(Photo: Jared C. Tilton/Getty Images)
By Aaron Bearden
Post-race review and analysis from the NASCAR Cup Series race at Martinsville Speedway.
Who Won?
Chase Elliott, who locked himself into the Championship 4 with a breakthrough drive.
Top Stories
The mark of a champion
What is the mark by which a NASCAR driver and team’s success should truly be measured?
Is it championships?
Victories?
Average finish?
Who truly knows these days?
The metrics we use to determine who is and isn’t deserving of titles like “champion” and declare individuals the “GOAT” have long been a point of debate, but it’s never proven more difficult or polarizing in NASCAR circles than in the elimination playoff era, and notably this year.
That’s because of moments like Sunday’s shocking result, where Kevin Harvick found himself eliminated from championship eligibility as the checkered flag waved on the Round of 8 finale at Martinsville Speedway.
Going into the playoffs Harvick was a near-lock for the Championship 4. That mindset had only increased by the time he’d scored his ninth of the year or finished runner-up in the Round of 8 opener at Kansas Speedway.
But then a peculiar set of circumstances befell the 2014 Cup Series champion. He caught the worst of the early mist at Texas Motor Speedway, slapping the wall from the front of the field before rain forced the race to a halt that would hold for more than three days. He recovered when racing resumed, but only minimally.
One week later Harvick hit a rare struggle weekend at Martinsville Speedway, suffered a cut tire in a battle with Matt Kenseth and spending the whole race recovering. He managed to reach the top-10 in the closing laps, but found himself at risk of elimination.
Joey Logano and Chase Elliott won from below Harvick in the standings to take two places away on points. Brad Keselowski was able to rally from a late penalty to rise ahead of him in the final run, while season-long rival Denny Hamlin found himself just ahead of the Stewart-Haas Racing veteran with time running out.
Harvick was one point behind the cutline entering the last lap. He tried to move Kyle Busch for the position, but wound up crashing himself in the process.
Suddenly his playoffs were over; lost in dramatic fashion to the elimination format.
It was a signature moment, the sort of thing envisioned with the elimination style of NASCAR’s postseason. But it caused mixed opinions from the paddock and fanbase given Harvick’s impressive result on the year.
“They wanted a Game 7 moment,” Hamlin said of NASCAR’s playoff format. “The only issues I have is that you can’t ignore the first eight innings. Myself, Harvick have dominated for most of the season. But it’s a three-race schedule.
“(I) heard (Harvick) say in his interview that these championships are a little different than what they used to be. Obviously they come down to one race. It’s not a full body of work for your whole season any more.
“As far as excitement, sure, we had some excitement this week. The guy with the nine wins not in the Final 4 somehow.”
The idea of a driver with a bevy of race wins could fail to win the title isn’t altogether new. But someone with Harvick’s resumé failing to compete for the title in the finale is a result largely exclusive to the “Chase” era that began back in 2004 and has seen multiple iterations over the years since.
Harvick has scored well over 100 points more than anyone else in the field on-track this year – a mark that’s difficult to ignore even with the notion that some might race different under season-long formats. His 7.3 average finish would stand up favorably to any title-winner from this millennium, while his 20 top-fives and 26 top-10s are each three marks above anyone else in the field.
By any measure, Harvick has been a driver of championship caliber this year. But NASCAR’s stick-and-ball style playoff format meant that a bit of Texas wetness and Martinsville madness stripped him of the opportunity to secure a title this coming weekend at Phoenix Raceway.
Similar results can come in other sports, but it’s rare for outside variables to influence them in the same manner. Added moisture isn’t typically seen on the court in Game 4 of the NBA Conference Finals, though weather can influence outdoor sports on occasion. LeBron James doesn’t have to worry about a bench player from the other conference tripping him on a fast break down the court.
NASCAR has embraced the potential for chaos with the elimination format. To their credit, many of those “Game 7 moments” have come from it along the way, with Sunday’s ending sitting among the most classic and memorable over the past seven years.
But with the format comes risk of true title-worthy drivers failing to have a chance to secure the championship – Harvick now being the concrete example moving forward.
To his credit, the veteran took the loss with composed grace.
“Like I’ve said, (championships) aren’t won the same way that (Dale) Earnhardt and (Richard) Petty did,” Harvick said. “You have to put together a few weeks and we didn’t put together these last few weeks like we needed to and just came up short..
“I’ve been punched in the gut a lot harder,” Harvick later continued. “We won nine races, had a great year, and, like I said, the championship is kind of a bonus. It would be great to win it, obviously, but I’d rather go through the year and win races and do the things that we did and just came up short.”
The two combined quotes elicit an interesting debate. Given the way championships are now awarded, can those triumphs alone be used to grade the merit of a driver and team? Is a title win, or even a Championship 4 berth, the bar by which top organizations should consider their years a success?
It’s a difficult question to answer in an era of the series clearly pivoted toward entertainment – where the stars of NASCAR compete in races with three periods like hockey, overtime akin to most stick and ball sports and an elimination playoff that includes unpredictable chaos along the way.
Championship will always hold extreme value, particularly among newer fans that transition over from other sports and are used to the playoff format. Whoever wins the title this Sunday will be fully deserving of their triumph for having made the run required under the format they were given.
But perhaps we could all stand to celebrate individual wins and season-long consistency a bit more, too.
Clouded by controversy
A good sports memory can rarely come without a moment of controversy along the way, and Sunday’s Xfinity 500 was no different.
In the final laps of the four-hour affair, before we all collectively came to terms with Harvick’s shocking exit, the Californian found himself within reach of a tie with both Brad Keselowski and Denny Hamlin.
Keselowski was marching forward, so his ability to hold Harvick off came with little issue. But Hamlin’s effort caused a rift among the NASCAR fanbase due to the nature of him retaining the final position needed to maintain his one-point edge on Harvick through the closing laps.
Hamlin was riding in 12th in the final run to the checkered flag when he was challenged from behind by teammate Erik Jones. Shortly afterward a radio message came over to Jones [urging him to hold his position, “stay with (Hamlin) and drive what you can,” per NBC Sports.
Teammates choosing not to pass each other in specific playoff moments isn’t necessarily uncommon, though most instances aren’t as high-profile as Sunday’s occurrence. But the significance of the moment in the Xfinity 500 led to fan outcry over a potential breach of the “100 percent rule,” leading NASCAR to review the instance before electing not to penalize Jones.
Hamlin’s crew chief Chris Gabehart claimed in a Monday Zoom conference that he doubted serious team orders were a factor in Jones’ ability to complete the pass.
“Each one of these teams and drivers and sponsors have a lot that goes into this, are expected to perform at their top level,” Gabehart said. “I can certainly tell you where Martinsville was concerned, Erik was doing plenty of what he was needed to do to (Hamlin’s) back bumper to try to get by him.
“If there were some sort of team orders on, he wouldn’t have been beating our back bumper. I think Denny was very determined to not get passed, he knew how important it was, he was very difficult to pass, and that’s how it played out.”
The desperation of the last lap also led to contact between Harvick and Busch, with both drivers spinning off of Turn 4 after Harvick made a last-ditch effort to score a final spot and advance.
“It was just a move I had to try knowing that I needed one point,” Harvick said. “I needed to hit (Busch) square in the door, but at that point I was too late and wound up hitting him in the back. It was just a Hail Mary that didn’t work out.”
NASCAR reviewed that move and elected not to penalize Harvick, either.
In the end the moments were just added controversy on top of a dramatic conclusion to one of the tightest bubble battles in the history of NASCAR’s brief elimination playoff era.
Chase for the Cup
The shame of the chaos on the bubble was that it overshadowed one of the great clutch drives in modern NASCAR history.
Pinned well behind the cutline on points, Chase Elliott rolled into Martinsville Speedway knowing he’d likely need his first short track Cup win if he was going to give his No. 9 team its first Championship 4 berth.
Elliott was used to this position. He’d been in the Round of 8 three other times, famously making contact with Hamlin that later resulted in a flat tire and playoff elimination for the Virginian in 2017 at Phoenix Raceway. The Georgian seemed poised to win that day and advance to the title race that was then at Homestead-Miami Speedway, but a spirited late drive from Matt Kenseth denied Elliott the opportunity. A year later Elliott had another chance but finished 23rd, then in 2019 he crashed out early and finished even deeper in 39th.
That Phoenix luck doesn’t necessarily bode well for his title hopes given that it’s the new host of the championship race, but Elliott needed to win at Martinsville to even have that opportunity.
So that’s what he did.
Despite a pair of difficult pit stops and partially because his jack man managed to go back to the wall after hopping over early in order to avoid a penalty, Elliott marched to the front over the final 100 laps and drove off to a 6.6-second win in the Xfinity 500.
The victory was his career-best fourth of 2020. It was also the most important of the Hendrick Motorsports star’s career – a breakthrough effort that allowed him to finally place himself among the best in the series with a rare shot at a title.
“To win a championship in this series, you have to make the final four,” he said afterward. “We’ve seen the same crowd make the final four since this deal has been implemented. We want to assert ourselves amongst the people who can make it consistently.”
Drives like Sunday’s go a long way toward making that happen. If he can do it one more time, Elliott will become the first Chevrolet title winner since the soon-to-be-retired Jimmie Johnson’s seventh title in 2016.
Other Notes
- Ryan Blaney has flown under the radar since his disappointing Round of 16 elimination, but the Team Penske star has been showing signs that should inspire optimism for 2021. If you remove a crash in the attrition-filled race at Talladega Superspeedway, Blaney has held an average finish of 5.0 in the races since his elimination, with three of his 11 top-fives on the year coming in the past four races. Blaney was disappointed to finish second on Sunday, but his No. 12 team has recovered well in a time where many would mail it in.
- What could have been for Martin Truex Jr. The winner of the prior two Martinsville trips held steady with Elliott through much of the day, but suffered a loose wheel while in position to challenge for the win in the final hundred laps, dropping him out of both race and playoff contention. “Unfortunate,” he said. “I think we should be the one in victory lane right now, but you have to do it all. Just a little mistake there.”
- Speaking of what could have been… In a different (Chase) era, Alex Bowman would be lauded for an impressive postseason run. The Arizona native has finished no worse than 16th during the postseason, with three of his six top-fives and seven top-10s along the way. A decade ago that likely would have been enough for Bowman to be within title contention on points this weekend. Instead he lost out to drivers with more playoff points and is out of title contention.
- Aric Almirola and Clint Bowyer ran into each other twice in the opening stage and seemed to be at odds, but the Stewart-Haas Racing teammates eventually finished next to each other in seventh (Almirola) and eighth (Bowyer). The result came in Bowyer’s last Martinsville start, with the future broadcaster showcasing a scheme that thanked both his fans and sponsors from along the way.
- The final margin of Harvick’s failure to advance wound up increasing because of the late spin. While Busch quickly recovered to retain ninth, Harvick slammed into the inside wall before the start-finish line and dropped to 17th.
