Five thoughts after Sunday’s NASCAR Cup Series Round 2 elimination playoff race at the Charlotte Roval …
1. Taking Stock
In its latest attempt to spice up the championship, NASCAR tossed an extra superspeedway and an extra road course into the first two rounds of this year’s playoffs.
The fears of how that might impact the playoff field were perfectly valid. Though gently referred to as “wild-card” races, superspeedways and road courses have the potential to be agents of chaos that promote shocking upsets and eliminate some of the season’s best drivers before they can have a chance to race for the title.
But despite the potential for an unpredictable group of drivers going for the 2024 championship, the first two rounds roughly shook out how they were supposed to on paper. Ultimately, none of the top championship contenders were tripped up by the two wacky funhouse rounds — and NASCAR ended up with one of its strongest elite eight fields as a result.
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Just check out the drivers’ credentials for Round 3, a group which includes:
• All seven drivers with multiple victories this season;
• Eight of the top nine seeds heading into the playoffs (all except for No. 8 seed Brad Keselowski);
• Seven of the top eight drivers in top-five finishes (all except for Keselowski, who is part of a three-way tie for sixth);
• Seven of the top eight drivers in top-10 finishes (all except for Alex Bowman, who is part of a three-way tie for sixth);
• All of the top five drivers in average finish.
As Larry David would say: Pretty, prettyyyyy good. For those purists who want NASCAR’s championship to be decided as legitimately as possible under this entertainment-focused format, having the best drivers of the year all still alive heading into the most straight-up round (two intermediate tracks and a short track), such a robust field is a giant positive.
After all, the worst thing that could happen for NASCAR would be a hard-to-explain driver winning the championship. Some people think the opposite because they want the excitement of an out-of-nowhere champ, but the truth is it would erode the credibility of the whole season over time — which goes against the tradition of motorsports.
If Tyler Reddick had become the first regular-season champion to be eliminated before Round 3, it wouldn’t have felt like all of the year’s best were vying for the big trophy. Same with Denny Hamlin, who Kyle Larson labeled Sunday as “the guy who has the speed that we do.”
But all of 2024’s fastest drivers made it through, increasing the odds we’ll see a champion who has won at least three times this year (four of the remaining drivers already have, and whoever makes the final four might have to win again).
At this point, beating all of the best just to make the Championship 4 is an accomplishment in itself, and that’s enough to feel good about whoever hoists the Bill France Cup trophy on the stage at Phoenix next month.
2. What If?
We had some fantastic what-ifs ready for you this week, but Bowman’s disqualification for his car being underweight made all of them a moot point.
For one thing, Joey Logano didn’t miss Round 3 by four points (a margin that could be accounted for by the five playoff points he lost when Austin Dillon intentionally wrecked him for the win at Richmond); he made it by 20 after Bowman’s penalty.
At the same time, we learned Reddick’s five additional points for narrowly winning the regular-season championship didn’t save him from elimination; he made it by 23. It also didn’t matter for the owners’ championship, which would have seen Reddick’s No. 45 car out by one point.
So essentially what we thought was the battle for the final playoff spot during the race turned out to be completely irrelevant when Bowman’s penalty was revealed hours later. It wasn’t even close.
Maybe the big “What if?” was if Bowman’s car hadn’t been underweight, but that’s a pretty black-and-white penalty. Even if Hendrick Motorsports makes an appeal and argues some weight fell off the car when Bowman went airborne over the curbs, NASCAR gives approximately 17 pounds of leeway for minimum weight. If he lost a significantly heavy part of his car, wouldn’t it be sitting somewhere on the racetrack?
It’s a shame because Bowman had a great playoff run going and this wasn’t his fault. But that’s the impact of penalties with this elimination playoff system, where a regular-season disqualification wouldn’t carry the same type of consequences.
3. NASquirks
We’ve spent a lot of words in this year’s column talking about what can be done to improve the Next Gen car on short tracks and road courses (aero packages, horsepower, tires, etc.). But as the Next Gen’s third season comes to a close without any immediate “fixes” on the horizon, one solution would be to simply not race at those tracks when there’s a better option readily available.
We’re not suggesting to get rid of a Martinsville or Bristol, of course. But when there’s a perfectly viable alternative at the same venue — as is the case with the Charlotte oval vs. the Charlotte Roval — racing the Next Gen car on a road course instead of an intermediate is forcing a square peg into a round hole.
Is the Roval terrible? No, and many fans say they enjoy its unique nature. But it’s also not amazing, especially with this car — and thus the entertainment value has a relatively low ceiling. Whereas having the Round 2 elimination race on the Charlotte oval, which has been one of NASCAR’s best tracks in the Next Gen Era, has the chance to be a thrilling duel between the remaining playoff drivers.
In a Monday poll conducted on X, more than three-quarters of respondents at the time of publishing (10,000 total votes so far) say they would prefer to see the Charlotte playoff race on the oval. Fans also appeared to speak with their wallets, as attendance appeared lackluster while May’s Coca-Cola 600 was announced as a sellout for the third straight year.
But that doesn’t mean the Roval was a bad idea. Actually, it might have been Speedway Motorsports chief Marcus Smith’s most inspired concept ever. When the Roval came along in 2018, no one wanted to see another boring intermediate track race. Smith came up with a way to transform his existing track into a course that put on some wildly entertaining races in its first few seasons — and this at a time when there were only two other road courses on the whole schedule. Brilliant, really.
Now the novelty has worn off, due to both the car itself and an influx of new road races the Roval itself helped usher in. Maybe there’s another place for it on the schedule, but the playoff race deserves a more prestigious spotlight on the oval.
4. Championship 4cast
In this space throughout the playoffs, we’re taking a look at the current power rankings for the Championship 4 and comparing them to our pre-playoff picks (Christopher Bell, Tyler Reddick, Kyle Larson and Ryan Blaney).
1. Bell (pre-playoffs: 1; last week: 1). You could certainly argue Larson is the best of anyone right now, and you’d probably be right. But as long as Bell is still in position to make the final four, he’s going to be in the top spot of these rankings because he has the best chance of winning at Phoenix — which ultimately is what matters in the end.
2. Larson (pre-playoffs: 3; last week: 2). Larson now has double the amount of wins (six) as the next-closest driver in the series. That is already tied for the most in a season during the Next Gen Era, and recording a half-dozen victories during such parity-filled years is almost as impressive as winning 10 races with the old car.
3. Byron (pre-playoffs: not ranked; last week: 3). Byron had a podium sweep in Round 2 (second-third-third), which is remarkable considering he hadn’t had back-to-back top-five finishes since April. The No. 24 team sure picked a good time to step up its game.
4. Blaney (pre-playoffs: 4; last week: 4). When Blaney finishes races in the playoffs (in other words, not counting the races where he crashed out at Watkins Glen and Talladega), he gets top-10 finishes. Get this: Dating back to last season, Blaney now has eight straight top-10s in playoff races where he didn’t get wrecked.
5. Best of the Rest
• AJ Allmendinger (sixth): Though it’s been a bit of a dry spell for Allmendinger on road courses since he won last year’s Roval race, he still managed to pick up his third top-10 in five road races this season — all of them sixth-place finishes.
• Shane van Gisbergen (seventh): It wasn’t the victory he wanted, but van Gisbergen led double-digit laps (21) for the first time in his Cup Series career and now has top-10 finishes in four of his six career road-course starts in Cup.
• Bubba Wallace (ninth): It used to be a given Wallace would struggle on road courses, but he’s clearly upped his game. On Sunday, Wallace recorded his third career top-10 in 32 road racing starts — but all of them have come in the last three seasons.
(Top photo of Kyle Larson celebrating Sunday’s victory at the Charlotte Roval: Meg Oliphant / Getty Images)
