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2017 Preview: Drivers No. 13-16 in our projected standings
Welcome to the second part of our NASCAR preview series. Monday we took a look at nine drivers we think will miss out on the 2017 playoffs. Now it’s time for the drivers we think will finish in the bottom quarter of the playoff standings.
Please note this isn’t who we think will get eliminated after round one, though with the addition of increased bonus points, we feel safer making first round projections than we used to. However, we’re sticking with guessing what the standings will look like at the end of the season and are still confident that these will be very wrong.
16. Ryan Blaney: Spoiler alert, Blaney is the only driver in our top 16 that will be a newbie to NASCAR’s playoffs. And, quite honestly, it’s possible that there may be no first-timers at all. It’s fairly plausible to drop a driver like Ryan Newman or Jamie McMurray into Blaney’s spot. But we’re going to go with the guy who’s essentially driving a third Penske car for Wood Brothers Racing.
Blaney’s rookie year was plagued with poor finishes. He had three top-five finishes (one more than McMurray, who made the Chase) and nine top tens. But he countered that with seven finishes outside the top 30. Nearly every good run Blaney had was preceded or succeeded by a race where the No. 21 flat struggled.
We’re banking on a leap in season two. Blaney had speed at intermediate tracks, and, as you know, that’s the majority of the Cup Series schedule. Throw in a few less horrible parts failures and run-ins with the wall, and you have the makings of a solid but not spectacular campaign that results in a playoff berth.
“Most of the time, if you’re not fast on Friday or Saturday it really makes for a tough weekend,” Blaney said. “The preparation before you even get to the track is key, to try to be as close as you can be. As drivers, we can only do so much about that, but trying to give the best information that you can throughout the whole weekend – Friday, Saturday and during the race on Sunday is so key. That was probably one of the biggest things I tried to work on and get better at. I spent a lot of time in the offseason trying to do just that, and then the communication side between myself and my engineers and crew chief.”
15. Austin Dillon: One more position in the second round of the Chase would have netted Dillon a spot in the third round in 2016. Alas, he lost out via a tiebreaker to Denny Hamlin, who finished ahead of Dillon at Talladega and took the third round spot.
Hamlin’s run at Talladega is a good summation of the issues that have plagued Dillon and others at Richard Childress Racing. Hamlin got the tiebreaker by finishing third and having the best finish second-round finish of the two drivers. And it was one of nine top-three finishes Hamlin had during the season.
Contrast that with one top-three finish (a run at Talladega in May with a battered car) and four top fives for Dillon all season. While Dillon had 23 top-15 finishes, his primary residence in that range was from 9th to 15th.
If Dillon or teammates Newman and Paul Menard are going to be contenders for a championship, RCR has to find the speed that the top-tier organizations have. If it does, Dillon has a very good chance to be much higher on this list and be joined by a teammate or two in the playoffs.
And remember, RCR is still searching for its first win since Kevin Harvick won at Phoenix in 2013.
“It sucks,” Dillon said of the winless drought. “No one likes to go winless. We want to wipe that out as soon as possible. I think what was good for our entire company was going to the Hall of Fame induction with my grandfather. It lights a fire in all our employees and myself included. Any kind of effort we can do to not letting any stone go unturned, try to find any bit of speed we’re going to do it. Last year, making the Chase and now we have a playoff format with bonus points that are going to mean a lot, so speed is something we’re going to have to rely on more. We were kind of a points-chasing organization the last couple of years. Myself and Newman did a good job of getting into the Chase and making a name for ourselves by getting through each round. But now we’re going to have to show speed early and often for these segments, and the strategy that goes into that will play a lot of it.”
14. Kasey Kahne: Since finishing fourth in the 2012 standings — his first season with Hendrick Motorsports — Kahne has finished 12th, 15th, 18th and 17th in the points. And given that you can count (right?), you know that he’s missed the Chase the last two seasons.
We think Kahne won’t stretch that streak of non-playoff seasons to three, but we’re not too optimistic he’ll snap the stretch of finishes outside the top 10.
Like the driver mentioned above him, Kahne and his team have to find some speed. While Hendrick Motorsports struggled over the summer months of 2016, Kahne bore the brunt of those issues the entire season. He didn’t lead a single lap and had just three top-five finishes.
But the end of the season provided us the optimism we’re showing here. Kahne grabbed seven of his 13 top-10 finishes over the past 12 races of the season. A rate like that in the first 26 races of 2017 should be good enough for a playoff spot. He’s optimistic about his chances in 2017 too.
“For me though, a lot of [optimism] has to do with the way we finished last year, the progress of the company and the progress of our team,” Kahne said. “What Jimmie Johnson did; what Chase Elliott did; those things to me were key and they were highlights. Our No. 5 team did the same, we made a lot of gains and we were much stronger the last 12 races of the season. Since Monday after Homestead I have been with [crew chief Keith Rodden], I’ve been with our engineers and all of us as a team, from the pit crew side to the road guys, the guys building the cars, we have been a team and we have been working to progress in those same areas that we made the gains in.”
13. Clint Bowyer: Do you think Bowyer has debated using the Men in Black memory eraser to remove all thoughts of his 2016 struggles?
When Bowyer has good equipment he’s a top-10 driver in the Cup Series. He’s finished in the top 10 in the points five times (Kahne has three) and is the forgotten second to Brad Keselowski in the 2012 standings.
2012 was a long time ago. And, not-so-coincidentally, it was the last season Bowyer won a Cup Series race.
There’s a good chance he’ll get to victory lane in 2017, at least relative to the past few seasons. Though it’s far from a guarantee. There’s probably going to be an adjustment period for Bowyer at Stewart-Haas Racing and there may be an adjustment period for SHR as the team transitions to Ford.
And ever since Kurt Busch joined the team in 2014, SHR has struggled to have three cars competitive on a regular basis. Busch and Harvick have been the team’s star performers over the past three seasons while there’s been a big gulf to Stewart and Danica Patrick.
We think Bowyer can help bridge that gap, though he may end up making the playoffs based on consistency rather than via a win.
“Every year you hear all the drivers and everybody is talking about excitement,” Bowyer said. “But after where I’ve been and signing onto this opportunity a year ago and just chomping at the bit watching everything that’s going on at Stewart-Haas and I just couldn’t wait to walk in the door and call that home.”
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Nick Bromberg is the editor of From The Marbles on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at nickbromberg@yahoo.com or follow him on Twitter!
