After finishing third and fifth respectively in Sunday’s race at Gateway, you’d think Chase Elliott and Joey Logano would be feeling good and sitting pretty in the NASCAR Cup playoffs. Well, yes and no. Or maybe, at best.
Advertisement
Team Hendrick’s Elliott finished a disappointing 17th in the playoff opener last week at Darlington, only to finish third Sunday, the highest-finishing Chevrolet behind the 1-2 Toyota finish.
It was Elliott’s best finish since another third-place finish eight races ago at Sonoma. In doing so, he climbed from 11th (one spot above the Round of 12 cutoff line) to ninth.
“It felt good to just have a solid day for this No. 9 Chevrolet team,” Elliott said. “I thought we were really good at times; certainly more competitive than we’ve been in a minute.
“It was a lot of fun to be up in the mix. We just needed a little bit more there at the end, but we were way, way better than we’ve been here lately, so that’s nice.”
Meanwhile, Team Penske’s Logano, who is the defending Cup champion and has won two of the last three Cup crowns, finished 20th at Darlington, but rebounded with a fifth-place showing on Sunday. In doing so, he jumped from three points below the cutoff line after Darlington to 10th place in the standings after Gateway.
“It was another solid day here in St. Louis,” Logano said. “We’ve got a cool top five streak going here. (I’m) proud of the Mustang team. I had a shot at it.
“I lost control on the restart there to the #11, was able to stay with him and thought we might have a chance of getting them on the cycle there. (But) we just weren’t able to cycle in front of them and then just couldn’t really go in that final restart. Just lost a balance on it.
“So overall I’m proud of the team. Team did a good job. They executed the first two races really good on pit road. And Paul (crew chief Paul Wolfe) called a really good race today and put us in position to try to win it. So just got to be a little faster.”
But there’s a big caveat for both drivers heading into Saturday night’s Round of 16 finale at Bristol. Elliott is 28 points above the cutoff line for the Round of 12, while Logano is 21 points above the cutoff line.
If one or both have a bad finish, and given Bristol’s propensity for lots of wrecks in a “normal” race, neither driver is assured right now of advancing to the Round of 12 until after the checkered flag falls at Bristol.
There are others in still worse shape
But they could be in a worse situation: 11th-ranked Ross Chastain is 19 points above the cutoff line, while 12th-ranked Austin Cindric is a meager 11 points above the cutoff.
And for the record, things are much worse for the four drivers who all leave Gateway below the cutoff line: Richmond winner Austin Dillon (minus-11), four-race winner Shane van Gisbergen (-15), Alex Bowman (-35) and Las Vegas winner Josh Berry (minus-45).
While Dillon and SVG still have chances of climbing back above the cutoff line points-wise with strong finishes this Saturday night, Bowman and Berry are in must-win situations. If they fail to win, they’ll be riding out a string for the rest of the season, with their championship hopes extinguished.
