Harvick’s starting position of 24th was his worst of the season, but it didn’t matter. The reigning champ still managed a top-10 finish, making it nine of 10 to start the year.
Hendrick Motorsports
Part of the Hendrick trio that led 164 of 188 laps (167 if you add Kasey Kahne’s three on top), Johnson was able to parlay his time out front into a runner-up finish and another spot in the standings.
Logano had a good day on Saturday, winning the XFINITY race. It likely wasn’t enough to ease his Sunday pain, however, as an early wreck put him down and he finished 33rd despite his best efforts to make a late comeback.
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Hendrick Motorsports
RELATED: Logano in XFINITY Victory Lane
Truex rode his second top-five finish of the season to second in the overall standings, continuing to be the most pleasant surprise of 2015.
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Team Penske
An Earnhardt winning at Talladega just feels right, doesn’t it? Junior’s Daytona win last year really set the tone for the rest of the regular season, so it’ll be interesting to see how this win rubs off on the somewhat revamped No. 88 team.
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RELATED: Junior Nation rewarded
Over the past two weeks, Busch has earned a win and risen seven spots in the standings. It’s easy to think that trend will continue.
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Keselowski started 15th, led no laps and finished 22nd. Not a typical race from the 2012 champion, who came in as the most recent winner at Talladega, but he’ll recover.
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Joe Gibbs Racing
Gordon likely had the best car out there on Sunday, but cost himself dearly with a late pit road speeding penalty. Win No. 1 of the season continues to evade him. That said, care to guess who the defending winner of the spring Kansas race is?
RELATED: Gordon's run undone
RELATED: Gordon's run undone
Remove Newman’s finish of 38th in the season-opening Daytona 500 and he’s got an average finish of 9.22, which would put him fourth in the series behind Kevin Harvick (6.6), Martin Truex Jr. (9.0) and Kurt Busch (9.1).
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Kenseth won back-to-back Kansas races from 2012-2013, but has finished in the top 10 just once with 22 laps led since then.
Hamlin has only four top-10 finishes in 10 races this season, but No. 4 came Sunday at ‘Dega. Still, he’s fifth in the series in laps led, so he’ll be adding to his good finishes plenty over the coming months.
Fun with stats: McMurray, who has close to double the amount of points as Tony Stewart, has led an equal amount of laps (14) as ‘Smoke’. McMurray averages a finish of 14.6, Stewart at 26.8. Laps led counts are interesting, but not a tell-all.
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While Kahne didn’t lead as many laps as his Hendrick cohorts, his three circuits out front marked just the third time this season he’s led any at all.
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Stewart-Haas Racing
Edwards was the unlucky recipient of a shove from Casey Mears on the last lap that really crushed the hopes of the No. 19 squad on Sunday, but it’s clear that the team is gaining momentum.
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Stewart-Haas Racing
No, Menard didn’t use the Dark Side to ‘force’ his way into a third-place finish at Talladega. Childress cars typically run well there when they don’t catch on fire, and Menard now has two top-fives at superspeedways this year.
Larson’s average start (11.7) to average finish (21.1) ratio is glaring, and you have to think that at some point his solid starting spots will even out with some solid finishes.