Here we are again: halfway through another NASCAR Cup Series regular season.
The ninth year of the current playoff format, NASCAR 2022 at midseason stands out for the parity produced by the sport’s new Next Gen chassis. Two teams that didn’t exist in 2020, Trackhouse Racing Team and 23XI Racing, have combined to win three of 13 races. In eight events, the margin of victory has been .552 seconds or less, with several overtime finishes and late-race passes to win. Lead changes have increased 20% from 2021, and cautions are up: no lead is safe these days — good news for fans who craved the return of unpredictability.
There have also been 11 winners in 13 races, 12 of 14 if you count Ryan Blaney and the All-Star Race. Could 2022 be the year that total balloons to 16 or more by the regular season finale? Based on the drivers still winless (Kevin Harvick, Martin Truex Jr., Christopher Bell) we’re trending in that direction, but we’ve also been here before: 2021 featured 11 different winners in the first 14 races before Kyle Larson caught fire and snuffed out the competition.
In 2020, I brought back “The Bowlesy Awards,” first appearing on SI.com years ago, and the new-age edition continues in 2022. So let’s take the window net down (at the right time, of course) to uncover who and what has made the largest impact on our sport in the past four months.
2022 NASCAR Midseason Awards
The David Pearson Award (Hardest Charger): Ross Chastain. Chastain could win a number of these categories, but his 2022 has stood out for how much this 29-year-old has muscled his way into the weekly conversation. His driving style is defined by the last lap at Circuit of the Americas, where Chastain literally muscled AJ Allmendinger out of the way while shoving him like a pinball into Alex Bowman to take his first career NASCAR Cup win.
The finish to today’s NASCAR race at COTA.
Ross Chastain gets the last punch on AJ Allmendinger and Alex Bowman.
Click Here to Read the Full Original Article at Frontstretch…