Kyle Petty believes the writing is on the wall for the drivers on the outside of the cut-line in the NASCAR Cup Series Playoffs.
At the moment, that means Martin Truex Jr., Bubba Wallace, Ricky Stenhouse Jr. and Michael McDowell. While they aren’t far from working their way back into the Top 12, those four have the challenge of racing their way in at Bristol this weekend.
However, Petty isn’t giving them as much as a chance as others. The NASCAR on NBC analyst believes the field may have already been set for the next round following last weekend’s race at Kansas.
“As I look at the Playoffs, I talk about it every year, it’s tough to gain points in this system, it is incredibly easy to lose points in this playoff system,” explained Petty. “As we go into Bristol, we look at Martin Truex. He lost 32 points yesterday. 32 — 32 points! Coming out of Kansas. He’s not going to make up 32 points in Bristol, I can tell you that. We look at Bubba Wallace, he lost 18 points. [Ricky] Stenhouse, loses 18 points. Michael McDowell lost 21 points. I am going to say this, and I’m going to go out on a limb here and I might be the only person in America that believes it, we may have seen this round set at Kansas, because I don’t believe that these four teams can recover that many points at a place like Bristol.
“We talk about Daytona being a wild card in the regular season, Bristol is the same type place. You get caught up in somebody else’s mess, you’re headed home. These guys may have been headed home from Kansas.”
Evidently, Petty believes the trouble at Kansas for multiple drivers in the Playoffs may have doomed their season, as Bristol is a beast of it’s own.
“The rest of the field, if you had a P by your name for Playoffs, it meant plenty of trouble,” Petty added. “We saw Martin Truex cut a tire early in the race. We saw Bubba Wallace look like he was going to dominate the race, cut a tire later on. We saw the No. 24, William Byron, a guy that I thought was just going to dominate the entire Playoffs, spin on the backstretch.
“The No. 20 car of Christopher Bell, and the No. 12 car of Ryan Blaney, have trouble on pit road, and have to recover. So there’s so many things that happened to those guys.”
Alas, that won’t quell the hopes of the drivers on the outside looking in at the moment. It’s going to be a fascinating weekend at Bristol, with some intense racing as everyone looking to move on to the Round of 12.
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