Past Cup Series champions facing prospect of elimination

KANSAS CITY, Kan. - NASCAR should change the name of Sunday’s Hollywood Casino 400 to the Champions on the Brink 400.

The Monster Energy NASCAR Cup event at Kansas Speedway is an elimination race that culminates the second round of the playoffs, where the field will be reduced from 12 to eight drivers.

And three drivers in precarious positions — on or below the cut line — are former Cup champions: Jimmie Johnson, Kyle Busch and Matt Kenseth. Johnson is clinging to the eighth and final spot, seven points ahead of Busch and eight in front of Kenseth.

Another former champion, 2014 title winner Kevin Harvick, is in fourth place, 15 points above the cut line.

Johnson, the seven-time and reigning series champion, would hate to see his bid for a record eighth title end before the season finale at HomesteadMiami Speedway.

“The position I’m in, chasing my eighth championship, and the desire I have to be competitive week in and week out and being part of that final four is as high as it’s ever been,” Johnson said. “It’s been a tough year in some respects. The speed department has been a little tough on us. We’ve been frustrated in the summer months, and that yielded poor results, and we’ve seemed to be on the right track in the last few weeks being competitive and collecting points.”

Johnson, a three-time winner at Kansas, is wary of Joe Gibbs Racing teammates Kenseth, a two-time winner at Kansas, and Busch, who has averaged a 3.8 finish in his last five races at the track, including a win in 2016.

“When you think of this track and the speed the Gibbs cars have had, it’s been a great track for Matt and Kyle both,” Johnson said, “I can go out there and put myself in a nice position in the points and maintain this eighth place on the bubble, and if Matt or Kyle wins, it shifts that whole thing down.

“We have to come to the track with the mindset of winning, largely because speaking of Matt and Kyle, both are capable of winning and shifting all the points around.”

Busch, a four-time winner this season, finds himself in peril because wrecks the last two weeks at Charlotte and Talladega left him with 29th and 27th place finishes, respectively.

“It sucks that you work all year long in order to build your point cushion and your stage points and your race wins and everything for Talladega,” Busch, the 2015 series champion said of the unpredictable restrictor plate race. “Then I have Charlotte happen. Unfortunately, it’s my fault that we had Charlotte happen. If we would have finished eighth, let’s say, at Charlotte, we wouldn’t be talking about it. We would have used up our point cushion that we had at Talladega like we built it for.

“What’s crazy is you can’t have a mistake on your own. I made a mistake at Charlotte. We can’t have that mistake on your own. You have mistakes brought to you in part by others at Talladega that wreck the entire field, and that’s your championship. We still have a chance, we’re still open, we’re still viable. We can still come through here and win or finish second in every round and hopefully advance. We’ll see. We just got to race it out.”

Kenseth, whose 774 led laps in 23 starts are the most of any driver at Kansas, has not won a race since July 2016 at New Hampshire Motor Speedway, and he seems fatalistic about his chances of winning on Sunday.

“I feel like I come to the racetrack every week with a chance to win,” said Kenseth, the 2003 champion.