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Much like the strands of a guitar in a skilled musician's hands, there is something about a race car at speed that pleases the senses. The sound of the engine as a driver accelerates down a straightaway has a harmonic quality, and its being repeated each lap creates a high-octane melody that complements one particular city just perfectly.

This weekend, the NASCAR Cup Series makes its way to the Nashville Superspeedway for the Ally 400 and its second race in Music City since the market returned to the Cup Series schedule in 2021. Just east of downtown Nashville, this 1.3-mile concrete oval presents a speedway with the characteristics of a much smaller track: A shorter than a normal mile-and-a-half speedway and with just 14 degrees of banking, drivers are challenged to remember their braking points on corner entry before trying to build speed through and off its corners.

Kyle Busch (+700): From the time he scored his first ARCA victory at this track as a 17-year old, Kyle Busch has had a sterling history at Nashville Superspeedway. Busch has five victories at this track and has contended for many more, including last summer when he scored the milestone 100th victory of his Xfinity Series career. Although Busch only finished 11th in the Cup race the next day, he did lead 10 laps, the most of any driver not named Larson.

Busch has a knack for this speedway, and it's also important to remember how he performed in the last race on a concrete oval. Busch led 103 laps last month at Dover, and looked like he might have had the car to beat before a caution during a green flag pit stop cycle cost him a chance at the win. Given Busch's history at Nashville and Toyota's speedway program rounding into form, it's safe to suggest that the adjective used to describe a usual night's activities on Lower Broadway could match the nickname of the driver in Victory Lane: Rowdy.

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