For the second consecutive race weekend, the NASCAR Cup Series Playoff picture took a dramatic turn and now the series shows up at the perpetually suspenseful Bristol (Tenn.) Motor Speedway for Saturday night’s opening round elimination race, the Bass Pro Shops Night Race (7 p.m. ET on USA Network, PRN and SiriusXM NASCAR Radio) with some real surprises in the standings – some unexpected drivers dangerously teetering on the first-round cutoff line.

The championship leader entering the Playoffs, Hendrick Motorsports’ Kyle Larson, for example, has yet to score a top-10 in the first two Playoff races. He’s ninth in Playoff standings – 20 points behind the new leader, Joe Gibbs Racing’s Christopher Bell. He’s 26 points above the cutoff line.

The Regular Season Champion, 23XI Racing’s Tyler Reddick, is also a bit behind expected pace. He dropped three positions in the standings following a 27th-place showing in the weekend’s road course race at Watkins Glen, N.Y. and is now ranked sixth, 16 points behind Bell. He finished 30th at Bristol this spring – a track where he has only a single top-10 in six starts (fourth in 2020).

The reigning NASCAR Cup Series Champion Ryan Blaney, who scored a runner-up in the opening Playoff race at Atlanta two weeks ago, took the biggest hit of any Playoff driver, falling seven positions to eighth place in the standings after being collected in a Lap 1 accident at Watkins Glen relegating him to a last-place finish. He is 29 points up on the cutoff line.

While those are all disappointing outcomes for competitors expected to cruise through the first round of Playoff competition, a much larger challenge awaits Joe Gibbs Racing teammates, veterans Denny Hamlin and Martin Truex Jr.

Hamlin is a perpetual title favorite and Truex is a former champion (2017). Both were expected to, at least, challenge for one of the four seats in the Championship 4 Round and instead are merely fighting to advance out of the Playoffs’ first round. Hamlin has finished 24th and 23rd in the first two races and Truex has finished 35th and 20th.

Hamlin (13th) and Truex (15th) both show up at Bristol ranked below the 12th place cutoff line that determines who will move into the next round of Playoff competition. Hamlin is six points behind both Stewart-Haas Racing’s Chase Briscoe and another JGR teammate, Ty Gibbs, who is technically in the 12th place position. Truex is 14 points back.

“We were certainly in a worse spot most of the day and luckily, we had some attrition there at the end that helped us out,” Hamlin said after climbing out of his No. 11 JGR Toyota Sunday.

“I feel like we can go there [Bristol] and win. We are going to an oval – back to a normal track. We can control our own destiny there.

“If you run in the top two or three all day, absolutely,” Hamlin said of his hopes of moving ahead in the Playoff rounds. He has four wins at Bristol, including the last two races where he’s led more than 300 laps combined.

Bristol has been a little more of a challenge over the years for Truex. He has never won there and has only three top-five finishes in 34 starts. The encouraging news, however, is that he finished runner-up to Hamlin there this Spring and led 54 laps.

Gibbs has earned top-10 finishes in his last three starts at Bristol, including a fifth-place showing in this race last year. Briscoe won the 2020 NASCAR Xfinity Series race at Bristol but has yet to have a top-10 finish in four NASCAR Cup Series starts.

“We’ve been really solid there the last two races so hopefully we can have a good race and have a good points day, I feel like we were solid enough to win there the last two times we were there,” Gibbs said.

Conversely, a handful of drivers that may not have been considered “automatic” selections to cruise through the opening round, instead find themselves in fine shape high in the standings.

Team Penske’s Joey Logano is the only driver to have earned an automatic ticket to the next round by virtue of winning the Playoff opener at Atlanta. Bell, a previous Championship Four driver holds a slight three-point edge on Team Penske’s Austin Cindric and is five points up on Hendrick Motorsports’ Alex Bowman atop the standings.

Trackhouse Racing’s Daniel Suarez, Reddick, Hendrick’s Chase Elliott, Blaney, Larson, Hendrick’s William Byron, Briscoe and Gibbs make up the top-12 entering Saturday night’s race. Hamlin (-6), Brad Keselowski (-12), Truex (-14) and Harrison Burton (-20) are all outside the cutoff line, but are all still within points-reach of racing their way in on Saturday night.

Among the Playoff drivers, Hamlin, Larson, Logano and Keselowski have all won NASCAR Cup Series races at Bristol previously.

Practice for the Bass Pro Shops Night Race is at 4 p.m. ET, Friday followed by Busch Light Pole Qualifying at 5:05 p.m. ET – both sessions will be broadcast on USA Network, PRN, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio and the NBC Sports App.

— NASCAR News Wire —