Top Dog: Zane Smith
It was fitting for the NASCAR Cup Series to be in Nashville.
Why?
That’s because you could probably name any country music song with the word “crazy” or even create your own country song to describe the Ally 400 at Nashville Superspeedway (June 30).
To describe it in a nutshell, just look at a line from the late country music legend Waylon Jennings’s song “I’ve Always Been Crazy.”
“I’ve always been crazy, but it’s kept me from going insane.”
Well, that may not hold true for this year’s race at Nashville, which featured a rain delay, went 31 laps past the scheduled distance and featured five overtimes, enough to drive any competitor insane.
While Joey Logano shedded his playoff bubble position and earned his first win of the year, it was Zane Smith who nearly shook the nerves and rattled the brains of bubble drivers, finishing .068 seconds back of Logano for the win.
Smith’s race was enough to make someone’s head spin, from how he fired off to finishing runner-up. After finishing both stages in 33rd, Smith was on his way to another disappointing result. But as he was sitting outside the top 20 with two laps remaining, Austin Cindric spun to send the race into overtime.
That’s when the chaos commenced.
The first overtime went into a second overtime — and then another, and another and another. With each green flag and caution lap, several cars out in front were forced to pit due to being short on fuel. However, Smith, who had taken fuel a few laps later than the leaders earlier in the final stage, was able to leapfrog them all.
On the fourth overtime restart, the Huntington Beach, Calif. native lined up fourth for the restart, holding his ground until another caution flew to force a fifth overtime restart.
Smith fired off in third for the final restart, but fell back to fourth on the backstretch. In turns 3 and 4, Chase Briscoe slowed, allowing Smith to move back into third and have a front row seat to the battle for the win between Logano and Tyler Reddick.
As the leaders drifted high in the final turn, Smith wrapped the bottom, gaining nearly enough momentum to shoot past both drivers and score the victory. And in doing so, he contributed an interesting stat to Logano’s career.
Given that Smith had only finished inside the top 20 four times this season with a best finish of 13th, the Music City was the right note for him to hit on. It…
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