Kentucky Cup Series

2 for 2 so far at Kentucky.  Good profit in Trucks and a huge day in Xfinity.  If you read my Xfinity article, you should have killed it Friday night.  I used Custer - Bell - Truex - Shane Lee - BJ McLeod - Vinnie Miller.  All but Miller were featured prominently in my write up.

I'm not going to write much about the Cup race for a couple reasons.  (1) I put a ton of time into Trucks and Xfinity this week and it paid off.  I didn't do as much work on the Cup stuff so I feel less prepared.  (2) It's an impound race.  There was no pre-qualifying tech inspection, so tech will be done Saturday afternoon.  Any car that fails once will have its q time disallowed and its official starting spot will move to the back of the field.  We have typically had at least a few cars fail which makes them obvious chalk plays in cash games.  Since a chunk of the field can get turned upside down on Saturday shortly before the race, it doesn't make much sense to focus too much on the specific lineup just yet.

There are two guys I've got pretty strong opinions about, so I will talk about them:

• Martin Truex -- Hasn't looked great in practice, but I'm still likely to load up on Saturday.  The track had a new layer of pavement added before the 2017 season.  In the two races since then, Truex has completely crushed the competition.  In 2017, he won both stages and the race, led a race high 152 laps and had a race high 84 fastest laps.  In 2018, he again won both stages and the race.  This time he led a race high 174 laps and had a race high 65 fastest laps.  It really doesn't get any better than that.
  • Also, keep in mind the Truex-Cole Pearn combo is very strong going from daytime practice to a nighttime race.  Truex has won two of the three (excluding Daytona) nighttime races this year  -- at Richmond and Charlotte.
    
• Chris Buescher -- He's getting priced up a bit, but I still really like him at these 1.5 mile tracks.  In six races at them this year, he's finished no worse than 20th.  And he has three Top 10 finishes in those six races -- including a 10th place finish at Kansas and a 6th place finish at Charlotte.  I highlight those races not just because of the great finishes but also because they were the only other two 1.5 mile track races where practice ran during the day but the race was at night.  Starting from 26th (but check again after tech), there's little downside and plenty of upside.
  

I will try to add something after tech inspection on Saturday, but I'm not sure I'll have time to do so.  In any event, follow Bob Pockrass (@bobpockrass)  on Twitter as he is typically at the track tweeting real time updates on tech as cars either pass or fail.