Jessie Punch catches up with the biggest headlines of the weekend before the Cup Series battles at Kansas Speedway.
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00:00This week, NASCAR is bringing the horsepower to the heart of the Midwest.
00:05Hey, race fans, Jessie Punch here.
00:07Welcome to Kansas Speedway.
00:09Race number 12 of the season, and it's a good week to be Denny Hamlin.
00:12Coming off win number three of the year last weekend at Dover,
00:15and now here at a racetrack where he has more wins than any other driver,
00:20including this race last season.
00:22That 11 team, incredibly confident going into these next few races.
00:26You know, Chris gave me the task of winning one of the next three races
00:30before we had the all-star break, and we got the first week.
00:33From here on out, I think that we can be in a good mood
00:36by the time we get to that all-star break,
00:38and certainly these next two tracks are set up really nicely.
00:41I'm certainly encouraged by it,
00:43but you don't want to use up all your promises too much early in the season.
00:46That win last season didn't come without a battle with that five of Kyle Larson.
00:52I just would have loved to have won that race, but it was a close finish,
00:55and I wasn't mad at him then,
00:58so I just kind of look at what I could have done
01:00to put together some better laps to not be in that spot.
01:03There's only one other driver in the field
01:05that also has three wins already this season.
01:07That's Kyle's Hendrick Motorsports teammate William Byron.
01:10Now, William did scrape the wall in qualifying
01:12and will roll off 36th here at Kansas,
01:14but with a notably strong mile-and-a-half program,
01:17that 24 team knows how important it is to still have a strong run here today.
01:22Been struggling to get stage points like I talked about,
01:25and that's really where we need to improve.
01:27That's where we were really good last year,
01:29so I'm trying to get a few more stage wins and stage points in general.
01:33This one's important just for the playoffs,
01:35trying to get an idea of what we need here.
01:37It's a very different style track running the top all the time,
01:41so just trying to figure out what the setup needs to be for that.
01:44I feel like we've got a good setup, but just trying to make small improvements.
01:47With the exception of Charlotte here in just a few weeks,
01:50the Cup Series will not race on another mile-and-a-half track
01:53until we're back here at Kansas in the fall for the playoffs.
01:57So catch this field, take on 400 miles,
01:59led by pole sitter Christopher Bell, 3 p.m. Eastern on FS1.