Will Corey LaJoie Make the Playoffs in 2023?
Did you also notice that No. 7 car hovering near the top 10 for almost all of Sunday (Feb. 26) at Auto Club Speedway?
It’s only been two races in the 2023 NASCAR Cup Series season, but already Corey LaJoie has shown he and Spire Motorsports have made some improvements during their offseason.
For 136 of the 200 laps run on Sunday, LaJoie ran within the top 15 in the running order. In stage two, he even earned an extra point when he finished 10th. Indeed, the team was on track to match the same amount of top 10s it had in 2022: one. In the end, LaJoie finished 14th.
But that’s not that impressive, right? Maybe not, except for when you sprinkle in the fact that the No. 7 was involved in an incident with Tyler Reddick that saw him backward on the frontstretch on lap 82.
For most teams, any kind of incident that puts you at the back of the field is a setback that is hard to overcome, especially when it’s the result of a crash that gave you some minor damage.
However, the Spire team stayed vigilant, returned for the stage two point and still hung around drivers like Martin Truex Jr. and Joey Logano on the edge of the top 10 for the rest of the race. It wasn’t the result of a high attrition rate that got them there, either. LaJoie drove back into contention on speed alone before the end of stage two.
Their second decent race in a row puts the No. 7 in 13th in Cup points. That’s already a vast improvement over last year, when LaJoie wasn’t even in the top 20 by the third week.
It is only the second race of the year, sure, but with Auto Club being the first true test of team performance for the year, the obvious speed LaJoie had on Sunday surely will put a pep in his team’s step moving forward.
And he certainly noticed.
How long will the Kyle Busch and RCR honeymoon phase last?
After his Auto Club victory, it’s clear that after undergoing statistically the worst full-time season of his Cup career since 2005 last year, Kyle Busch has gotten his groove back thanks to Richard Childress Racing.
But how long will it last?
Is this the dawn of a resurgence to Busch’s dominant winning ways? Or was Auto Club a fluke?
At Auto Club one year ago, we saw Kyle Larson, who was fresh off a commanding championship season that saw him win 10 races, claim victory early in 2022. Naturally, the racing world looked at the Californian champion and braced…
Click Here to Read the Full Original Article at …