NASCAR Cup Series Playoffs Tag

By Holly Cain, NASCAR Wire Service The 2020 NASCAR Cup Series Championship 4 will be decided by Sunday’s Xfinity 500 at Martinsville (Va.) Speedway (2 p.m. ET on NBC, MRN and SiriusXM NASCAR Radio) and expectations are high that positions in this championship foursome are still very much up for grabs. Team Penske’s Joey Logano is the only driver locked-in to a position in the Championship 4 with his victory at Kansas two weeks ago. Regular season champion Kevin Harvick leads the points standings by 15 points over Denny HamlinRead More

By Reid Spencer, NASCAR Wire Service After winning the three-time-weather-delayed Autotrader EchoPark Automotive 500 at Texas Motor Speedway on Wednesday, Kyle Busch climbed from his car and pointed to the image of a zombie on his helmet. “This is what we’ve all looked like around here for the last three days,” Busch quipped. “Everybody just zombied into their phones.” In reality, 72 hours, 28 minutes and 34 seconds elapsed between the time NASCAR red-flagged the NASCAR Cup Series Playoff race on Sunday and lifted the red at 5:03 p.m. ETRead More

By Reid Spencer, NASCAR Wire Service Misting rain interrupted Sunday’s Autotrader EchoPark Automotive 500 at Texas Motor Speedway and ultimately forced postponement of the NASCAR Cup Series Playoff race until 10 a.m. ET Monday (NBCSN, PRN, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio). NASCAR called a caution on Lap 42 because of wet track conditions. In the second race of the Round of 8, the Cup cars ran 10 laps under caution before the sanctioning body brought the field to pit road and red-flagged the event. Roughly half the field opted to pit underRead More

By David Morgan, Associate Editor The penultimate round of the NASCAR Cup Series Playoffs hits the halfway point as Texas Motor Speedway and the Autotrader EchoPark Automotive 500 comes calling this weekend. On Sunday, the stock car racing elite will take on the 1.5-mile track with a pair of six-shooters, a cowboy hat and a berth in the Championship 4 on the line should any of the remaining playoff drivers find themselves in victory lane when the checkered flag falls. After last weekend at Kansas, which saw Joey Logano claim theRead More

By Holly Cain, NASCAR Wire Service Joey Logano held off Kevin Harvick by a scant .312-seconds in a high speed duel to the checkered flag to win the Hollywood Casino 400 Playoff race at Kansas Speedway on Sunday and earn the first position in the NASCAR Cup Series Championship 4 that will vie for the season title Nov. 8 at Phoenix Raceway. Logano’s No. 22 Team Penske Ford beat Harvick’s No. 4 Stewart-Haas Racing Ford off pit lane and then successfully held off the 2020 regular season champion for theRead More

By Holly Cain, NASCAR Wire Service In only his fifth NASCAR Cup Series season, Chase Elliott is proving himself a road course master, easily besting the field Sunday at the Charlotte ROVAL and more importantly, the 24-year old continues to establish himself as a perennial championship contender. Elliott’s win in the Bank of America ROVAL 400 Playoff race was his fourth consecutive road course victory, a mark of excellence shared only with NASCAR Hall of Famer Jeff Gordon, who won six straight road course races. It’s his second consecutive winRead More

By David Morgan, Associate Editor There are numerous adjectives that can be used to describe this weekend’s race on the Charlotte Motor Speedway road course: unpredictable, volatile, treacherous, chaotic, etc. One thing is for sure, Sunday’s Bank of America ROVAL 400 is going to be a hell of a ride. Especially with wet weather in the forecast and the issues that racing in the rain brings to the table. In an effort to spice things up back in 2018, Charlotte officials elected to switch from running another race on the 1.5-mileRead More

By Reid Spencer, NASCAR Wire Service For the second time in as many seasons, Denny Hamlin broke Matt DiBenedetto’s heart, before NASCAR removed the pathos from the situation with a post-race ruling. At the end of a third overtime at Talladega Superspeedway, Hamlin beat DiBenedetto to the finish line to win by .023 seconds—roughly two feet—in Sunday’s YellaWood 500 NASCAR Cup Series Playoff race at the 2.66-mile track. But NASCAR erased the close call by penalizing DiBenedetto for forcing William Byron below the yellow line separating the racing surface fromRead More

By David Morgan, Associate Editor One wild card race down, one to go. A crazy afternoon at Talladega, as expected, wreaked havoc on the NASCAR Cup Series Playoff field, putting a number of championship contenders in dire straits with just one race remaining before the postseason field is cut from 12 drivers to eight. Heading into the Charlotte Motor Speedway Roval, only Kurt Busch and Denny Hamlin are truly safe having already clinched their spots in the next round. Busch automatically advanced with his win at Las Vegas, while Hamlin punchedRead More

By David Morgan, Associate Editor The final two races that make up the second round of the NASCAR Cup Series Playoffs will be a gauntlet for the drivers still in championship contention with races at Talladega and the Charlotte Roval set to wreak havoc on the Playoff field. Sunday’s Yellawood 500 at Talladega is the first wild card race that will have to be dealt with, as the unpredictable nature of superspeedway racing will likely throw a wrench into even the best laid plans and leave some of the Playoff driversRead More