By Don Coble, Jax Sports Wire
With no elimination rounds and 16 playoff drivers in NASCAR’s newest Chase for the Championship, there won’t be a lot of opportunities to recover from a bad race.
But the way Sunday’s Enjoy Illinois 300 at World Wide Technology Raceway at Gateway, Illinois, unfolded, most of the Chase drivers will need a mulligan to get back into championship contention.
Ill-handling cars, overzealous driving and a rash of exploding right-front brake rotors created so much chaos – both with the race’s outcome and in the point standings.
Thirteen of the 16 playoff drivers either spun, crashed or suffered a mechanical failure. Only three, including race winner Kyle Larson, points leader Denny Hamlin and Austin Cindric, left the 1.25-mile oval without a bunch of dents or tattered emotions.
With everyone else spinning or crashing, Larson, Joey Logano, Ryan Preece, Carson Hocevar and William Byron made significant moves in the point standings. What’s even more impressive is the fact Reece, Hocevar and Byron were all involved in spins.
“I’ve never understood the three-wide, Turn 1, on Lap 1 mentality,” Preece said. “Sometimes we put such an emphasis on track position, you want to get all you can on a restart that you throw your entire race away.
“The last thing you need in the Chase are mechanical failures, or things of that nature. Wrecking, you can’t afford it.”
Preece was lucky. So was Byron. Their cars sustained superficial damage after they were in the middle of a six-car pileup on Lap 142. Hocevar crashed with Shane Van Gisbergen on the third lap of overtime, but he managed to keep his Chevrolet rolling to an eighth-place finish that helped him move up three slots in the standings.
Larson advanced five spots in the rankings by snapping a 51-race winless drought. Logano jumped four spots with a third-place finish, while Preece and Byron both advanced four positions.
Six of the 16 Chase contenders finished 25th or worse.
Larson’s best move came with his car stopped on pit road. While most were gambling on track position by only changing right-side tires, Larson insisted on changing all four. That added traction, plus three restarts following crashes and two attempts in overtime, allowed Larson to make up ground and get out front.
Hendrick Motorsports teammate Alex Bowman wound up second, followed by Logano, Byron, Ross Chastain, Austin Dillon, Connor Zilisch, Hamlin and Cindric.
“If it goes green, they don’t get there,” Logano said. “There’s so many cautions, that’s why they got there.”
There also were five brake failures.
“Everyone’s on edge. Everyone’s trying to figure out how to get their cars into the corner,” Logano said. “Long straightaways, they cool off. Then you have a huge braking moment that spikes the heat and they crack.”
Hamlin still leads the standings. Larson, however, is just nine points back, followed by Christopher Bell, Ryan Blaney, Tyler Reddick and Ty Gibbs. Those five drivers either broke a brake rotor or were in an accident.
It won’t get any easier as the series shifts to the third of 10 Chase races at the Bristol Motor Speedway for Saturday night’s Bass Pro Shop Night Race 500. The .533-mile bullring has steep 24- to 28-degree banking which creates a lot of side-by-side battles – and heated crashes.
A lot of feuds were triggered at Bristol – like Randy LaJoie against Buckshot Jones, Dale Earnhardt against Terry Labonte and Rusty Wallace, Jimmy Spencer against Kurt Busch, Kevin Harvick against Greg Biffle and Chase Elliott, and the late Kyle Busch seemingly against everyone.
It’s where Tony Stewart threw his helmet at Matt Kenseth while Kenseth circled the track after forcing Stewart into the wall, and where Dale Jarrett threw his helmet at Bobby Hillin Jr.
Qualifying for the 500-lap race will be on Friday at 5:40 p.m. (Tru). The main event will have a 7:30 p.m. green flag start on USA.
