Daniel Suarez is a driver to watch this week. Photo via: Wiki Commons.
The NASCAR Cup Series makes its second visit to the famed Atlanta Motor Speedway this week for the Quaker State 400. As we saw the last time they came here, this is not your father’s Atlanta Motor Speedway. We will continue to see the pack-style racing that we saw in the spring, and let's hope that the tires can hold up better than they did then. This has been a season of parity, we have seen 13 different winners, five of them being first-timers. Because of the many changes we have seen to the track, there is a legitimate chance we see a fourteenth different winner on Sunday. The key to the race this weekend will be figuring out how to manipulate the draft and finding the right person to work with, just like we see at Daytona and Talladega. Obviously, when you have big groups of cars, there is always a risk of a major pileup. The biggest cause of these crashes has been flat tires. Every driver will be sweating bullets trying to manage their tires and while we haven’t had too many major issues over the last few weeks, the high rate of speed that the cars are traveling will cause a fair amount of concern all throughout the day.
Last week, Tyler Reddick scored his first career win at Road America. The race was akin to what we are accustomed to seeing in F1, with lots of strategy, very little drama, and only two drivers in Chase Elliott and Tyler Reddick being in the hunt for the win. The opening two stages were won by Chase Briscoe and Ryan Blaney as they stayed out longer to try and get the stage victory. This came back to bite them as they would fall to the back and be out of the hunt. In the late stages, the race ultimately came down to the final pit stop as Reddick followed Elliott into Pit-Lane and was able to keep pace with him exiting, thus setting up the race-winning pass.
After this week, the future remains unclear for Road America. With a race on the Chicago Street Course looming, one track will need to be removed and unfortunately, Road America is looking like it will be that track. While it’s certainly never ideal to see a racetrack lose its date, the silver lining is how many forms of racing there are at this track. Many F1 drivers have said they would love to race there, so the future remains bright.
As I mentioned earlier, NASCAR is almost more than certain to host its first race ever on a temporary street course. Ever since the 1980s, NASCAR has tried to keep up with its open-wheel opposition, but hasn’t ever been able to make a street course race happen. Whether the cars were too heavy to race on that type of surface or certain cities wouldn’t oblige. As hard as they tried, NASCAR just couldn’t seem to make it happen. Fast-Forward nearly 40 years and now it seems as if we are on the cusp of seeing the first-ever NASCAR Street Course in Chicago in 2023. What was once an idea is now becoming reality, and I for one, am extremely excited to see how this plays out.
While Chicago is on the horizon, the focus this week remains on Atlanta and the driver I predict will win this weekend is Daniel Suarez. For many, this seems like an out of left field type of pick, but if you have been following this season, he is in the midst of a career year. This year, Suarez has scored six top tens with four top-fives and has led 203 laps, the most in his career. There have been many occasions this season where he’s had the fastest car on the track, but something would come along to mess everything up. In the spring, he had a great car and finished fourth. If he can show the same type of speed on Sunday, he should be a serious threat to win.
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There was a conversation Cleveland guard Donovan Mitchell had during training camp, the topic being all the teams that were generating the most preseason buzz in the Eastern Conference. Boston was coming off an NBA championship. New York got Karl-Anthony Towns. Philadelphia added Paul George.
The Cavs? Not a big topic in early October. And Mitchell fully understood why.
“What have we done?” Mitchell asked. “They don't talk about us. That's fine. We'll just hold ourselves to our standard.”
That approach seems to be working.
For the first time in 36 seasons — yes, even before the LeBron James eras in Cleveland — the Cavaliers are atop the NBA at the 25-game mark. They're 21-4, having come back to earth a bit following a 15-0 start but still better than anyone in the league at this point.
“We've kept our standards pretty high,” Cavaliers coach Kenny Atkinson said. “And we keep it going.”
The Cavs are just one of the surprise stories that have emerged as the season nears the one-third-done mark. Orlando — the only team still unbeaten at home — is off to its best start in 16 years at 17-9 and having done most of that without All-Star forward Paolo Banchero. And Houston is 16-8, behind only the Cavs, Boston, Oklahoma City and Memphis so far in the race for the league's best record.
Cleveland was a playoff team a year ago, as was Orlando. And the Rockets planted seeds for improvement last year as well; an 11-game winning streak late in the season fueled a push where they finished 41-41 in a major step forward after a few years of rebuilding.
“We kind of set that foundation last year to compete with everybody,” Rockets coach Ime Udoka said. “Obviously, we had some ups and downs with winning and losing streaks at times, but to finish the season the way we did, getting to .500, 11-game winning streak and some close losses against high-level playoff teams, I think we kind of proved that to ourselves last year that that's who we're going to be.”
A sign of the respect the Rockets are getting: Oddsmakers at BetMGM Scorebook have made them a favorite in 17 of 24 games so far this season, after favoring them only 30 times in 82 games last season.
“Based on coaches, players, GMs, people that we all know what they're saying, it seems like everybody else is taking notice as well,” Udoka said.
They're taking notice of Orlando as well. The Magic lost their best player and haven't skipped a beat.
Banchero's injury after five games figured to doom Orlando for a while, and the Magic went 0-4 immediately after he tore his oblique. Entering Tuesday, they're 14-3 since — and now have to regroup yet again. Franz Wagner stepped into the best-player-on-team role when Banchero got hurt, and now Wagner is going to miss several weeks with the exact same injury.
Ask Magic coach Jamahl Mosley how the team has persevered, and he'll quickly credit everyone but himself. Around the league, it's Mosley getting a ton of the credit — and rightly so — for what Orlando is doing.
“I think that has to do a lot with Mose. ... I have known him a long time,” Phoenix guard Bradley Beal said. “A huge fan of his and what he is doing. It is a testament to him and the way they’ve built this team.”
The Magic know better than most how good Cleveland is, and vice versa. The teams went seven games in an Eastern Conference first-round series last spring, the Cavs winning the finale at home to advance to Round 2.
Atkinson was brought in by Cleveland to try and turn good into great. The job isn't anywhere near finished — nobody is raising any banners for “best record after 25 games” — but Atkinson realized fairly early that this Cavs team has serious potential.
“We’re so caught up in like the process of improve, improve, improve each game, improve each practice," Atkinson said. “That’s kind of my philosophy. But then you hit 10-0, and obviously the media starts talking and all that, and you’re like, ‘Man, this could be something special brewing here.’”