Playoff Longshots Experience Mixed Bag in Atlanta Playoff-Opener

While there was no true "Big One" in Sunday's Quaker State 400 at Atlanta Motor Speedway, the 400-mile event around the hybrid superspeedway/intermediate oval provided a shakeup in the championship standings.

One race into the three-race NASCAR Cup Series Playoffs Round of 16, and the drivers who were the odds-on longshots to take the NASCAR Cup Series championship had a mixed bag of results.

For Austin Cindric (150-1 championship odds heading into Atlanta), Daniel Suarez (80-1 odds), and Alex Bowman (30-1 odds), Sunday was a good day, and by the end of it, all three drivers had bolstered their hopes of advancing to the Round of 12.

While Cindric finished the worst of the three drivers in 10th, he was the class of the field for the majority of the race as he led a race-high 92 laps, and accumulated an impressive 19 Stage Points due to a runner-up finish in the opening Stage of the race, and a win in Stage 2.

Unfortunately, Cindric got mired back in the pack after issues on pit road, but he was making a rally through the field as he was latched to the back bumper of his teammate, and eventual race winner Joey Logano. However, the rally for Cindric ran out of steam as he lost contact with Logano. Still, a 10th-place run at a track known for being a crapshoot is a pretty solid effort.

“We just got off cycle there with a bad pit stop and I just really took a long time to get back up to the front of the field,” Cindric said post-race on pit road. “I feel like I could have made some better decisions on the last couple of restarts, but a solid effort all around with all of the challenges of pack racing.”

And with the good run, Cindric vaulted from 10th in the Playoff Grid to seventh, and he now has a 27-point advantage over the cutline. The Team Penske driver was only two points to the good heading into Sunday.

Suarez, who entered the weekend one point, and one position behind Cindric on the Playoff Grid in the 11th position, nearly repeated his February win at Atlanta Motor Speedway.

The driver of the No. 99 Trackhouse Racing Chevrolet Camaro ZL1 was leading the high lane in the closing laps, with his teammate Ross Chastain pushing him. And they were neck-and-neck with the Team Penske cars of Logano and Ryan Blaney.

Unfortunately, Chastain lost control in Turn 3 on the final lap, which caused Suarez's potential race-winning surge to stall out. However, he was still able to hang on to finish second after the field was frozen in an 11-car melee on the final lap.

Suarez went from 11th, one point to the good, to ninth, 22 points above the cutline with his near-miss of victory lane.

"It was a good day. Every time you get second, it's that close, you feel like you were in position to win, and you didn't win, it doesn't matter if you got a good points day or not," Suarez explained. "I don't feel really good right now. But it's part of it."

Meanwhile, Bowman entered the day as the final driver inside of the cutline, but his advantage was merely a tiebreaker over Chase Briscoe and Harrison Burton, who had the same point total as the Hendrick Motorsports driver.

However, Bowman had potentially the best superspeedway race of his career, and a better race than the one he had at Atlanta in the spring, where he crashed after completing just one lap.

In Sunday's Quaker State 400, Bowman racked up 16 Stage Points with third-place finishes in both Stages, and he finished the race solidly in the fifth position. Sure, Bowman would have preferred a win, but the excellent performance on Sunday greatly improved his Playoff position.

"Yeah, for sure it feels good," Bowman said of his finish. "I would have rather had a win. Top-five is good. Huge points day, but need a whole lot more of that."

Bowman climbed to sixth on the Playoff Grid, and like Cindric, he sits 27 points above the Playoff cutline with two races remaining in the Round of 16.

If Cindric, Suarez, and Bowman can avoid chaos at Watkins Glen and Bristol Motor Speedway, it's a safe bet to think they'll be among the 12 drivers advancing into the next round of the Playoffs.

While it was a good day for those three long shots, it was an equally trying day for fellow Championship longshots Chase Briscoe (100-1 championship odds), Harrison Burton (1,000-1 odds), and Ty Gibbs (30-1 odds).

Briscoe had a really fast No. 14 Stewart-Haas Racing Ford Mustang, a week after his surprise win at the Cook Out Southern 500 at Darlington Raceway. However, what looked to be a promising day, was promptly ruined as Kyle Larson, the championship favorite, crashed ahead of him on Lap 56.

As Larson's car careened into the outside wall and skidded back across the track, Briscoe had nowhere to go and collided with Larson's car. The impact destroyed the front of Briscoe's car and would result in the driver collecting a last-place finish.

"Yeah, just that's NASCAR, right? You can be on top one week, and you can be on the very bottom of the mountain the next week," Briscoe said after a trip to the infield care center. "Yeah, unfortunate. Our car, I thought was an adjustment away from being really good."

With the DNF, Briscoe, who came into the race 13th on the Playoff Grid, tied with the final man inside the cutline (Bowman), he leaves Atlanta as the last man on the totem pole, and he finds himself 21 points outside of the cutline. While it's not a must-win situation for Briscoe, yet, it very well could be by the end of next weekend's race at Watkins Glen.

Likewise, Harrison Burton had a decent run going, but he was unfortunately one of the 11 cars swept up in the crash on the final lap of Sunday's Quaker State 400. Burton, who was staring at a top-15 finish, wound up 31st after his car came to a stop on the track, and would not be able to finish the final lap

Burton now sits 15th on the Playoff Grid, 16 points below the cutline.

While you could call Ty Gibbs' 17th-place run good due to the fact that he actually improved his Playoff standing with it, overall, he didn't improve his position by much at all.

Gibbs has just a one-point advantage on the cutline, and he has two former champions (Brad Keselowski and Martin Truex Jr.) behind him in the standings with two expected high-tire-wear races to close out the Round of 16. Those types of events typically favor veterans, which should put Gibbs at a disadvantage to those two drivers down the stretch.

To make matters worse, Gibbs was in a position to score a much better finish on Sunday. Then, a Walmart advertising sign flew onto the track, which caused a late-race caution.

On the ensuing restart, Gibbs, who was in the mix for the race win, got shuffled out and faded to a 17th-place finish. He could very well advance to the Round of 12, but coming out of Atlanta with just a one-point advantage over Keselowski is a loss for the 21-year-old driver in his first Playoff appearance.

Heading into next weekend's Go Bowling at The Glen, three of the longshots to win the championship, will have a bit of a points, buffer, while three others will have to maximize their performance over the next two races if they hope to keep chasing a championship for another round of the Playoffs.

But for the ones that walked out of Atlanta relatively safe, they can't get complacent. Kyle Larson showcased how quickly a "comfortable" cushion can evaporate in the NASCAR Cup Series Playoffs if something goes wrong in one of these races.

For now, it's onto Watkins Glen International.

Photo Credit: Nigel Kinrade, NKP for Ford Performance