Hendrick Motorsports may be especially happy to see the Playoff Round 2 re-set considering the team’s drivers were among the most successful on the grid during the regular season.
Byron won his second consecutive Daytona 500 on the way to his first Regular Season Championship. Kyle Larson won three races and their teammate Chase Elliott has a victory as well. All four drivers – including Alex Bowman – qualified for the four-driver 16-race Playoffs and three of them have now advanced to this 12-driver second round of Playoff competition.
Both Byron and Larson conceded the Joe Gibbs Racing first round sweep was a little surprising considering how strong Chevrolet drivers have been. But they also say the mental re-set for this Playoff round may be just what they need.
“The start of the Playoffs was a shock to us as good as we’ve run all year,” said Byron, who will start fifth Sunday – the top qualifying Chevrolet.
“There’s been very few races where I felt I’d run worse than eighth, honestly and then felt like in the first round we were scratching and clawing for top-10s. The first round was a shock to us. We’ve put a lot of work into these three races and putting our best foot forward.
“There’s still a lot of season left though. It’s kind of a marathon in and of itself. The way this format is, you just have to keep advancing and hopefully you’re at your best when it counts.”
“We had to kind of reset our goals and expectations to kind of survive and advance and we did that flawlessly. But now it’s kind of time to step it up and I feel like so far this weekend we’ve done a good job of that so we’ve just got to keep it going.”
Byron starts 5th Sunday, Larson 16th.
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