Race Previews - Driving on Marbles

NASCAR Kansas 2026: This Week’s Top 20 Driver Rankings for the AdventHealth 400

Hey race fans, welcome back to Driving on Marbles! Happy Wednesday and welcome to race week at Kansas Speedway. After back-to-back short tracks at Martinsville and Bristol over the past three weeks, we’re finally moving back to the intermediate oval world and honestly the timing couldn’t feel more refreshing.

Kansas Speedway is a 1.5-mile tri-oval in Kansas City and it’s one of the smoothest, most flowing tracks on the entire NASCAR schedule. Where Bristol was chaos and contact and bumpers and tempers, Kansas is about pure speed, lane management, tire conservation, and pit strategy.

The AdventHealth 400 runs 267 laps across 400 miles with Stage 1 ending on Lap 80, Stage 2 on Lap 165, and the final stage running to Lap 267. Speedwaymedia Green flag drops at 2:00 PM ET this Sunday April 19 with practice and qualifying on Saturday April 18.

Kyle Larson is the defending winner of this race, having also won it back-to-back in 2024 and 2025. He comes in off a dominant Bristol performance where he led 284 laps and swept both stages before getting outwitted by strategy in the final laps. The motivation to finally convert that kind of speed into a 2026 win is absolutely going to be there on Sunday.

A few things are worth knowing about Kansas heading into the weekend.

Hendrick Motorsports leads all organisations in wins at Kansas with nine, and Kyle Larson leads all active drivers in laps led there with 703 across his career.

Kansas has also been the home of the most speeding penalties at intermediate ovals in the Next Gen era, so pit road execution is going to be just as important as raw speed on Sunday.

Let’s get into this weeks full Top 20 breakdown.

NASCAR Bristol 2026: This Week’s Top 20 Driver Rankings for the Food City 500

Hey race fans, welcome back to Driving on Marbles! Happy Wednesday and welcome to race week at one of the most electric venues in all of motorsport.

We had a week off last week to catch our breath after a wild start to the 2026 season, and now we’re back with one of the most anticipated races on the calendar. The Cup Series is heading to Bristol Motor Speedway for the Food City 500 this Sunday and I genuinely can’t think of a better track to come back to after a week away from racing.

Let’s get into this week’s top 20.

NASCAR Martinsville 2026: This Week’s Top 20 Driver Rankings for the Cook Out 400

Hey race fans, welcome back to Driving on Marbles! Happy Wednesday and welcome to race week at one of my absolute favourite stops on the entire NASCAR schedule.

The Cup Series is heading to Martinsville Speedway this Sunday for the Cook Out 400 and honestly I couldn’t be more excited about this one. Martinsville is a completely different animal from anything we’ve seen so far in 2026. We’ve had superspeedways, road courses, a flat one-mile oval, a 1.5-mile intermediate, and last week the unique challenge of Darlington. But nothing on this schedule prepares you for what Sunday is going to feel like at the paperclip.

Martinsville is a 0.526-mile half-mile oval that is absolutely brutal on brakes and tires. The straights are only 800 feet long. Drivers are nose-diving into these turns, braking as hard as they can, and then slamming on the throttle coming out of Turns 2 and 4 to get back to as much speed as the straights will allow before doing it all over again.

Four hundred laps of that. It’s a grind and it’s glorious and the winner gets a grandfather clock instead of a trophy because Martinsville does things its own way.

The big storyline heading in is whether Tyler Reddick can make it five wins from seven races or whether the field finally figures out how to stop him. Interestingly, Reddick is not the favourite this week. Ryan Blaney and Denny Hamlin are the early market leaders heading into Sunday. There’s a reason for that and we’ll get into it below.

Green flag drops at 3:30 PM ET this Sunday March 29. Here’s your full top 20 breakdown based on the current Cup Series standings.

Let’s get into it!

First	Second	Third

2267	2223	2219