Sunday Setup: NASCAR returns to 1.5-mile track with plenty of unknowns

KANSAS CITY, Kan. -- It's been a hot minute since the NASCAR Cup Series last put a 1.5-mile track on the smoker. After a 10-race wait, Kansas Speedway is ready to fire up the grill with some saucy racing. Sunday's Hollywood Casino 400 (3 p.m. ET, USA Network, HBO Max, MRN Radio, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio) is the first in a trio of intermediate races in The Chase presented by Mobil 1 before the series makes its annual fall voyage to the 1-mile Phoenix Raceway. By then, the 2026 championship picture should be clearer. Chase teams know how important Kansas is. Toyota has hogged the top five at 1.5-mile venues in 2026, claiming 15 of the 25 total top-five finishes in those events. Collectively, Toyota drivers have led 891 of a possible 1,448 circuits (61.5%) en route to three checkered flags. RELATED: Starting lineup | At-track photos: Kansas But that doesn't mean Toyota will have a handle on the field at Kansas. Teams couldn't get any sort of direction with practice and qualifying canceled on Saturday. "When you're out of the groove of something, we haven't devoted a lot of time to that until recent weeks getting ready for these next three in a row and certainly Homestead later in the year," Adam Stevens, crew chief of Christopher Bell's No. 20 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota, told NASCAR.com. "It's been a while since we've ran an intermediate, and certainly the teams have learned things that may or may not apply to those tracks – us included. "As a whole, the [Toyota Racing Development] cars were super strong at [Chicagoland Speedway]. But you don't know the gains everyone else has made and how much time they've devoted to it. It's still going to take progression and getting better to run up front." Kansas presents its own set of obstacles. Unique to the Midwest track is the preferred groove in running more than two-thirds up the track. Compared to its upcoming intermediate counterparts at Las Vegas Motor Speedway and Charlotte Motor Speedway, the track surface is relatively smooth. The seams, meanwhile, can be tricky and catch teams off guard. "Depending on how you straddle them," Mike Skarbowski, making his crew chief debut for Brad Keselowski's No. 6 RFK Racing Ford, told NASCAR.com. "We're going fast around the track, so any minute differences in the track and content around there is changing the aero effects of the car." Another unknown is how Kansas will race with the added struts to the front splitter, a change competition officials introduced ahead of North Wilkesboro Speedway in mid-July. While Stevens hasn't noticed a drastic difference at other tracks in how the updates have affected the No. 20 team, aerodynamics play a larger role at 1.5-mile facilities. That makes Kansas more of a trial-and-error situation. MORE: Why Kansas could shake up The Chase "I would say the faster that the cars are going, the more of a difference something like that would make," Stevens said. "It's certainly going to make a lot less difference at North Wilkesboro than it does at Kansas this weekend." While Kansas has featured racing from the apron to the outside retaining wall, the easiest spots to gain track position can often come on pit road. The No. 20 car has won four of the last nine Busch Light Pole Awards at Kansas, though Bell is still searching for his first Victory Lane appearance at the track. For crew chiefs, it seems like a no-brainer to take the first pit stall at every circuit, being close to the exit of pit road. But in the Next Gen era, the eighth pit stall has produced the most success when it comes to average finish and best average pit-stop time. Each stall has a different amount of grip, leading to Stevens choosing pit stall No. 1 any time he wins the pole. "The biggest thing is the distance from the No. 1 stall to the camera," Stevens said. "It used to be that camera was a lot closer to the first stall, so there was a much bigger advantage on a caution flag stop. They have changed that at almost every track now where it's much further away, so that negates some of the inherent advantage in pit stall one under caution. There's an inherent disadvantage for pit stall one under green because you're not up to speed leaving pit road. "You know you are going to have a couple of caution-flag stops and think you're going to have a couple of green-flag stops. There's traffic considerations if it's going to be a race where alternate pit strategies are a concern, you don't want to be coming out in traffic if you are taking two tires." Via the metric, Bell will take the green flag from third position. Keselowski will start in 16th place.