Chaotic Night in Daytona Sets the Stage for Final Charge to the Playoffs

By David Morgan, Associate Editor

DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. – It all comes down to Darlington.

With Harrison Burton claiming a season and career defining win to punch his ticket into the 16-driver NASCAR Cup Series Playoff field, just three spots remain up for grabs to finalize the list of drivers that will be eligible to contend for the championship.

As it stands after Daytona, Martin Truex, Jr. is in the best position of those still not locked in, carrying a 58-point advantage into the regular season finale even after getting collected in a crash and finishing 24^th when all was said and done.

Likewise for Ty Gibbs, who finished the night exactly where he started, sitting 39-points up on the cut-line. As such, both of the Joe Gibbs Racing drivers should be safe to move on when the checkered flag falls at Darlington.

Chris Buescher now sits on the cut-off line, holding onto a 21-point advantage heading into the track that he very nearly won at earlier this year.

“Darlington, you’re always racing the track. I don’t want to be in the position leaving here where we have to have too many of those internal thoughts, but it’s a tricky place,” Buescher said ahead of Saturday’s race already looking ahead to the regular season finale 

“I love that racetrack. I love how difficult it is and what it makes you think of as a driver. For us, you will pay attention. If that’s the scenario we’re in, we’ll pay attention to where others are at, but you’ve got to race that racetrack first, run our own race, make sure we don’t make mistakes. 

“You’re right at the edge at any given point there and while the cars have proven to be quite robust when you are right there up against the fence, they’re certainly not indestructible. 

“We have to have our mindset right going in, but it’s about how we’ve gone about the last couple weeks is go to figure out how to win the race. For whatever reason, many different reasons, we haven’t found ourselves with a chance to really compete for a win in the closing stages of these things and with that you kind of turn your attention to those that we are racing on the other side of it and knowing what their situation is and kind of helping decide how we need to approach the ends of these things. You want to ultimately be fighting for the win first and then worry about the rest of it.”

Then there are those below the cut-off line.

Bubba Wallace entered the night within striking distance of the top-16, just one point out, but now sits 21 points back heading to Darlington.

After a night in which he finished in sixth-place at a track that he hoped to win at, the weight of the world appeared to be weighing on him as he digested his current points position.

“Not good enough. Simple as that. Easiest way to put it. We had a fast Columbia Toyota Camry – just not good enough,” Wallace said.

“You have one car fighting for a regular season championship and another car right around the bubble. It is unacceptable. I’ll take all of that weight on my shoulder – should have won multiple times this year and we haven’t. We don’t deserve to be here, and we are – I’ve got to go win next week. That’s it.”

Ross Chastain came into Daytona holding on to a razor-thin one-point advantage, but found himself involved in one of the multi-car crashes on Saturday night. Though he was able to limp his Trackhouse Racing Chevrolet around to a 12^th place finish, he’ll have some work to do at Darlington to overcome the 27-point deficit he now finds himself at.

“I was just hoping it would stay running, keep the water in it and be able to keep up with the pack,” Chastain said of trying to finish the race with a damaged car. “Looking at the car, it was amazing it did. The whole splitter is off of it; dragging the ground. Yeah, it’s pretty incredible that we were even able to finish.

“I thought the radiator was going to be gone. We’re fortunate to finish, but yeah, as I’m riding around – mainly in Stage Two when I dropped back from the pack and was going to be the free pass, I thought through all of it then. And then the whole final stage, it was all about trying to execute and maximize what we could.”

Even with the double-digit points deficit, Chastain remains upbeat about his chances to make another trip to the Playoffs.

“I look at it like we have another chance to go win the Southern 500,” said Chastain. “That’s what I’m focused on this week. The points, they give them out at the stages and end of the race. If you run good, they give you a lot of them. I just get excited for a chance to go win the Southern 500.”

Behind those two, only winning will get the remaining drivers into the Playoffs, with Kyle Busch leading the charge among them. He is a staggering 106 points out, with a victory at Darlington standing between himself and keeping his Playoff streak alive.

“I mean, we want to,” Busch said of his chances of pulling off a win next week. “We ran good there the first time I ran with these guys early last year. But early this year, we struggled mightily. We’ll just have to go with hopefully a really good package that works and get our job done.”