With three races left in the Cup Series regular season, the battle at the playoff cutline couldn’t be much tighter.
And here’s the crazy thing — it was even worse four days ago.
Bubba Wallace currently holds a three-point edge on Chris Buescher, who sits tied with Ross Chastain on the playoff bubble. After Austin Dillon’s shock win at Richmond Raceway, it looked like only Wallace would be in the provisional playoff grid. But an additional spot was opened up after Dillon was stripped of the playoff perks for crashing Joey Logano and Denny Hamlin, placing Buescher back in the field of 16 on a tiebreaker.
The news came as a relief to Wallace.
“It definitely helped us out,” Wallace said Saturday. “We’re still only in by three (points). But there’s four spots now instead of three. Definitely a relief there, but it’s still going to be a dogfight for the next three weeks.
“Still not safe, but there’s an extra spot open now.”
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Wallace has been on a roll in the heat of the summer, notching an average finish of 7.8 in the past five races. It’s been enough to elevate the two-time Cup winner from 15th to 12th in the standings, keeping him just inside of the playoff field despite the number of available spots on points dropping to just four. The only winless drivers ahead of him at this stage are Martin Truex Jr. — who sits 75 points clear of Wallace and comfortably in the playoff field without any issues — and sophomore Ty Gibbs, whose once lengthy advantage is down to 18 points over Chastain.
“We’ve shown up with a lot of speed the last five weeks,” Wallace said. “We’ve shown up with our heads in the game and we’ve been close a couple times. You’ve gotta keep putting your name in the hat. We went for a long time not even having the right size hat on. Showing up and being in the game from the start of practice to the end of the race, which is so hard to do every weekend.”
This summer stretch has been key for Wallace’s playoff ambitions, but he knows he can’t get complacent now. “
“It doesn’t matter how good your last five was, it doesn’t mean your next five are going to be the same,” he said. “It’s a new set of downs — it’s a new week.”
The drivers around Wallace on the cut line have been trending in the opposite direction. Buescher had five top 10s in the opening seven races of the season and came as close as possible to winning as anyone in the sport’s history at Kansas Speedway, but he’s had as many finishes outside of the top 20 (three) as in the top-10 over the past 11 weeks. Chastain had a similar early season stretch and sat as high as fifth in the standings, but, faded and suffered two DNFs in the weeks leading up to the Olympic break that helped push him from ninth in points to 13th.
It’s an uncomfortable position for both drivers, but one Buescher expected without a victory.
“We knew at the beginning of the year, before we ever got to Daytona, that the only way to really be comfortable at any point before the playoffs was to win,” he said. “There’s no way to get through the next three weeks and be comfortable without one.”
The discomfort isn’t going to get any better in the short term. Each of the final three races offers a unique challenge — high speeds at Michigan International Speedway, the risk of the Big One and a surprise winner at Daytona International Speedway, 500 grueling miles at Darlington Raceway. The points situation could swing wildly from week to week.
Dillon’s removal from the equation, appeal pending, leaves an extra spot up for grabs. But it won’t change how Buescher or Chastain approach the next three weeks”.
“Yeah, it affects us,” Chastain said. “You look at that and how it resets, kind of just note it and move on. There’s still an appeal next week, so we’ll see how that plays out.
“But it doesn’t change how I drive here. The math says it doesn’t really change for us much. All of us just slid one spot. It’s just points. If we gain a handful of points, we’ll be ahead of all of them.”
Buescher admits his team would prioritize limiting mistakes if there are any issues to his bubble rivals. But in the absence of that, his team is just focusing on execution.
“It’s similar to the last couple months for us,” he said. “When we go to the racetrack, we need to control what we can. We need to take these Saturdays and be good in qualifying. Figure out how to have a good race car. If we can qualify well, then you can typically grab stage points early. That just comes with running well — it’s not that we’re chasing stage points in Stage 1, it’s just a matter of just being good.
“For us that’s the same way we’re going to approach these. How do we have fast race cars and how do we get our Fifth Third Bank Mustang into victory lane.”
As for Chastain, the goal is simple.
The only goal for the 1 team and Trackhouse is to just go faster,” he said. “That’s going to solve a lot of our problems.”