Cindric, Bowman, Suárez, Briscoe not counting themselves out entering Round of 12

KANSAS CITY, Kan. — Every round in the NASCAR Cup Series Playoffs, four drivers have to sit below the elimination line. For the second straight time in the 2024 playoffs, Southern 500 winner Chase Briscoe will be on the outside looking in as he enters the Round of 12, seven points out and last of the title-eligible drivers.

Joining Briscoe are Austin Cindric (minus-4), Daniel Suárez (minus-6) and Alex Bowman (minus-7). All three of them started the opening round above the cutoff and fended off the likes of Ty Gibbs, Martin Truex Jr., Brad Keselowski and Harrison Burton to advance.

Briscoe was the only Round of 16 driver to enter the playoffs outside of the picture and race his way in. The deck will be stacked against Briscoe once again Sunday at Kansas Speedway (3 p.m. ET, USA, MRN Radio, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio, NBC Sports App), a track where he’s yet to score a top 10 in seven starts but the No. 14 Stewart-Haas Ford driver isn’t hitting the panic button as he can lean on a 2022 run where he scored his best result at the track (13th) that was on the path to Briscoe making it all the way to the Round of 8 that year.

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“We definitely need to try to maximize this race,” Briscoe said. “I do think if we could come out of here 12th, 13th, get some stage points, it should put you at least in the hunt, right? Like you’re not going to start at a huge deficit like we did at Atlanta. So that’s for sure a focus. This has probably not been our best race track so we got some work to do but I’m confident that we’re gonna be probably the best we’ve been here in a long time. I feel like we’ve made a lot of gains on our mile-and-a-half stuff. Hopefully, we can come out of here and qualify good starting today and it just makes your life so much easier tomorrow, getting stage points and things like that. Definitely need to start this round off right…kind of the opposite of what we did last round.”

Briscoe, indeed, had a good qualifying run Saturday as he’ll roll off ninth for the race.

Cindric enters as the first driver out of the Round of 8 but is coming off two top 10s and a 13th-place result in the first three playoff races that paid out 103 points to the No. 2 Team Penske Ford driver to move him forward.

With a drafting track and road course recurring in the Round of 12, Cindric will aim to play game manager at Kansas as he’s finished outside the top 30 in the last three events at the 1.5-mile track and will start 17th on Sunday.

“I think, for us, it‘s really replicating a similar performance from the Round of 16,” Cindric said Wednesday in a Zoom teleconference. “You look at the numbers and what we did for the past round is probably the bare minimum of what‘s gonna get us to advance for this round. From a points perspective, it definitely gets more challenging, especially the deficit we have to the top four or five guys. It definitely becomes more of an issue when you start to eliminate guys that are in a similar space as far as points go as what we are. Otherwise, a win obviously is what you want to do, especially to be able to do it in the first two races. That makes things a lot easier, but I think, for us, I still think this is a no-mistakes round, this is don‘t take yourself out of it and race within our limits.”

A runner-up finish at Atlanta and a clean day at Watkins Glen for Daniel Suárez were required for him to advance to the Round of 12 after Bristol was all but a nightmare for the No. 99 Trackhouse Racing driver.

After a poor qualifying effort at the short track, Suárez swiftly fell a lap down and never recovered, resulting in a 31st-place result while four laps down. He needed every one of the 73 points earned in the first two playoff races to keep Gibbs at bay for the final transfer spot into the Round of 12.

Entering Kansas, Suárez isn’t interested in hearing about his current position and is focused on maximizing his car’s performance on Sunday.

“I, personally, don’t think points right now,” Suárez said. “It’s too early. I’m gonna just go out there and race, maximize the potential for the race car. If that’s good enough to win the race, great. If that’s good enough for a top five, good. So we just have to go out there and just focus one race at a time. Talladega is very unpredictable. Here is unpredictable. We’re gonna be running very close to the wall. There’s a lot of opportunities in this round and now we have to try to maximize that.”

There hasn’t been a 1.5-mile event since May and while Suárez finished 27th at Kansas in the spring and 24th in the Coca-Cola 600, the two-time series winner is confident in having a good performance Sunday and he’s already stepping in the right direction with a 10th-place qualifying effort.

“I thought in Darlington we were pretty decent but it’s different,” Suárez said. “In the Coke 600, I thought we were decent. We had pretty good pace. I believe that we were a top-10 car in the Coke 600. We didn’t get to finish strong because we had a penalty in the last pit stop before they called the race. But I feel good about it. A lot of things happened in May. We have to just go out there and perform and do our thing. I believe that our team is very, very well prepared. I believe that maybe the best-prepared team out there based on how everything works, how everything that we did from Monday through Thursday and I’m looking forward to hopefully see that reflected on track.”

A driver who could really break out this round is Bowman. Kansas, Talladega and the Roval are all among the No. 48 Hendrick Motorsports driver’s best tracks.

Bowman has four consecutive top 10s at Kansas, he finished fifth at Talladega in the spring and owns the best average finish among active drivers at the Roval with a 6.4 clip.

If it wasn’t for teammate Kyle Larson’s pure dominance last weekend at Bristol, you could make the case that the No. 48 was the best of his organization in the opening round but Bowman says he’s just focused on maintaining strong performances weekly.

“I think you just have to operate at a high level every week and everywhere we go has the same opportunity for points,” Bowman said. “I think this round plays out really well for us, probably better race tracks than the previous round for me personally and hopefully we can just continue to operate at a high level and have a lot of pace.”

Bowman has gotten used to the general consensus counting him out of a deep postseason run, but the Tucson, Arizona native has learned to ignore the outside chatter and figures it’s something that will be a part of his Cup career down the road.

“That’s never gonna change,” Bowman said. “I’m not too caught up in what other people say and certainly just need to continue to execute at the level that we have been. I don’t see that ever changing in my career. It’s kind of just par for the course so just out here doing my thing.”