Playoff pressure
Three former NASCAR Cup champions face playoff elimination at Kansas this weekend
The sometimes bizarre nature of the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series playoff structure was fully illustrated last week at Talladega Superspeedway with the case of Ryan Blaney.
Blaney entered the Talladega weekend in 11th place in the 12driver playoff grid. What did he do at Talladega? He crashed — didn’t almost everybody? — and finished
18th, 11 laps behind the leaders. Yet Blaney jumped from 11th to seventh — safe, for the time being — in the playoff standings. This happened because Blaney won one Talladega stage and finished third in another and because several other drivers in the playoff group wrecked during Sunday’s wild race.
Playoff drivers can’t depend on such wacky activity in the final race of the second round Sunday at Kansas Speedway, where the racing typically is a bit more subdued than at Talladega.
Although stage results at Kansas could change matters considerably, the six drivers on edge entering the Hollywood Casino
400 are Jamie McMurray, Ricky Stenhouse Jr., Matt Kenseth, Kyle Busch, Jimmie Johnson and Blaney. Three of the six — Johnson, Busch and Kenseth — are former series champions.
Stenhouse (22 points below the eighth-place cutoff line) and McMurray (29 points) probably need wins at Kansas to advance to the third round. Kyle Busch is seven points below the line, and Matt Kenseth is eight behind.
Busch, the 2015 Cup champion, sits in the first slot below the cutoff line after finishes of 29th at Charlotte Motor Speedway and
27th at Talladega.
“We’ve obviously had a terrible round, and we are still within striking distance,” said Busch, who has five consecutive top-fives — including one win — at Kansas.
“We’ve obviously had a terrible round, and we are still within striking distance. So I’m thankful that the system is in place that rewards the good runs we had.”
Kyle Busch, who is ninth in the standings
“If we didn’t have those bonus points, we wouldn’t have much shot going into this weekend. So I’m thankful that the system is in place that rewards the good runs we had during the regular season.”
Blaney, in seventh, is nine points above the cutoff, and Johnson, in eighth place, is seven points to the good. Johnson, the seven-time and reigning series champion, has won three times at Kansas, most recently in the spring of 2015.
“Obviously we are in a tight spot in the playoffs after last weekend at Talladega,” Johnson said. “We know what we need to do in Kansas.”
A win at Kansas by any playoff driver puts him in the Round of 8.
Brad Keselowski won at Talladega with a last-lap pass of nonplayoff driver Ryan Newman, securing the Ford driver a spot in the next round along with Charlotte winner Martin Truex Jr. Keselowski’s win also boosted him from 10th in the playoff standings to second, behind Truex.
Five of Truex’s six victories this season have come at 1.5-mile tracks, including Kansas in May. Kenseth and Kevin Harvick — fourth in the standings — own two victories each. Harvick won at Kansas a year ago when it was the middle race of the second round.
Kenseth, the 2003 series champion, is the all-time leader in laps led at Kansas with 774, Truex has led 622, Johnson 601 and Harvick, the 2014 champion, 559. No other driver has led more than 300 laps at the Kansas City track, which underwent a repave in 2012.
“The repave is definitely what changed and turned things around for us at Kansas,” said Harvick, who earned one career top-five at Kansas before the repave but six afterward. “Once the repave happened, we were able to really hit on some things and, for whatever reason, it kind of fits my driving style and we have gotten some good results out of it.”
After Kansas, the playoffs move to Martinsville (Va.) Speedway, Texas Motor Speedway and Phoenix Raceway. Following Phoenix, the playoff field will be trimmed to four drivers for the season finale at Homestead-Miami Speedway.