Kevin Harvick and Denny Hamlin, the top drivers in the Cup Series this year, have also had the most success at Texas Motor Speedway.
FORT WORTH, Texas — Kevin Harvick and Denny Hamlin can easily be considered favorites for the first summertime race at Texas, even in this unpredictable and unprecedented NASCAR Cup season.
While there have been no practice sessions or qualifying laps since racing resumed two months ago, Harvick and Hamlin are both three-time winners at Texas and have combined to win four of the last five races there. They are tied with a Cup-best four wins this season, and all but one of those have come since mid-May.
The 1 1/2-mile track could get slick on a scorching Sunday afternoon, with temperatures forecast in the upper 90s and the heat index into the 100s. It will be about 30 degrees warmer than on March 29, the day the race was originally scheduled before the coronavirus pandemic.
“You’d be hard to bet against those two. This track, with (turns) one and two being so flat and having so little grip, that’s right up Denny Hamlin and Kevin Harvick’s alley,” NBC Sports analyst Jeff Burton said. “That’s right what they’re so good at, so I expect they’ll both run very well.”
Burton, who won the inaugural Texas race in 1997 and became the first two-time winner at the track in 2007, said the fascinating part about this season is the unpredictability of what’s going to happen without practice and the application of traction compound on tracks.
There are no rules changes from last year for the aerodynamic or engine packages used at Texas, where Hamlin won in the spring before Harvick won his third consecutive fall race there.
