Going into the NASCAR Cup Series playoffs on Sunday, many expected a field full of the playoff drivers to be near the front of the pack. For at least a small portion of the race at Darlington that was the case.
But it didn’t hold. Only four playoff drivers finished in the Top 10 when the race ended.
Analyst Kevin Harvick, though, essentially predicted some sloppiness from the playoff teams. So he wasn’t surprised by the finish, which proved chaotic for many of the playoff teams.
“I was not. I think that we see it every year,” Harvick said on the Kevin Harvick’s Happy Hour podcast. “You get to a racetrack where there’s a new element to the racetrack where you have to race the racetrack, super easy to make mistakes. A lot of amplified enthusiasm as you start the playoffs, and it can bite you.”
Chase Briscoe had no such issues taking home another NASCAR Cup Series win. He was dominant from start to finish, leading a whopping 309 laps in the race.
Tyler Reddick also found some success, finishing in second place after battling back to the front multiple times. Both drivers had one thing in common: They avoided the problem spots for other playoff drivers.
“I think pit road was definitely a place where we saw a lot of trouble,” Harvick pointed out. “But I think a lot of that trouble started for some of our playoff contenders in qualifying.”
The former NASCAR driver turned analyst pointed to qualifying as the genesis of the issue for many of the teams. And now Joey Logano, Austin Dillon, Alex Bowman and Josh Berry are all standing below the playoff cut line.
For Bowman and Berry, winning might be the only way out at this point. They’re at a significant points disadvantage with two races to go until the Round of 12.
Better qualify well going forward. That was a key piece of the puzzle this weekend.
“We’ve covered the Chase Elliott piece of the scenario about him and his team saying they need to qualify better,” Harviick said. “Alex Bowman didn’t qualify good. SVG kind of in the middle of the pack. But even the guys at the front of the pack, we saw Christopher Bell get in trouble on pit road, we saw Denny Hamlin have trouble on pit road. Almost everybody had trouble on pit road in some way, shape or form.”
