DARLINGTON, S.C. — Ahead of the Cup playoffs opening Sunday night at Darlington Raceway on USA Network, the 16 drivers vying for a championship were asked this week to assess their strengths and weaknesses.
This is what they said (drivers are listed in numerical order):
1 – Ross Chastain
“I’ll start with the weakness, because it’s the easiest one. It’s just, are we going to be fast? Are we going to roll off the truck fast for practice at Darlington, and are we going to be able to stay fast on lap10 of that run, lap 20, lap 30, and transfer that through into qualifying for one lap, and then back to long run for the race? That’s the ultimate question for Trackhouse in my mind, is can we go fast? And if we can do that, can we execute? We can call strategy right. … All the little things, I think we can do really well, but it’s holding ourselves accountable to keep doing them well. I don’t just rest on what we’ve done, but you need to make sure we do the little things right.”
2 — Austin Cindric
“I think strength-wise, I don’t feel like I have any motivation or reason to change my approach just because it’s the playoffs. I think our group has our process really well dialed in, especially this year compared to last. I think that mentality for execution is gonna be incredibly important. Weaknesses, look, it’s a difficult series, but I don’t think there’s a standout weakness other than have we gone out and dominated races this year? No, but I don’t think there’s a consistent favorite either, so I think it’s up for anyone.”
3 — Austin Dillon
“I think biggest strength right now as a team, we’re executing well. Weakness, I don’t want this be weakness, but I think qualifying is going to be the most important thing for us. If we can qualify, which I think being in the playoffs and going out later is going to help that for us. We’ve had to fight that from a point situation all year. So now, if we can capitalize on being able to go out late (in qualifying), I think that helps our weakness.”
The NASCAR playoffs begin at “The Track Too Tough To Tame.”
5 — Kyle Larson
“It’s hard to pinpoint one strength because I feel like we have a lot of strengths. Speed is always one, for sure. We’ve just been through a lot throughout the summer. I think we’ve seen a lot of different things and we’re prepared for almost anything. I think we’re looking forward to the challenge of these next 10 and hopefully we can execute on a high level.
“(Weakness) I think still the shorter, flatter tracks, so seeing Gateway and New Hampshire in the playoffs is not something that I was thrilled about. But I do think we’ve made our package better on that style of track. You know, I look at Iowa – we were fast and William (Byron) won, Chase (Elliott) was fast, Alex (Bowman) was fast. When we went to Richmond, we were all really good again. Alex finished second, and I think I was in sixth. Chase was probably one of the best cars that night. William was good, as well. I do think we’ve gotten our cars better on those places, but we still need to probably be better. We’ll see when we get to Gateway and New Hampshire.”
9 — Chase Elliott
“I think the experience … is a major strength, as you just get faced with different situations throughout the final 10 (races). You know, the challenges for us have been mainly on Saturdays, more than they’ve been on Sundays. I’ve been pretty open about that, but yeah, we’ve got to have better Saturdays to set ourselves up better for success.”
Denny Hamlin will be joined on the front row by teammate Chase Briscoe, who won last year’s Southern 500.
11 — Denny Hamlin
“Our strengths are just conventional ovals. Anything that turns left is going to be our strength. We’re in the unique position, there’s truthfully about four or five of us that are the fastest cars every single week and there’s others, right? It’s just, do you have enough of a head start through your playoff points and whatnot to keep moving on? Do you have enough to sustain a bad day that everyone has during the course of a season?
“The challenge will be obviously Talladega. I don’t think I’ve avoided a superspeedway wreck in about 10 years now – or it feels that way. And then, what happens at the Roval, right? There’re so many different strategies and stuff that can happen. What points position are you in before you get to there? A lot of that will be dictated in the first couple races of that round.”
12 — Ryan Blaney
“One thing I’ve been really happy about this year as opposed to last year or the year before that when it took us a little while to get going, early in the year and through the early summer, our pace was just really not where it needed to be, and that was with some car changes and stuff like that. It just took us a while to get our arms around it, but this year I’ve been really happy with our pace all year. I feel like we’ve had super fast cars, been executing really well and we’ve been continuing to get better on our execution and stuff like that. Just mentally tough guys. We’ve had a bunch of DNFs, but don’t really let it get to you, just continue to go do your job very well the weeks after. It’s a cool group to be like that, so this group is very mentally tough.”
Ryan Blaney, Chase Elliott and Bubba Wallace are among a group of playoff drivers who began racing full-time in Cup between 2016-2022 making an impact in the sport.
19 — Chase Briscoe
“For us, our strength is our speed. There’s really not a single style of race track where we haven’t been one of the faster cars in general. I think for us, you know our pit crew has been really good, we just we have a couple of blow up pit stops and just mistakes. Think it all just gets bundled into execution, whether it’s pit crew or myself on the race track. Just executing races from lap one to the final lap. That’s really what I feel like separates teams in the playoffs is just making sure you execute and don’t make these mistakes that take you out of the day.
“If we can do that for 10 weeks, from a speed standpoint. we should have plenty of speed you know run up front and get points. It’s going to be a matter of not shooting ourselves in the foot and if we can do that, I feel like we have a really good shot.”
20 — Christopher Bell
“Well, I would say our biggest strength is road course racing, but there is a guy named Shane van Gisbergen that keeps taking that away. Road courses have been really good, so I’m optimistic about the Roval, and then obviously, short tracks, flat tracks – Phoenix, Loudon, Gateway – those style race tracks have obviously been really good to us for a number of years now. Between the Roval and those – Gateway, Loudon, Phoenix – I think that is our bread and butter.
“Intermediates – we’ve been close and have been able to run well, but it just seems like we have been a little off on winning pace, but … it could change in any week, and we could go out and win any of those races. Weakness for sure is Talladega – even if Talladega is a strength, you are not guaranteed a good finish there. I think we are on par with the rest of them with most of our good tracks.”
21 — Josh Berry
“I feel like our strengths going into this deal are basically every oval track. I look at throughout this season at different races where maybe we didn’t get the finishes that we deserved or the little things here or there that held that back, so I think generally more often that not we had speed at a lot of these places and that’s going to be important when we get into these playoffs and just executing smooth races, making it to the end and seeing what happens. I think weakness probably for us would be the Roval, but we’ve got to get there before we worry about that.”
22 — Joey Logano
“Our biggest strength is gonna be those … those 1-mile, flat tracks. That’s our wheelhouse. Our biggest weakness is probably mile-and-a-halves. With that said, I still think we can win at them, I just think that’s kind of our toughest point or biggest hurdle to try to jump.”
23 — Bubba Wallace
“Biggest strength – I think mentality is my biggest strength. You guys probably wouldn’t give me that trait a couple of years ago. I feel good where I’m at. I feel confident where I’m at. My weakness – I think is the heat of the moment scenarios. I guess it goes with mentality too – how do you react to that. We will go with that.”
USA Network will have coverage from Darlington Raceway beginning at 5:30 p.m. ET Sunday.
24 — William Byron
“I think our strength is just that we’re fast at all the different tracks. I really don’t see a track that we’re at a big deficit. So I think at the same time, though, you never know what everyone else is going to bring and how fast they’re going to be. So we’ve just got to keep working. We can keep getting better, but that’s our strength.
“And then I guess the area we can improve is … I don’t know. There’s not a huge glaring area. We could always be faster on pit road. We could always be faster, have a better balanced car. But I think the underlying theme of the playoffs is just you’ve got to get to the Round of 8, and then you’ve got to start peaking as that round goes. October is the most important time of the year.”
45 — Tyler Reddick
“Our speed is our strength. What’s been our weakness is the execution. We haven’t got the results on those days where we’ve been that fast. Whether that’s DNF or damage and finishing laps down, it seems when you look at this year when we’ve been fast and leading laps, we’ve found a way to not be on the lead lap by the end of it.”
A look at the 16 Cup playoff drivers, key facts and a key question for each as NASCAR’s postseason begins this weekend at Darlington Raceway.
48 — Alex Bowman
“The biggest strength is the momentum that we have behind us … the year that we’ve been able to put together, the speed that we’ve had at some racetracks that I’ve been pretty bad at before. At Homestead, we’ve never been good and we almost won. Richmond, we’ve been pretty bad with the Next Gen car and we were strong there. So I think that shows me that we can go to places that we haven’t been good at before and be really strong. The lack of playoff points is probably our biggest weakness, but the field’s pretty wide open.”
88 — Shane van Gisbergen
“Strength (besides road course), I guess, is my team. I’ve got awesome people in my corner and I know they’ll do anything for us to succeed. Seeing the work and preparation in the team has been awesome. The vibe and how knuckled down everyone is… it’s really cool to be a part of that. The weakness is me. It’s my inexperience and I’ve got those people helping me to get better.”
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