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Storylines aplenty as NASCAR Cup Playoffs begin in Atlanta
By Matt Weaver,
12 hours ago
Denny Hamlin is fortunate that something broke in the powertrain of his No. 11 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota Camry in qualifying rather than the first lap of the race on Sunday at Atlanta Motor Speedway.
Sunday marks the start of the NASCAR Cup Series Playoffs and breaking early would absolutely crater his chances to advance to the second round and continue challenging for his first career championship.
As it stands, crew chief Chris Gabehart and their mechanics and engineers can look at it overnight and put in new parts and pieces with the only penalty forcing them to start at the back, which is where they qualified anyway.
“Something in the power train was not up to speed,” Hamlin said. “They’re going to look into it and see what needs to be fixed. Certainly, there is something wrong and they will get it fixed overnight.”
On the bright side, this is a track where Hamlin will have an opportunity to drive forward immediately and challenge for stage points from the drop of the green flag as long as the car is fixed properly.
“I don’t think it’s going to be a huge deal,” Hamlin said. “It’s not ideal right. I wish we were up front but the way this race plays out, you’re going to have some want to race early and some not. We didn’t have false hopes that we were going to qualify well. I’m glad we found it before the race at least.”
Where they start
2. Ryan Blaney 5. Austin Cindric 6. Kyle Larson 7. Joey Logano 9. William Byron 10. Chase Briscoe 11. Alex Bowman 12. Harrison Burton 16. Chase Elliott 19. Brad Keselowski 20. Ty Gibbs 22. Martin Truex Jr. 23. Tyler Reddick 26. Christopher Bell 30. Daniel Suarez 38. Denny Hamlin
While this round is extremely combustible, opening with a superspeedway style race at Atlanta, but then two races with unpredictable tire situations at Watkins Glen or Bristol, William Byron has two wins on the third year of this reconfiguration.
“We’ve had success here at Atlanta,” Byron said. “Although it can be unpredictable, I feel like, as I’ve studied and watched it back, a lot of times if you’re up in the front and making good decisions, you can kind of control your destiny here.
Ryan Blaney, the reigning and defending series champion, will start second but with no practice for superspeedways has no idea how the near pole winning speed will translate to the race.
“You can do little changes for the race tomorrow, just kind of air-pressures and stuff like that, but I don’t know,” Blaney said. “I felt pretty decent in qualifying handling-wise but getting in the pack is a whole different thing. It’s nice that we have the track position and I think the speed is good to hopefully control a lane, and I’m sure we’ll get back in the pack tomorrow at some point and we’ll see how I am in traffic.
“It’s all good right now. It’s a solid starting spot and I’m looking forward to hopefully being able to control the first part of the race, especially the first stage, and then see how it shakes out from there.”
His teammate, Austin Cindric, starts third and is considered a longshot to advance into the Round of 12 and beyond but this is certainly a non-traditional race that can immediately give him a chance to win or even survive his way into an advantageous position.
“I think once again the Fords at speedways are really, really strong,” Cindric said. “I felt like our car handled extremely well in qualifying, which it’s not something you necessarily have to worry about here, but I think it just bodes well for us for the race tomorrow. I’m excited about it and feel like we can have a shot at the win.”
The same thing applies for Chase Briscoe, in a fellow Ford entered by Stewart-Haas Racing, who unpredictably won his way into the Playoffs with a Southern 500 triumph.
“We ended up 10th there and I’m not really sure how we slowed down in the second round. I guess we didn’t slow down, everybody else kind of sped up, but I’m not really sure what happened there,” Briscoe said. “We have a good starting spot. We’re starting inside the top 10 and should have a good pit stall selection, but it’s really hard to say what you’ve got just running one lap around here, but so far so good. It’s a good start to the weekend. Starting 10th is a lot better than starting 30th, so we’ll just have to see what we can do with it tomorrow.”
And no one knows better the transformative effect of a win at Atlanta right now quite like February winner Daniel Suarez, who is in the playoffs because of the triumph and wouldn’t have been otherwise.
He won that race in a dramatic photo finish with Kyle Busch that was the difference in the two-time champion himself being in the playoffs instead.
“It’s good to be back here, and we had a lot of fun, but that’s in the past now,” Suarez said. “Now we have to do the job again and execute the little things and make sure we have a shot at the end. We know there is going to be a lot of contact and wrecks and we have to make sure we’re not in them and having a shot at the end.”
Suarez will have a great pusher, at least early, in teammate Ross Chastain who did not make it to the Round of 16. Chastain said he is planning to help Suarez every chance he can on Sunday.
“We work together fairly well the past couple of years, with setups and things like that, and most times, the 1 team goes their way on setups and the 99, we go our way but they’re going to go with our set up the next 10 weeks and help us figure out race and qualifying adjustments,” Suarez said. “We always work together but are working together even more closely.
It’s a similar dynamic for Briscoe too, who says all of Stewart-Haas Racing, which has three cars that didn’t make the playoffs committing to helping the 14 car or try set-ups to provide them data towards advancing.
Regular season champion, despite all the reasons he shouldn’t feel like he is in control at Atlanta, feels otherwise.
“No, it is in our control,” Reddick said. “Maybe a wreck that happens in front of you is out of your control, but how you end up in that position is. Obviously, we know that qualifying is not our strength – we know that we will probably be starting back there in the mess a bit, but it is in our hands to get in front of it or get out of there, so it is very much in our control I feel like.”
In winning his fourth consecutive superspeedway pole, Michael McDowell and the Front Row Motorsports No. 34 team have done something not accomplished since Bill Elliott, Ernie Elliott and the famous Melling Motorsports team in 1985 and 1986.
“Sometimes I think it’s undervalued what Front Row has done and where they’ve come from in the last three or four years to what we’re doing week in and week out,” McDowell said. At the other side of it, it’s a compliment that people aren’t really that shocked when we run well or challenge for wins, so it’s going in a good direction. It’s a tremendous amount of work. It’s a tremendous effort by everybody, but we’re still, I don’t want to say small. Bob doesn’t like it when I say small, but we’re still a medium-size team, so to do what we’re doing – not just here, but week in and week out – is a real testament to what hard work and dedication and being resourceful and being efficient can do because I promise you we’re not spending the most and we don’t have the most people, but we have a great group of men and women who fight really hard and this NextGen car has given us the platform to do what we’re doing.
“Without that, it would have been a really tough road, but from that point forward we’ve been in the game and I think we’ve done a good job of trying to stay in the game.
Can he win and play spoiler against the playoff drivers?
“It’s tough when you’re the pole-sitter because you’re trying to control the race and you’re trying to control the runs, but you’re also the sitting duck that people are building runs on and dragging back and building momentum,” McDowell said. “The last time here, I kind of let the first part of that race play out, but wanted to stay near the front in those first two rows, but you need to learn what your car is going to do and balance and all that.
“We were able to win the first stage here in the spring race, so I felt like our car drove well and we did what we needed to do, so, to me, it’s more about just keeping yourself in position. It’s not do or die. It’s not a lap one, lap two, lap 10 and you’ve got to block every lane and every run that’s coming, but ideally you want to keep control of the race as long as you can.”
Like his teammate, Todd Gilliland has been really fast on these types of tracks, and wants to capitalize on Sunday.
“Our cars have been really fast at all the superspeedways and it feels like we actually have cars very, very capable of winning every single superspeedway at this point and that doesn’t last forever,” Gilliland said. “It always goes in waves, so, to me, even Daytona felt like a little bit of a missed opportunity with how fast my car was. I felt like even when I was in the back I could go to whatever line I felt like it would really move the line forward and those are hard to come by in these type of races when everyone is so close. I’m excited about it. I think we definitely need to take advantage of it while our cars are this fast.”
Josh Berry hopes to play spoiler too.
“Yeah, I think so,” Berry said. “Obviously, we had a really good car at Daytona with a lot of speed. We were in great position there until we weren’t, so we feel like we had a strong car here in the spring. I feel like I’ve grown and learned a lot since then. I put us in a hole speeding on pit road in the spring, so we’ve ironed all of that stuff out hopefully.
Car handling does matter a lot here, just because how the draft is and how tight the track is. You can tell the cars that are comfortable and handling well, so if we can check those boxes at the beginning of the race and we stay out of trouble, I think we’ll have a shot at it at the end.”
Corey Lajoie nearly won at this track in 2022 and that’s a reflection of how anyone could win on the right circumstances.
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