Homestead-Miami Speedway presented an opportunity to take away elimination pressure and secure a spot in the Championship 4. And, for quite a few Playoff drivers, that urgency was very visible as they battled for the race win. Others, however, struggled to find speed or even make it to the end in a mixed bag of performances.
Each driver’s performance at Homestead is scored on a 1-to-10 scale, with a score of 1 reserved for a terrible performance with no redeeming qualities and 10 reserved for a perfect and dominating performance. Performance over the entire weekend is factored in, since qualifying results make race days easier or more difficult. This rating gives an indication of each driver’s relative performance throughout the Playoffs.
Homestead-Miami was the second race of the Round of 8. There are just three chances to guarantee a spot in the finale at Phoenix, and those chances are quickly slipping away. The competition, then, is higher than it’s ever been all season and drivers and teams need to be at the top of their games. The round concludes at Martinsville Speedway in Virginia, where the field will be set.
9.5 – Ryan Blaney (2nd)
Ryan Blaney had a strong car. That alone should be heartening. He started tenth and finished fourth Stage 1 before won Stage 2. His Team Penske group has struggled all year to give him enough speed, especially on mile-and-half tracks like Homestead-Miami. But throughout most of the race, Blaney looked like he had the best overall car, leading 53 laps, the second-most of any driver. He was able to make speed in the top and the bottom lane, helpful both for passing and for following cars in dirty air.
The only place he wasn’t good enough was on the restarts. Unfortunately for Blaney, the race was decided with a short run, with just 25 laps after the restart for him to try to catch and pass Christopher Bell. Blaney lost out to Tyler Reddick on the restart too, forcing him to make that pass before starting on Bell, but, despite running him down, there wasn’t enough time to catch Bell. Still, Blaney entered seventeen points below the cutline, after getting his disqualification rescinded, and leaves ten points to the good. Not safe for Martinsville, necessarily, but certainly much better position.
9 – Christopher Bell (1st)
Christopher Bell earned that all-important ticket to the Championship 4 with his win at Homestead. That he got it at all showed the fight in the No. 20 team. Bell started back in 13th, climbing to ninth in Stage 1, but failed to score any points in Stage 2 after getting outside the top twenty and nearly going down a lap. But his team made the adjustments he needed, and Bell was good when it mattered. A great late restart gave him the gap to hold off Blaney and get his first win on a paved track this season for a bit of a confidence boost too.
“It’s no secret this track hasn’t been my favorite. The first stage, I thought we were onto something. Started 14th and got all the way up to ninth, I thought if we can improve just this much, we’d have a great day. And then, it went the opposite as soon as we got to stage two,” he explained. “What they can do on the pitstops, it’s pretty incredible the turnaround we had today.”
8.5 – William Byron (4th)
William Byron had a very good day in Miami but was left wanting a little more. He started seventh and climbed to fourth by Stage 1 and second by Stage 2. He just wasn’t able to hold on to the lead and secure that all-important win. Still, a fourth-place finish leaves 30 points to the good heading into Martinsville, the biggest gap of any driver who hasn’t won this round.
“We just didn’t have the turn in our car to go into a run, so we just struggled there to fire-off. I was doing all I could to air-block; move my line around and try to take his air, but it just wasn’t enough. I couldn’t get through the middle well enough to maintain pace,” he explained. “We just needed more there at the end, but we had good execution, good pit stops and put ourselves in position to win.”
8 – Tyler Reddick (3rd)
Tyler Reddick had a very strong day at Homestead but couldn’t get up to the front. He started third, but only managed to pick up seventh-place stage points in both stages. A recovery up to third, even battling Ryan Blaney for second on the final restart, helped his points situation, but didn’t ameliorate it: Reddick entered sixteen points below and leaves ten points below. He’ll need to get those stage points – and ideally even a win – at Martinsville to contend for the championship. He complained that his style at Homestead, which has been successful in the past, is no longer a big advantage.
“Yeah, it was a frustrating day. I was really hoping we were going to get a little more out of that,” Reddick acknowledged. “The finish was what we needed, but we didn’t run as well as we wanted to all day, which was the disappointing part. I don’t know, it’s been a gripe of mine ever since we went to the composite body on the Cup side. Everyone runs the fence, and there’s no penalty when you have a mistake and hit the wall. Everyone just ran up there and hit it all day long. Gotta be more willing to take that risk in this car as there’s no penalty.”
5 – Kyle Larson (34th)
Kyle Larson looked like the class of the field midway through the race. After showing one of the fastest cars in practice, he qualified fifth and quickly drove to the lead to win Stage 1, following that up with a third-place finish in Stage 2. Overall, the driver of the No. 5 led 96 of the 267 laps, more than any other driver. But he ended up 34th with no result to show for it.
That’s because of green flag pitstops in Stage 3. As Kyle Larson tried to make up ground on Ryan Blaney in front of him on entry, he closed much too quickly on the No. 12 car and had to turn right to avoid barreling into the Blaney’s rear. As it happened, he did tag Blaney slightly and then turned straight into the sand barrels that protect the pit entrance. That meant a red flag for the race to clean the sand – fitting for a race by the beach – and a DNF for Larson. Luckily, he’s locked into the Championship 4 and the result doesn’t matter, but no driver wants their day to end in a pile of sand.
4 – Denny Hamlin (30th)
It just didn’t work out for Denny Hamlin. After fighting for the lead late in the race, he got caught up battling Ryan Blaney, abused his tires, and faded back in the pack as the race approached 30 laps to go. That wasn’t so bad: he’d already picked up points from finishing sixth in Stage 1 and fourth in Stage 2, and he was in position to leave with a reasonable points gap above the cutline as he ran on track.
But then something broke, he explained after the race, and his car careened into the outside wall. On the radio, Hamlin complained of a steering issue. Whatever the fault, it did enough damage to force Hamlin out of the race, and he was credited with 30th. More importantly, instead of coming into the final race of the round at Martinsville in comfortable position above the cutline, he will enter 17 points below, tied with his teammate Martin Truex Jr.
3.5 – Martin Truex Jr. (29th)
Whether it’s his fault or not, Martin Truex Jr. just hasn’t performed in this year’s Playoffs. He’s only finished inside the top fifteen once since the Playoffs began, in the first race of this round at Vegas. At Homestead, things were looking up: he started on pole, finished fifth in Stage 1 and sixth Stage 2, and was running towards the front as the laps wound down.
But as the caution flew for teammate Denny Hamlin’s wreck, it all went upside-down for Truex. His car started smoking and Truex told his team that the engine had failed. That sent him behind the wall to the garage and out of the race. He was ultimately awarded a 29th-place finish, with leaves him 17 points below the cutline leaving Miami, with plenty of points to make up at Martinsville. As the field slims down, this might be the end of Truex’s luck. He’s been able to carry the 15-Playoff-point advantage awarded to the regular season champion through each round, but now he has to make up the deficit.
1.5 – Chris Buescher (21st)
Chris Buescher needs to find speed again, and fast. After impressing in the lead-up to the Playoffs with three straight oval-track wins, he’s fallen off in the Playoffs. So badly, in fact, that he’s now failed to finish in the top ten in this round, which is all ovals. His performance at Homestead-Miami was even worse than last week at Vegas: he started seventeenth, scored no stage points, and fell back to 21st. Leaving 43 points below the cutline, Buescher is absolutely in must-win position headed into Martinsville.
“Yeah, it is a must-win,” he admitted. “There is no other way around that one now. For us, I feel like we have brought really fast race cars to a lot of these tracks. We obviously needed some tweaks today and we did a good job during the race. Another short track and we have been good at them this year, so we need to go make that one trophy for us.”
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