Watch these 10 in Sunday’s marquee NASCAR race at Kansas Speedway. All are contenders

The NASCAR Cup regular season is nearing the halfway point, and 10 drivers have posted victories in 12 races and clinched playoff spots.

Some of the sport’s biggest names, including former Kansas winners and Cup champions Kevin Harvick, Brad Keselowski and Martin Truex Jr., are still looking for their first wins of 2021.

Here’s who to watch in the Advent Health 400 on Sunday at Kansas Speedway.

Chase Elliott, No. 9 Chevrolet

Elliott, the 2020 Cup champion, won his first race of the season two weeks ago at Dover for Hendrick Motorsports and leads the points standings as the series comes to Kansas Speedway. Elliott, 26, won the 2018 fall race here and is the series’ reigning Most Popular Driver. He has four top-five finishes in his last six starts at Kansas, including a second place in 2021.

Kyle Larson, No. 5 Chevrolet

Larson, 29, won last fall’s playoff race at Kansas Speedway in his first season for Hendrick Motorsports en route to the 2021 Cup championship. Larson, known for combining a prodigious schedule of dirt-track racing with his Cup season, won on the Fontana road course in February.

Denny Hamlin, No. 11 Toyota

Hamlin, 41, is one of five three-time winners at Kansas Speedway, including the summer race in 2020. Considered the best active driver not to have won a Cup championship, he clinched his postseason berth by winning at Richmond for Joe Gibbs Racing. He has two wins in his last six starts at Kansas.

Kyle Busch, No. 18 Toyota

Busch, the 2015 and 2019 Cup champion, owns two Cup victories at Kansas Speedway, including last spring when he swept both the Cup and trucks races for Joe Gibbs Racing. That gave him nine career victories (two Cup, four Xfinity and three trucks) across NASCAR’s three national series at Kansas, most of any driver. Busch, 37, won his 60th career Cup race — ninth all-time — last month at Bristol.

Martin Truex Jr., No. 19 Toyota

Truex, the 2017 series champion, is the only driver to sweep both Cup races in a season at Kansas Speedway when he pulled off the double in 2017. Truex, 41, has an average finish of 8.3 in his last six starts at Kansas, including a third in 2020 after leading 44 laps. He was seventh last fall and sixth in the spring.

Joey Logano, No. 22 Ford

Logano, the 2018 Cup champion for Team Penske, is coming off a win at Darlington last week when he shoved William Byron off the lead with two laps to go. Logano, 31, has won three times at Kansas but all were in the fall. He has struggled in the spring, with finishes of 15th, 20th and 17th in his last three starts.

Kevin Harvick, No 4 Ford

Harvick, one of two drivers, along with Kurt Busch to have started all 32 Cup races at Kansas, has won three times at the track, most recently in the spring of 2018. Harvick, 46, has four top-fives in his last six starts at Kansas for Stewart-Haas Racing, including a second last fall. The 2014 Cup champion owns 58 career wins, 10th all-time, but has gone 55 starts without a win, dating to Bristol in 2020.

Alex Bowman, No. 88 Chevrolet

Bowman, one of all four Hendrick Motorsports drivers with a victory this season, won at Las Vegas — like Kansas, a 1.5-mile tri-oval. Bowman, 28, has an average finish of 8.8 in his last six starts at Kansas, including a second in 2019 after leading 63 laps and a third in the 2020 fall race.

William Byron, No. 24 Chevrolet

Byron, 26, is a two-time victor for Hendrick Motorsports, winning at Atlanta and Martinsville, giving him multi-win seasons for the first time in his five-year Cup career. Byron, who won the trucks race at Kansas as an 18-year-old high school senior in 2016, has an average finish of 9.7 in his last six starts at Kansas with best finish of fifth.

Ross Chastain, No. 1 Chevrolet

Chastain, 29, is the feel-good story of the 2022 Cup season. A career journeyman in the trucks, Xfinity and Cup series, the eighth-generation watermelon farmer from Florida caught on with upstart Trackhouse Racing after Chip Ganassi Racing bought the organization at the end of last season.

Chastain, who won the 2019 trucks race at Kansas, won his first two career Cup events this year, on last-lap passes at Austin and Talladega.