The bottom six drivers on the NASCAR Cup Series playoff grid are separated by just 26 points heading to the first cutoff race on Saturday at Bristol Motor Speedway.
Below the cutline are former champions Brad Keselowski and Martin Truex Jr. but also one of the winningest drivers of all-time in Denny Hamlin. Three of the four Joe Gibbs Racing drivers are on the playoff bubble.
This first round, one that has already featured a diet superspeedway in Atlanta Motor Speedway and then a road course on an experimental tire compound, produced the kind of unpredictability it intended.
Denny Hamlin
First came the engine seal penalty last month, then the last lap crash at Atlanta, and then came the first lap on Sunday at Watkins Glen when Corey Lajoie tagged Kyle Busch and collected Hamlin, Blaney and Christopher Bell.
Hamlin caught the worst of it, having nowhere to go since he started near the back, and it destroyed the right front of the Joe Gibbs Racing No. 11. Hamln was then involved in a second crash when he found himself three-wide with fellow playoff contenders Kyle Larson and Brad Keselowski.
Hamlin nursed his way to a 23rd place finish.
“Obviously the car is just destroyed, so to finish 23rd – I guess there is a positive,” Hamlin said. “We were certainly in a worst spot most of the day, and luckily, we had some attrition there at the end that helped us out.”
“I feel like we can go there and win,” Hamlin said. “We are going to an oval – back to a normal track. We can control our own destiny there.”
Now he goes to Bristol, where he’s won the past two races, one under traditional circumstances and one featuring the extreme tire wear in March.
Martin Truex Jr.
The string of bad luck continued for Martin Truex Jr., who even before this weekend, was mired in a slump of eight finishes of 24th or worse over the last nine races. Now, it’s nine of the last 10 at 20th or worse.
Truex actually won the first stage, and showed race winning speed in the first half, and looked like he was going to dig out of a playoff deficit, only to get door slammed on the final two restarts, spun on the final one, and clawed his way to 20th.
Remarkably, this is his best finish since July 14.
“I’m tired of this,” Truex told NBC Sports. “You get green-white-checkers at the end of these races and people are just going to drive through everyone. We were in the wrong lane and the short end of the stick as usual. We were in a decent spot there.
“These dumbasses just plow through you, put you in the marbles. It’s ridiculous, this racing today is just ridiculous. I don’t really care anymore.”
He’s retiring at the end of the season and if he can’t overcome a 14 point deficit, similar to the eight point deficit he overcame at Bristol last year to advance, he might completely check out by this time next week.
Brad Keselowski
After getting involved in the first lap crash, Keselowski still had a chance to salvage a decent finish because he had just taken fresh tires before the restart with seven laps to go and at worst could have challenged for a top-10.
Instead, he didn’t make it one full lap before this happened.
“The track was really really dirty and I assume there were marbles on the tires and didn’t make the turn but then got hooked in the left rear,” Keselowski told FOX Sports. “It’s a shame. I had brand new tires on, started 16th and was going to salvage a pretty decent day with everyone on old tires. With the attrition, who knows, maybe get a top five with everything we’ve been through and didn’t even make the first lap. Tough way to go.”
He has 12 points to try to make up on Saturday night.
For his part, Logano agreed with Keselowski about track conditions but ultimately took responsibility for their incident.
“I’m not making any excuses, I needed to check up more but the track’s a complete disaster,” Logano told FOX Sports. “They need to clean it up and I got pushed maybe four-wide at one point, so tried to give room there and got up in the marbles. When I went to turn back to the left, it’s got crap all over the tires and I got into him.
“It’s still on me, right, but at the same time, clean the damn track. I brought it up at least two to three times about cleaning the track before the restarts, but it just didn’t happen.”
Chase Briscoe
If these playoff deficits look overwhelming, consider that Chase Briscoe entered this race with a 20 point margin to overcome after getting crashed out of Atlanta but did it in a single race with stage finishes of third and sixth and a race finish of sixth.
No one scored more points on the day than Briscoe did at 43.
“It was huge.,” Briscoe said. “It’s what we needed to do was to score stage points and run good in the race and we were able to do that. It was a really good, solid day for our HighPoint.com Ford. I felt like I could have got a couple more points, but just didn’t want to risk it there at the end.
“I knew I was in a pretty good position compared to a lot of the field, so we did what we needed to do and now we just need to go do that same thing next week. We need to just hit singles and doubles and don’t do anything crazy. As long as we just execute all day long, it should be enough. We’ll just go on to Bristol and see what we can do.”
What this all means
Joey Logano won at Atlanta and beyond trying to score more stage points towards the use of the next two rounds, there’s no consequence for him at Bristol.
He has already advanced into the Round of 12 no matter what.
Even though Christopher Bell had a dramatic day, getting spun twice, but salvaging a P14, he has so many banked playoff points from his regular season and they have come in handy.
“That was our worst road course race that we’ve had in a very, very long time,” Bell said. “That was disappointing, but ultimately if you would have told me that I’m going to come out of here with gaining on the points to the cutline, I would’ve taken it. It wasn’t pretty how we got there, but we got there and now we can go to Bristol and relax a little bit more.”
Austin Cindric’s top-10 combined with a very good Atlanta has him pretty safe at +43 barring the worst-case scenario next week. The same can be said of Alex Bowman at +41 too.
That’s generally true of Daniel Suarez, at +36, and Tyler Redick and Chase Elliott at +30 each, who just needs to largely finish the same. Ditto Ryan Blaney at +29 — just do not get caught up in an early crash, which would come with an automatic 30-point swing.
And really, Kyle Larson and William Byron at +26 and +25 just can’t afford to have a sub-30 result.
Logano had a 12-point advantage last year but was eliminated when he crashed so that’s why the bottom six are in various degrees of danger.
Joey Logano won at Atlanta and beyond trying to score more stage points towards the use of the next two rounds, there’s no consequence for him at Bristol.
He has already advanced into the Round of 12 no matter what.
Even though Christopher Bell had a dramatic day, getting spun twice, but salvaging a P14, he has so many banked playoff points from his regular season and they have come in handy.
“That was our worst road course race that we’ve had in a very, very long time,” Bell said. “That was disappointing, but ultimately if you would have told me that I’m going to come out of here with gaining on the points to the cutline, I would’ve taken it. It wasn’t pretty how we got there, but we got there and now we can go to Bristol and relax a little bit more.”
Austin Cindric’s top-10 combined with a very good Atlanta has him pretty safe at +43 barring the worst-case scenario next week. The same can be said of Alex Bowman at +41 too.
That’s generally true of Daniel Suarez, at +36, and Tyler Redick and Chase Elliott at +30 each, who just needs to largely finish the same. Ditto Ryan Blaney at +29 — just do not get caught up in an early crash, which would come with an automatic 30-point swing.
And really, Kyle Larson and William Byron at +26 and +25 just can’t afford to have a sub-30 result.
Logano had a 12-point advantage last year but was eliminated when he crashed so that’s why the bottom six are in various degrees of danger.
The only open question about Bristol is that Goodyear and NASCAR are trying to do everything in their respective power to create the kind of extreme tire wear that happened in the spring race back in March.