Some big names missing from NASCAR's win column

NASCAR

BRISTOL, Tenn. --- Kyle Busch had 2 wins and entered the spring race at city Motor Speedway leading the points standings a year agone. Kevin Harvick had a success and was third. Denny Hamlin come into being the season with a success at the Daytona five hundred and was eighth.

This season, they share another common bond - a shocking zero wins because the Cup calendar turns to city.

Rain forced postponement of the Food town five hundred to one p.m. ET on Monday, that means those 3 can need to wait another day to secure their 1st success of the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series season.

“We've simply thrown away points, if points matter, week in and week out,” Busch aforementioned earlier this month in Martinsville, Va., once one amongst solely 2 top-five finishes over the primary seven races. “We've just got to somehow get our luck better. I don't know what it is that just keeps knocking us back that we don't have things kind of go our way, but they just haven't been going our way, so we've just got to keep plugging along until they do.”

Joe Gibbs Racing, Busch’s team, piled up 12 victories last season and pushed Toyota toward its first manufacturer title at NASCAR's premier level. But the team has yet to win through the first seven races.

"I think I know where we are at this point and the things we need to work on, and by no means are we at the top," Hamlin said earlier this month, per The Associated Press. "We as a company have a good idea of where we're at, but I don't think people from the outside can really make a judgment until probably eight to nine races."

There also have been some surprise winners this year - with Kurt Busch at the Daytona 500 after several other would-be victors ran out of fuel, and Ryan Newman at Phoenix Raceway on a late pit stop strategy. It was Newman's first win since July 2013.

Kyle Busch enters Monday’s race seventh in the standings and Hamlin - who clings to the 16th slot - would be the only other JGR driver to make NASCAR’s 16-driver postseason as of Sunday.

Former champion Matt Kenseth, WHO has JGR’s solely alternative top-five end this season, is twenty second within the standings, one spot earlier than JGR initiate Daniel Suarez, WHO was promoted to Cup prior to expected once Carl Edwards left the team within the offseason.

All four JGR drivers (Busch, Hamlin, Kenseth and Edwards) created the competition last season and every survived to the spherical of eight. Jimmie Johnson edged Busch, Edwards and Joey Logano for his record-tying seventh title, within the four-driver finale in Nov.

Besides the JGR drivers, Team Penske’s Logano and Stewart-Haas Racing’s Harvick conjointly created the spherical of eight last postseason and every ar still looking for their 1st win of this season. Johnson (Texas Motor Speedway on April 9) and Kurt Busch (Daytona International Speedway on Feb. 26) ar the sole active drivers WHO created the spherical of eight in 2016 to win up to now this year.

Harvick has won here doubly, as well as the last time Cup raced here, in August.

“It's very simply a matter (of) putt a weekend along,” Harvick aforementioned. “It’s very no completely different than the other raceway. This business is tough to achieve success at thereforeme|and a few}times you bear years wherever short tracks ar sensible and some years not so sensible. ... I get pleasure from the short tracks as a result of we tend to don’t get to travel to quite as several as i feel we’d all like.”