The weather forecast for this weekend’s NASCAR Cup Series activity at Watkins Glen International in New York is not particularly pleasant.
Weather gurus call for a good chance of rain Saturday and a better chance Sunday, Cup race day.
None of that is likely to dampen the mood at Spire Motorsports, which enters the weekend still aglow from Carson Hocevar’s popular victory at Talladega Superspeedway, a sweep of the front row in Texas Motor Speedway qualifying, and the team’s general rise through the NASCAR landscape.
Hocevar, NASCAR’s current golden boy (and an attendee at Monday’s exclusive Met Gala fashion extravaganza, along with Beyonce, Nicole Kidman, Serena Williams, and Steph Curry, in New York City), rides in sixth place in Cup points heading to Watkins Glen. The only Chevrolet driver ahead of Hocevar in points is Sunday’s Texas winner, Chase Elliott, who is third.
Daniel Suarez, Hocevar’s teammate, is 14th in points, placing him in front of Austin Cindric, Chase Briscoe, Joey Logano, Ross Chastain, and Kyle Busch, among other notables.
If the Chase started today, Spire would fill two of the 16 spots in the field. At the end of last season, Spire’s point positions were 22nd (Michael McDowell), 23rd (Hocevar), and 31st (Justin Haley).
Hocevar said the 77 team is “right where we want to be. It was obviously a really cool thing to get the win for Jeff (Dickerson) and everyone at Spire Motorsports, and while we are sixth in points with 98 points on the Chase cutline, we lost out on some points at times this year, too. We got turned while leading at Daytona and lost spots on late-race restarts at Bristol and Richmond. We have shown where we are capable of running week-in and week-out. We just have to continue to put it all together like we have the first 11 weeks.”
Although Hocevar, who races with abandon and often creates excitement win or lose, has carried the biggest bucket of publicity for Spire, Suarez, dumped by Trackhouse Racing last season, has shown improvement and is building a season which should carry him into the playoffs. His sixth-place run Sunday at Texas was his best since Atlanta in February, and he has scored three top-10 runs.
All three Spire drivers (including Michael McDowell) could expect good runs Sunday at the Glen, although setups and race strategy at the legendary New York road course are likely to be significantly different from past runs there.
This is the earliest in the year Watkins Glen has hosted a Cup race, and temperatures are likely to be considerably cooler than during previous runs, generally in August. Additionally, the precipitation forecast throws in another unknown of sorts and potentially opens the door for drivers who excel in wet-weather competition. Also, NASCAR has added 10 laps to the race, making it 100 laps long and putting new strain on pit-stop calculators.
The biggest challenge to Spire success Sunday should come from Shane van Gisbergen, who has redefined what road-course greatness means in NASCAR’s top series. He has won five of the past six road-course events, finishing second in the single one he failed to win.
The boost in Spire’s general performance this year is shadowed by the ongoing dispute in federal court over the departure of Chris Gabehart from Joe Gibbs Racing and his subsequent arrival at Spire as chief motorsports officer. Accusations and amendments continue to fly around in a case that seems to grow more acidic each week, with JGR claiming Gabehart acted illegally in transferring team information from one shop to another.
The details of the dispute remain matters of different interpretations, but there is little question that Spire is riding on a higher road.