NASCAR’s playoff races at the Roval never end quietly — even when the checkered flag has signaled a relatively calm finish on the treacherous road course inside Charlotte Motor Speedway.
That was evident last year when the Round of 8 field seemed to have been set with 10 laps remaining when Tyler Reddick moved into the final spot. He eventually advanced by four points over Joey Logano.
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More than two hours later, Alex Bowman’s car was disqualified, Logano’s championship bid was resuscitated, and Charlotte’s reputation as host of the annual cutoff cauldron of chaos remained secure.
Logano would win two of the next four races to wrap up his third Cup championship in the most extreme example yet of how the unpredictability of the Roval can reverberate through NASCAR’s premier series.
Sunday will mark the eighth consecutive year that the road course-speedway hybrid has held an elimination event, and at least one driver annually is singled out for a heart-pounding roller-coaster ride of agony or elation while teetering on the brink of advancement or oblivion.
The Roval’s inaugural race in 2018 set the tone with an unbelievably game-changing final lap.
Comfortably above the cutline by seven points and less than a quarter mile from transferring to the second round, Jimmie Johnson was charging toward his first victory of the season when he overdrove a corner in the frontstretch chicane and tangled with Martin Truex Jr. for the lead. Meanwhile, Kyle Larson, who had led a race-high 47 laps before destroying his front-end suspension in a massive crash, was driving a wounded No. 42 Chevrolet with the grace of Mr. Magoo. After being involved in the same wreck (and two earlier incidents), Aric Almirola was just as desperate with a damaged car.
After his spin, Johnson finished eighth and fell into a three-way tie with Almirola, who gained six positions in three laps, and Larson, who comically slammed into the frontstretch wall to make a left turn past the stalled car of Jeffrey Earnhardt and across the finish line to pick up the final point he needed to advance.
And thus began the Roval’s run as the playoffs’ primary change agent.
The track moved from Round of 16 cutoff race to Round of 12 finale the following year, but the bedlam never has subsided.
Chase Elliott wrecked on a restart while leading halfway through the 2019 race and still managed to win. (Teammate Alex Bowman, ailing from dehydration and illness, barely advanced by battling for second after falling to last on the first lap in a backup car.) In 2020, Kyle Busch’s two-championship run with crew chief Adam Stevens essentially ended with a 30th-place elimination.
In 2021, Larson flipped from seemingly out of the playoffs with a malfunctioning alternator in the first stage to leading the final eight laps after a remarkable recovery that was pivotal in his championship push. In 2022, he suffered a stunning elimination in his title defense after slapping the Turn 7 wall with 12 laps remaining and squandering an 18-point lead while fixing the damage.
In 2023, Brad Keselowski entered above the cutline and was eliminated after a horror show of a spin and a pass-through penalty for a missed chicane. Last October was Bowman’s turn to deal with a Roval heartbreak.
Every year, a playoff driver and team get put through the wringer at this unusual 17-turn, 2.28-mile layout that might have the highest degree of difficulty in NASCAR.
Who will face the Roval’s wrath this season?
Be prepared to stick around until after the finish to find out.