Tiebreaker propels Rhodes into Playoffs, leaves Truex on the outside

Posted on September 16, 2017September 16, 2017 by Nascar

JOLIET, Ill. – Ben Rhodes survived a pit road penalty and contact with his teammate to earn the final Playoff spot for NASCAR’s Camping World Truck Series here Friday night at Chicagoland Speedway.

The driver of the No. 27 Toyota for ThorSport Racing finished sixth in Friday’s TheHouse.com 225, a result that left him tied in the standings with fourth-place finisher Ryan Truex. But Rhodes had the edge with a tiebreaker (he had a season-best finish of second at Pocono while Truex had a best of third, also at Pocono), thus sending him into the three-round, seven-race playoff that will begin next weekend at New Hampshire Motor Speedway.

“They said we were tied but I didn’t believe we had the (tiebreaker) point to get us through,” a still-unbelieving Rhodes said on pit road afterward. “I don’t even know what it is. They gave me the (playoff) hat and I said ‘Are you sure? I’m not putting that on until I see the official word.’

“I can’t believe it; I was kind of desperate out there for whatever we could get. All night long the race wasn’t going our way. We had a couple of pit road penalties. Ever since we unloaded here we struggled. We had to change our package several times and could just never get the truck to come to life for us.

“That kind of set a bad tone for us and then the 16 (of Truex) getting the pole, it seemed like everything was going wrong. We just managed the whole night; thank goodness we had the advantage we did.”

Six drivers were already assured spots in the Playoffs by virtue of having won one or more races this season, including Friday night’s winner Johnny Sauter. Other winners this season consisted of Kaz Grala, Christopher Bell, John Hunter Nemechek, Matt Crafton and Austin Cindric.

Chase Briscoe had a solid enough points advantage over the other non-winners to assure himself a spot in the playoffs.

Rhodes led Truex by only seven points and sat 31 ahead of Grant Enfinger prior to Friday’s race.

Those points gaps grew and shrunk throughout the course of the 150-lap race, with Truex holding the advantage after the completion of the second stage. Enfinger finished fifth, right between Truex and Rhodes. He needed to be ahead of both — much further ahead.

Rhodes had fallen behind when a tire violation during a pit stop on Lap 38 cost him track position. Later, on a restart, teammate Crafton slipped up the track and made contact, nearly cutting down a tire on the No. 27 Toyota. When Crafton spun on Lap 106, Rhodes hit pit road twice as his crew repaired the cosmetic damage.

In spite of the setbacks, Rhodes had more than enough truck and barely enough time to rally in the final stage.

“This was definitely our worst night as far as performance goes,” he said. “It couldn’t have come on a worse night; it stressed us all out.”

Truex posted his fourth top-five finish in his last five starts with the Hattori Racing Enterprises Toyota but needed one more spot to bump Rhodes from the Playoffs.

“We don’t have the speed those top three guys have is really what it comes down to,” Truex said. “My only shot was restarts, if I could get good restarts and get in front of them.

“But they just had so much more long run speed than we did. It sucks. We’re a top-five truck and we’re missing the playoffs. It’s frustrating.”

Posted on September 15, 2017September 16, 2017 by Reid Spencer

JOLIET, Ill. – Johnny Sauter served notice that he’s ready to make a spirited defense of his 2016 NASCAR Camping World Truck Series championship.

Ben Rhodes was happy just to squeak into the final NASCAR Camping World Truck Series Playoff berth — by the skin of his teeth.

Sauter passed regular-season champion Christopher Bell for the lead on Lap 123 of 150 and drove away to win Friday night’s TheHouse.com 225 by 2.005 seconds over Chase Briscoe, who passed Bell for second on Lap 136.

The race within a race between Rhodes and polesitter Ryan Truex was much closer. Fighting for the final position in the playoffs, Truex won the first 35-lap stage and finished fourth behind Bell at the checkered flag. Rhodes came home sixth and snagged the last Playoff berth on a tiebreaker.

With the Playoff spot decided by best regular-season finish, Rhodes won on the strength of his second-place run at Pocono Raceway, where he beat Truex to the finish line by a quarter of a second.

Sauter won for the first time at Chicagoland Speedway, the second time this season and the 15th time in 214 NASCAR Camping World Truck Series starts.

“This truck was unbelievable,” said Sauter, who stayed on the track during a caution late in the first stage and had to battle back through the field. “We had a great truck yesterday (in practice). I was worried with the Cup guys and the XFINITY guys here the track might change a little bit.

“We elected to try to win that first stage there, and we lost a lot of track position, had to fight to get it back. And then I had a horrible restart and lost a lot of track position again. This is what we needed. This is the momentum, the shot in the arm. … This thing was on rails the last run.”

Rhodes edged into the Playoffs despite a performance he considered sub-par. A violation for an uncontrolled tire during a pit stop under caution on Lap 38 sent him to the rear. Later in the race, Rhodes’ No. 27 Toyota developed a left rear tire rub after contact with the No. 88 Tundra of Matt Crafton.

But Rhodes persevered.

“Man, I still can’t believe it,” Rhodes said. “They gave me the hat (for playoff qualifiers), and I’m like, ‘Are you sure this is ours?’ We were tied, and we have the tiebreaker. I can’t believe it. The truck … all night we struggled ever since we unloaded.

“This has definitely our worst performance overall, and it couldn’t have come at a worse week to do it. But I’m glad we’re in, and overall, everything worked out for us.”

Truex expected a close battle for the last Playoff spot and was understandably disappointed to be on the short end of it.

“It’s tough, but it’s racing,” Truex said. “We did everything we could do aside from win. We just didn’t have the speed for the 29 (Briscoe) and the 21 (Sauter). I was good on restarts. I felt like that was my best shot, so I was really, really aggressive on restarts …

“I had a feeling it would come down to this. It’s been so close this whole year.”

Grant Enfinger, whose only path to the Playoff was a victory, came home fifth. Rhodes, John Hunter Nemechek, Noah Gragson,

Kaz Grala and Myatt Snider completed the top 10.

Briscoe, Nemechek, Grala, Crafton and Austin Cindric join Sauter, Bell and Rhodes on the Playoff grid.

Posted on September 15, 2017September 15, 2017 by Staff Report

The field is set and a regular-season champion has been crowned.

One playoff spot was on the line in the NASCAR Camping World Truck Series at Chicagoland Speedway and Ben Rhodes claimed it, besting Ryan Truex for the final spot. Rhodes and Truex ended up tied in the standings and the tiebreaker goes to a driver’s best finish in the season. By virtue of Rhodes’ best finish of the season being a second-place result at Pocono verses Truex’s best result of third-place in the same race, Rhodes grabbed the last spot.

Below is the eight-driver field for the seven-race playoff:

Christopher Bell, No. 4 Kyle Busch Motorsports Toyota: 2,040 points
Johnny Sauter, No. 21 GMS Racing Chevrolet: 2,025 points
John Hunter Nemechek, No. 8 NEMCO Motorsports Chevrolet: 2,014 points
Matt Crafton, No. 88 ThorSport Racing Toyota: 2,014 points
Chase Briscoe, No. 29 Brad Keselowski Racing Ford: 2,009 points
Austin Cindric, No. 19 Brad Keselowski Racing Ford: 2,007 points
Ben Rhodes, No. 27 ThorSport Racing Toyota: 2,007 points
Kaz Grala, No. 33 GMS Racing Chevrolet: 2,005 points

The top-seeded Bell also clinched the NASCAR Camping World Truck Series 2017 Regular Season Championship. Bell locked up the top spot in the 16-race regular season, besting 2016 Camping World Truck Series champion Sauter in the standings.

Bell has four wins on the season and earned 25 playoff points over the course of the regular season. He will add the 15 playoff point bonus for the regular-season title to his total when the postseason starts at New Hampshire Motor Speedway next weekend, giving him 40 playoff points to add to the reset total of 2,000.

Posted on September 15, 2017 by Nascar

JOLIET, Ill. – Kyle Busch won the pole but it’s unclear who won the war of words.

Busch will start out front in Sunday’s opening Playoff race at Chicagoland Speedway, the Tales of the Turtles 400 (3 p.m. ET, NBCSN, MRN, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio), thanks to a blistering lap of 187.963 mph around the 1.5-mile track.

But the remarks between Busch and Team Penske driver Brad Keselowski virtually overshadowed Friday’s qualifying efforts.

A social media volley following the day’s first practice session was still simmering long after Busch had shot his No. 18 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota into the top slot hours later.

“We are all in for a rude awakening. Haven’t seen NASCAR let a manufacturer get this far ahead since the 70s,” Keselowski, who drives the No. 2 Ford for Team Penske, posted via Twitter after Toyota teams led by Busch posted the top four times in the day’s lone practice session.

Toyota teams were quick to respond.

“Were you alive in the 70s?” asked Cole Pearn, crew chief of points leader and Toyota teammate Martin Truex Jr.

JGR teammate Denny Hamlin posted: “NASCAR is showing favoritism to @ToyotaRacing when did this start? … Concentrate on your own program bro.”

Busch acknowledged that there “probably” were mind games being played in the garage as teams ramp up for the 10-race, championship-determining Playoffs, but then called Keselowski “any idiot anyways.”

“Overall, I would say the biggest thing is that you don’t hear anyone else complaining like he is – it’s just one guy,” Busch said after winning the pole, his seventh of the season and the 26th of his career.

“We work on what we work on and we weren’t complaining when (Team Penske) were fast and they won the championship knowing what they were doing we had to go to work and figure it out. It just seems like those things aren’t happening. All in all, I just have to give thanks to our guys. They do the work and they do a great job, they build fast race cars and it’s fun to drive fast race cars.”

Busch, the 2015 champion, is third in points entering this weekend’s playoff race; he trails Truex by 24 points and second-place Kyle Larson (Chip Ganassi Racing) by four.

“If you ask Brad he can fix the world’s problems, that’s all there is to it,” Busch said, crediting any perceived advantages to nothing more than hard work and preparation.

“He thinks that somehow the big brother is going to come up and help him,” Busch said. “I don’t know what the point is, we all just work hard and do our jobs, we’ve gotten to where we are and we’re going to keep doing that.”

Keselowski and his No. 2 team won twice this season, at Atlanta and Martinsville, to earn a Playoff berth. He enters the 10-race battle fourth in points, just 10 behind Busch. Friday, he advanced into the third round of qualifying and will start fifth in Sunday’s 40-car field.

Last month, Keselowski intimated that Toyota teams were sandbagging during qualifying at Michigan International Speedway after Ford teams swept the top three positions.

He said his latest comments were the result of what he felt was “NASCAR’s complete inaction to level the playing field.”

“There are natural cycles where cars, teams, manufacturers … go up and down,” he said. “At the start of the year we were at the top of the cycle. And at this moment we are not where we need to be. With respect to that, we were at the top and it seemed like there were a lot of rules changesto slow us down and now you have cars that are so much faster than the field and the complete inaction by anybody.”

Chevrolet teams have won 10 of this season’s 26 races, while Toyota and Ford teams have won eight apiece.

“We could complain, but Kyle Larson runs too good for all the Chevys to complain,” Hendrick Motorsports driver Dale Earnhardt Jr. said. “If Kyle Larson wouldn’t run so damn good then we’d have an argument.

“I think you have to look at more than just are the Toyotas better or the Fords better or are the Chevys better? It’s really how people run their business and I think the Gibbs guys have been working on how they build cars together as a group across the board and how all the teams work together and I think they’ve really got it going on right now.”

Keselowski called the situation “frustrating” but noted that “winning races is (the result of) more than one thing.

“It always has been and always will be,” he said. “You always like to be close but right now we aren’t close.”

Posted on September 15, 2017September 15, 2017 by Reid Spencer

JOLIET, Ill. – Fresh from a Twitter war with Brad Keselowski, Kyle Busch proved a point with his pole run at Chicagoland Speedway—and may just have proved Keselowski’s.

“We are all in for a rude awakening,” Keselowski tweeted two hours before Friday’s knockout qualifying session at the 1.5-mile track, site of Sunday’s Tales of the Turtles 400, the first event in the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series Playoff (Sunday, Sept. 17 at Chicagoland Speedway at 3 ET on NBCSN). “Haven’t let a manufacturer get this far ahead since the ’70s.”

The tweet was a reference to Toyota’s recent dominance in NASCAR’s foremost series, and after a snarky social media exchange with Keselowski, Busch let his No. 18 Camry do the talking, leading all three rounds of qualifying and capping the session with a blistering 28.792-second circuit at 187.963 mph in the money round.

Joe Gibbs Racing teammate Denny Hamlin (186.168 mph) was second in the final round, 0.277 seconds off Busch’s pace.

The Coors Light Pole Award was Busch’s first at Chicagoland Speedway, his seventh of the season and the 26th of his career.

“You’d like to be doing your talking on the race track, and they (Keselowski and Team Penske) were earlier in the year,” Busch said. “They were doing their talking on the race track and again, we kept our head down and went to work and did our job to make our stuff faster.

“Now he’s doing the opposite. As far as having Twitter wars or whatever else, I don’t know. I’d like to not have to. I guess somebody needs to take it off my phone.”

Ten of the 16 Playoff drivers advanced to the final round, with regular-season champion Martin Truex Jr. qualifying third in the No. 78 Toyota. Kevin Harvick was the top Ford driver in fourth, followed by Keselowski in fifth. Kyle Larson in sixth had the fastest Chevrolet.

Joey Logano in seventh and Clint Bowyer in 11th were the only two non-playoff drivers to crack the top 12.

Kasey Kahne was bumped out of the top 24 in the final minute of the first round and was the only Playoff driver who failed to advance beyond that point.

The disparity between the third-round runs of Busch and Hamlin had the latter wondering where his teammate found such blazing speed when it counted.

“It wasn’t because his car was that much faster,” Hamlin said. “He must have done something inside the car better than I did, so I’ll have to look at the data and see what line he took and how much throttle he used, because I know there’s not three tenths between our cars, for sure.”

Busch had a ready answer.

“It’s because I’m in a Toyota—that’s why right?” he said, taking another not-so-subtle dig at Keselowski. “Just great adjustments there, because we were kind of free there the first couple of runs and were trying to get the balance there.

“And the last run, our balance was way better, and we were able to attack it and get the most out of it. That’s all she had.”

Note: Ryan Blaney qualified 12th, failing to make a qualifying run in the final round. The reason? His No. 21 Wood Brothers Ford was out of fuel. Trying to keep the car as light as possible, the team filled the car with just enough fuel to complete three rounds. But a red flag for Erik Jones’ spin in the second round canceled one of Blaney’s laps in progress and forced him to run extra laps—and to run the car out of gas.

Posted on September 15, 2017September 15, 2017 by Staff Report

The NASCAR Playoffs have yet to turn an in-race lap, but the war of words already has started between rivals Kyle Busch and Brad Keselowski.

Keselowski, driver of the Team Penske No. 2 Ford, rekindled his commentary on Toyotas after the manufacturer swept the first four spots in Friday’s opening practice at Chicagoland Speedway.

After a slow start to the season, Toyota has won six of the last nine races heading into Sunday’s Tales of the Turtles 400 (3 p.m. ET, NBCSN, MRN, SiriusXM), the opening race in the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series Playoffs.

We are all in for a rude awakening.
Haven’t seen NASCAR let a manufacturer get this far ahead since the 70s https://t.co/LttpCz9vJZ

— Brad Keselowski (@keselowski) September 15, 2017

That prompted a fiery response from Kyle Busch, who led Friday’s first practice in the No. 18 Toyota from Joe Gibbs Racing.

😭 STFU https://t.co/EjexBIHWwE

— Kyle Busch (@KyleBusch) September 15, 2017

The back-and-forth volley between the former series champions didn’t stop there with an objection from Keselowski.

It’s 2017. When you’re about to lose an argument you call people names rather than face facts. https://t.co/IJnFiQOAXY

— Brad Keselowski (@keselowski) September 15, 2017

Busch then worked in a delightful bit of sponsorship synergy, tied to a new flavor of Skittles.

Ahh yeah!! It’s getting 🔥 in here! 😲 pic.twitter.com/UaBpSEYpdv

— Kyle Busch (@KyleBusch) September 15, 2017

Keselowski’s remarks echoed the comments he made last month at Michigan International Speedway, where Fords swept the first three spots in Coors Light Pole Qualifying to break a five-race streak of Toyota poles. Keselowski hinted that Toyota teams had intentionally dialed back their performance with the looming specter of closer scrutiny in tech inspection.

Those accusations of sandbagging were met with criticisms from Toyota drivers Martin Truex Jr., Denny Hamlin, and ultimately Busch, who replied the next day, saying, “That’s just Brad being Brad, I guess.”

Keselowski and Busch have had their share of on-track run-ins, the most recent being a midrace crash last month at Watkins Glen International. Add that to incidents between the two in national series races at Bristol (2010, 2016), Watkins Glen (2012), Kansas (2013) and Michigan (June 2017) and their rivalry is well stoked.

The mid-afternoon social media squabble spilled over into pre-qualifying interviews on NBCSN.

“They’ve got a lot going for them right now,” Keselowski said. “It’s not really fair of me to say where that is. It’s really NASCAR and their team’s job. It is still pretty obvious. You can BS through it any way you want, but it’s there and we know we’re going to have to out-execute ’em and we need a little bit of luck, because at this point in time, their cars have way more speed.”

Said Busch: “We watched those guys be fast in the beginning of the year. We’ve watched them be fast in years past, even when the Penske guys were with a different manufacturer, they won a championship. We didn’t do our complaining on TV, we just did our complaining in the shop on Tuesdays and we went to work. So that’s where it’s all done, and that’s what we’ve done, and I’ve just got to say how proud I am of all our Toyota TRD teammates and guys and teams, Furniture Row, Joe Gibbs Racing, TRD in Costa Mesa … it’s just, the whole package is there.

“It takes a whole lot of hard work and dedication through a lot of great people, and I feel like right now all he’s doing is slapping his people across the face.”

Posted on September 15, 2017 by

RELATED: Full playoff field | Playoffs 101

The Nos. 17 and 6 teams of Ricky Stenhouse Jr. and Trevor Bayne, respectively, have swapped over-the-wall pit crews for the 2017 NASCAR Playoffs, a Roush Fenway Racing representative confirmed Friday to NASCAR.com.

The team said the swap is intended to give both teams a fresh perspective and the tentative plan is to keep the swap through the playoffs. However, they will continue to monitor each team’s performance throughout the final 10 races.

Stenhouse is one of the 16 drivers vying for a shot at the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series championship this season. Bayne did not make the playoffs and is currently ranked 21st in the driver standings.

Roush Fenway Racing isn’t the only Monster Energy Series team to switch up the crews this season; Joe Gibbs Racing recently announced that the Nos. 18 and 19 teams of Kyle Busch and Daniel Suarez would also swap over-the-wall crews beginning at Chicago. Busch is competing for his second Monster Energy Series title.

Posted on September 15, 2017 by Zack Albert

This year’s edition of the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series Playoffs is well-represented by nine different organizations with several usual suspects among the 16 drivers. But there also are a handful of championship-eligible participants hoping to upend the odds with a deep run into the postseason.

Ryan Blaney, Austin Dillon and Ricky Stenhouse Jr. all made their first trips to Victory Lane during the regular season, clinching their berths through the win-and-in method. Stenhouse doubled up in the win column, and he enters the final 10-race stretch with the most playoff points among the three.

Only Dillon — the Coca-Cola 600 winner — is making a return trip to the postseason, but he relishes having little to lose in staring down foes with a wealth of playoff advantages.

“I love the underdog role,” said Dillon, driver of the No. 3 Chevrolet for Richard Childress Racing. “The pressure is on the guys that gained all the points to lose them and crumble. A lot of people have already put them in position to get to Homestead because of bonus points, but it can happen real quick where you have anything that can go wrong. Wreck early, engine, anything. So, you have to have a solid piece, and you have to have things go your way, but we can definitely make (the) most of our luck and put ourselves in the best position.”

Blaney, who prevailed at Pocono Raceway in June, is one of the postseason first-timers. So is his Wood Brothers Racing No. 21 Ford team, which was ineligible for the Playoffs during its years of part-time competition from 2008-15.

Blaney hasn’t had a top-five finish in the 12 races since his breakthrough win at Pocono, and he acknowledged there’s work to do to regain that stride. But there’s also an embrace of entering the Playoffs as a sleeper pick.

MORE: Download Blaney’s Glass Case of Emotion podcast

“I know our team, for sure, has been called an underdog, dark horse, all that stuff, and that’s great,” Blaney said. “Our team doesn’t have as many wins as some other cars. There are other teams that have been really strong this year. There are three that I can think of that have really shown up and kind of dominated the regular season, and I think if we just clean up some stuff on our end, we can be right up there with them, too, and just find a little bit of performance.

“But I don’t really mind being called an underdog or dark horse and anything like that. That means if you exceed expectations you kind of know that it’s even that much cooler and better when you can do that.”

Cool points aside, Stenhouse has the distinction of following up his first win at Talladega in May with an encore at Daytona in July. Should he survive the first elimination after the three races in the opening Round of 16, the Roush Fenway Racing driver likely will be a favorite for automatic advancement when the series returns to Talladega for the only restrictor-plate track in the postseason.

“I don’t really care,” Stenhouse said of the underdog label. “For us, I think we’re all really happy to get our first wins in the same year. I think we’ve had a lot of fun with that and we’re looking forward to hopefully making many more wins as it comes.”

PLAYOFFS 101: What you need to know

Posted on September 15, 2017September 16, 2017 by Staff Report

Can’t get enough of your favorite NASCAR Playoffs driver? Want him near you at all times?

We don’t blame you — and we’re here to help.

Scroll or swipe below for wallpapers of all 16 Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series Playoffs drivers for your desktop or laptop (designed by NASCAR Creative Design). We also have three images designed to serve as the home screen or lock screen on your mobile device.

Simply click on the image of the driver you want; the full-sized image will pop up, and you can download it and set it as your background.

Bookmark this page and change them weekly if you want to. We hope you enjoy; see you Sunday at Chicagoland Speedway for the green flag (3 p.m. ET, NBCSN, MRN, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio).

Ryan Blaney

Kurt Busch

Kyle Busch

Austin Dillon

Chase Elliott

Denny Hamlin

Kevin Harvick

Jimmie Johnson

Kasey Kahne

Brad Keselowski

Kyle Larson

Matt Kenseth

Jamie McMurray

Ryan Newman

Ricky Stenhouse Jr.

Martin Truex Jr.

Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series Playoffs

And now, for mobile devices:

Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series

Monster Energy NASCAR Cup

Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series Playoffs

Dale Earnhardt Jr.

Posted on September 15, 2017June 22, 2021 by @KESELOWSKI

RELATED: Playoff standings

JOLIET, Ill. — Brendan Gaughan isn’t really worried what NASCAR XFINITY Series 2017 Regular Season Champion Elliott Sadler does in Saturday’s TheHouse.com 300 (3:30 p.m. ET, NBCSN) at Chicagoland Speedway. Nor will he pay much attention to how playoff points leader William Byron fares.

With this race being the final event of the regular season before the playoffs begin, the No. 62 Richard Childress Racing driver’s precarious 12th-place position in the playoff standings has him looking at two very specific people.

“Right now, I have to worry about these two gentlemen right here,” Gaughan said during his media availability on Friday at Chicago, seated next to 11th-place Michael Annett and 13th-place Dakota Armstrong. “So, what we have to do is stay focused on where we need to be. If Dakota is going for stage points, it forces us to go for stage points. If he stays out to go for the win, it forces us to kind of stay on his cycle. So, we’re looking at a different strategy for the race than looking what the leader does, looking at what everyone else does.

“I have to pay attention to these two guys right here and base my strategy off them off of trying to gain whatever points I can to give me a bigger lead, a bigger cushion in case something random does happen.”

This weekend’s event will finalize the 12-car playoff field in the XFINITY Series. Gaughan and Annett are on the positive side of the bubble as of now and are separated by one point. On the other side, Armstrong sits 13th and 25 points behind 12th-place Gaughan.

That will be some work to make up this weekend, the driver of the No. 28 JGL Racing Toyota said.

“We’re in a spot where we’re going to have to ha ve a little bit of help,” Armstrong said. “Twenty-five points is a pretty big margin. Especially (because) our mile-and-a-half program has been better this year, but it’s not been where it still needs to be. So, we’re putting all our eggs in the basket trying to get as much as we can … we’re going to try all we can this week but that’s really our only hope is to get as much stage points as we can and have a little bit of help in trying to get a top five.

“The win obviously is what it’s probably going to take, but it’s a pretty big jump for us. So we’ve just got to go out there — we’re not giving up — but we have to go out there and really perform this weekend.”

For Annett, performance has been a bit of a letdown this year, his first full-time season back in the XFINITY Series since 2013. He sees his JR Motorsports teammates Elliott Sadler, William Byron and Justin Allgaier all winning races and securing their spots in the playoffs and he is still searching for his first ’17 victory in the No. 5 Chevrolet.

“I feel like we should be a lot better, feel like we shouldn’t be talking about the playoff bubble in securing our spot this weekend,” Annett said. “It’s been subpar, we’ve shown flashes, then we’ve been consistently just a couple spots out of what I think we should be, especially looking at our teammates’ performance … Even though our finishes are decent — still not where we want — we’ve just struggled in qualifying and struggled in those two first segments seems like week in and week out.

“So, if we get ourselves in the (playoffs), that’s something that we’re going to have to focus on and get as many (points) as we can.”

Should Annett secure a spot in the playoffs, he has another must-achieve goal in mind for the rest of the season.

“We need to go get a win,” Annett said. “I’m not going to be happy with our season if we finish out the year and don’t have a win yet. I definitely think it would be a disappointment without that.”