected, this year's Pocono race was a fuel mileage game. We saw pit strategy and fuel mileage dominate the last 30 laps of the race which did end up affecting the final outcome of the race. We have seen Hendrick Motorsports dominate the past month or so and that really showed in the first race. Hendrick teammates Kyle Larson and William Byron filled up the front row Saturday with Kevin Harvick starting third and Joey Logano starting fourth, fifth being awarded to Kyle Busch.
We know that the race is never over until the checkered flag flies and Saturday's cup race really demonstrated that. Kyle Larson was fighting for his fourth straight points win when he blew a tire in the final laps of Saturday's race, handing off the win to teammate Alex Bowman. Kyle Busch finished second with Bowman's teammate William Byron finishing third. Larson finished the race in the ninth position.
The day began with Justin Haley being replaced for precautionary reasons by Justin Allgaier for Sunday's Cup series race after taking a huge hit in the Xfinity race. Several cars were sent to the rear, including Kyle Larson and Ryan Newman. Sunday we saw this same Hendrick dominance being portrayed again.
We saw several of Hendrick's cars up front early on and that lasted throughout the remainder of the race with William Byron really dominating the latter half of the race and the final stage. Kyle Busch was having a few transmission problems with his gear shifter being stuck in fourth gear for a majority of the race making pit stops and restarts very difficult; a very rare occurrence for the Busch team. It was the fuel mileage race that prevented Byron from getting the checkered flag after falling short by several laps. Behind were the two Joe Gibbs Racing teammates, Denny Hamlin and Kyle Busch. Denny Hamlin fell just short and Kyle Busch nabbed the checkered flag.
Kyle Larson managed to scrape up a second-place finish after trouble early on with Brad Keselowski finishing just behind him in third. Bubba Wallace finished fifth, earning 23XI's first top-five and first top ten of the season.
Denny Hamlin maintains his position as the leader in the point standings having no DNF's and no wins this season. Kyle Larson is behind by a mere two points and Kyle Busch moves up to fifth in the standings with his win Sunday.
