Here’s what’s happening in the world of NASCAR with Watkins Glen in the rearview and Bristol (Sat., 7 p.m. ET, USA) up next.
THE LINEUP
1️⃣ Denny Hamlin’s Bristol hot streak vs. his 2024 playoff cold spell; which prevails?
2️⃣ Buescher chalks one up for the non-playoff crowd; sizing up the on-deck spoilers
3️⃣ Deconstructing the last-lap bout for the ages at Watkins Glen
4️⃣ Seeds and signifiers: Where each season’s champion started their playoff quest
5️⃣ Catch the pack — news and notes from around the garage
1. Can a well-timed triple play save the day for Denny Hamlin?
The No. 11 team has ruled the last two races at Bristol Motor Speedway; a trifecta would shake off a surprising playoff deficit
It’s been a little more than a year since Denny Hamlin beat your favorite driver. All of them.
Since that dynamic display and those infamous post-race barbs, Hamlin’s hold on Bristol’s high-banked concrete has only gotten stronger. He enters Saturday’s Bass Pro Shops Night Race (7 p.m. ET, USA, NBC Sports App, PRN Radio, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio) with two consecutive wins in the Tennessee hills.
Turns out, Hamlin and the No. 11 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota team are going to need some continuation of their solid performance markers to keep their hopes for the NASCAR Cup Series Playoffs intact. Saturday’s 500-lapper is the finale of the postseason’s opening Round of 16, and four drivers will be eliminated from championship contention at the race’s conclusion.
Right now, Hamlin is one of those four on the outside of the playoff picture, sitting six points below the elimination divide after a significant sag in his results. A subpar 24th-place run in Atlanta’s postseason opener preceded last weekend’s crash-marred 23rd at Watkins Glen, and his average running position in those two races — 30.8 and 32.2, respectively — marked a personal low for any lead-lap finish in his career.
It’s all been a drastic turn for the veteran driver who led the Cup Series standings through the middle sections of the regular season, but one who was happy to put a drafting-style track and a rambunctious road course behind him.
“I feel like we can go there and win,” Hamlin said, with eyes sharpened on Bristol. “We are going to an oval, back to a normal track. We can control our own destiny there.”
Win streak notwithstanding, the playoff deficit of six points doesn’t strike Hamlin or No. 11 crew chief Chris Gabehart as particularly steep. Gabehart reminded Hamlin of that in a post-race radio transmission, calling Bristol “our house,” and Hamlin didn’t dispute that the margin was a manageable one: “If you run in the top two or three all day, absolutely.” There’s also recent precedent for surmounting such a playoff gap within the Toyota camp; just last year, 23XI Racing’s Bubba Wallace escaped from a 19-point deficit to advance to the Round of 12 in last year’s night race.
The last time a driver won three consecutive races at Bristol came 20 years ago, when Kurt Busch swept the 2003 season there and tacked on a springtime victory the next year. Hamlin isn’t facing a must-win spot this time around, but pulling another sword from the stone in Victory Lane would go a long way toward steadying the ship.
2. Postseason spoilers rise up for a round of redemption
Buescher’s triumphant day at Watkins Glen carried the banner for non-playoff drivers; more opportunities abound
The stakes for Cup Series drivers outside of the title-eligible playoff field of 16 may not have the same season-long ramifications. The importance, though, remains, as the tenor of Chris Buescher’s celebration last Sunday at Watkins Glen International suggested.
Buescher broke down the fundamentals of NASCAR’s postseason to some of its most basic terms, explaining how stock-car racing does the playoffs differently. An NFL team that doesn’t reach the playoff road to the Super Bowl might shift its focus to reserving tee times. In NASCAR, there’s still 10 weeks left for those outside the championship hunt to make a statement, much like Buescher did with his dazzling last-lap battle with road-race ace Shane van Gisbergen.
“We have this playoff format that starts, but nobody goes home,” Buescher said after his first win of the 2024 season. “We bring the same 36, 38 cars to the race track every week. We race the same drivers and teams every week no matter if there’s a playoff going on or not. Our sport is not like others in that sense. We’re here to race to win. We’re going to play spoiler as much as we can in the next seven or eight weeks coming up as well.”
Buescher has some familiarity with that role, winning Bristol’s night race in 2022 as non-playoff drivers made a stunning sweep of that year’s first-round victories. (Erik Jones at Darlington and Bubba Wallace at Kansas were the others.) Sunday at Watkins Glen, he led a top-five sweep of postseason outsiders on the results sheet.
Plenty of other drivers outside of the playoff picture have opportunities to follow that cue, but four in particular stick out:
- Ross Chastain (17th in Cup Series standings): The Trackhouse Racing standout has won two races in each of the last two seasons, but his oh-so-close brushes with Victory Lane so far this year left him out of the playoff field. Chastain started from the pole and led a race-best 51 of 92 laps at Watkins Glen, and he played playoff spoiler in last year’s finale at Phoenix.
- Bubba Wallace (19th): Each of Wallace’s two Cup Series victories have come in a spoiler role in consecutive years — Talladega in 2021 and Kansas in 2022. Both of those tracks are still to come in this year’s playoff schedule as Wallace aims to end a two-year winless drought that’s now 71 races long.
- Kyle Busch (20th): The motivation is mega for Rowdy, who would reach 20 consecutive seasons with at least one win if he can break through in the final eight races. Busch closed the regular season on the verge of victory with back-to-back runner-up finishes, and he’s heading to Bristol where he leads all active drivers with eight career wins.
- Michael McDowell (23rd): The 39-year-old McDowell has poured on the speed in qualifying this year, sealing the first five pole positions of his career and posting a personal-best average start of 13.3 for the season. McDowell is much improved at Bristol, but Talladega and the Charlotte Roval loom as places to wrap his Front Row Motorsports tenure with a W.
3. Inside Buescher’s big move at The Glen
Go Inside the Race as crew chiefs Blickensderfer and Peterson dive into the data and footage of SVG’s fateful misstep.
4. What’s in a seed? Where champions have started their playoff quests
Since NASCAR began crowning Regular Season Champions in 2017, the top-seeded playoff driver has won the Cup Series title three times. Tyler Reddick — this year’s regular-season king — is aiming to make it four. In that seven-year span, here’s where each overall champion has started in the 16-driver field.
| Season | Champion | Seeding |
|---|---|---|
| 2017 | Martin Truex Jr. | 1 |
| 2018 | Joey Logano | 6 |
| 2019 | Kyle Busch | 1 |
| 2020 | Chase Elliott | 5 |
| 2021 | Kyle Larson | 1 |
| 2022 | Joey Logano | 2 |
| 2023 | Ryan Blaney | 12 |
5. Catch the pack — news and notes from around the garage
Power Rankings: Larson no lock as Round of 16 hits Bristol
Paint Scheme Preview: 2024 Bristol Night Race
NASCAR betting: 2024 Bristol Night Race odds
Fresh faces, familiar names on Bristol entry lists
Playoff Pulse: Few trending upward after Watkins Glen
A history of Cup Series Playoffs’ walk-off winners
Drivers below playoff elimination line to advance on points
Analysis: Chaos theme continues in opening round
Last-lap madness: Buescher-SVG battle one for the ages
@nascarcasm: Fake texts to Watkins Glen winner Chris Buescher
Updated championship odds after Watkins Glen
Crew rosters for Bristol
