Homestead-Miami Turning Point: Playoff adversity aplenty as title stretch heats up

Here’s what’s happening in the world of NASCAR with Las Vegas in the rearview and Homestead-Miami (Sun., 2:30 p.m. ET, NBC) up next.

THE LINEUP

1️⃣ With Homestead-Miami on deck, will postseason chaos continue to reign supreme?

2️⃣ Will Sunday see one team rise above the rest of the crop?

3️⃣ This changes everything: Playoff hopes turned upside down at Las Vegas

4️⃣ The importance of winning the opening Round of 8 race is significant

5️⃣ Catch the pack — news and notes from around the garage

1. With Homestead-Miami on deck, will postseason chaos continue to reign supreme?

The Round of 8 opener at Las Vegas continued an anything-but-straightforward 2024 postseason, and Homestead-Miami could extend that trend.

It’s off to the races (no pun intended) at Homestead-Miami Speedway, and while the palm trees and sandy beaches might mean a different geographic setting compared to the deserts and valleys out west at Las Vegas Motor Speedway, the racing could very well be similar. Not solely in the sense that both tracks are 1.5-milers, mind you, but also in the lens that it’s the playoffs, and postseason racing is its own beast.

To this point, this year’s playoff racing has been anything but smooth sailing. Instead, it has been tumultuous, and the postseason landscape has been shaken in more ways than one as a result.

Perfect fuel strategy from Joey Logano and the Team Penske camp saw the No. 22 Ford find Victory Lane at Las Vegas and clinch a Championship 4 berth, but sound racing on the two-time champ’s part didn’t dissuade the bumpy playoff picture for the remainder of the playoff field. Title hopefuls Chase Elliott and Ryan Blaney, Logano’s teammate, tangled with Tyler Reddick, who eventually went airborne during a Stage 2 restart. The aftermath? All three drivers, viewed in numerous pundit circles as potential Championship 4 layups, finished 32nd or worse. As such, all three drivers find themselves well under the elimination line and essentially in must-win mode well before the green flag waves to begin the second Round of 8 race.

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How Joey Logano cashed in at Las Vegas to clinch Championship 4 berth

The point? These playoffs have been unruly, for starters. But more specifically, the 2024 postseason has been trouble-laden. Look no further than in-race incidents. Of the seven playoff races to date, five contests have seen at least half of the playoff field be involved in something, spanning from brushes and bumps on pit road to full-fledged wrecks, such as what was seen at Las Vegas or at Talladega Superspeedway fewer than three weeks prior.

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Breaking it down even more paints the picture. Two of the three Round of 16 races (13 at Atlanta, 11 at Watkins Glen) saw more than half of the playoff field be involved in an incident, leaving Bristol Motor Speedway’s Round of 16 finale as the “calmest” among the venues, with only five of the 16 playoff drivers caught up in trouble. The Round of 12 saw a similar theme. The round’s opening race at Kansas Speedway saw 10 of 12 playoff drivers involved in trouble, while Talladega Superspeedway saw a whopping 11 of the 12 drivers not escape cleanly. Only five of the 12 postseason drivers were involved at the Charlotte Motor Speedway Roval to close out the Round of 12. This takes us back to Las Vegas’ Round of 8 opener, where five of eight playoff drivers were involved in incidents.

If you haven’t kept score, that’s OK. Racing Insights has, and together, 65% of playoff drivers have had in-race trouble during the playoffs. Staggering indeed.

Even more staggering can be the effects of excellent points days for some, combined with duds for others. Although he didn’t cash in with the victory despite starting on the pole and leading the most laps (155), Christopher Bell received compensation through his field-leading 54 points, netting him a 29-point gain (tops among all playoff drivers) and perching him second in the playoff standings, plus-42 to the good. Combined with Logano’s victory (and 49 points from the race), the likes of Reddick, Blaney and Elliott are in a precarious position more than they would otherwise be. Reddick (minus-30), Blaney (minus-47) and Elliott (minus-53) all sit sixth through eighth, respectively, in the playoff standings. In postseason history, only one driver — Martin Truex Jr. (minus-22) in 2021 — has pointed their way in from 20-plus points below the good after the first Round of 8 contest. Wins are always at a premium, and as mentioned already, these pilots will essentially need to capture a victory to advance to Phoenix and have a chance at hoisting the Bill France Cup.

“We can still have a good day at Homestead and be in the mix in Martinsville,” Reddick said after Las Vegas. “Ideally, yeah, it would have been nice to win today. It would be nice to win next week, and that is what we will focus on, but thankfully, we got 10 stage points in Stage 1, and it’s not like we are absolutely out of it on points yet. We are going to have to be perfect here on out, probably.”

Sometimes, one incident can derail a championship run. But if the 2024 postseason has taught us anything, multiple incidents have been the theme, and now, the high lines at Homestead-Miami — the only track remaining on the schedule where the field hasn’t raced this season — will be the battleground for drivers fighting for their title-contending lives.

In other words, buckle up. This show isn’t close to being over.

Las Vegas was the gold standard for Team Penske. Sure, Blaney’s day didn’t end the way he would’ve liked, given his 32nd-place finish, but there was still an overarching mentality the team possessed, from fixing a backup car for Blaney after his initial No. 12 Ford wrecked out during practice to Logano’s eventual victory at the track.

“We’re just a big team effort, right? We want to do well for Roger (Penske, team owner),” Blaney said after Las Vegas. “We want to do well for everyone who works for us and all of our partners, and we all try to work hand in hand and do the best we can to help. You want to help yourself, but you also want to help the group, right? So, yeah, it’s nice that they were able to pull one out today. Hopefully, we can join them in a couple of weeks.”

Team effort could very well be the name of the game once again at Homestead-Miami, and while it might not play out exactly the way it did for Team Penske at Las Vegas, anything can go in the postseason — and perhaps there can be a correlation.

So, which teams could be the leading candidates to have that team-wide success down Miami way?

The conversation starts with Hendrick Motorsports. The team’s 22-race streak of top 10s at Homestead-Miami — the longest streak all-time at the track — speaks for itself, not to mention winning two of the last three races (William Byron in 2021, Kyle Larson in 2022) and leading 463 of the 801 laps raced there in that span, good enough for a 58% mark. Despite not winning there in eight career Cup attempts, Elliott’s 10.4 average finish is second only to Bell (more on him below). Then, there’s Kyle Larson, who is among the sport’s elite, possessing five career top-five finishes in 10 Homestead-Miami races (including his win) and a series-leading 625 laps led. And while William Byron’s Cup Homestead-Miami race sample is the smallest of the Hendrick playoff trio (six races), he’s shown out regardless, finishing 12th or better in the last four races there. Add to the fact that the 26-year-old has finished inside the top four in the last four 2024 races, and there’s reason to believe momentum could remain on his side.

Not so fast, though. Joe Gibbs Racing might have something to say about this. Of course, Bell won last season’s Homestead-Miami race, and a pristine 10.0 average finish — albeit in only four Cup races — sets the tone in terms of his track speed there, even when disregarding his pace at Las Vegas. Denny Hamlin — who sits 27 points underneath the elimination line — has 19 career Homestead-Miami races to his Cup resume, the most among all remaining playoff drivers. With those 19 races comes three wins and 12 top-10 finishes, tied with JGR teammate Martin Truex Jr. for the most among all active drivers.

“I feel like we’re going to have to go to both of these races and run top three all day to get points in the stages and good points in the race,” Hamlin said when speaking of Homestead-Miami and Martinsville Speedway, the final Round of 8 races. “That’s going to be a tall task, but Homestead is pretty straightforward from a strategy perspective. You’re going to take four tires anytime you pit, so that will allow guys that are up front to stay up front. We need to be in that group and hope for a little luck from someone having a bad day or whatnot to make up that gap.”

Who knows, though — 23XI Racing’s Reddick and his three career top fives (in four Cup attempts) could also make noise in a huge way, especially given his track record of riding the high Miami line at a paint-scraping clip. And you cannot assume Team Penske won’t have an extra ace saved following their Las Vegas clinic, even if Ford has only found Victory Lane twice in the last 14 Homestead-Miami contests.

The racing lines will be crystal clear. Speed will be necessary. Teamwork, whether from drafting off a racing mate or allowing an opening to the optimal driving lane, could be all the difference for any of these teams. So the question will be a simple one: Which team will do it best?

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Updated championship odds after Las Vegas