Ford EcoBoost 400: NASCAR Championship preview, predictions

The 2017 Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series season comes to an end at Homestead, where Toyota and Ford will battle it out for a championship and Dale Earnhardt Jr. will ride into the sunset.

Even if you had to write a script for a NASCAR Championship race from scratch, it would be hard to come up with one more dramatic than what’s going to take place at the Ford EcoBoost 400 at Homestead.

Martin Truex Jr.,, who’s been the fastest driver more often than anyone else in 2017, is considered by many the favorite even though he’s never won a Cup Series title before. The three men trying to stop him — Kyle Busch, Kevin Harvick and Brad Keselowski — are all trying to add to their trophy cases as they’ve won one before.

All of Truex’s pursuers drive for powerhouse NASCAR teams, while Furniture Row Racing is looking to place itself in that top tier despite operating out of Denver and running just one car for most of its existence (and again in 2018). The championship is also an even toss-up between Toyota (Truex and Busch), the dominant manufacturer for big stretches of the season, and Ford (Harvick and Keselowski), which started 2017 hot and would love to bookend the season on top.

Playing out against all of that drama is the farewell of Dale Earnhardt Jr., who makes his final start as a full-time Cup Series driver at Homestead. He’ll have to start from the rear of the field, but likes driving at Homestead and will be urged on by his fans like never before. Danica Patrick is also driving in the season-ending race for the first time, and Matt Kenseth might be as well.

There’s a good chance that when the Ford EcoBoost 400 is over, the NBC announcers might have to hustle to pit road to talk to three different drivers: the Cup Series champion, the race winner and Earnhardt. But it also just might take a win at Homestead for one of the final four to take the title, and that would make for a fitting finale.

Forecast

There’s a reason that NASCAR likes coming to Homestead in November, and that’s the fact that the weather is generally gorgeous. Weather Channel expects the same today, with the temperature in the low 80s when the green flag drops. It is expected to cool off by about 10 degrees over the course of the race, so crew chiefs will have changing track conditions to keep in mind.

Three things to watch

• Can Truex stake his claim as The Man? Truex and the Furniture Row bunch were underdogs last season at this time, but he says the favorite role suits him better. He’s never won this race, but the same could be said about plenty of tracks this year and it didn’t matter. With NASCAR losing a ton of star power over the past few years, Truex can help lead the sport into its next era with a victory at Homestead.
• Do the Fords have enough to make a charge? The Ford EcoBoost 400 hasn’t been a strong Ford race this decade, with the last victory for any Ford driver coming back in 2010. Harvick and Keselowski — who has been particularly vocal about his feelings that the Toyotas have more under the hood — are publicly embracing their underdog status. But all it takes under the current championship format is one really good day on Sunday.
• Will Busch and Keselowski clash? If there’s a pair of drivers in the Championship 4 who have a traditional, “I really don’t like that guy” rivalry, this is it. Busch got into it with Kes’ Team Penske teammate Joey Logano early this season, and they’ll likely be racing near each other all afternoon. It wouldn’t be shocking if some fireworks broke out at some point.

Bonus thing to watch: How will Junior do? Naturally, many eyes will be on Earnhardt, whose impending departure from full-time NASCAR competition still feels a little surreal. An equipment change after practice means he’ll tackle Homestead with the highest possible degree of difficulty, starting from the back, but he’ll undoubtedly be itching to give the fans one last show if his car has any kind of speed.

Next: Earnhardt Jr.: No regrets about walking away from NASCAR career

Prediction

Keselowski isn’t wrong when he says the one-race format means anything can happen. There’s just as much chance of a clean, relatively uneventful Ford EcoBoost 400 as there is continuous drama with the status of the contenders changing constantly, which is kind of what happened Saturday in the XFINITY Series championship. One also only needs to ask Kyle Larson about what can happen in the pure bad luck department.

Still, the guess here is that at least three of the four title hopefuls will be near the front when the laps are winding down. With that being the case, we’ll ride with Martin Truex Jr. to win both the race and the championship, cementing his status as a bona fide superstar and boosting his chances to become a household name at a time when NASCAR could certainly use that.