KANSAS CITY, Kan. — The playoff pressure has been ratcheted up heading into Sunday’s Hollywood Casino 400 (2:30 p.m. ET on NBC/NBC Sports App, MRN, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio). The elimination race will see the field of title contenders whittled down from 12 to eight at the end of the 267-lap race at the 1.5-mile track.
Entering the race, Kurt Busch (+30), Clint Bowyer (+21) and Martin Truex Jr. (+18) are the last three drivers that would provisionally transfer into the next round. Giving chase of that group is Brad Keselowski (-18), Ryan Blaney (-22), Kyle Larson (-36) and Alex Bowman (-68).
Consider this stat: In every Round of 12 cutoff race in the playoff elimination era there has been a flip flop of some sort between who was in entering the race and who was out by the end of the race. Is there anyone inside the provisional cutline that should be very concerned going into the race? NASCAR.com’s RJ Kraft and Pat DeCola analyze that very thought.
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KRAFT: Maybe I’m taking the easy target since he’s the last driver above the cutline but for me, Martin Truex Jr. should be the most concerned. The two-time Kansas winner just seems a little off this weekend and he can’t afford to be especially when the Team Penske Fords of Blaney and Keselowski — two drivers below the cutline — looked to be pretty dialed in. A winner outside of the top 8 makes Truex’s position even more precarious and it essentially could become a battle between he and his former Michael Waltrip Racing teammate Clint Bowyer for the final spot.
Besides how Truex has looked this weekend, there are two bigger concerns for me. One, this is not 2017. Truex scored seven wins on 1.5-mile tracks in his championship season, but this year he has just one. By and large, he has run well at those tracks in 2018, but hasn’t been in position to seal the deal as opposed to last year when those tracks were the cornerstone of his title campaign.
The driver of the No. 78 Furniture Row Racing Toyota just seems snake bit this postseason as well. He had a strong car that led the most laps at Las Vegas and finished third. He led the most laps at Richmond but a pit road penalty set him back before rallying for a third-place finish. At Charlotte, he led coming to the final chicane before contact with Jimmie Johnson spun him around and led to a 14th-place finish. All those factors have me extremely concerned for Truex being able to advance and further defend his title.
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DECOLA: I agree that Truex’s No. 78 team has just seemed a bit … off, by their standards … but forgive me if I’d rather trust the driver that swept the races at this track last year on his way to the Monster Energy Series title and was runner-up here in the spring to figure things out by checkered flag on Sunday over someone else.
And that someone? The Kansas native, Clint Bowyer.
As great as it’d be to see the Stewart-Haas Racing driver finally, finally break through for a win at his home track and keep his quest for what would certainly be one of the greatest championship celebrations the sport has ever seen, I see it coming to an abrupt halt Sunday evening.
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Bowyer has enjoyed a beautiful comeback season this year, putting to rest all of the futility that plagued him since 2013, but I’m not sure he and his team has what it takes to win a title at this moment. He was runner-up at Talladega last weekend and finished third at Charlotte — and has still compiled a pedestrian average finish of 14.6 in the playoffs thus far. That likely won’t cut it with some talented drivers capable of winning outright below the cutline.
Compound that with Bowyer’s inability to put together top 10s at Kansas (just one since finishing fifth in Spring 2013) and there just seem to be more factors pointing to him missing the Round of 8 than making it. The veteran is in one of the faster cars this weekend so anything is possible, of course, but fate just seems to be more on the side of Truex than his former teammate.