16 drivers entered the NASCAR Cup Series playoffs, half have now been eliminated from championship contention. Eight drivers are left standing after four were eliminated after Bristol in Round 1 and four more eliminated last Sunday at the ROVAL.
So, how do we stand from where we predicted before the playoffs?
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- Champion: Kevin Harvick
- Bold Prediction 1: No Penske drivers make the Championship 4
- Bold Prediction 2: Kyle Busch is eliminated in the Round of 12
- Bold Prediction 3: Chase Elliott wins Martinsville and puts a Chevy in the Championship 4 for the first time since 2016
- Bold Prediction 4: 3 of the 4 Championship 4 last year make it this year. 3rd straight year of that trend?
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Harvick is still around. One Penske driver is already out and the other two very well could get eliminated this round. Kyle Busch was eliminated in the Round of 12 and three of the four final round drivers last year (Hamlin, Harvick and Truex) are looking like favorites to get there again.
Now, can Elliott win Martinsville?
Let’s take a deeper look at the Round of 12.
Here’s my predictions at the start of the playoffs? Do I change them for this round?
Round 3
Kansas – Denny Hamlin (Winner)
Texas – Kevin Harvick (Winner)
Martinsville – Chase Elliott (Winner)
Eliminated: Joey Logano, Brad Keselowski, Ryan Blaney, Aric Almirola
Hamlin won at Kansas last month, Harvick has won the Fall Texas race it seems like every year and Elliott snags Chevrolet’s first Championship 4 driver since Jimmie Johnson in 2016.
Harvick and Hamlin have won 1/2 the races in 2020 and should win at least once this round too
Preview
There’s a great chance Denny Hamlin and Kevin Harvick get to Phoenix. I mean they have banked a ton of playoff points thus far to where they can get by and not win. But, I can also see a scenario to where both win the first two races of this round and automatically advance through early too.
I mean Hamlin has won two straight races in Kansas and has four top five finishes there in his last six tries. He also has five top five finishes in his last seven 1.5-mile starts on the season.
Harvick, then can win at Texas, a place to where he’s had 12 straight top 10 finishes and four two top results in his last six tries there overall. He’s won the last three playoff races at that.
Plus, the two have won half of the races (16-for-32) run this season and half during the playoffs (3-for-6) too. During the pandemic, they’re 15-for-28.
I don’t think either get shutout this round as the cream always rise to the top.
That would then just leave Martinsville as the cutoff race.
Martin Truex Jr. has won the last two races on the Virginia paperclip. On 750 horsepower tracks, Truex has six top three finishes in his last eight tries. The only ones he didn’t go good on this year is actually at Bristol but he’s never good there.
Remember, pre playoffs, I picked Elliott to win at Martinsville. He does have four top seven finishes, three of which being in the top five on 750 horsepower tracks. He was fifth in June.
I’m changing my pick though from Elliott to Truex or the Team Penske tandem of Brad Keselowski or Joey Logano. These are the top three drivers on 750 horspower tracks in 2020.
Keselowski has four wins on the year, three of those on 750 horsepower tracks. Logano, won at Phoenix earlier this year on one. Penske put all three cars in the top four of the finishing order at Martinsville back in June. Between Penske and JGR, they’ve had four of the five top five finishes in each of the last three Martinsville races overall.
Keselowski, has three straight top three’s and nine straight top 10’s at Martinsville. Eight of those nine top 10’s are top fives.
Logano, has three top eight’s in his last four Martinsville starts.
On 750’s, Keselowski and Logano both have six top 10’s in his last nine tries on them.
I’ll take Truex though for the win. I mean for this round, this is the cream rising to the top, as it always does, and the three to win this round are to the top and until they can be beat at these tracks, I’m not picking against them.
Kansas – Denny Hamlin (Winner)
Texas – Kevin Harvick (Winner)
Martinsville – Martin Truex Jr. (Winner)
That means my Elliott prediction is out and I think Keselowski with his playoff points banked and a solid run at Kansas and Martinsville in the playoffs gets him the final wildcard spot to give us Two Fords vs. Two Toyota’s for the championship at Phoenix.
Spoilers
It’s rare at this point of the playoffs to see drivers not championship eligible win. I mean, every race this year has been won by a championship eligible driver at the time. I think the same holds true for the Round of 8, but there are three drivers that can steal a win though.
Kyle Busch doesn’t want to have his first winless season ever. He’s 0-for-32 at this point. But, just look at his success on tracks in this round.
Busch has nine top 10 finishes in his last 11 Kansas starts including seven of those being in the top five. Next is to Texas to where he has four top 10 finishes in his last five starts there. After that, it’s to Martinsville to where Busch has eight top five finishes in his last 10 tries overall.
He’s a good candidate to steal a win.
So is his teammate Erik Jones. I mean, the free agent has a top eight in all but one race run this postseason. At Kansas, he has five consecutive top seven finishes. In Texas, he has six straight top 10 runs at the LoneStar State track. He can steal a win over the next couple of weeks.
Ryan Blaney can also get a victory. Kansas isn’t the spot to do it at, but Texas and Martinsville surely are.
Blaney, has five top eight finishes in his last six Texas starts. He led a race high 150 laps and swept both stages back in July. If not for a late race caution, he was going to win that race easily. Then, it’s to Martinsville to where he has three straight top five finishes and four in his last five tries including a runner-up back in June.
Can either of these three drivers steal a win this round?
It’s going to be hard with how Harvick and Hamlin should fare.
Will Chevy Get Shutout Of Championship 4 Again?
We didn’t know it then, but when Jimmie Johnson won the 2016 NASCAR Cup Series championship, it would be Chevrolet’s last. Over the last four years now, not only has Chevy not had a title, they have failed to make the Championship 4 even.
They come into the Round of 8 with three of the eight drivers left standing. Kurt Busch, Chase Elliott and Alex Bowman will each try and end Chevy’s championship drought.
Chevrolet is growing tired of not competing for championships anymore anyways. From 2005 through 2016, the bowties captured 10 championships in the 12 year span.
If you go back to 1984 even and end it at 2016, Chevrolet had 23 titles compared to Ford’s 5, Pontiac’s 3, Toyota’s and Dodge’s 1 a piece. At the time of Jimmie Johnson hoisting his seventh Cup championship trophy in 2016, Dodge and Pontiac were out of NASCAR while Ford hadn’t won a title since 2004.
It was pure domination.
Chevy had won at least 10 races for 16 straight seasons. They had won at least nine races every year from 1993 though 2016 too. In fact, from 2003 through 2016, they won 15 races in a single season in 12 of 14 years.
But, that’s when the bottom started dropping out.
They won just 10 times in 2017, their lowest since having nine victories in 2000. In 2018, they won only four times, their smallest amount since only scoring three wins in 1982. Last year, they’ve rebounded to win seven times, but their 11 trips to victory lane the last two years combined is smaller than every single single’s total other than 2017 (10) from 2001 on.
This season, they’ve won only seven times again. They made so many upgrades to their cars over the offseason in hopes they can find their footing again. It paid off early but they since faded back to the clutches of everyone else.
Can they make up for it this round?
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