After Talladega, playoff picture becomes more clear

Five takeaways from Sunday’s Alabama 500 Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series race at Talladega Superspeedway.

Teams will prepare for Sunday’s Hollywood Casino 400 at Kansas Speedway, the final event in the second round of the playoffs.

Trim time:

Four drivers will be cut from the playoff field of 12 after Sunday’s race.

Those sitting below the cut-off line entering Kansas: Kyle Busch (seven points behind), Matt Kenseth (eight), Ricky Stenhouse Jr. (22) and Jamie McMurray (29).

A win by any playoff driver boosts him into the third round, which might be the only route open for Stenhouse and McMurray.

Five of the playoff drivers — Kyle Larson, Chase Elliott, Ryan Blaney, Stenhouse and McMurray — have never won at Kansas. Jimmie Johnson, eighth in points and sitting on the cut-off line, has won there three times.

Toyota streak ends:

With Sunday’s dramatic last-lap pass and win, Ford driver Brad Keselowski ended Toyota’s playoff victory run at four.

There were no Toyotas in the top five Sunday, and thanks to the

wrecks that eliminated so many drivers, the second Toyota driver on the finish sheet (after Denny Hamlin in sixth) was Gray Gaulding, who wouldn’t have predicted a top-10 run Sunday morning.

Truex talking:

As if winning six races this year and pushing a team based in Denver very close to the championship isn’t enough, Martin Truex Jr. impressed Sunday with an honest assessment of his involvement in one of the race’s major wrecks.

Truex appeared to cause the final-stage crash when he tried to fit his Toyota into a hole that suddenly disappeared, and contact between David Ragan and Truex sparked a massive accident.

“I was trying to get toward the front and have a good day and ended up causing a wreck, so I hate it for everybody,” Truex said. “Even though I feel like I’ve never been that guy here before, it looks like today I was. Bad judgment. I should’ve been more patient.”

Talladega ‘is what it is’:

There seems to be no solution to the sensational multicar accidents that usually mar races at Talladega, and some drivers appear to have given up on the idea of change.

Ryan Newman, who lost Sunday to Keselowski on the final lap, challenged a reporter’s comment that the racing was sloppy. “That’s a matter of opinion,” he said. “It is what it is. I don’t think it’s ... a big surprise for this type of racing. It’s totally different than what we had last week and what we’ll have next week.”

On the road again:

Four Cup teams will be involved in important Goodyear tire tests Tuesday and Wednesday at Charlotte Motor Speedway before heading to Kansas.

The 2018 playoff race at CMS will be run on the track’s road course, which combines parts of the infield and the traditional oval. Chicanes (artificial narrowing or turns on a racing course) will be added to the frontstretch and backstretch to slow cars as they run on the oval portion of the track, so teams — and Goodyear — will be facing an entirely new challenge on a new racing landscape.

The tests will help Goodyear engineers design tires appropriate for the high-speed portions of the course and the tight turns in the infield.