KANSAS CITY, Mo. – NASCAR Cup Series drivers hit the track for the first time on Saturday at Kansas Speedway, with practice and qualifying sessions falling in consecutive order.
But before drivers can hit the track, weeks of preparation are necessary to make sure the cars and drivers are ready to go.
“Whether it’s with the team, with all four teams, with the manufacturer, we try to correlate into the simulator. We have a lot of different things we do,” said Alex Bowman, driver of the 48 car. “There’s a lot of layers of preparation. It’s a well-oiled machine to keep this thing rolling.”
Some drivers, like John Hunter Nemechek, are hard at work off track.
“There’s a lot of studying for sure going into each and every race weekend,” Nemechek said. “Unlike other sports, we can’t go out in our backyard and throw a football or baseball or whatever it may be. So, we show up to the racetrack, 20 minutes of practice, straight into qualifying, and then the race.”
Other drivers, like Hendrick Motorsports driver Kyle Larson, rely on feel and experience to be successful.
“Usually, the tracks I’m going to are tracks that I’m familiar with and have a good understanding of what it takes in the car or lines and stuff,” Larson said in a press conference Saturday. “So, it doesn’t make studying super in-depth.”
Drivers like Larson choose to drive in other racing series to help their preparation. William Byron, driver of the 24 Chevrolet, is driving in NASCAR’s Craftsman Truck Series race on Saturday night.
“I think it’s a big advantage if you use it correctly,” Byron said. “You just have to go into with the right mindset and hopefully, you know, it’ll be a lot of fun.”
His teammate, Chase Elliott, says being on a NASCAR team is a marathon each year.
“It’s every week,” Elliott said. “You know, it’s a massive undertaking to do that and especially to do it at a competitive level. Our schedule is such a grind, right? You know, you got 38 weeks of being on the road and this year, only the one off-weekend, you know, from February to November, which is just it’s a lot of work.”
Elliott knows how many people it takes to win; he won the NASCAR Cup Series championship in 2020.
“It requires everybody to be all in,” Elliott said. “And the people at the shop or the guys and girls that travel, you know, on a weekly basis, regardless of what your role is, it’s a grind. It’s a marathon.”
Defending Cup series champion Joey Logano says while the spring race at Kansas Speedway is important, there’s more on the line when the series returns.
“This becomes a very important race in the fall,” Logano said. “Not that it’s not this time, but there’s going to be even more on the line when you come back here because it hopefully means you’re in the playoffs.”
The Advent Health 400 starts at 2 p.m. on Sunday.
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