KANSAS CITY, Kan. (WDAF) – NASCAR fans and drivers are back at Kansas Speedway for the Hollywood Casino 400.
The green flag drops Sunday at 2 p.m., and drivers are looking forward to more close racing that Kansas has produced in the last few years.
“We’re proud of the fact that about a year and a half ago we had the closest finish in NASCAR history, one one-thousandth of a second,” said Pat Warren, president of Kansas Speedway.
“I think with the playoff race we’re going to have here on Sunday, you can expect to see a lot of very aggressive racing and a lot of passing in what will be a fantastic playoff race at the Kansas Speedway.”
The track is a driver’s favorite, with many singing its praises leading up to Sunday’s race.
“It’s rewarding that we have options because so many tracks you’re locked into two lanes, maybe two and a half, but you can really only run double file,” said Ross Chastain, driver of the No. 1 Chevrolet for Trackhouse Racing.
“Here you can be three or four wide and be okay.”
He says that the progressive banking which have been added to the Speedway in recent years makes the racing more fun.
“You can’t really see it from the grandstands or really even on TV, but down by the apron it’s flat, then there’s a white line, then from there you step up and you said 17 degrees all the way up to 21, which is only a couple degrees difference, but that’s all these racecars need to go faster.”
Chastain is the defending winner of the Hollywood Casino 400, and thinks they can do it again by using different lines on the racetrack with the speed their car has had recently.
“I feel like we can repeat, we’ve shown the speed, most recently, Darlington is a similar track to Kansas and we were top five there in speed, so we’ll see,” Chastain said.
“That’ll mean running up by the wall, really close to it, touching it, at times hitting the wall, but as long as I hit it soft and with the wheel straight, it’ll be okay.”
The way the cars perform at this track gives Warren hope that Sunday’s race will rival any in the country.
“It is a great feeling. For a lot of years, as a mile and a half track, people sort of knocked us. We were called ‘cookie-cutter tracks’ but now the best racing in the series is on tracks like this and I think the best racing in the country is right here.”