What The Metrics Had To Say About Kansas
The world of sports data is constantly changing, with more information available to teams, athletes, and even the common fan that can be used to predict performance trends. NASCAR is no different, and the author of this post has built several analytical metrics to help give race fans a more advanced view of the action on the track—because, as any driver can attest, auto racing isn't always a fair sport.
The following numbers—explained in full detail here—are designed to measure driver performance in various aspects of each race, many of which come from NASCAR’s Loop Data. They are ranked by True Driver Rating (TDR), a variation on NASCAR’s Driver Rating, which incorporates factors such as speed, track position, passing, luck, and equipment strength to best estimate how well each driver performed during an event.
The metrics from Sunday's Hollywood Casino 400 at Kansas Speedway are as shown below:
This week features a rare split between Estimated True Driver Rating (ETDR) and Advanced True Driver Rating (ATDR), with William Byron scoring highest in the former and Ross Chastain in the latter. Byron, who also takes the overall TDR victory with a score of 228.92, ran the most consistent race as he was in the top five all day long and finished second.
Chastain, meanwhile, picked up the win and stood out for his performance given that his Trackhouse Racing teammate Daniel Suarez ran much deeper in the field. Chastain has outperformed Trackhouse's speed all season long and only seemed to have about a 10th-place car on Sunday before a strategy play put him up front. The driver did the rest and is rewarded in the metrics as such.
Behind them, Denny Hamlin may have had the most impressive race and never quite got to show it after losing track position on several poor pit stops. His Pass Differential of +49 trailed only Chase Elliott's +52, and Hamlin also scored the highest True Passer Rating of any driver in the field. Ryan Blaney and Alex Bowman each had solid finishes of fourth and sixth while earning top-fives in the metrics.
In sixth place, though, is a driver who did not finish near the front in Kansas. Kyle Busch has had a disastrous season, results-wise. He desperately tries to keep his streak of winning a race in every year of his Cup Series career alive, and it seems to be in his head. He made an unforced error on Sunday while leading, hitting the wall and spinning as he attempted to lap Chase Briscoe. It's far from the first time in 2024 that Busch has had a great run go sour due to such a mistake.
Busch was the only driver in the top 10 of the metrics who did not finish in the top 10 of the race. Coming in behind Busch were a trio of Joe Gibbs Racing drivers (Christopher Bell, Martin Truex, and Ty Gibbs), followed by Elliott, whose drive from the back of the field to ninth was mentioned above. The only other top-10 finisher was Zane Smith, who has been impressive in recent weeks but still only recorded the 14th-best TDR score on Sunday.
All in all, this was another impressively fair race, with a Fairness Rating score of .7426. Kansas has been one of the best tracks on the Cup Series schedule in recent years, with white-knuckle action that seems to usually result in the best drivers coming out on top. That was the case on Sunday, as a race full of twists and turns still churned out a finishing order that aptly reflected driver performance.