WATKINS GLEN, N.Y. — Denny Hamlin never had a chance to race for the win at Watkins Glen after he was caught up in an opening-lap wreck that knocked fellow playoff driver Ryan Blaney out of the race.
Hamlin recovered to later gain a stage point, but he eventually spun and the nose of his Toyota tagged the wall. He finished 23rd and was dumped to 13th in the NASCAR playoff standings, six points behind Ty Gibbs on the postseason cutoff line.
Not ideal for the Joe Gibbs Racing driver, though his familiar bravado hasn’t waned as NASCAR heads to Bristol Motor Speedway for the final first-round playoff race.
“I feel like we can go there and win,” Hamlin said. “We are going to an oval, back to a normal track. We can control our own destiny there.”
Hamlin, who has 54 career wins, should feel confident about his chances at Bristol. He’s won in back-to-back years at the track and has four career wins on the 0.533-mile oval.
That should put the drivers around him fighting for a spot in the field of 12 on edge.
Four drivers will be cut from the field Saturday night. Joey Logano won the playoff opener Atlanta Motor Speedway to earn a spot in the second round. Chris Buescher spoiled the playoff party with a win Sunday at Watkins Glen International, leading a string of five non-playoff drivers to the finish.
Hamlin, NASCAR Cup Series champions Brad Keselowski and Martin Truex Jr., and Harrison Burton are in the bottom four. Christopher Bell finished 14th at the Glen and holds a comfortable 46-point edge in the standings.
“It wasn’t pretty how we got there, but we got there and now we can go to Bristol and relax a little bit more,” Bell said.
Watkins Glen was a disaster for most of the playoff field. Chase Briscoe was the highest finisher among the 16 drivers, in sixth place. At least 11 playoff drivers ran into some sort of issue, including a rough scene late in the race where Keselowski and William Byron crashed battling for position. Byron’s Chevrolet landed on top of Keselowski’s Ford with six laps left in the scheduled 90-lap race.
Ten playoff drivers were dumped into the bottom 21 finishers.
No playoff driver had a better bump in the standings than Briscoe. The Stewart-Hass Racing driver, trying to win the team a title in its final season, entered the Glen in 16th and 21 points below the cutline. His sixth-place finish jolted him to 11th and six points ahead of the cutline.
Briscoe, who won at Darlington to clinch a playoff spot, has never finished better than 13th in five career Cup races at Bristol.
“I don’t consider ourselves to be an underdog,” Briscoe said. “Some people might’ve already written us off, but for myself and our entire race team, we all feel like we can win it all. That’s probably crazy from a guy who didn’t look like he was even going to be a part of it, but the way we look at it is if we can win the Southern 500, we can win probably any race throughout the entire season.”
Briscoe, who is signed to drive for Joe Gibbs Racing next season, has reveled in the pressure in the final days of the SHR program that won NASCAR titles with Tony Stewart in 2011 and Kevin Harvick in 2014.
“No other team can compare to what we’re going through, and no other team has the emotions that we do, so I think that’s what makes us so scary,” he said. “We have a lot on our shoulders and there’s a lot of pride that comes along with that. We’re just a unique race team right now.”
Truex, the 2017 champion, has had a farewell season to forget as he heads toward retirement without a victory. The JGR driver was 20th at the Glen and is 15th in the standings, 14 points below the cutline. He has has never won at Bristol in 37 total starts.
Keselowski has one win this season — he earned another as an owner with Buescher at RFK Racing — and was collected in that late crash Sunday. He finished 26th, enough to dump him from 12 points behind Ty Gibbs for 12th.
The 2012 champion, Keselowski has three Bristol wins (2011, 2012, 2020).
Blaney argued his race team should have been allowed to try and repair his Ford on pit road after the first-lap wreck. His car instead was towed to the garage and his race was over. Last season’s Cup champion, Blaney is still in a solid spot, in eighth place and a 29-point edge. He has never won at Bristol.
The complete picture: Logano is in the second round with his Atlanta win. Bell, Austin Cindric, Alex Bowman, Daniel Suarez, Tyler Reddick, Chase Elliott, Blaney, Kyle Larson, Byron, Briscoe and Gibbs make up the rest of the field of 12.
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