(Photo: Nigel Kinrade Photography)
By Aaron Bearden
There’s never been a more stressful time to be on the playoff bubble in NASCAR.
It’s been a chaotic regular season. There’s been a presidential visit, civil rights uprising, pandemic and subsequent esports detour, midweek races, doubleheaders and enough rain to fill Lake Lloyd.
Through it all, NASCAR has persisted. Six months after it all began, the Cup Series field is finally caught up on races and ready to crown a champion with the 2020 playoffs.
There’s just the little matter of the regular season finale to get through…
At Daytona International Speedway.
Possibly the most unpredictable track on the entire NASCAR tour.
In the past decade of summer races on the 2.5-mile Daytona oval, no driver has been able to score repeat wins. Three of the past six winners have earned their first-career victory in the race, and four of the six failed to claim another event in the season after they triumphed in the summer showdown.
There will be about 16 drivers hoping to keep that streak of surprise wins and unpredictability alive, starting with 16th-place Erik Jones, who sits 50 points out of the currently playoff field, and running through Daniel Suarez, who is 31st but could theoretically crack the top-30 and steal a playoff spot with the points he would get courtesy of a win.
Mixed into the group are newcomers like rookies Tyler Reddick and Christopher Bell, drivers for underfunded teams including Suarez and Corey LaJoie, even a few veterans in the midst of strange years in Matt Kenseth and Ryan Newman – the latter of which seemingly had February’s Daytona 500 won before contact sent him into the wall and out of the sport for three races with injuries.
That group promises to fight hard for the win. Aggressive drafting aces like Ricky Stenhouse Jr. should pose a threat to the standard group of contenders this weekend. Others like Bubba Wallace, Chris Buescher and Ty Dillon have ran up front in the late stages before and could also factor into the finish if the crashes and pushes fall their way.
Playoff drivers already locked into the postseason also promise to be aggressive, out for five playoff points and the potential to gain positions within the top-10 and the regular season bonus points that accompany them. Denny Hamlin could tie Kevin Harvick with seven victories on the year and be the first one to sweep the season at Daytona since Jimmie Johnson in 2013 if he can make his way back to victory lane.
Somewhere in between the playoff-certain drivers and the ‘nothing to lose’ competitors out of the postseason on points lie the quartet of drivers on the playoff bubble.
Clint Bowyer is first in the group, carrying a 52-point edge on the current bubble. He should need only to survive the opening stages to secure his playoff berth, freeing him up to chase the race win.
The other three are less fortunate.
Matt DiBenedetto, William Byron and Jimmie Johnson find themselves in the unenviable role of needing to try to control Daytona and score max points in what should be an incalculable battle throughout the night.
DiBenedetto enters in the best spot of the group, up nine points on Johnson thanks to a sizable cushion that he nearly used up entirely with a disastrous doubleheader weekend at Dover International Speedway.
Hendrick Motorsports teammate Byron and Johnson have wound up battling for the final spot in the field as things stand, with the younger Byron currently up four points on Johnson. That comes with an asterisk given that Johnson missed a race along the way due to a positive COVID-19 test, but regardless the teammates each sit precariously close to playoff elimination.
Despite that, their early intention is to work together at Daytona. With DiBenedetto’s position within reach for both drivers, they hope to knock him out and place both teams in the playoffs.
“I think we have a chance and an opportunity to get both Hendrick cars in and be able to bump (DiBenedetto) out,” Byron said on Thursday. “So, that’s kind of our goal and hopefully it works out that way. Speedways are really unpredictable. It’s all situational, so hopefully we’re together at the end, we can push each other to the lead and hopefully finish 1-2.”
Of course, all allegiances will go out the door if they end up battling for a postseason spot in the closing laps. But working together at Daytona is status quo for manufacturers as they attempt to position themselves to battle for the win at the end of races.
“If we decide that we’re not going to work with the No. 24 or any other Chevrolets, who are we going to have to work with? The Fords? The Toyotas?,” Cliff Daniels, crew chief for Jimmie Johnson, said. “That doesn’t put us in a great position to succeed because they don’t want us to succeed.
“So, I think through it all, the message, at least within our camp right now, is the best position that we can be in to succeed is going to be to capitalize on help from our teammates. And that does include the No.24.”
Those same allegiances could work to DiBenedetto’s advantage. Along with his overall Ford ties, the Wood Brothers Racing ace will be able to work with pseudo-teammates Brad Keselowski, Joey Logano and Ryan Blaney of Team Penske.
“I think the things we can count on is when the situations present themselves, I know that (Penske drivers) will work with us well,” he said. “We’ve always worked with each other very well and I think that they will be sure to not put us in a bad situation.
“It may be hard to plan. You can come up with all these great plans and be like, ‘We’re gonna work together and we’re gonna line up and do this and that,’ but there are also a lot of other race cars out on the track that will interfere with those plans.
“But what you can try and do is to not put each other in bad positions and maybe that’s more something that you can plan on and work for, so it’s very tough to plan things at Daytona, but I know we’ll work together very well and they’ve said they’ll work with us.”
With the focus on alliances, the success of Chevrolet and Ford might determine which drivers are in position to make the playoffs coming off of Turn 4 for the final time.
Of course, the driver leading the field to the checkered flag could be a surprise that knocks at least one of them out.
That’s the unpredictable beauty of a regular season finale at the World Center of Racing.
