CONCORD, N.C. – The Bank of America ROVAL 400 was not kind to four drivers who were hoping to continue their respective pursuits of the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series championship.
Ryan Newman, Aric Almirola, Kurt Busch and Erik Jones were all eliminated from the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series playoffs Sunday afternoon at Charlotte Motor Speedway.
Newman, who was the underdog entering the 2019 edition of the playoffs, was perhaps the most determined of those who failed to advance to the second round of NASCAR’s postseason.
Late in the race Newman was within a few points of potentially advancing to the second round, but a mistake while trying to hold off Almirola in the final three laps caused him to miss the backstretch chicane. He failed to stop in the restart zone on the frontstretch as required by NASCAR after he missed the chicane, then he failed to adhere to a pass through penalty for not stopping on the frontstretch.
Instead, NASCAR penalized Newman 30 seconds at the conclusion of the race. Newman ended up finishing 32nd as a result, well below the cutoff to advance to the second round of the playoffs.
“I felt like I made a lot of mistakes trying too hard. We did not have the race car and that’s what I had to do,” Newman said. “I felt like we were in a position at one point and then just kept trying too hard trying to keep the 10 car (Almirola) behind us and missed the curbs. That was unfortunate. We came in at a big deficiency and finished one point out or whatever it was, but, no matter what, we’re still gonna fight for fifth. I’m proud of everybody at Roush Fenway for the fight and the opportunity that they’ve given me. We’re not done, we’re just out at this point.”
Almirola’s day was mostly uneventful, but a late strategy call to stay on track when several others ended up biting him when those drivers with fresh tires blew by him in the laps that followed.
Almirola eventually hit pit road for fresh tires and tried to climb back through the field, but he ran out of time and finished 14th and outside the playoff bubble.
“I think they said we missed by five points, so the strategy we were on if the race would have continued to go green to the end we were gonna be in a good situation,” Almirola said. “I think we were seven or eight points to the good. That caution came out and kind of put us in a spot to where we had to choose, and I knew and Johnny (Klausmeier, crew chief) knew that all the guys we were racing in points were gonna do the opposite of whatever we did. We were the first car ahead of all those guys on the cutline, so we stayed out and made our bed and all those guys came and got tires. That’s just part of it.”
For the third-straight week, Busch simply had a bad day. He was one of several cars collected in an incident in turn one during a restart at the end of stage one, then he spun again late in the race coming out of turn eight.
His 20th place finish at Charlotte on Sunday was his fourth-straight finish outside the top-15 and Busch acknowledged he and his Chip Ganassi Racing team had nothing but bad luck throughout the first three playoff races.
“We’ve got to reground in these last seven races to make something better out of our season. It was a nightmare for three races,” Busch said. “We’re out, but we can still try to salvage something overall. We were a top-10 team all year, but the wheels came off it. This was a nightmare.”
Jones entered the ROVAL in a must-win situation after he was disqualified following a fourth-place finish last weekend at Richmond Raceway. His luck didn’t turn around Sunday when he was also collected in the same turn one melee that collected Busch, resulting in a 40th-place finish.
“It’s frustrating. It’s frustrating not just to even have a chance throughout the whole race, you know? We didn’t make it to the first stage and it wasn’t our fault,” Jones said. “That’s probably the most frustrating part is getting taken out and nothing you can do about it. We’ll have to keep going all year, win some more races and come back and start over again in next year’s playoffs.”