CHARLOTTE, N.C. — Ricky Stenhouse Jr. and Michael McDowell are in the NASCAR Cup Series Playoffs for just the second time in their careers. Bubba Wallace qualified for his first championship run.
Don’t mistake their lack of playoff experience, though, for any sort of underdog label.
While each of the three racers enter the playoff opener at Darlington Raceway beneath the provisional elimination line, they have respectively performed at career-high levels throughout the 26-race regular season. Now, they enter the final 10-race stretch of 2023 with a chance to surprise some folks with a deeper playoff run than anticipated.
MORE: Playoff standings | Weekend schedule: Darlington
Stenhouse, winner of the Daytona 500 in February, secured his spot on the postseason grid over half a year ago. But his 16.7 average finish is the best of his 11-year career, bettering his previous best of 17.1 in 2017 — the only other year he made the playoffs.
He and the JTG-Daugherty Racing team embrace being an underdog, but that title carries a little extra fuel, too.
“We definitely are (underdogs),” Stenhouse said Thursday during Cup Series Playoffs Media Day at the Charlotte Convention Center. “Obviously, all the powerhouse teams we’re going up against are manufacturer teams. Definitely an underdog, but I think we like our role. All 40 of us at the team, we like where we are. We have great partners behind us and great fans. I’ve seen a lot of fans that are pumped up about what they feel like we can do. Hopefully, we can go prove all those people right.”
The first round shapes up well for the No. 47 team, with Darlington Raceway, Kansas Speedway and Bristol Motor Speedway all serving Stenhouse well in years past. Stenhouse qualified third at Darlington earlier this year en route to a 13th-place finish and has finished runner-up at Bristol twice. So forgive him he disagrees with being an early out in the postseason.
“I feel that’s a mistake,” Stenhouse said. “I feel our team and I have a lot more confidence than probably a lot of people have in us, which is fine. I was at the shop yesterday, and my guys were saying so-and-so says we’re going to be out, and I’m like, let’s go prove them wrong. I’m not worried about proving people wrong, but I want to make sure I prove that to our guys and our supporters. There’s plenty of people that think we’re going to make the next round. It’s about proving those people right. I told them don’t worry about who didn’t pick us; let’s just do our job and let’s go perform the way we know we can perform. If we do that, I feel like we can make it out of the first round of the playoffs.”
McDowell won his way into the postseason with a dominant win at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway road course in August, but the driver of the No. 34 Front Row Motorsports Ford was on his way to the playoffs just based on the points he’d gathered to that point. The long-time underfunded organization — relative to the sport’s powerhouses, of course — may still look like it’s playing from behind. But does McDowell feel like an underdog?
“No, and I don’t know why I don’t feel that way,” he said. “Like on the outside, I understand why people are like, ‘Oh, if I’m gonna pick a guy that’s falling out the first round, it’s gonna be the 34.’ So I’m not mad at you all for saying that. Doesn’t offend me. But when I look at it, I’m like, I don’t think so. I think we are going to be able to advance and to move on. And so why I have that confidence, you know, I have my own reasons — just based on speed and performance, and I know the nuances of, oh, did we miss it this week or hit it this week.
“The first Darlington (race in the) spring, we missed it a little bit, but I know what we had last year, and we ran top 10 both races last year. We tried something different that first Darlington, didn’t work out. So I have confidence going back because I know we have a pretty proven package that has run well there before. Yeah, so I look at it differently.”
Wallace has yet to visit Victory Lane in 2023, but each of the 23XI driver’s two career wins have come during the playoff portion of the season — an October win at Talladega Superspeedway in 2021 and a September triumph at Kansas in 2022.
“I’m really good at winning in the playoffs when I’m not a part of the playoffs,” he said with a laugh.
Now a championship contender for the first time, Wallace carries some optimism into the opening round.
“For it to be great, you have to be great,” he said. “I think I’m pumped to be an underdog. We know we are way more capable of being better than 16th, but we know if we don’t execute, we can see our happy asses in 16th. We just have to go out and do what we know how to do and just do it. Not get complacent and be one of those front-running cars over the next 10 weeks. We know it’s a tall task, but we can do it.”
“The first round, really, we look at that one,” Wallace said. “Darlington was really good in the spring, really good last year. Kansas is Kansas. Bristol, top-10 car, a couple tweaks to make it a little better is what we need. Second round, though, Texas. Not really high up on Texas. I think they said we had speed last year until we had power-steering problems. But Talladega is a wild card, and then the Roval is a wild card. So we just have to get through the first round on a positive note, grind through the second round and then we can kind of go back to work in the third round.”
Their competition, of course, knows better than to count anyone out before the checkered flag flies in Phoenix.
Kyle Larson, the 2021 NASCAR Cup Series champion, has seen the shine of each team’s success throughout the regular season and knows any one of them could strike over the next 10 weeks.
“Especially in the Next Gen era, I don’t think you can overlook anybody,” Larson said. “You know, everybody’s so equal, and those ‘underdogs’ have done a really good job this year of executing each race and finishing where they probably deserve or a little bit better. So I look at like Ricky; he’s probably has his best season by far to date. And he’s been super consistent. He’s had a lot of speed at times. And those races that he’s had speed, he’s finished up there too.
“I mean, I think you can’t overlook them guys at all because they’re gonna be consistent. They’re gonna do a job. And always, too, when the playoffs start, even the good teams, like there’s always somebody that, like, their team just does a really good job of executing and making themselves stand out. So hopefully, that’s us this year.”
Six weeks ago, Chris Buescher may have found himself in the underdog conversation — a fantastic season, but yet to dazzle his way to Victory Lane. Since then, he won three of the last five regular-season races to vault to the No. 4 seed entering the postseason — a whirlwind he says still has him dizzy.
Buescher has had that underdog moniker before, back when his rain-shortened win at Pocono Raceway in 2016 propelled him to a playoff run in his rookie season. Things are quite different this year.
“In the past, this first round you’ve looked at, and I’ve been a part of this in 2016, right, this first round, you’re like, ‘Oh, we can kind of predict the first four that probably aren’t going to make it through,’ ” Buescher said. “(I) don’t have a very good read on that this year. Everybody has been very strong. To call them underdogs, it’s not necessarily a stretch, but I don’t think anybody is coming into this playoff season thinking they’re an underdog. I feel like everybody feels like they’re having a career year and feels like they can continue on, and I think it’s going to be a very tough season.”
What to watch for:
