The front row for Sunday’s NASCAR Cup Series playoff race at Kansas Speedway is quite a unique one that nobody saw coming.
The idea that Richard Childress Racing rookie Daniel Hemric and Front Row Motorsports’ David Ragan, two non-playoff drivers, are set to start a NASCAR Cup Series playoff race on the same row ordinarily wouldn’t garner much attention.
You might think they both had solid qualifying efforts and qualified somewhere between rows five and eight, or perhaps they both qualified right around where they usually qualify, somewhere between rows nine and 11.
But that is not the case for this afternoon’s Hollywood Casino 400, the round of 12 finale, at Kansas Speedway.
Hemric has made 33 career Cup Series starts, and he has never started on the front row. Ragan hasn’t started from the front row in over eight years, as he last did so in July of 2011 for the Brickyard 400 at Indianapolis Motor Speedway.
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Richard Childress Racing have already confirmed that they will not be retaining Hemric for the 2020 season, as they announced last month that Tyler Reddick is set to replace him. Ragan, meanwhile, announced that he will retire from full-time competition after the 2019 season ends.
Hemric sits in 25th place in the championship standings out of 31 full-time drivers with just one top five finish through the season’s first 30 races. Ragan sits in last with a top finish of 15th, the lowest top finish among all 31 of these drivers, and he is riding a win drought of 237 races, the second longest win drought among active full-time drivers with at least one victory. He last won a race in May of 2013 at Talladega Superspeedway.
Yet these are the two drivers set to share not just any row but the front row for this afternoon’s 267-lap race around the four-turn, 1.5-mile (2.414-kilometer) Kansas Speedway oval in Kansas City, Kansas.
Who saw this coming?
One driver is a rookie who has already lost his ride for next year and has never before started a race on the front row. The other one is the last place driver in the championship standings who entered the weekend on a 299-race front row start drought with only a few weeks remaining, less than a month actually, before he retires.
Yet it will be those two drivers who lead the field, a 40-driver field containing 12 hungry championship contenders, including 10 seeking to secure their spots in the round of 8, to the green flag to get the round of 12 finale underway.
You can’t make this up.
Will Daniel Hemric or David Ragan pull off a shocking victory from the front row in this afternoon’s NASCAR Cup Series round of 12 finale? For the first time in Hemric’s career, he is set to start from the pole position, and for the first time in Ragan’s career, the name “Front Row” Motorsports actually fits his entry. NBC’s live broadcast of the Hollywood Casino 400 from Kansas Speedway is set to begin at 2:30 p.m. ET.