Chase Briscoe is in the Championship 4, and Joe Gibbs Racing has no worse than a 50-50 shot to win the NASCAR Cup Series championship.
Briscoe took the lead on a green-white-checkered overtime attempt and held off Bubba Wallace and company to win the YellaWood 500 on Oct. 19 at Talladega in Alabama.
The driver of the No. 19 JGR Toyota joins Denny Hamlin in the Championship 4, with two spots to be decided Oct. 26 in the Xfinity 500 at Martinsville Speedway. Christopher Bell can make it three Gibbs drivers in the final four with a good run, but the two other teams in the playoffs had error-filled days.
Here are the winners and losers from the NASCAR Talladega race:
Briscoe went into Talladega fourth in points, 15 points ahead of the Championship 4.
So it wasn’t necessarily a must-win situation for the No. 19 team. But they’ll take the peace of mind at Martinsville.
Briscoe was stunned in his post-race interview with NBC that he had won a race at a pack-racing track.
His estimation that he had never won a superspeedway race in his career was correct: In six ARCA wins, two Truck Series wins, 11 Xfinity Series victories and five career Cup wins, Briscoe had never won at Daytona, Talladega or the current version of Atlanta until Oct. 19.
Gilliland was a factor in the last 30 or so laps, leading 11 and taking control for stretches of the final stage before finishing second.
He surely learned some lessons about staying closer to the pack when leading, but that’s a good lesson to learn and it didn’t cost him at the end.
Gilliland maxed out his finishing position, taking advantage of William Byron’s spin on the inside lane and a broken-up line behind Wallace on the outside lane in the final lap.
It was a good day overall for Front Row, with Zane Smith (ninth) also finishing in the top 10. But no matter the track, a runner-up finish is something to cheer for at FRM. (And don’t forget that Front Row is also a part of the ongoing NASCAR/23XI Racing lawsuit.)
All three Hendrick playoff drivers had issues that pushed them outside of the top 20.
Chase Elliott was caught up in a Lap 52 multi-car crash that ended his day, finishing 40th. He is in a must-win situation at Martinsville to advance to the final four.
The other two playoff drivers, Byron and Kyle Larson, were the top two cars in the running order ahead of the green-white-checkered restart.
Byron got pushed back a couple of rows on the next-to-last lap, while Larson was side-by-side with Briscoe coming off of Turn 2 on the final lap. But Larson ran out of gas with a half-lap to go while inside the top five, finishing 26th.
Byron was in line for no worse than a top-10 finish coming off of Turn 4 to the finish line, but he spun as the bottom line stacked up through the tri-oval. He finished 25th, a second straight finish outside the top 20 for the No. 24 driver in the Round of 8.
Larson has a healthy cushion to the playoff cutline — as long as no driver below the cutline wins at Martinsville. Byron is one of those drivers who technically has a mathematical chance to get into the top four via points, but most likely is going to have to win at the paper clip next weekend.
The other two drivers in the likely win-to-get-in situation? Ryan Blaney and Joey Logano.
Logano led a race-high 35 laps, and he and Blaney both were running consistently up front.
But when Chris Buescher crashed with two laps to go, the two Penske cars pitted for fuel after prioritizing a short stop over ensuring enough fuel for multiple overtime attempts on their previous stop.
Instead of racing for the win, Logano and Blaney were in the periphery of the race for the win in the lead pack. Logano finished 16th, and Blaney ended up 23rd.
It was a late-race avoidable swing-and-miss from Penske’s crew chiefs. Yes, Briscoe’s win would have made it difficult for either driver to make the final four via points. But add 10 to 15 points to each driver’s deficit, and it’s at least an avenue of consideration at Martinsville next week. Not now.
