With five races remaining in the NASCAR Cup Series regular season, the top 14 drivers in the points standings should feel pretty secure about the Playoffs.
Among the top 11 drivers, only Kevin Harvick has yet to visit Victory Lane. However, with a 163-point advantage over 17th-place AJ Allmendinger, the 2014 champion should have nothing to worry about before the postseason kicks off at Darlington Raceway in six weeks.
What the No. 4 Stewart-Haas Racing team lacks in Playoff points, Harvick, who currently sits eighth in the standings, makes up for in talent and experience. The same could be said for fellow Cup champion Brad Keselowski, who is currently ranked 12th in points. Yes, Keselowski is also winless but holds a 122-point advantage over AJ Allmendinger.
Fourteenth-place Ricky Stenhouse Jr., who won the Daytona 500, would leapfrog over Harvick, Keselowski, and 13th-place Chris Buescher if the Playoffs started tomorrow. So would any other driver outside of the top 14 who happens to win one of the next five races.
While it’s unlikely that there will be five drivers coming from the winless ranks at the five remaining regular-season tracks–Richmond Raceway, Michigan Raceway, Indianapolis Road Course, Watkins Glen, and Daytona International Speedway–anything is possible.
Even two new winners in the next few weeks would likely keep Buescher up at night. Only 84 points separate the No. 17 Roush Fenway Keselowski team from Bubba Wallace in 15th. Buescher holds a 94-point margin over McDowell, who has remained in the top 16 for the last three weeks.
Of the drivers immediately on the outside looking in—from Allmendinger to Chase Elliott in 21st—Daniel Suarez took the biggest hit on Sunday at Pocono. Suarez started the HighPoint.com 400 17th. He finished the first stage 12th but was collected in a wreck involving Joey Logano and Tyler Reddick on the Stage 2 restart.
Suarez accepted responsibility for finishing 36th.
“It’s our fault,” he said. “We shouldn’t be back there, racing with those squirrels.”
Suarez has bounced in and out of the top 16 since the Cup tour left Atlanta Motor Speedway in March. With his fourth DNF in 21 races on Sunday, he dropped to 18th in the standings—23 points outside of 16th.
“Yeah, it’s not great; it’s not ideal,” Suarez said. “But I have to control what I can control, and I cannot control some of the other guys. In my mind, we shouldn’t be racing back there. We had a car capable of running in the top 10, top-15 at least, and we were running in the 20s because we missed the balance of the car in the first stage.
“We just have to be better.”
But will better be good enough? Sure, Suarez has been successful on certain road courses. His first victory came at Sonoma Raceway last year. Among the upcoming tracks, Suarez has an average finish of 12th at Watkins Glen, where he finished fifth last year. Indy, however, has been brutal. While Suarez’s average qualifying effort is eighth, his average finish is 32.5. Michigan has been hit or miss. He has two top-fives but seven finishes of 22nd or worst.
At venues raced on this season, Suarez finished seventh at Daytona in February and 23rd at Richmond in April. Still, the 31-year-old driver of the No. 99 Trackhouse Chevrolet will have an uphill climb in the points, particularly since Allmendinger has victories at both Indy and the Glen. McDowell comes from a road-racing background and has a victory at Daytona.
Suarez has a five-point buffer over 19th-place Ty Gibbs, followed by Hendrick Motorsports veterans Alex Bowman and Chase Elliott.
Bowman has a win at Richmond and has qualified for the Playoffs every season since joining HMS in 2018. He was having a solid day at Pocono until Denny Hamlin took the air off the No. 48 Chevy’s rear bumper with 10 laps remaining in the race. He finished 20th.
Elliott has also advanced to the postseason each year since he was recruited by Hendrick for the 2016 season. He won the title in 2020. Seven of Elliott’s 18 Cup wins have come on road courses, including two at the Glen. Elliott gained two spots in the standings at Pocono but only gained four points on the Playoff cut line. He heads to Richmond 56 points under water.
Both Bowman and Elliott are in must-win positions if they intend to keep their respective Playoff streaks intact. Despite Elliott’s previous road course success, his last win turning left and right came at Elkhart Lake in 2021. So where’s his best shot of winning and advancing to the postseason?
“I’m sure everybody wants me to say a road course or something, but, no, I don’t feel that way,” Elliott said. “I want to have that opportunity (to win) every week. That’s where I want to be. That’s the position you need to be in to go and have a legitimate shot of winning the actual whole deal.
“You have one magic race track that gets you in the Playoffs, that’s not going to get you to Phoenix. You’re not going to ride that one miracle all the way through. Yeah, we want to be good every week, and we’re capable of being good every week. It’s not just that we want to, it’s that we’re capable of doing it. We need to go and make it happen.”
Follow Lee Spencer on Twitter @CandiceSpencer or email her at: [email protected].
