“The playoffs start now for me.”
Denny Hamlin said this after the Cup Series race on Sunday at the Charlotte Motor Speedway Roval but it really applies to everyone in the Round of 8, whomever that ends up being.
The first two rounds of the playoff was designed to be a complete crapshoot, and candidly not something worthy of a legitimate championship process, but practically everyone who should have advanced to this point did and now they can race it out.
If, somehow, Alex Bowman gets his disqualification reversed, the Round of 8 will be comprised of the eight highest point scorers from the entire season. Even if Joey Logano is in instead, that makes seven of the eight highest points earners and one of the greatest of his generation behind the wheel.
“I am a bit surprised by that, based on the way the schedule was this year with the two superspeedways and two road courses in the playoffs,” said William Byron. “But so far, everyone has kind of adapted to it. The speedway racing has been a bit different in the playoffs this year. I feel like everyone is taking care of each other, for the most part, until some of the wrecks last weekend. But overall, I feel like guys are scoring a lot of stage points and staying up towards the front, which is unique at superspeedways. You never know what can happen.
“And then, I feel like Watkins Glen was just a wildcard. So yeah, I’m a bit surprised. But at the same time, I know that the Round of Eight is going to be really competitive.”
And again, despite all the nonsense associated with two superspeedway races and two road courses in the first six, those who should be racing for the championship are.
And more importantly, they will do so at three tracks that are more about performance, in theory, and less about randomness in Las Vegas, Homestead-Miami and Martinsville.
Chris Gabehart, who crew chiefs for Hamlin and the Joe Gibbs Racing No. 11 called the first two rounds a ‘haunted house.’
“Here we are in October, and Halloween is coming up, and it’s felt like it the past six weeks in the playoffs,” Gabehart said. “Fortunately, we made it through and are going to three tracks that Denny is more than capable of winning at.”
But again, you can make that case for practically anymore in the Round of 8. Sure, Kyle Larson and Hamlin are 1a and 1b in a lot of ways this season, but these next three tracks are Christopher Bell tracks, and William Byron tracks. The past two years are a reminder that Team Penske will catch fire in this round and Blaney could repeat over even Logano, if the Bowman disqualification holds.
Chase Elliott? Don’t count the Hendrick 9 out either because even in a season that hasn’t produced multiple wins, they’re still champions and these are tracks where that group always seems to be in the mix.
Larson called this round ‘scary’ too.
“I feel like it calms down a little bit once we get to the Round of 8,” he said. “I feel like there’s more desperate drivers I feel like in the Round of 12. To me the Round of 12 has always been the scariest round because of the tracks, but too just some of the drivers in it.
“I don’t know. I think the field starts giving more respect. As the group starts getting smaller, I feel like the rest of the field starts giving a little bit more respect and give and take to the playoff guys. I feel like it gets not easier by any means, but just a little less scary.”
At least next year’s Round of 16 and 12 is more normal, with the only major scare is the possibility that Talladega could determine championship race advancement now that it will move to the Round of 8.
Distractions galore
It’s a shame that there are boom mics and cameras all around the garage, filming content for the second season of the NASCAR Full Speed documentary, and virtually none of the most relevant stories are presently about the racing product.
There is also absolutely no chance in hell that one of those storylines will make it into the documentary.
That’s a reference to 23XI Racing, co-owned by Hamlin and Michael Jordan, joining Front Row Motorsports to sue NASCAR on antitrust grounds and providing a significant weekly distraction from the playoffs as well.
Meanwhile, there are way too many conversations about balls and strikes, the media holding court far too often with senior vice president of competition Elton Sawyer or Cup Series managing director Brad Moran for technical issues or officiating discrepancies.
Like, Cup Series drivers shouldn’t be taking to Twitter hours before the race and debating about what constitutes course cutting.
That should be solved by the drivers meeting, should it not?
It certainly wasn’t solved during the race when Bubba Wallace and Byron appeared to cut the frontstretch chicane in identical fashion but only the former was penalized and not the latter, which needed to be cleaned up in real time by a NASCAR spokesperson on Twitter.
It didn’t have playoff implications, but the roof rails falling off the RFK cars and not receiving a penalty created conversation, especially since something just fell off the Bowman car and that resulted in a minimum weight disqualification.
Oh, and there’s the whole Damaged Vehicle debacle right now. Overall, the teams are talking way too much about the inconsistencies of the referees.
Technically, race control made the correct call on Saturday with a caution just a split second before Parker Kligerman took the white flag but waited 20 seconds to do and it just seemed like an unnecessary delay.
The race felt decided, Kligerman fending off several attacks from Sam Mayer, and was driving to the white flag even as Leland Honeyman sat under a tire barrier for five seconds, and then 10, and 15 …
And with certain victory in his grasps, his first at the second highest level just five weeks before he retires from full-time competition, the call came in from race control.
And now there’s the disqualification to Bowman, which even if it’s a mistake by the Hendrick 48 team that NASCAR had to take action against in the name of integrity (and it should), it all just creates another distraction in an autumn full of focusing on anything other than the racing.
New Roval was … fine?
There was a lot of consternation leading up to this weekend because the Charlotte Motor Speedway received a reconfiguration over the summer, one that created a hard braking zone U-turn in Turn 7 and a much sharper frontstretch chicane.
But for the most part, it turned out … fine.
Turn 7 was certainly a hot spot throughout the race, a place where drivers sent it in the hopes of dive-bombing track position, but never turned into a parking lot where one sideways car created a stack-up like the 28-car crash at Talladega the week before.
Hamlin called it ‘okay,’
“You know, nothing positive, nothing negative,” Hamlin said. “The track is just really bumpy and whatnot but it certainly, I thought the drivers for the most part looked after each other a little bit today. I thought there were not crazy moves that came in and wiped out 10 cars. There were a few, but I thought the Cup drivers raced pretty professional today.”
Larson dominated the race, but that wasn’t a reflection of the layout, and instead just a great set-up by the Cliff Daniels led engineering group and their driver.
Turn 7 did create passing opportunities, and the potential to make drivers mad at each other like Erik Jones and Kaz Grala, but it seemed like a net positive.
It’s arguably still an unnecessary race, given how compelling the NextGen car is on intermediate tracks, but if this is the layout next season, it diversifies the schedule and produced a fine race on Sunday.
Matt Weaver is a Motorsports Insider for Sportsnaut. Follow him on Twitter.