Time might view it differently but in this moment, William Byron scored the biggest win of the season on Sunday at Texas Motor Speedway because it means he gets to bypass any negative consequence of Talladega and the Charlotte ROVAL.
These are considered the two wild card races of the NASCAR Cup Playoffs due to the anticipated extreme attrition and two disastrous races could eliminate anyone … except Byron.
“First off, just making the Round of 8 is an accomplishment in itself,” Byron said. “I think for us and where we are with our team, not making it through the Round of 16 would be a big disappointment but the Round of 12 is tough.
You don’t really control your destiny at Talladega, and then the other two could go either way. You can have a good car but you can have a bad day and crash or whatever. That makes it nerve-racking in this round.”
But again, not for him, and it’s also a benefit for teammate Kyle Larson, who could receive extra support from Byron at Talladega if it comes down to it in the final laps. He could use it too as superspeedway races have not been remotely kind to Larson over the past decade.
Supporting their teammates is certainly how Byron crew chief Rudy Fugle is looking at Sunday, not only for Larson but Chase Elliott, who is racing for the owner’s championship in the No. 9 car.
“Now we get to go help the 5; we get to help the 9; we get to help our Chevy partners next week,” Fugle said. “We don’t have to be as stressed about what happens. We can just go try to get more playoff points and that’s a big goal too.”
Stress is the operative word for the other 12, who feel varying degrees of desperation based on what happened last weekend at Texas, like Kyle Busch (-17), Ryan Blaney (-11), Tyler Reddick (-3) and Bubba Wallace (-2) who enter this the final drafting track race below the cutline.
Blaney got hit with a speeding penalty and was then caught in a mid-pack crash late on Sunday at Texas, finishing 28th to drop him below the cutline.
“I thought I was going to be way more out of it,” Blaney said. “So just understanding that you’re going to have these moments and it’s kind of how you respond to them and how you rebound after a bad week and realize you still have two weeks to make it up.”
To that point, he isn’t feeling a sense or urgency to make something happen on Sunday.
“We don’t have to go win Talladega,” Blaney said. “We’re not in that spot.”
But that’s kind of the point because Talladega could put a lot of people in that spot come Sunday afternoon. Conventional wisdom dictates there will be multiple multicar crashes and they could come at anytime and anywhere in the field.
There is no safe place to hide and it could happen before a single stage point is paid out on Sunday. Â That Denny Hamlin got out of Texas unscathed and with a +37-point advantage to the cutoff was huge for exactly what Talladega and the ROVAL represents.
“Everyone is going to worry about those two races short of already being locked in,” Hamlin said. “All of us, even if you have a one race buffer, because these are two crazy tracks where a lot of things happen that are out of our control. Texas was the most pivotal one they could control.”
Then there’s a guy like Ross Chastain, +12, who isn’t concerned whatsoever. Whatever happens, happens.
“We just go race,” Chastain said. “That’s what we do. They hand out the same points in every stage in every race in every one of these rounds. If we finish up front, we score more points and if not, we know we get less. We just go race.
“And that’s the great thing about our playoff format, if you don’t make it, you don’t but if you do, they reset your points and you get another chance to go do it again.”
Okay, but is there a goal for how many points Chastain feels like he needs to get on Sunday?
“More than the rest of the guys get.”
Chastain said he hates to be evasive but it’s a relative equation.
“It just depends on how everyone’s race goes, right,” Chastain said. “So it depends on where we qualify, working with out Chevrolet teams and just go race.”
Talladega, especially with the ROVAL looming the next week, is every bit the opportunity as it is a risk, too. For example, Brad Keselowski (+8) says he and teammate Chris Buescher (+22) have had amongst the best superspeedway cars the past two years.
Buescher and Keselowski finished 1-2 at Daytona last month.
“We’re in the hunt with both cars and hopefully we can go to Talladega and replicate what we had at Daytona,” he said.
And the ROVAL?
“One at a time,” Keselowski said. “Shoot, we can look ahead all the way to Phoenix if we want to but the race in front of us is Talladega.”
The Yallawood 500 at Talladega on Sunday will take the green flag at 2:04 ET and will air on NBC.
Updated NASCAR Cup Playoffs grid
William Byron Win, Adv
Denny Hamlin +37
Chris Buescher +22
Christopher Bell +20
Martin Truex +19
Ross Chastain +12
Brad Keselowski +8
Kyle Larson +2
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Bubba Wallace -2
Tyler Reddick -3
Ryan Blaney -11
Kyle Busch -17
Matt Weaver is a Motorsports Insider for Sportsnaut. Follow him on Twitter.