LAS VEGAS -- The first elimination of the 2019 NASCAR Gander Outdoors Truck Series Playoffs happens this week following Friday night’s World of Westgate 200 (9 p.m. ET on FS1, MRN, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio).
The 2016 Gander Trucks champion Johnny Sauter is on the wrong side of the cutoff, but this is a tightly packed playoff field – only six points separate third-place Stewart Friesen and seventh-place Sauter, with six drivers advancing to the Round of 6.
RELATED: Full series standings | Las Vegas scheduleBrett Moffitt has reminded everyone why he’s the defending series champion, winning the first two Round of 8 races – at Bristol and the Bowmanville, Ontario,road course – and he’s technically the only racer with a sure spot in the next round. He has never won a race on this week’s 1.5-mile Las Vegas high banks, however. And regular season champion Grant Enfinger is actually the defending winner of this September race.
Ross Chastain, a three-time winner this season, won the NASCAR Xfinity Series race at Las Vegas last fall and is currently second to Moffitt in the championship standings by 22 points.
Friesen is third, 44 points behind Moffitt with two-time series champ Matt Crafton on his heels, just one point off Friesen. Austin Hill is fifth in the title run, only a point behind Crafton and Enfinger is only two points behind Hill. Sauter is two points behind Enfinger and Tyler Ankrum is 12 points behind Enfinger, who holds that sixth and final cut-off position.
Moffitt finished runner-up to Kyle Busch in the March truck race at Vegas with Crafton and Friesen in third and fourth place. Sauter was eighth, Chastain 10th and Hill 30th. At that point in the early season, the now 18-year-old Ankrum wasn’t old enough to compete on the 1.5-mile speedway.
Among the championship eight, only Enfinger (last year) and Sauter (in 2009) have celebrated in Las Vegas’ Victory Lane. Ben Rhodes joins the pair as the only other driver entered this weekend who has won at Vegas.