Brad Keselowski was wondering, “what if” about Talladega. What if he doesn’t push Carson Hocevar too hard late. Maybe he’s in the Round of 8.

Kyle Busch was wondering the same about his early race crash at the same Talladega track as well as the week prior at Texas too. Maybe he’d be still dancing himself.

Ross Chastain had to be wondering what if about the Talladega crash with Busch. Maybe he’d be still alive too.

Even more so now for this trio. All three finished in the top five in Sunday’s Round of 8 playoff opener at the Las Vegas Motor Speedway.

Busch brought his No. 8 Chevrolet home third in Sunday’s South Point 400 for his second straight third place finish. Keselowski was 4th in his No. 6 Ford for his 6th top 10 result in the last 8 races on the season. Chastain was fifth in his No. 1 Chevrolet for his second top 5 in the last four races. He had 2 in the previous 17.

Busch was quietly solid all day after qualifying 6th and finishing 8th and 7th in the pair of stages.

 “Really appreciate Randall (Burnett) and all the guys giving me a great piece when we unloaded here,” said Busch. “We qualified up front and ran top 10 all day. Our weak spots are just restarts. I just get into bad spots and lose spots at times and can’t get my way forward, like a couple of other guys can do a better job at doing that.”

Chastain overcame a speeding penalty early to get back to second by the end of the second stage and while he tried multiple times to get Bell for the lead in the final stage, he lost spots to finish P5.

“It feels good to be competitive — just be able to drive by cars,” he said after scoring his 3rd top 5 finish in his last 4 starts in Vegas. “We were just a couple of adjustments away and we got it there late in Stage Two. We drove from 12th to second, and from there, just both sides of the balance — too loose for our No. 1 Worldwide Express Chevy, and then too tight there at the end. If we nailed it, balance-wise, I think we had a shot.”

Keselowski was the best of all. He started 21st but took 2 tires late in the opening stage to end up third. That track position healed all. He was 5th in Stage 2 and ended up 4th in the end. Keselowski led 38 laps on the day.

“We just executed really well on pit road, with strategy and on restarts,” Keselowski said. “We executed really well, but I feel like we needed a touch more speed and a few breaks to go our way to be able to win. Kyle was just a little faster. If we were in front of him, I think we might have been able to hold him off, but he was just really fast.”