Homestead-Miami Speedway, the second-to-last chance for one of the seven playoff drivers not already in the Championship 4 to earn their way in, is a great track for Denny Hamlin and the one driver already in the finals, Kyle Larson. But don’t count out Martin Truex Jr., who has the best average finish at Homestead in the stage-racing era, or possible spoilers like Kyle Busch or Kevin Harvick.
Meet Homestead-Miami Speedway
Homestead-Miami Speedway is anything but a ‘cookie cutter’ intermediate track. While it has the same 1.5-mile length as Las Vegas and Texas, Homestead began life as a shorter version of the rectangular Indianapolis track.
Being a mile shorter than Indy, Homestead didn’t race like its bigger sibling so its owners reconfigured it from a flat oval in 1997. The track really took off when the turns were banked to 18-20 degrees in 2003.
Progressive banking made the track faster. The pole speed in 2002 was 154.365 mph. Bobby Labonte won the 2003 pole with a speed of 181.11 mph. That banking also provides multiple racing grooves, letting drivers find out where their car runs best throughout the race.
Homestead and tire wear
Because Homestead is a true oval rather than a tri-oval, tracks like Las Vegas and Kansas aren’t the best comparisons. Homestead’s family tree branches more toward Darlington and Fontana. Even though the three tracks are different lengths, all three are true ovals with high tire wear.
Their rough surfaces reward smart tire management. Being too aggressive too early can be a disadvantage. In a long green-flag run, drivers who were more judicious with their tires will be faster.
High-wear tracks also give the pit crew a larger role. Drivers will want four new tires whenever possible. Watch who gains or loses positions on pit road.
Watch also for reports on the condition of tires coming off cars. Homestead has the same potential for the tire problems seen last week at Las Vegas.
Keeping the car rear close to the ground generates more downforce. Lower tire pressure keeps the car closer to the ground.
The problem is that tire pressure changes throughout a green-flag run, increasing as the tire temperature increases. Pressure increases depend on multiple factors including track temperature, suspension details and how hard the driver pushes the tires.
To compensate for the pressure increase, teams start tires at lower pressures. But running tires at very low pressures, even only for a few laps at the start of a run, can damage tire sidewalls. That damage may not impact the tire immediately but could cause failure later in the run.
Some teams are willing to take more risk than others. Sometimes the risk pays off and sometimes it doesn’t.
What to expect from a Homestead race
Homestead has relatively few accidents and most accidents don’t involve a lot of cars. Fewer retirements make mistakes more costly because there are more cars on the track. Penalties like going to the end of the longest line have more impact. Crew chiefs must balance the advantage of new tires over the cost of having to pass more cars to return to the front.
In the last six Homestead races, only three had their last caution within 40 laps of the scheduled race end. That included the 2022 race, the only race run with the Next Gen car. The other final cautions ranged from 66 laps to 105 laps from the scheduled race end. None of the six races went into overtime.
Winning at Homestead
Larson has the best winning record in Next Gen races at Homestead, Darlington and Fontana. He won three of the seven races and is the only driver to win Homestead in the Next Gen car.
Given only one Homestead race in the Next Gen car, excellence at Homestead in the stage-racing era is probably the best performance metric.
Six different drivers have won each of the last six races: Larson, William Byron, Hamlin, Joey Logano, Busch and Truex. Harvick and Truex finished in the top five at Homestead in four of the six races, for a top-five rate of 66.7%, The only other driver with a top-five rate above 50% is Larson, who finished in the top-five in three out of five Homestead races.
No Homestead race winner in the stage-racing era led fewer than 78 laps. The last four winners all led 120 or more of the 267-lap race. Hamlin has led laps in every stage-racing event at Homestead. Truex has led in five out of six races and Larson in four out of five.
Lead changes at Homestead over the stage racing era range from 11 (in 2022) to 22 (in 2018) with an average of 16.2 lead changes over the six races.
Running well at Homestead
Again, given the lack of Next Gen data, these statistics cover the six Homestead races in the stage racing era. In calculating averages, I exclude mechanical failures because they rarely repeat.
Truex has the best average finish at 4.33. He finished sixth last year and did not finish worse than 12th during this time. He’ll start from the pole Sunday (coverage begins at 2 p.m. ET on NBC and NBC Sports App.)
Larson’s average finish is second highest at 5.25 with no finish worse than 13th. That excludes a 40th-place finish in 2019 due to a blown engine. Keep in mind that Larson has seven DNFs this year. But he also has the least to lose in this race.
Busch has the third-best average finish at 5.33 and has never finished out of the top 10. Even with his struggles in 2022, Busch finished ninth at Homestead.
Hamlin, Harvick and Austin Dillon tie for the third-best average finish at 8.33. Last year, Hamlin finished seventh at Homestead, Harvick eighth and Dillon fourth.
As a possible wild card option, A.J. Allmendinger finished third last year. He’s only run three of the stage-racing era Cup Series races but has a quite respectable 12.0 average finish.
William Byron, who won in 2021 and is second in the championship standings has a 11.5 average finish excluding a 2019 engine-failure DNF.