Time to separate NASCAR’s contenders and pretenders
While everyone in the NASCAR industry was busy drooling over the Roval at Charlotte Motor Speedway — and to be fair, the early indications of TV ratings say they had every right to be — something else got lost in the shuffle.
We’re just seven races away from crowning the next Cup Series champion.
And, while Jimmie Johnson, Erik Jones, Denny Hamlin and Austin Dillon were all eliminated Sunday during the first round of playoff cutdowns, there are still 12 very capable, very hungry drivers gunning for that title.
Which of those 12 are true contenders? And which are merely hanging on for dear life?
We’ll excuse the “big three” of Martin Truex Jr., Kyle Busch and Kevin Harvick for the purpose of this exercise, as it’s clear from their performances this season that they’re all worthy of a second Cup Series championship. But as for everyone else? Well, let’s sort through some of the biggest names:
Pretenders
• Clint Bowyer: Before Bowyer’s third-place finish on the Roval at Charlotte — again, with two serious collisions in the last 10 laps — he’d only recorded one Top-5 finish since the first weekend in July.
• Joey Logano: Logano’s one win this season? Talladega. And which race comes right after Dover this weekend? That’s right — Talladega. But counting on consecutive wins at Talladega is about as reliable as expecting to win the lottery twice in a year.
• Ryan Blaney: Listing the most-recent winner as a pretender may seem harsh, but even Blaney acknowledged after his win Sunday that he had mixed feelings about his first victory this year. Knowing that two other drivers spun out and he just happened to be in the right place at the right time, he said, wasn’t how you’d want to win a race.
Contenders
• Brad Keselowski: OK, so maybe this is cheating a little bit. Keselowski won three straight races to end the regular season and open the playoffs, putting him right there in the conversation with Truex, Busch and Harvick. Some people even contemplated changing the “big three” to the “big four” to accommodate a new contender.
• Kyle Larson: You’ve got to feel for Larson at this point. The man has five runner-up finishes this year and still no victories to show for it — and that doesn’t even include the Roval, when he was among the leaders before a late crash torpedoed his afternoon.
• Kurt Busch: Busch may not fit into the trendy groups currently dominating NASCAR’s marketing campaigns, but his results speak for themselves. A pole at the Roval demonstrates his savvy and raw speed still, and dating back to Daytona in July, he only has two finishes outside the
Top 10.