Brickyard 400 to decide final two Cup playoff berths
The final two Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series playoff spots will be decided in the Brickyard 400.
Two spots are all that are left on the playoff grid as five drivers officially clinched their place in the postseason after 500 long miles Sunday night in Darlington, South Carolina. A win did the job for Erik Jones, but he and his No. 20 Joe Gibbs Racing team were already safely inside the grid on points.
Also clinching their spots were Kyle Larson, Ryan Blaney, William Byron and Aric Almirola. This will be the first appearance for Byron in the playoffs. For Almirola, he didn’t get the best result in Darlington (17th place), but by locking up his playoff spot stopped the bleeding as he’d lost a fistful of points after the two previous weeks, where he finished outside the top 25.
Kyle Busch clinched the regular-season championship in Darlington and added another playoff point through a stage win. The same can be said for Kurt Busch.
The good news for StewartHaas Racing is that its other two drivers are both sitting inside the playoff grid with one race to go. Clint Bowyer leapfrogged teammate Daniel Suarez to put himself 15th on the grid while Suarez is holding down the final spot on a tiebreaker over Ryan Newman.
For Jimmie Johnson, it comes down to one race and 18 points.
The seven-time Cup Series champion has the unique honor of being the only driver to have appeared in the playoffs each year since they started in 2004. But if Johnson is going to keep that streak alive, and have a positive in a season full of struggles and disappointment, he has work to do Sunday at Indianapolis Motor Speedway.
Johnson is 18 points out of 16th place.
“It is what it is,” Johnson said after the Southern 500. “We’ll keep digging.”
The progress Johnson, crew chief Cliff Daniels and the No. 48 Hendrick Motorsports team made at Darlington knocked only eight points off their deficit.
“The whole race we ran top six, top four, great car, great stops,” Johnson said before addressing getting caught up in a Lap 276 crash. “Just bad luck. I guess I had 15 years of really good luck and the last two or three have been pretty bad.”
Indianapolis has been good to Johnson in the past with four wins, but he was last victorious in 2017. However, Johnson also can make the postseason through points.