When the green flag drops today on the Geico 500 at Talladega Superspeedway, it will be the 10th NASCAR Cup Series race of the season. Here’s a few things to chew on before the rubbin and racin begin.

What’s wrong with Ford?: This year’s Mustang isn’t running like a derby favorite, that’s for sure. The automaker is winless so far in nine races, while Chevrolet – with a large boost from Hendrick Motorsports – has dominated with six victories.

At the season-opening event at Daytona International Speedway, Ford squeaked into the Top 10 with a pair of cars finishing ninth (Noah Gragson) and 10th (Chase Briscoe). At Atlanta Motor Speedway, somewhat similar now to the superspedways, defending series champion Ryan Blaney found his groove and finished second. He’s earned three more top fives, but his Penske Racing teammates Austin Cindric and Joey Logano have just one apiece. Past champion Brad Keselowski leads the stable of drivers at RFK Racing with three top fives, but none of the four full-time Stewart-Haas drivers have a single top five.

While much of the media and fanbase seem to be fixated on the winless drought, Blaney described his performance in the first nine races as “fairly decent” and is nowhere near ready to hit the panic button.

“I feel like we’ve had the first quarter of the season go better than last year at this time,” he said.

And his feeling are valid. Mathematically at least. This season his average finish is 13.8; Last season that number was 14.7. And he did win the championship, after all.

The biggest difference, though, seems to be the fight Chevrolet is putting up on the way to the postseason.

How many times will William Byron win this year?: Hendrick Motorsports drivers know a little something about stacking wins on wins on wins. Only three years ago Byron’s teammate, Kyle Larson, put up double-digit wins (10), a feat also accomplished by fellow Hendrick Motorsports drivers Jimmie Johnson in 2007, and three times by Jeff Gordon, twice winning 10 races (1996, 1997) and then 13 in his other-worldly campaign of 1998. Larson, Johnson and Gordon all won championships at least once when they hit double digits, but with NASCAR’s current playoff format, it’s not how many one wins, but when.

Byron already won the season opener and is among the top five favorites to win again on Sunday.

If this early dominance by Chevrolet continues, there’s no reason to believe Byron couldn’t make a run at a season like Gordon put together in the 1990s. However, his biggest impediment(s) might prove to be his teammates collecting wins of their own.

Talladega skyline: In football a pylon is an orange, foam-filled, elongated cube, standing 18 or so inches tall. As technology has advanced, football leagues have found it to be a good place to hide a camera, giving us yet another interesting vantage point.

In motorsports, however, they’re a little bit different. Aside from the one at Talladega Superspeedway being 148-feet tall, scoring pylons are there to let the drivers and fans know race facts such laps run and position of the top drivers.

Or at least it was.

Now, it’s gone. And Texas lost its scoring pylon, too, drastically changing the skyline of both oval arenas. NASCAR officials told the Charlotte Observer and other media outlets not a single reason, but multiple ones for the change: 1. obstruction of fans’ views; 2. better able to delineate the same information on video boards; and 3. Some parts needed to make repairs weren’t even in production anymore.

If you’re watching the racing from the comfort of your own home, you might never know they’re missing. But fans and drivers (some only when asked) have expressed their opinions, which have ranged from indifferent to disappointment.

“I don’t see where it was hurting nothing,” Chase Elliot said. “It couldn’t have made the power bill that much higher.”

Added Denny Hamlin: “Taking those things down, it’s just not as good … Maybe it’s more of a sentimental thing for a purist like myself.”

“