After all the surprises and turmoil of the first two races of the NASCAR Cup Series playoffs, Saturday night’s Bass Pro Shops Night Race was set for a high-stakes showdown around the high banks of Bristol Motor Speedway. As the first elimination race from the playoffs, the event lived up to the hype, but it came at the cost of many drivers’ heartache at the end of the night.
Kyle Busch, Kevin Harvick, Austin Dillon and Chase Briscoe went into the race and looked inside. Ahead of them were first-timers in the playoffs, such as Daniel Suarez, Tyler Reddick and Austin Cindric, who needed a clean race to make it to the Round of 12 comfortably.
In classic Bristol fashion, none of those drivers had a clean race. Briscoe was the best in the pack as his 500 lap battle with power steering problems proved to be a blessing in disguise. While he fought tirelessly to hold on to his car, his playoff competitors fell like flies. Briscoe pushed on to the next lap, but behind him was an intense crawl to the finish that saw many drivers on the bubble all night long.
The first domino fell early when Cindric lost a right front tire on lap 83. The unscheduled green flag pit stop sent him four laps down and left his play-off fate at the mercy of the field. Cindric and his team trudged through the race, never reclaiming laps, but quietly providing a solid margin of error for their competitors.
Their resilience showed his first suspicions of bloom when Kyle Busch suffered his second engine failure in the past three weeks, effectively ending all control over his destiny. While this ultimately took Busch out of the playoffs in his senior year with Joe Gibbs Racing, the elimination is even more painful as he was the likely winner at Darlington before blowing up an engine.
If Busch had taken home the win in Darlington, he would have locked himself in the second round. Instead, he sat on the sidelines as a heavily lapped Cindric limped past Busch for the 12th and final playoff spot.
At this point, Richard Childress teammates Austin Dillon and Tyler Reddick were still in the playoff photo. That is until, just seven laps after Busch dropped out of the race, Daniel Suarez lost control on the backstretch and collected both Dillon and Reddick.
Despite desperate repairs by their teams, Dillon couldn’t come back before the Damaged Vehicle Policy clock ran out, and Reddick’s badly damaged car just couldn’t do anything but log laps. It was only a matter of time before Cindric, ‘the little rookie who could’, would get past Reddick and Dillon, raising hopes of two more drivers in the play-offs.
Other things conveniently went right for Cindric and wrong for others to paint the playoff picture coming into Texas this weekend. Cindric’s Team Penske teammates, Joey Logano and Ryan Blaney, also had tire problems that set them back even further.
Meanwhile, Bubba Wallace’s decision to return to the track took another point away from Kyle Busch. In fact, Cindric wasn’t officially free until lap 450 when Ty Dillon was forced to pit and surrendered his position to Cindric.
The last threat to make the 12th and final playoff spot was Kevin Harvick. Despite entering the final round of pit stops ahead of eventual winner Chris Buescher, a loose wheel on Harvick’s pit stop wiped out any chance the team had to win the next round. While there’s no telling how things would have turned out, Harvick had a competitive car for most of the day and could have shaken up the standings if given the chance.
Brick by brick, the No. 2 team won and lived to see one more round at the expense of others. However, the way the dominoes fell for them to move forward was a rollercoaster of thrills that relied as much on luck as perseverance. Nevertheless, with two former champions out and four first-timers on their way into the playoffs, this year’s playoffs are reaching uncharted territory in terms of unpredictability.
Speaking of unpredictability, Chris Buescher’s win to cement the Round of 16 non-playoff drivers’ race added even more to the drama on Saturday night.
With 100 laps to go, RFK Racing seemed well on its way to its first win as an organization, but not with Buescher. Teammate and owner Brad Keselowski had one of the best cars all day as he won the first stage and made a skilful pass on last year’s winner Kyle Larson to take the lead late in the race. However, Keselowski fell victim to a flat tire at the worst moment. Within seconds, Keselowski went from watching one of his greatest career achievements to falling off the lead.
If there’s a silver lining, the bitterness soon turned sweet with Buescher’s bold two-band call. With tire wear having a minimal impact on speed, Buescher took the lead and kept it after the final warning. He drove to his second career win for the sport’s biggest names, taking famed owner Jack Roush back to the victory lane for the first time in 191 races.
For those of you who don’t have a calculator handy, that’s the first time RFR — make that RFK now — is in victory lane in more than five years!
With Roush, the win also brought new co-owner Brad Keselowski to the victory lane. Though Keselowski fell one band short of winning it for himself, the consolation prize courtesy of Buescher certainly softened the heartbreak.
A first win for an owner is a beautiful thing. It rewards the long nights, signed checks and disappointment that come with running a race team. Above all, the first win proves to an owner that they can win a second time, which does great things for an organization’s culture. Fans have seen it recently with teams like 23XI and Trackhouse, and with this win, fans can see what they once knew when Roush Fenway Racing returned to fame with Keselowski on board.
With the elusive first win out of the way and non-playoff drivers excelling in the playoffs this year, all hope is not lost for Keselowski to still face retaliation. Especially with Talladega on the way, a circuit where he has racked up six wins, Keselowski can take a win as owner-driver before the end of the season.
