The Round of 8 is a three-horse race. Sure, there are eight drivers, but they come from just three teams.
Specifically, the big three teams of modern NASCAR: three drivers from Hendrick Motorsports, three from Joe Gibbs Racing, and two from Team Penske.
But, one race in, while Gibbs’ Hamlin celebrated and Hendrick’s Larson extended his points advantage, it’s starting to look like the final four might not feature the team to win a championship in the Next Gen era. Penske leaves Las Vegas Motor Speedway with both its drivers in a deep hole to the cutline and unpredictable tracks ahead.
Ryan Blaney and Joey Logano are now both, by their own admission, in must-win territory. But how they got there are two different stories.
For Blaney, the day went about as badly as it could have. He started in 14th, the worst qualifying position of all Playoff drivers, and ran around the middle of the pack through the early going. Then, on lap 71 of 267, it went from bad to worse. His left-front tire went down, sending the No. 12 Mustang sideways, and Blaney hit the outside wall hard.
In an instant, without warning, Blaney was left climbing out of his car on the apron and as any points he might have salvaged from the day slipped away.
“No, I didn’t have any thoughts that it was gonna blow. As soon as I lifted into three it blew out,” he described. “It destroyed the right-front, the right-rear. It destroyed everything.”
If Blaney was watching the points, he would have seen himself slip to -31 below the cutline by the end of the race, a huge deficit to make up with two races to go in the round. Blaney explained that he’s treating it as a must-win position for the rest of the round.
“No doubt,” he said, when asked whether he was in must-win territory. “You’ve got to be optimistic. I’m not very happy right now, but tomorrow morning I’ll be optimistic to go to the next race.
“We’ve had good success at the next two events, so hopefully we can come and bring the speed and try to overcome the hole we put ourselves in today.”
For teammate Logano, the day was actually pretty good. Logano ran around the bottom of the top ten through most of the race, picking up stage points but struggling to get any higher. That led crewchief Paul Wolfe to decide to take two tires on what ended up being the final pitstop, a move that gave Logano the front row. He wasn’t able to hang on for the win, but the No. 22 still came home a respectable sixth.
“We had nothing to lose,” Logano admitted. We were kind of at the spot where we scored only a couple stage points, I think we were eighth and ninth in both stages and that’s not enough points to points race I didn’t think, so Paul made a good call and put us on the front row.
“That’s all you can hope for, and you hope the two tires are decent. You hope that you can get clean air and maybe block your butt off to where you can do something,” he described. “At that point, it was just kind of trying not to bleed very many spots there at the end.”
Nevertheless, despite the effort, Logano leaves in a similar points position to his teammate, -24 to the cutline, with the two Penske cars seventh and eighth of the eight drivers in the standings.
That was all determined well before the start of the race for Logano. In the Playoffs, drivers can carry points from stage and race wins into each round and get an advantage before the round has even started. For the Round of 8, Logano entered as the last driver in points, meaning he carried a points deficit before any racing began.
Logano acknowledged that, as the deficit continues to mount and the number of races remaining gets smaller, the pressure to win only increases and he increasingly seems in must-win territory.
“The closer we get, the more we’ve got to win,” Logano said. I think we closed the gap a little bit today. I heard we were 21 points out. I’m not sure if that’s right or not, but I haven’t really looked at all the spots yet. It’s still possible to point in, but one of the spots are obviously taken up now.”
Those final two chances to earn a spot in the final four are Talladega and Martinsville. Blaney and Logano both have good records at those tracks: both have three wins at Talladega, and Blaney has two wins at Martinsville to Logano’s one. However, those tracks can be unpredictable, especially Talladega. Despite all his success at the superspeedway, in both his last two visits Blaney finished outside the top 35 after getting involved in a wreck.
If Team Penske wants to see any of its drivers in the final four racing a shot for the championship, the points picture suggests that a win might be the golden ticket. Hopefully Las Vegas used up all the team’s bad luck.
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