The first round of the NASCAR Cup Series playoffs are now behind us. 16 drivers entered, 12 made it out of Bristol with championship hopes still alive. Here are my main takeaways from the first round of the postseason.
Harvick/Hamlin going in opposite directions, but don’t count Hamlin out yet
Combined, Kevin Harvick and Denny Hamlin won half of the regular season races. During the pandemic, they’ve now won 14 of the 25 races during it. That’s why they were the favorites to win the championship this November at Phoenix. It wasn’t necessarily because they had 57 and 47 playoff points respectively entering the postseason. That was a strong case, but they were the top two drivers in the series too.
Hamlin has five top two finishes over the final eight races of the regular season. He and Harvick won four of the final eight races during that span as well.
Now that the postseason has started, Harvick and Hamlin are going in opposite directions though.
Harvick won two of the three opening round playoff races. Hamlin has no top 10’s. Harvick, has 13 top five finishes in his last 16 starts. Two of the three he didn’t were at Daytona, the other was a seventh place run at Richmond.
Hamlin, has one top 10 over his last five starts. Still, it’s not like he’s had slow race cars. He was third heading to his final stop at Darlington before getting run in the back of by Jimmie Johnson while trying to come to pit road. He went from third to 13th as a result. A week later, he won the second stage at Richmond but had a pit road speeding penalty. He’d finish 12th. On Saturday night, he ran into the back of Martin Truex Jr. early.
Now, I don’t necessarily expect much out of him in the Round of 12 either. He has one top five in his last seven Vegas starts and no top 10’s in his two ROVAL starts. The middle race is Talladega. Hamlin may enter the Round of 8 quiet, but he can turn it on instantly too.
“That stuff can flip around and turn the other direction really quick,” Harvick said of Hamlin’s luck right now. “They all outran us — I felt like the Gibbs cars outran us at Richmond. We struggled at Darlington and figured out a great strategy and wound up capitalizing on a late accident there, and tonight probably had the best car.
“It can go either way. It’s just those days that you don’t have a really good car what happens and how you can rebound from that, and on the days you do have a good car, hopefully finding Victory Lane.
“It’s been a battle some weeks, and some weekends it’s been good, but we’ve been able to capitalize on the good weeks.”
Harvick, feels confident heading into the next round.
“Yeah, I think for us you just want to keep doing what you’re doing,” he continued. “You don’t want to get out of rhythm, you don’t want to start thinking about what could happen or what did happen. You just go and do what you do on a week-to-week basis, climb in the car drive it as hard as you can.
“The guys are going to put what they think is the best setup in the car for that particular week, and everybody wants to achieve the same goal, so nobody is trying to have a bad night or a slow car.
“Everybody is coming to the racetrack trying to do everything that we can, but the thing I can tell you is when things aren’t going 100 percent correctly on a race weekend, we’ve got a great group of guys on pit road, we’ve got a great group of guys back at home helping us and on the pit box and doing all the things that it takes to try to climb back in the race or strategize our way back in the race.
“Sometimes those weeks, and I think Darlington is a great example of that, we just kept ourselves in the race and wound up in a position that capitalized on winning the race so that we weren’t really in contention to win.
“You just want to stay in rhythm. It’s kind of like basketball or football and you look at the teams that get the first-week bye and then they go to the next week and it always makes me wonder if you wouldn’t just rather keep playing to stay in that rhythm because I know for us staying in the rhythm and just thinking the same way that we have all year is the best way to do it for us.”
Harvick says at this time of year, it’s only about paying attention to themselves and keep your head down and focused on the task at hand.
“I think for us, you just don’t want to read anything that’s happening in the sport, honestly, at this particular time of the year,” said Harvick. “You just want to keep your mind as clear as possible. “We’ve made a decision of how we want to think and what we want to talk about and pay attention to, and it’s us. I know that sounds selfish, but the thing that I can tell you is it’s way less mentally exhausting than worrying about where you need to have a good race and where you need to have a bad race.
“It’s how do we get the most out of this week, and once you start the race, it’s okay, what do we need to do to our car, are we good, are we bad, where do we need to work and just try to be productive and proactive of thinking towards what we need to do next.
“I don’t have the capacity to think more than one week ahead anyway, and trying to overthink things just takes way too much space in my brain for me to function during the week.”
Kyle Busch still winless, Round of 12 may be end of the road though
Kyle Busch had himself a quietly good first round of the NASCAR Cup Series playoffs. He was seventh at Darlington, sixth at Richmond and second at Bristol. Still, hes not confident in his teams’ ability to make it to the Championship 4 for the sixth time in seven years.
“We’ll be eliminated next round,” Busch said after his runner up in the Bristol night race.
The next round isn’t good for him anyways. He has four playoff points to carry with him after his stage win on Saturday night. Half of his last six Vegas finishes he came home 15th or worse. He was 19th last year and 12th this past spring there.
Then it’s to Talladega to where he has two top fives since 2014 there. After that it’s to the ROVAL to where his two starts on that track, he’s finished 32nd and 37th respectively. He was 37th on the Daytona road course last month too.
Add that up and he’s right about seeing his playoff hopes dashed next round.
That’s why he wanted a win so badly on Saturday. It would have given him five more playoff points, which could be the difference in advancing or not.
He’s won just once in his last 51 starts. Over the last 31 races, he has one win, Harvick has 10. His teammate Hamlin has eight.
Drivers eliminated had no momentum
Denny Hamlin’s first round finishes were only 13th, 12th and 21st respectively. Martin Truex Jr’s were 22nd, 2nd and 24th. They’ll still advance onto the Round of 12. That’s because the four drivers that were eliminated weren’t any better and they lacked the playoff points to do anything about it.
William Byron started the playoffs with a fifth place run at Darlington but was only 21st and 38th after as he crashed early at Bristol.
Cole Custer finished 12th in Bristol, 14th at Richmond and 23rd in Bristol.
Matt DiBenedetto was 21st, 17th and 19th respectively himself.
Ryan Blaney was 24th, 19th and 13th.
Hard to advance when those are your finishes. Plus, Custer, DiBenedetto and Blaney combined to score no stage points on Saturday night too.
Should Bristol and Richmond get moved out of playoffs?
Heading into the 2020 season, the way the cutoff races shaped up, well it appeared to be full of fireworks. Two short tracks and a ROVAL sandwiched in between them as the three cutoff races in the NASCAR Cup Series playoffs.
The first round would have the Southern 500, Richmond and Bristol. The second round had Talladega and the ROVAL in Charlotte to close the Round of 12.
But, we all figured two short tracks in the playoffs would have led to some hurt feelings after them. Instead, it was anything but.
Richmond only saw three cautions for 21 laps. The only three were for stage breaks and the competition caution.
Bristol saw just five cautions for 50 laps all night. That’s eight combined cautions, three for crashes but two were for single car incidents. 900 laps of racing with just 71 of them run under yellow in the playoffs on two short tracks.
No bump and runs. No crashing finishes. No excitement that we thought we’d have. Kurt Busch kind of warned that something like this could happen though.
“The anxiety will be higher, the nerves of course,” Busch said on Thursday of what to expect this weekend at Bristol. “The ambiance of excitement. Still, everybody has to protect their points and the race car and not run into somebody and get a fender rub. That’s what led to Richmond’s lack of excitement and that’s what can happen at Bristol.”
He said that if that happened, which is absolutely did, we’d have to question if we need to move these races back to the regular season.
“Then, that would be a question of ‘oh wait a minute maybe we need to move this race back to August when guys aren’t necessarily worried about points as much and let the rough edges dry,” Busch continued.” Dump somebody. Wreck some cars and not have to pay such a big points penalty.’
“That’s the difference in playoff racing in that everybody is making sure that they get every point possible. Therefore they are driving more cautiously.”
We didn’t see many guys get into one another at Bristol which is very un Bristol like. We saw so much action this past spring which is why we expected more the second time around too.
Round 1 cautions –
Southern 500: 7 for 34 laps
Richmond: 3 for 21 laps
Bristol: 5 for 50 laps
Total: 15 for 105 laps
1,267 laps run with 1,162 of them under green (92%)
Wild stat for an entire round when 2 races were short tracks. While I don’t like seeing sloppy races with crashes and honestly like to see so much green Flag runs, I am just shocked to see so few on track run ins with what’s at stake. Maybe that’s because of what’s at stake too though.
3 SHR Cars Move On
Four SHR cars entered the playoffs, three advanced on. Aric Almirola earned his first Bristol top five since 2014. It was his first top five in his last 13 starts on the season too. But, it was enough to advance him to the Round of 12 in the playoffs. He was ninth, eighth and fifth respectively in the first round of the playoffs. He now has 14 top 10 finishes over his last 18 starts on the season now.
Uneventful, but enough.
Same for his teammate Clint Bowyer. He came home sixth on Saturday night in Bristol for his fifth top 10 in his last seven starts on the season but also a pair of seventh place runs last year on this track and a runner up this past spring. He’s had nine top 10’s over his last 11 overall Bristol starts too.
“I just feel comfortable we’re getting back to our consistency,” Bowyer said of his momentumnow. “I guess for a long time in my career I was kind of steady Eddie, and that’s what it takes in these playoffs, to go the rounds, you can’t make mistakes.
“I said that going into these playoffs. For our team, we’ve got to live up to our capabilities, and if we can do that and race to our capabilities and not make the mistakes we were making through the summer months, we can contend and move forward rounds in this playoff system, and that’s what we’re doing.“
Again, enough.
He said he didn’t think about it too much when he saw Byron crashed and knew only three drivers were left to find their ways past him.
“You know, not really,” said Bowyer. “Obviously they told me that on the radio. I saw it. That’s a shame for William. He had a good run going, and Chad has been doing a good job there with those guys.
“But I mean, from there — it’s short track racing. You don’t have time to think about points and all that stuff. There’s nothing you can do. You attack the racetrack, 100 percent every lap, especially at a place — bullring like this. Love these short tracks.
“Obviously was hoping to be a little bit better, but at the end of the day we did what we came here to do, and that’s advance. Obviously you come here to win the race, but proud of Kevin Harvick and everybody at Stewart-Haas Racing for winning the race here and taking care of business with the 10 and the 14, and we’ll move on and survive and live to see another round here in the playoffs.”
Now, it’s time to swing for the fences to get a win now. He’s there.
“Yeah, looking forward to getting out to Sin City and having some fun out there. Hopefully we can double down, get some stage points and continue to march forward up through this playoff system and the points. We’re definitely starting behind again, there’s no question about that. We’ve got to get out there and swing for the fence. These are the playoffs; you don’t base hit it. Steady Eddie got us through this round, but from here on you’ve got to get up to the plate and swing for the fence every time, and every decision, and that’s in the car and out of the car, we’ve got to lay it on the line and go for it, and that’s why these playoffs are fun.
Kevin Harvick won two of the three races in the opening round and SHR now has three of the 12 playoff spots to their drivers heading to the Round of 12.
Race Review Online 