Advertisement

NASCAR playoffs: Denny Hamlin and Martin Truex Jr. enter Bristol outside the top 12

Saturday's race is the last of the first round and four drivers will be eliminated from the playoffs

nick bromberg
Senior writer
·4 min read

The NASCAR Cup Series playoff standings look a bit bizarre ahead of the final race of the first round on Saturday night at Bristol.

Austin Cindric is second after two 10th-place finishes to start the postseason. Alex Bowman is fourth and Daniel Suarez is fifth. Neither of those three drivers were in the top 10 during the regular season. Meanwhile, drivers like Denny Hamlin and Martin Truex Jr. find themselves among the bottom four heading into the first elimination race of the postseason.

Here’s a quick look at the postseason standings ahead of Bristol. After Saturday night, the playoff field will be cut from 16 to 12.

Thanks to Chris Buescher’s win at Watkins Glen, Logano is the only driver locked into the second round after his victory at Atlanta to open the playoffs. He’s the only one who can head to Bristol without a care in the world.

Bell is the outright points leader with a fourth-place finish at Atlanta and a 14th at Watkins Glen. That underscores just how chaotic the playoffs have been through two races. He’s 46 points ahead of 13th and should be in very good shape at the concrete half-mile.

Cindric’s back-to-back 10th-place finishes are his first consecutive top-10s since he was fifth at Sonoma and seventh at Nashville in his rookie season of 2022. As he’s also more than 40 points ahead of 13th, he should be good to advance to the second round.

Bowman is tied with Logano on points and was 18th at Watkins Glen after finishing fifth at Atlanta. He’s finished in the top 13 in three of his last Bristol starts.

Suarez has the best average finish of any playoff driver so far with finishes of second at Atlanta and 13th at Watkins Glen.

The regular-season champion had a roller-coaster Watkins Glen. He finished 27th. Barring a disaster at Bristol, he’s safely in the next round.

Elliott’s just kind of existing and finishing races. He got his first DNF of the season at Daytona but has finished between ninth and 19th in seven of the last eight races otherwise.

Blaney has crashed out of three of the last four races and even his third-place finish at Atlanta included a crash. He’s been an innocent victim in those wrecks, so perhaps he’s just getting his bad luck out of the way now instead of in the later races of the postseason.

Larson has three finishes outside the top 20 over the last five races. He was 12th at the Glen. Don’t be surprised if he wins at Bristol.

Byron really needs to find the form he had at the beginning of the season. Two top-10 finishes and four finishes outside the top 25 in the last seven races isn’t going to cut it.

Briscoe was 38th at Atlanta after driving into Kyle Larson’s wreck but rebounded to finish sixth at Watkins Glen. He’s going to need a very good Bristol run.

After posting back-to-back top fives at Michigan and Daytona, Gibbs hasn’t finished any better than 17th in the last three races. That has to change at Bristol if he wants to advance.

It’s been a brutal start to the playoffs for the perennial title contender. Hamlin was 24th at Atlanta after starting at the back of the field and was caught in multiple wrecks at Watkins Glen before finishing 23rd. If the No. 11 team doesn’t rebound at Bristol and advance to the second round, this could be the most embarrassing playoff performance yet for Hamlin and his team.

Keselowski’s finishes over the past five races have gone fifth, eighth, 14th, 19th and 26th. You can decipher for yourself if that’s a bad trend. That should break at Bristol, a place where Keselowski has finished in the top 13 in six of his last seven starts.

The retiring Truex lamented the lack of driving courtesy from his competitors at the end of the Watkins Glen race, and it’s hard to disagree with him. Overtime races have started turning into high-speed games of pinball. Truex has not finished any higher than 20th — his finish at Watkins Glen — since he was eighth at Pocono.

The surprise Daytona winner has reverted back to the norm over the last three races. He’s the least likely driver to jump into the top 12 given his average finish of 26th this season.