With the NASCAR Cup Series Playoff field trimmed by four drivers, the Round of 12 begins Sunday at Kansas Speedway with the Hollywood Casino 400 Presented by ESPN BET (3 p.m. ET on USA, MRN and SiriusXM NASCAR Radio).
Last Saturday night at Bristol Motor Speedway, former champions Brad Keselowski and Martin Truex Jr. were eliminated from title contention, along with relative neophytes Ty Gibbs and Harrison Burton.
That leaves Bristol race winner Kyle Larson, Christopher Bell, Tyler Reddick, William Byron, Ryan Blaney, Denny Hamlin, Chase Elliott, Joey Logano, Austin Cindric, Daniel Suarez, Alex Bowman and Chase Briscoe to vie for the championship.
All five Chevrolet drivers who made the Playoffs—including all four entries from Hendrick Motorsports—advanced to the Round of 12, with Larson retaining top seeding with a seemingly comfortable margin of 39 points above the current cut line for the Round of 8.
That’s not to say the Round of 12 won’t be intensely competitive. The bottom seven drivers in the field are separated by a mere 10 points.
Cindric was a model of consistency in the Round of 16. He was 10th at both Atlanta and Watkins Glen—the only driver to post top 10s in both races—and 13th at Bristol. Cindric scored points in three of six stages, including a win in the second stage at Atlanta.
With the points reset after the opening round, Cindric finds himself ninth in the standings, four points behind Team Penske teammate Joey Logano, who currently occupies the last eligible position for the Round of 8.
“I think, for us, it’s really replicating a similar performance from the Round of 16, the first round for us,” Cindric said about his prospects for advancement. “You look at the numbers, and what we did for the past round is probably the bare minimum of what’s going to get us to advance for this round, so from a points perspective, it definitely gets more challenging, especially the deficit we have to the top four or five guys.
“It definitely becomes more of an issue when you start to eliminate guys that are in a similar space as far as points go as what we are. Otherwise, a win obviously is what you want to do, especially to be able to do it in the first two races. That makes things a lot easier, but for us, I still think this is a no-mistakes round. This is ‘Don’t take yourself out of it and race within our limits.’”
Five of the 12 Playoff drivers are past winners at 1.5-mile Kansas. Hamlin, who finished a solid fourth at Bristol to advance, leads the group with four victories, the last coming in the spring race of 2023.
“It’s game on from here,” said Hamlin, who vaulted from negative to positive territory in the Bass Pro Shops Night Race. “We need to be on the offensive from the start of practice this weekend and put ourselves in position to get stage points and have an opportunity to win the race or get a solid finish to set ourselves up for Talladega and the ROVAL.
“Kansas has historically been one of our better tracks, maybe our best, honestly, so we are more than capable.”
Logano has three Kansas wins, but none since the fall race of 2020. Larson got the second of his two victories at the track in May, and teammate Chase Elliot scored his lone triumph in 2018. Tyler Reddick is the defending winner of the Hollywood Casino 400, having claimed his only victory at the track last year.
— NASCAR News Wire —