So this package isn't the "pack racing" we were all promised, which depending on your view is either a good or bad thing. That aside, strictly compared to last year these last two races have been excellent by 1.5 standards.
One of the biggest differences I can see is just how the drivers go about battling each other. In the low downforce era, a better handling car would simply dive into the corner and blow by the car ahead without much time lost. Some may call that good racing but to me it takes the driver vs driver element (one of the big selling points of NASCAR) out of it. Yesterday and at Atlanta was so much different.
The leader and 2nd place car could trade places back and forth over the course of multiple laps. We saw this yesterday with Kyle Busch vs Logano in stage 2 and logano vs Kez with 40 to go. When was the last time you saw a "pass-back", as humpy wheeler would say, outside of a superspeedway race? If this were last year's package Keselowski would have won the race because there'd be no way for Joey to fight back after losing the lead in lapped traffic.
I have no idea why this is, because from a technical standpoint it makes no sense. Clint Bowyer and Denny Hamlin were complaining that the track was single groove because why do anything else beside hold it wide open around the bottom, the shortest way around? And yet we saw cars get huge runs off the top lane all race long. Slide jobs and crossover moves shouldn't be a thing when everybody has so much grip and yet that's exactly what happened. From the TV perspective Vegas and Atlanta looked a lot like a typical intermediate race, but with better restarts, better battles up front, and closer intervals. That's a win in my book.
