Facing must-win odds, responding to a summer-long storyline about whether or not he would advance into the NASCAR Cup Series playoffs, it was Chase who captured the pole for the regular season finale at Daytona International Speedway.
…
Chase Briscoe, that is.
While Chase Elliott receives a majority of the headlines facing must-win odds on Saturday night in the Coke Zero Sugar 400 at Daytona, there are no shortage of drivers currently on the outside and looking towards the playoff grid who are capable of winning the biggest wild card race of the season.
Alex Bowman
AJ Allmendinger
Austin Dillon
Aric Almirola
Ryan Preece
Erik Jones
Justin Haley
Corey Lajoie
Harrison Burton
The good news for Briscoe is that he will take the green flag from the lead with all three of his teammates inside the top-10. The bad news is that two of those teammates, Preece and Almirola, also need to win the race.
Almirola will start the race from the outside front row.
Oh, there’s more bad news for Briscoe too, in that a points paying race at Daytona has only been won from the pole four times since the turn of the century and hasn’t been accomplished since Dale Earnhardt Jr. won the 2015 Firecracker 400.
“Oh man, you’re really stealing it from me,” Briscoe said with a laugh when told the odds by Sportsnaut.
On the other hand, even though Briscoe hasn’t won this season and enters this race 31st in the championship standings, it also means ‘we have nothing to lose’ and he will race accordingly on Saturday night.
“That part of it is a little freeing and relieving knowing that I can just go out there and race and literally winning is the only thing that matters,” Briscoe said. “Winning is all that matters every week, but you typically have other motives like racing someone in points … but the only lap that matters is Lap 160 or whatever the final lap ends up being.”
There is a lot of that going around on Saturday due to the number of expected contenders who have no other way into the one remaining playoff spot but reaching Victory Lane. Elliott is the headliner, but Hendrick Motorsports teammate Bowman is in the same figurative boat. These are the same odds Dillon faced last year and was pushed to the win and into the playoffs by then-teammate Tyler Reddick.
Jones has won this race before and superspeedway racing is the great equalizer for smaller team drivers like Lajoie or Haley.
Almirola won this race, albeit under rain-shortened conditions, to punch his ticket to the playoffs and also won a Daytona 500 qualifying race back twice in the past three years.
“This is certainly a place I feel like I can win at… I went back and looked at a lot of film getting ready for this race, and I’ve seen that No. 10 Smithfield Ford Mustang up front in every single one of them,” Almirola said. “You just have to have things go your way. You’ve got to manage all of it—the pit cycle, when to come on and off pit road with your teammates, making sure you do all the little things right…
“I know where Victory Lane’s at. I’ve won the last couple of Duels here, and we’ve had really, really fast race cars. I think that will still be the same.”
His Stewart-Haas teammate, Preece, shares that optimism about their organizational speed but also recognizes the odds. Penske can have Ryan Blaney commit to pushing Austin Cindric to the win. Richard Childress Racing can commit to having Kyle Busch push Dillon to a second-consecutive summer win at Daytona.
Hendrick Motorsports has Kyle Larson and William Byron is and will be committed to Elliott and Bowman.
But on the other hand, that’s also a recipe for … what’s the word …
“Chaos,” Preece said.
Yes.
“Look at the number of organizations that have at least one car outside of (the playoffs) and their teammates will be doing whatever they can, like pushing or throwing big blocks, to help their teammate get in.
“I can see there being a lot of chaos and aggressive moves.”
Is there pressure in that?
“There’s pressure every week in the Cup Series.”
That’s how Allmendinger articulated it too. He abhors, literally, superspeedway racing but also recognizes it for the opportunity it presents his and every other team in their situation.
“There’s no pressure beyond what I put on myself and that doesn’t change from week-to-week,” Allmendinger said. “From where we’ve started this year, I think we’ve had a pretty solid year and while we can nitpick what happened or didn’t happen, there’s no pressure beyond what I put on myself every week.
“Matt (Kaulig, team owner) and Chris (Rice, team president) have never put pressure on me. It’s just what I put on myself. I’ll put it this way: If we win our way in, it’ll shock everyone anywhere, so just let it hang out.”
No one is more reflective of how anything can happen, and anyone can win their way into the playoffs on Saturday than Harrison Burton, who is seeking his first Cup win in an otherwise listless season with a 23.6 average finish. If he wins, he suddenly goes from 30th in the standings to 16th with an opportunity to chase a championship.
Oh, and there’s the points battle for the final spot too, which matters if there isn’t a new winner from that list above.
16. Bubba Wallace +32
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17. Ty Gibbs -32
18. Daniel Suarez -43
“Everyone is in a must-win situation,” Wallace said. “If you’re not locked in, you’re in a must-win situation. The last race is Daytona, and we’ve seen surprise winners.
“No one is safe until the race is over with. We’re hoping we can do everything right, continue to get stage points. And if there’s a new winner, it has to be the 23 car—other than that, everyone is fighting for the same real estate.”
But even that battle has an interesting wrinkle in Denny Hamlin, who owns the car Wallace drives, but is a teammate at Joe Gibbs Racing to Gibbs. Hamlin has been adamant all week, that being placed in the position to have to choose one over the other, Hamlin would push Wallace to the playoffs.
“The 11 car always comes first, and I would never compromise my track position for a car that I own and its important to be a team leader for 23XI but also a good teammate so I would push them both equally,” Hamlin said. “But right now, if we’re coming to the line, in the .00001 percent chance that happens, I’m going with the 23XI Racing car.”
Has he justified that to the younger Gibbs, grandson to the team owner?
“I haven’t spoken to Ty,” Hamlin said. “I typically don’t during the week but this is just a unique situation that hasn’t presented itself until now.”
For his part, Suarez isn’t even playing the points game, because like Wallace said, everyone without a win must win on Saturday.
“Honestly, I don’t even know how many points we’re behind,” Suarez said.
43.
“43, so I honestly don’t know, and I think, right now, because we’re in Daytona, anything can happen and maybe we can have some luck on our side,” Suarez said. “We’re going to have to make some friends, we have a lot of Chevrolets out there, but there are a lot of them trying to do the same thing we are too.
“We’ll see how things work out.”
Matt Weaver is a Motorsports Insider for Sportsnaut. Follow him on Twitter.