NASCAR insiders outline advantages Championship 4 drivers have at Phoenix

Ahead of the NASCAR Cup Series season finale at Phoenix Raceway, insiders Jordan Bianchi and Jeff Gluck outlined the advantages that each Championship 4 driver has entering the title-deciding race.

First, Gluck shed some light on how long each team has been working on their cars for Sunday’s race, elaborating on how teams who only have one driver in the Championship 4 — like Hendrick Motorsports’ William Byron and 23XI Racing’s Tyler Reddick — could benefit from added resources.

“I think it was (Kyle Larson’s crew chief) Cliff Daniels, and I can’t remember when he said this, I need to go back to find the quote this week,” Gluck explained, via the latest episode of The Teardown. “But he was asked, I don’t know, at Vegas or somewhere like that, at some point, and he basically said, ‘We’ve been working on Phoenix since, like, the last — the Phoenix race last year, the championship race last year, as a company.’ They were like, they realized, ‘Okay, we’re behind and we need to get going on this,’ so that’s a huge point of emphasis.

“You’re gonna have all of Hendrick’s emphasis and all of Hendrick’s brain-power focused on one car, in Hendrick’s anniversary year, which they’ve talked about all year, capping that off.”

In response, Bianchi played a bit of devil’s advocate, making the point of how there isn’t much each team can do to their car, but the preparation for Phoenix in winning early, like Joey Logano enjoyed via his victory at Las Vegas Motor Speedway, may mean more than anything.

“I could also say that everyone in Toyota, whether it’s Joe Gibbs Racing or it’s 23XI, is going to be focused on the Reddick car, you know? Yes, everyone in Hendrick is going to be focused on Byron, but the same is going to be said at that,” Bianchi added. “I will say this, by the way … I have talked to a lot of drivers and crew chiefs about the advantage of winning early. I’ve said this before, but you go back the last eight years, four times in the last eight years, a driver who’s won the first race in the semifinal round has gone on to win the championship.

“So I sat down with (Joey Logano’s crew chief) Paul Wolfe at Homestead about this, because he did it in 2022. I said, ‘Walk me through this,’ and he’s like, a lot of crew chiefs have said the same thing that I talked to too, ‘There’s only so much you can really do with the car.’ These teams, by the way, whether it’s Penske or Hendrick or Gibbs, have so many people back at the shop that are like, dedicated. So it’s not just the crew chief. They’ve been working on their Phoenix car for a long, long time. There’s only, because of this era, the Next Gen car, with the parts and pieces, there really isn’t a lot of like, fine-tuning that you can do, or find little things.

“So the cars are already largely built, right? And so what Paul said to me was — really what he said, from his perspective, was strategy. It was like it allowed him to go and really look through his notes and kind of layout things and analyze and say, ‘Okay, if this thing happens on this, you know, this lap, we can do this,’ and it was really, he felt it was like, a real advantage like that. He goes, in terms of the car and stuff like that, yeah, maybe. But really, there’s not a lot.”

While Bianchi recognizes the extra mental preparation is important, he also realizes that momentum plays a factor, taking Ryan Blaney’s comments about winning Martinsville last season into consideration.

“One of the things that Christopher Bell said, and I asked him about that, he was like, ‘I spent so much,’ when he won last year at Homestead, he’s like, ‘I didn’t even pay attention to Martinsville. I was focused — everything we were doing in the simulator was focused on Phoenix.’ So it is inherently an advantage, of like that,” Bianchi stated. “But then there’s also guys like Ryan Blaney, who said, ‘I don’t think we win the championship if we don’t win Martinsville, because of the momentum that it carried through. We were so, you know, we just rode that high.’

“But then Clif Daniels was like, ‘It does allow you to, when you win early, it allows you guys to rest a little bit.’ Like it gives you a, you know, just to kind of come down for a week. Then when you get into Phoenix, you’re on this high and you’re like all in because you feel refreshed. So I don’t know what I’m saying here, but this is, it does — I do think winning is such an — winning early is such an advantage.

“These organizations are — have already been so prepared for Phoenix. You know, I know what Cliff said about, ‘Hey, we’re focused so much on Phoenix,’ but like, so is everybody. So is everybody. These cars have been built. There’s really not much more they can do. There’s been a lot of smart people behind the scenes because there’s so many people in these companies that are doing these things.”

Alas, it remains to be seen which Championship 4 driver receives the bigger advantage, and who was better off for how they entered Phoenix. When the dust settles on the 2024 season, it’ll certainly be an interesting development to look back on.