1. Chase Briscoe Gave Us The Season’s Best Moment
Last June in the media center at World Wide Technology Raceway, when drivers filed in for their media availabilities, Chase Briscoe and his Stewart-Haas Racing teammates were among the more anticipated ones for the sport’s media to hear from.
It had nothing to do with a race win or prospects to win at Gateway.
It had everything to do with the news that at the end of the season, Stewart-Haas would cease operations.
Ten weeks from now, more than a couple hundred individuals — drivers, crew members and other team personnel — will be seeking new jobs aside from those yet to line something up for 2025. Back in June, Briscoe conceded the challenge of losing employees to other teams and not being replaced.
SHR has not just had to battle back and get one of its drivers into the postseason. It has had to do so under the cloud of despair. It would have been incredibly easy to run the season out and log laps. But like many in the garage, these people at SHR are racers to the core.
With everything else swirling around, Stewart-Haas had one last shot to get to the postseason. And Briscoe didn’t just win a race. He did it the hard way at one of the sport’s toughest tracks. Oh, and he had to outrun Kyle Busch to do it, as well.
The Daytona 500 may be full of prestige.
But its current drafting package is a race decided by a game of chance. If you want to be somebody in NASCAR, you have to win the Southern 500 at Darlington Raceway. Briscoe did that and given all going on away from the track, it may have been the best moment of the season.
2. Is the No. 23 Team’s Disappointment a Blessing in Disguise?
You won’t find anybody this morning at 23XI Racing happy about the No. 23 team missing the postseason.
For any team, having 100% of your cars in the postseason is a huge deal and no amount of ‘we’ll build momentum for February’ talk will soften that disappointment.
But Bubba Wallace missing the NASCAR playoffs could be a blessing in disguise for the No. 23 team.
Here’s why.
When your teammate is the regular-season champion and you are the only other full-time team in the organization, missing the postseason is — to quote Wallace’s own words at Daytona International Speedway regarding his postseason pursuit — “unacceptable.”
Making it into the postseason would have taken some of that dread away.
Now?
Very valid questions are being asked.
“How can a team that can win races and got into the postseason on points last year miss the playoffs when one teammate is the regular-season champion?
In missing the postseason, the urgency is pegged to the red line. Wallace should not necessarily be running 1-2 with Reddick, but it’s not unreasonable to expect the No. 23 to be able to be within the top-12 range of drivers.
Is Bootie Barker the guy to deliver those results for the No. 23 team? That’s something that should be further evaluated after Wallace fell short of the postseason.
3. Could Atlanta Motor Speedway Play Into Hands of Postseason Underdogs?
Atlanta Motor Speedway hosts the playoff opener on Sunday afternoon for the NASCAR Cup Series.
Given what was seen there earlier this season in Daniel Suarez‘s win, it may be ripe for a postseason driver on the lower end of the grid to upset the apple cart, so to speak.
Let’s think about two of this year’s restrictor-plate winners who are in the playoffs.
Suarez’s Atlanta win was by far his best showing of the season. Harrison Burton, as has been mentioned in many places, was the lowest-rated full-time driver in terms of points. But let’s go beyond that.
If not for the fuel-mileage snafu by Ryan Blaney‘s team at Gateway, Austin Cindric may not be in the postseason. Cindric, by the way, has a Daytona 500 win to his name.
The playoff grid to begin the postseason has drivers on its lower end who can and have won restrictor-plate races. That could make Sunday (Sept. 8) at Atlanta all the more white-knuckled.
Drafting-style racing lends itself to the element of the unpredictable. It’s why even casual fans tune in for the closing laps of Atlanta, Talladega Superspeedway and Daytona.
That version of racing roulette, however, could make teams nervous if they are worried about advancing out of the top 12.
4. Is the Southern 500 More Prestigious Than the Daytona 500?
There are six drafting-style races on the Cup schedule.
Given the number of fans showing up on these race weekends, many people love that type of racing and the unpredictability that it brings.
But that racing is also a game of randomness.
This year’s schedule tweak had Darlington as the final race before the postseason with a win there getting a driver into the postseason if they were below the cutline.
If you want to win at Darlington, you have to do something hard. There are few tougher tracks to win than that track and its egg-shaped oval. You don’t just have to race the other drivers, but you have to battle the track, as well.
Forget winning a race at Darlington. Finishing one is hard in itself. If you win at Darlington, you have earned it.
Sometimes, all you have to do to win at Daytona in the Great American Race is to avoid wrecks, remain near the front, and get a draft at the right time.
Darlington with its grinded-up pavement that chews tires and odd-shaped alignment is a challenge unlike any other, especially for 500 miles.
That’s a lot harder to do than get drafting help at the right time, and also why there’s a case to be made that a Southern 500 win, not a Daytona 500 win, should mean more to a driver.
5. Is it Spoiler Season for Kyle Busch?
This doesn’t help anyone at Richard Childress Racing right now, but the No. 8 of Busch was running well enough the past six weeks to make the playoffs. The problem was a deep hole leading up to that time made it a hill too steep to climb.
If a driver almost wins one race and does not run well after that, it’s fair to call it a one-time burst. If not for a gutsy effort by Briscoe, Busch is in the playoffs. The same goes for the drafting gods favoring Burton at Daytona.
The long and short of it is that Busch has been in a position to win multiple times in the past few weeks. When you run well, good things happen. And if what the No. 8 team hit on of late continues, Busch may be in a position to be this year’s non-playoff spoiler.
Yes, that’s a letdown if you are a Busch fan for him not to be in the postseason. But as we have seen previously, a hot-streak version of Busch can be tough to contend with.
Brad joined Frontstretch.com in 2020 and contributes to the site's 5 Points To Ponder column and other roles as needed. A graduate of the University of Georgia's Henry W. Grady School of Journalism and Mass Communication, he has covered sports in some capacity for more than 20 years with coverage including local high school sports, college athletics and minor league hockey. Brad has received multiple awards for his work from the Georgia Press Association.
Is Bootie Barker a good crew chief, I don’t know, but his reputation as one does seem to be a lot larger than his results as a one. If everything else is equal at 23XI and one driver’s in the Playoffs and the other isn’t, then maybe the 23’s crew chief should be evaluated. But if the 23’s crew chief deserves to be evaluated over the team’s failure this year, doesn’t the 23’s driver deserve to be evaluated too?
Exactly right. Driving a JGR car equal, if not better , than all JGR cars. Perhaps the drivers talent just isn’t there to win a race. The crew chief can’t teach his driver to be a real racer. Maybe a racer should be in cup on merit only.
Its funny how these media types never question the driver of the 23 but use every other excuse in the book for the failures of the 23 car.
Austin Cindric was leading Gateway at the time of the pit stops. The only reason Blaney took over the lead was because he took less fuel than he needed (as they found out on the last lap). The narrative that somehow Cindric lucked into the race win just isn’t true.
How often has a crew chief change solved the problem for a driver?