Yahoo Autos NASCAR playoff season brings a sting for those on the outside
The notifications started rolling in one after another.
All of the obligations associated with making the NASCAR Cup Series playoffs were taken off Ross Chastain’s calendar. He could do nothing for about 20 minutes but watch as those who had access to his Apple calendar pulled everything off after the Trackhouse Racing driver failed to earn a berth in the postseason.
“I get notifications whenever stuff gets added or taken off,” said Chastain (main image). “It was motivation as I just had to watch them ding and pop up, ‘Deleted. Deleted. Deleted.’ So, it was tough. It doesn’t feel good, for sure.”
Chastain was a part of the postseason the last two seasons, going as far as the Championship 4 in 2022. He won four races between 2022 and ’23.
Since joining Trackhouse Racing, the driver of the No. 1 Chevrolet has been a contender, and has become accustomed to the things that accompany such status. The expectation was for more of the same this year, but Chastain and his team went winless through the regular season and bled away over 120 points in the final eight races to go from sitting well above the cutline (over 90 points after New Hampshire) to the outside looking in.
Now, as the most important part of the season rolls on, Chastain continues to look for the right pieces. Statistically, he is on track to have his worst season with Trackhouse Racing when it comes to top-10 and top-five finishes.
But Chastain isn’t the only driver facing this reality. Kyle Busch missed the postseason for only the fourth time in his Cup Series career, and the first time in over 10 years (2012). It is almost unfathomable to think of the postseason and competing for a championship without the two-time champion.
“My Wednesday was great,” Busch said with a smile, referring to NASCAR Cup Series playoff media day, where all 16 eligible drivers are made available. “It was fantastic. I loved it. I got to do what I wanted to do on Wednesday. So that wasn’t so bad.”
Busch admitted he began to come to grips with not making the postseason with five races left in the regular season. His Richard Childress Racing team has struggled in its second year together; Busch is still winless, and until the series returned from the Olympic break last month, he did not have the consistent speed to run inside the top 10.
Although it wasn’t a surprise to see Busch miss the postseason given his performance, and while he can joke about not having as many responsibilities in the season’s homestretch, Busch also said, “That comes with a cost.
Busch, pictured above chasing playoffs No.1 seed Kyle Larson at Daytona last month, is looking forward to playing the spoiler role in the final races of the season. John K Harrelson/Motorsport Images
“I’ve lost a substantial amount of money, let’s say, in the last few weeks (because) of not making the playoffs, not getting wins and things like that. That’s a big hit. But again, it is what it is. We just move on. We go through and try to play spoiler now, and try to go out and be a guy that’s on the outside looking in and take victories from these guys who want them to be able to move to the next round.”
Chris Buescher is well aware of what it feels like to be both included and excluded from the postseason. Buescher earned a berth in 2016 with an unexpected weather-shortened victory at Pocono Raceway. He made a return to the postseason last year with RFK Racing and looked well-equipped to do the same this season, but was knocked out after the regular season finale when another new winner, Chase Briscoe, emerged.
“It goes through a range (of emotion),” Buescher said. “The first part of it was just the frustration and airing that out with our entire group. We’ve had a really great year: our average finish on the season is top five. Our year has been strong in a lot of different ways.”
The airing-out happened during the weekly post-weekend debrief. It was nothing crazy, Buescher said. As the team went through the different scenarios, they felt they covered the competitors they needed to at Darlington Raceway, and had it not been for Briscoe, they were headed toward a postseason berth. There is not much Buescher and his group felt they could have done differently – other than winning.
Buescher was 11th in the overall championship standings before it was reseeded for the playoffs, and his average finish of 13.7 was fourth-best in the series.
“Playoff media day was missed,” Buescher said. “We had that one on the calendar. That’s really the only thing that changed.”
The last time crew chief Rodney Childers wasn’t competing for a championship was in 2013, a year before he joined Stewart-Haas Racing with Kevin Harvick. Over the last 10 years, Childers guided his team to a top-five championship points finish seven times. In five of those 10 seasons (2014, 2015, 2017, 2018, 2019), he was in the championship race. This time around, Childers and rookie Josh Berry needed to win a race to make the postseason.
“It really is” weird not to be on a championship run again, Childers admitted. “It seems like it’s been forever since we weren’t in the playoffs. But maybe we took that for granted. To have Chase Briscoe in it, you kind of get that same sense around the shop. At least, you still have those same conversations. For us, I still feel like we’re in that same mode because we want to win a race so bad with Josh, and we’ve had really good cars lately.”
Childers did admit it’s nice to have a different mentality this year – show up and race, and not get caught up in points.
The final 10 weeks of the season are a lot more stressful for those living in a championship hunt. There is more on the line, more responsibilities and more attention. It’s a much different environment for those not included in the playoff picture. But not necessarily a bad one.
“I said it in our meeting (at Atlanta), ‘We need to concentrate on winning races,’” Childers said. “With Kevin, that’s how we always got through the playoffs. But it was nice (last) week to not deal with the drama. I’m not much for drama; I just want to go race and win races.”
