Sometimes, the NASCAR Cup Series Playoffs are about which drivers and teams can exceed expectations by the most — think about Joey Logano’s history of clutch wins that always seem to have him outperforming his regular-season output. But in other cases, it’s about doing what’s expected and producing at tracks where you’re supposed to.
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That was theoretically the plan for Rick Hendrick’s team at Sunday’s Southern 500 at Darlington Raceway. In the modern era of the Cup Series — since 1972 — Hendrick Motorsports owns the most wins (16), top fives (58) and top 10s (97) at the track “Too Tough to Tame,” and the team had a streak of five consecutive years with at least one driver finishing eighth or better at the Southern 500 going into this year’s race. Simply holding serve and doing their usual thing would have helped a Hendrick lineup that went into the playoffs with the top two statistical championship favorites (William Byron and Kyle Larson) and a 43 percent chance of winning the title in our initial playoff simulation model.
Instead, Hendrick’s quartet of drivers had one of the team’s worst days ever at Darlington. No Hendrick driver finished better than Chase Elliott at 17th, which represented the first time at a Southern 500 that all Hendrick Motorsports entries were outside the top 16. The team’s overall average finish of 22.0 was also its fourth-worst showing in a four-car race at the track in its history:
Between Alex Bowman’s problems on pit lane early — from which he never really recovered en route to a 31st-place finish — to the other cars mostly lacking their usual pace (Larson was the only Hendrick driver to carry a Driver Rating over 80), Hendrick missed its marks in the playoff opener. So how much should the team be concerned now, and what did its disappointing evening in South Carolina do to its overall playoff chances?
Here’s a look at how the playoff odds changed for each team between the pre- and post-Darlington simulations:
Whereas Hendrick was the biggest favorite to produce the eventual title winner going into the playoffs, the model has now shifted toward Joe Gibbs Racing, with Chase Briscoe gaining a series-high 9.6 percentage points to his championship odds with an absurdly dominant win at Darlington. Byron remains the model’s favorite, as he stays the runaway leader in average Driver Rating this season — at 98.5, well clear of teammate Larson’s 90.5 mark — and has a series-best 106.9 rating on ovals specifically. But he has dipped from 22.5 percent title odds to 18.9 percent after a 21st-place finish and 76.2 Driver Rating at Darlington.
Meanwhile, at the other end of the title-odds ranking, Bowman’s nightmare day shaved 33.6 percentage points off his chances to advance to the Round of 12, dropping him from a solid 55.3 percent chance to just 21.8 percent. (Only Josh Berry, who had his own immediate problems at Darlington, lost more advancement potential in the opening race of the playoffs.) Sitting 19 points below the cutline, Bowman now is in the unenviable position of needing to score at least one — if not two — top-10 finishes at Gateway and Bristol to even have a chance of advancing to the Round of 12:
He could still win one of these races, of course, and punch his ticket instantly. But short of that type of heroics, Bowman will probably cut Hendrick’s crew of playoff drivers down to (at most) three when the Round of 16 is complete.
The good news for Team Hendrick, however, is that its other drivers are not in nearly as dire a position as Bowman.
Larson actually gained advancement odds with his 19th-place showing at Darlington, because he ran better than his final placing would have indicated — he scored 12 stage points and had a solid 90.3 Driver Rating, ninth-best in the field. He’s 38 points above the cutline and we’re coming up on two of his best tracks; Larson should be just fine.
So should Byron, despite the unimpressive run at the Southern 500. He has a 25-point cushion of his own in the standings, and that top-ranked average Driver Rating for the season as a whole should portend success at an oval and short track in the next two weeks.
Elliott is a bit less secure, sitting in 11th place with just a nine-point edge over the cutline. But his hallmark is consistency, and that should come in handy for nursing that lead in the standings, even if Gateway and Bristol aren’t his very best tracks. In the model, Elliott can probably still make the next round if he has just one good showing and avoids a truly bad outing in the other race:
In other words, it’s not quite time to panic at Hendrick Motorsports yet, even if they didn’t have a field day at a track where they usually run wild. Barring total disaster, they ought to still be fairly well-represented in the Round of 12, even if Bowman will probably drop out of the championship chase.
But still, Darlington proved that even the strongest team on paper isn’t immune to sudden changes in the postseason — and Hendrick’s championship road does look rougher now than it did just a week ago.