NASCAR’s Round 2 is as it should be
NASCAR elimination playoff system, version 2.0, disgorged four race winners in the first round of the postseason Sunday at Dover International Speedway.
There was Daytona 500 winner Kurt Busch.
There was Phoenix spring winner Ryan Newman, who fell two points short of running down Ricky Stenhouse Jr. for the 12th and final transfer spot.
There was Austin Dillon, winner of one of NASCAR’s other majors, the Coca-Cola 600.
And then there was Kasey Kahne, victor of another of the series’ albeit faded stalwarts in the Brickyard 400.
Four winners out, three from some of the most coveted races of the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series schedule.
Meanwhile, three winless drivers advanced: Chase Elliott, who has no victories at NASCAR’s highest level; Jamie McMurray, who hasn’t won since 2013; and Matt Kenseth.
How’s that look?
About right, really.
It took a little bit of the tweaked version of the elimination-style playoffs that made its debut in 2014, a little bit of the racing food chain figuring itself out, but the 12-driver field of Cup contenders seems as it should be heading into round two.
Busch won the Daytona 500 as Elliott expended his fuel on the white-flag lap and brought only those five playoff points with him to the playoffs. The rest of the season, Busch failed to win a stage and was prone to periods of poor results. He produced three of his five top-fives of the season heading into the playoffs but then finished 19th, 37th and 20th.
Newman claimed victory at Phoenix Raceway by making a daring late tire gamble work. Impressive, certainly, but he won no stages the entire season, either, and like Busch, brandished just five playoff points when each one was crucial Sunday. Finishes of fourth, sixth, seventh and third in the last four regular-season races gave him a chance, but he couldn’t maintain it in the playoffs, and a dearth of insurance via playoff points finished him.
Dillo won the 600 on a fuel gambit, and while the trophy still is plenty shiny, it provided him his only playoff points of the season. Three top-fives and four top-10s the entire season suggested the team would not sus- tain a deep run.
Kahne claimed victory at Indianapolis when many quality cars wrecked and he executed a skillful overtime restart that ended in controversy of the now-defunct backstretch restart line. A big win, his first since 2014, but it didn’t save his job at Hendrick Motorsports. And it wasn’t augmented by any stage wins the rest of the season, so it couldn’t salvage his postseason.
While the elimination of Newman — who advanced to the championship final winless in 2014 and finished second in the standings — and Dillon can be more directly traced to their failure to exploit NASCAR’s new rewards system for wins and stage victories as postseason insurance, it also had a lot to do with not being among the 12 best weekly competitors.
Beyond the numbers, the three winless drivers who advanced performed better when it mattered.
Kenseth’s performance has flourished in the last half of the season with the Toyota camp, and he is a plausible contender most weeks. Elliott, as has been his maddening bent, led almost to the white flag Sunday — one of a race-high 138 — before being overtaken by Kyle Busch, who won for the second consecutive week. Jamie McMurray, the statistical oddity of the contenders with just two top-fives but a respectable 15 top-10s, always seems to be around.
The new NASCAR points system figured to eliminate some of the ruthlessness of random racing events from the postseason and reward season-long performances at a high level. It likely saved Stenhouse’s season Sunday when a timely caution allowed him to skip a pit stop and earn seven stage points that ultimately proved decisive. But for Newman and the other three drivers cast out, this wasn’t just about a new way of doing the math.
It was about being better when it mattered.