The NASCAR Cup Series Playoff picture will be intriguing to watch come into focus as the regular season winds down.
Only eight races remain to decide which 16 drivers will move into the postseason and run for the championship. Ten drivers are locked in by virtue of winning a race over the first 18 leaving six spots to be determined.
Back-to-back surprise wins by Cole Custer at Kentucky Speedway and Austin Dillon last week at Texas Motor Speedway added another element of interest to the playoff landscape and put several drivers at or near the cutline.
Jimmie Johnson has the last spot heading into Thursday night’s Super Start Batteries 400 at Kansas Speedway. But he is only two points ahead of William Byron and 14 ahead of Tyler Reddick, who comes to Kansas after finishing second in Texas and is eyeing a playoff position. But Reddick knows the further up the standings he can climb, the better off he’ll be in starting races.
“It’s been really difficult,” Reddick said after his runner-up Texas run. “I mean, last two races I’ve drawn the 24th starting position. It makes it really hard to get that track position. The pit stall you get isn’t the greatest. The odds are kind of stacked against you at the beginning of the day.
“The guys that are in the top 12 in points, they draw pits from the race before. They get the track position at the beginning. It helps them get the race going. If your car is off a little bit, you make a small mistake, it can really upset the outcome of your race in general.”
Along with Byron and Reddick, the gaggle of drivers south of Johnson in the standings includes Erik Jones, Bubba Wallace, Chris Buescher, Christopher Bell and Ricky Stenhouse Jr.
Making up ground through points is becoming increasingly more difficult to accomplish with each passing week however the opportunity to “win and get in” remains the surest avenue to advance.
The road to the end of the regular season won’t be easy by any means. Due to the COVID-19 crisis and NASCAR’s rescheduling of events, the next eight races are a myriad of challenges.
Kansas is the third straight 1.5-mile track coming after Kentucky and Texas. But NASCAR has never raced there in the summer and track conditions without practice or qualifying to dial cars in will provide a unique hurdle.
New Hampshire (August 2nd) follows with a short sprint race of 301 miles on the flat, one mile oval. Then it’s on to the Irish Hills of Michigan for a doubleheader weekend of racing (August 8-9), the first time the Cup Series has double dipped at the two-mile track.
A giant wild card follows with the first-ever race on Daytona International Speedway’s road course (August 16), which replaces Watkins Glen on the calendar. Tackling the famed road circuit in stock cars has already generated both anticipation and dread in a number of competitors.
“I think it’s a tall order to show up there and run a track that we’ve never been on before with the tire combination with the package, with the aero, horsepower, we’ve never seen before, it’s going to be a crapshoot for everybody,” said Clint Bowyer.
“I think there’s definitely drivers and teams that have experience running that Rolex that will be ahead of the pack, ahead of the curve for sure. These are challenging times. To ask the teams to come up with a unique car and again for a backup car and everything else. It’s saving them money. I get it. Everything is tight right now. You’ve got to give and take in this scenario, and I think that’s definitely a give for the Daytona race.”
Dover International Speedway hosts another doubleheader the following weekend (August 22-23) before a return engagement at “The World Center of Racing” to finalize the playoff field under the lights (August 29) at the 2.5-mile superspeedway.
Buckle up. It promises to be a wild ride.
