Day-after takeaways from Texas: What are the chances of JGR only getting 1 car in final 4?

• We know Carl Edwards is heading to Homestead with a shot at the championship. Will any of his teammates be joining him?

With Edwards’ win Sunday night at Texas, Joe Gibbs Racing has won 12 of 34 races in 2016. But it’s not farfetched to think Edwards will be the only title-eligible Joe Gibbs Racing car at Homestead even though his three teammates are in contention for the last two spots in the final four.

3. Joey Logano, 4,074 points
4. Kyle Busch, 4,074
5. Matt Kenseth, 4,073
6. Denny Hamlin, 4,072

While Busch, Kenseth, and Hamlin have Logano outflanked in the points standings, Kevin Harvick is 16 points behind Hamlin. And he’s the big favorite at Phoenix.

Harvick has won six of the past eight races at Phoenix. And if that wasn’t staggering enough, the stat looks better if you only look at Harvick’s races with Stewart-Haas Racing. Since 2014 he’s won four of five Phoenix races. The lone non-win was a second-place finish last fall that came when Dale Earnhardt Jr. won thanks to rain and the placement of timing lines.

Harvick winning at Phoenix again is no sure thing. But it’s the closest modern NASCAR has seen to a sure thing. And if we assume he wins his seventh race in the last nine races in the desert, well, there’s only one spot left for a non-winner in the third round among Logano, Busch, Kenseth and Hamlin. Kurt Busch, the eighth driver remaining in the Chase, is exempted from this discussion because he needs to win at Phoenix. And he can’t do that if his teammate does.

It’s hard to find a favorite among those four drivers too. Phoenix was repaved in the middle of 2011. In the 10 races since the repave, here’s their average finishes at the one-mile track.

Hamlin: 11.0
Logano: 12.2
Kenseth: 12.9
Busch: 14.0

You can make a case for any of them. And that’s exactly why we think you shouldn’t be surprised if Logano and Harvick join Edwards and Jimmie Johnson to race for the title in two weeks.

• Johnson headed to pit road under the caution flag that ultimately ended the race 41 laps short of the scheduled distance. And that was the right call.

With last week’s win at Martinsville, Johnson’s Texas finish had no importance unless he won and prevented another driver from winning. By getting tires when the leaders didn’t, Johnson would have been a rocketship and gone to the front if the race resumed. He finished 11th.

• Sunday’s race started six hours late after rain hit the track just before the scheduled start time of 1 p.m. CT. It didn’t rain that much, but the porous surface at Texas takes a really long time to dry. Had the track gotten a downpour instead of a moderate rain, it’s not a stretch to think the race would have been postponed to Monday (with an even worse forecast) because of a two-hour off-and-on rain event.

Four hours is too long to dry a track. NASCAR and Texas Motor Speedway officials know this, and they also know that the track’s history of weepers (where water seeps up from cracks in the surface) is an issue as well. That’s why it’s not going to be surprising if Texas announces the track will be repaved in 2017.

The aged surface has opened up three lines of racing in the corners at the track. But older pavement takes more time to dry. Had track drying efforts taken an hour less, Sunday’s race would have gone the full distance and not been cut short by over 60 miles.

“I don’t want to say I get it, but I do,” Logano said. “You can’t have a racetrack that takes that long to dry. You can’t have that. I really like the way this track races right now. It’s a lot of fun. You can run the top, bottom. It’s bumpy. It’s just awesome right now. All but that one thing … Pick your poison, right?”

• Tony Stewart’s retirement tour is not going well. Yeah, Stewart made the Chase, but he was eliminated in the first round. And he’s been pretty bad since that elimination.

Stewart finished 31st on Sunday, his third-straight finish outside the top 25. Stewart’s average finish in the Chase is a putrid 20.75, lower than his season-long average finish of 18.3.

He’ll get a deserved sendoff at Homestead in two weeks. But it’s hard not to wonder how different the final races of Stewart’s career could be.

• Take a look at this pre-race scene next to the No. 55 of Reed Sorenson. As you likely know, Sorenson’s Premium Motorsports car had a Trump/Pence 2016 paint scheme. It was paid for by two of the team’s sponsors and it’s hard not to view the sponsorship a success even if you’re not voting for Donald Trump and Mike Pence on Tuesday. The paint scheme gave the low-budget team the most exposure it’s gotten all season.

Sorenson finished 35th, eight laps down.

• Oh, we need to mention the irony of Dale Earnhardt Jr. getting a warning for speeding on his way to Texas Motor Speedway on Sunday. Junior attended the race to be with his team and cheer on substitute driver Alex Bowman. And apparently was going a bit too fast on his way there.

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Nick Bromberg is the editor of From The Marbles on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at nickbromberg@yahoo.com or follow him on Twitter!

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