MOORESVILLE, N.C. — Only two regular-season NASCAR Cup Series races remain.
Those races will be at Richmond (Va.) Raceway and Daytona Int’l Speedway.
Following Sunday’s Go Bowling at The Glen, championship leader William Byron, who finished fourth, extended his advantage to 42 points over Hendrick Motorsports teammate Chase Elliott.
Thirteen drivers have automatic Playoff bids by virtue of a regular season win. Tyler Reddick, Hendrick Motorsports’ Alex Bowman and Sunday’s third-place finisher Chris Buescher round out the 16-drivers currently eligible for the Playoffs.
Ryan Preece and Richard Childress Racing’s Kyle Busch (-102 points) are just below the cutoff line.
A new race winner at the Richmond short track or the Daytona Beach superspeedway, however, could drastically alter the Playoff look.
• Christopher Bell brought his Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota home second at The Glen. He was pleased with the result.
“Happy, yeah. I’m thrilled,” Bell said. “We’ve been struggling a little bit to find a rhythm. I feel like the car has been good, but executing the races has been tough for us. Really awesome to have a good day. Frustrated to get our butts kicked by the 88 (Shane van Gisbergen) car. He’s doing a really good job. That team has it going on. We need to find a little bit more, but certainly happy. It was a good day for DEWALT Camry.”
• Bubba Wallace continued his recent streak of top-10 finishes that began when he won the Brickyard 400 at Indianapolis Motor Speedway. He finished eighth at The Glen.
“Indy was life changing, right? It allowed me to come here and not harp on all of the mistakes that I usually make at a road course and figure out how to make less,” Wallace said. “I think we did that. I don’t think our car was capable of winning at all, but 10th to 12th place is where we determined our team is a couple months ago, and we exceeded that, so that’s a win.”
• Chase Briscoe was in contention to win throughout the day at Watkins Glen, but wound up fifth in the No. 19 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota.
“I guess it would have been that final stage, just strategy kind of got flipped. The 88 (Shane van Gisbergen) and the 1 (Ross Chastain) and myself kind of started right there in the mid pack,” Briscoe explained. “The restart didn’t go me or the 1’s way, the 88 was able to get five spots ahead of us before of us on the first lap and kept pulling further and further away.
“I thought our car was – I don’t know what the 88 had – but I thought we were probably the second-best race car. That restart just didn’t go our way and we lost a lot of track position and obviously was able to play the long game there in the end and come home top-five. Overall, a good solid finish in a fast Bass Pro Shops Camry. We will go onto Richmond and see what we can do.”
• Chris Buescher finished third and all but guaranteed a playoff spot for his RFK Racing Ford with two races remaining.
“Had a fast race car again and definitely took the opportunity to capitalize on some stage points early,’’ said Buescher, who collected 10 important points in winning Stage 1. “Still got back into second [place] there and was making some pretty good headway but just got used up really hard getting by a couple cars to get track position and it fell off pretty hard there at the end.”
• Ryan Blaney finished sixth after starting his Team Penske Ford from the pole.
“Decent day for our Ford Mustang. We led early and settled into second,” Blaney said. “We had a little different strategy than the 88 [Shane Van Gisbergen] and it was kind of a split deal. We lost a little bit of pace at the end of the day. The last run, the track changed a little bit and I got too tight and faded to sixth. Overall, a really good weekend. A great showing for our group and hopefully we learned something for the ROVAL.”
• Daniel Suarez finished seventh for Trackhouse Racing.
“It feels nice to get a good finish for this No. 99 Freeway Insurance Chevrolet team. For the last couple of months, I feel like we’ve had decent, top-10 speed,” Suarez said. “We just haven’t been able to execute. Today, we were able to execute a decent race. This team did a good job all day. Our Chevrolet was pretty good – I don’t know if it was good enough to win, but it was good enough to be fighting in the top-10 and that’s where we ended up.”
