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This year’s edition of the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series Playoffs is well-represented by nine different organizations with several usual suspects among the 16 drivers. But there also are a handful of championship-eligible participants hoping to upend the odds with a deep run into the postseason.
Ryan Blaney, Austin Dillon and Ricky Stenhouse Jr. all made their first trips to Victory Lane during the regular season, clinching their berths through the win-and-in method. Stenhouse doubled up in the win column, and he enters the final 10-race stretch with the most playoff points among the three.
Only Dillon — the Coca-Cola 600 winner — is making a return trip to the postseason, but he relishes having little to lose in staring down foes with a wealth of playoff advantages.
“I love the underdog role,” said Dillon, driver of the No. 3 Chevrolet for Richard Childress Racing. “The pressure is on the guys that gained all the points to lose them and crumble. A lot of people have already put them in position to get to Homestead because of bonus points, but it can happen real quick where you have anything that can go wrong. Wreck early, engine, anything. So, you have to have a solid piece, and you have to have things go your way, but we can definitely make (the) most of our luck and put ourselves in the best position.”
Blaney, who prevailed at Pocono Raceway in June, is one of the postseason first-timers. So is his Wood Brothers Racing No. 21 Ford team, which was ineligible for the Playoffs during its years of part-time competition from 2008-15.
Blaney hasn’t had a top-five finish in the 12 races since his breakthrough win at Pocono, and he acknowledged there’s work to do to regain that stride. But there’s also an embrace of entering the Playoffs as a sleeper pick.
MORE: Download Blaney’s Glass Case of Emotion podcast
“I know our team, for sure, has been called an underdog, dark horse, all that stuff, and that’s great,” Blaney said. “Our team doesn’t have as many wins as some other cars. There are other teams that have been really strong this year. There are three that I can think of that have really shown up and kind of dominated the regular season, and I think if we just clean up some stuff on our end, we can be right up there with them, too, and just find a little bit of performance.
“But I don’t really mind being called an underdog or dark horse and anything like that. That means if you exceed expectations you kind of know that it’s even that much cooler and better when you can do that.”
Cool points aside, Stenhouse has the distinction of following up his first win at Talladega in May with an encore at Daytona in July. Should he survive the first elimination after the three races in the opening Round of 16, the Roush Fenway Racing driver likely will be a favorite for automatic advancement when the series returns to Talladega for the only restrictor-plate track in the postseason.
“I don’t really care,” Stenhouse said of the underdog label. “For us, I think we’re all really happy to get our first wins in the same year. I think we’ve had a lot of fun with that and we’re looking forward to hopefully making many more wins as it comes.”
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