NASCAR insiders react to drivers eliminated in Round of 16 after Bristol Night Race

Four drivers were eliminated from the NASCAR Playoffs on Saturday night. So, how did it all play out for these drivers? There were misakes, wrecks, and other incidents that caused chaos for the drivers below the cutline.

The three drivers who made the playoffs from outside of the top-16 in points were Josh Berry, Shane van Gisbergen, and Austin Dillon. Alex Bowman was the last driver in the NASCAR Playoffs to make it on points, without a win. All four were eliminated at Bristol.

For Berry, SVG, and Dillon, it was always going to be an uphill battle. But the elimination for Bowman is particularly difficult for that Hendrick team.

Jeff Gluck and Jordan Bianchi talked about the eliminations after the race on The Teardown podcast. The two journalists for The Athletic went over what went wrong for these four drivers.

“I don’t know that I’ve ever seen the bottom four just collectively have a completely miserable round, and it wasn’t even close,” Gluck said. “There was zero, you know, Josh Berry probably had the worst Round One, anybody’s ever had. Honestly.”

“Look at this, he finished 38th, 36th, 39th. He had two crashes and a mechanical failure that caused his car to catch on fire,” Bianchi responded. “That was his Round One. That might be the worst performance in Round One in the history of this format.”

Three last-place finishes for Josh Berry are the worst Round of 16 performance of all time. He wrecked in Stage 1 twice, and his car caught on fire at Bristol early on. Not a winning strategy.

So, what would it take for those four drivers to advance? Well, Austin Cindric advanced and it didn’t take that much of a great effort. P12, P19, and P30. That’s what it took.

“So, if you look at it, Austin Cindric finished with 66 points, and that included his playoff points, right?” Gluck explained. “He, you know, that’s 22 points a race, if you don’t count playoff points. That’s not, that’s very, if you had just done okay.”

While 22 points per race sounds easy enough, it is actually difficult. As Gluck explained after a 15th-place average finish, would have been enough. Doesn’t sound too hard, right?

Well, there are only nine drivers this season with an average finish of 15.0 or better. On top of that, of the drivers eliminated, Alex Bowman is the only one who averaged more than 22 points per race in the regular season.

Berry, SVG, and Dillon all averaged less than 20 points per race in the regular season. It was always going to be an uphill battle for them. For Bowman? If he had just been average, he would be in the Round of 12.

“I don’t mean to keep harping on this, but that is the difference,” Bianchi said about Bowman’s performance. “You easily can make up 10 points in the last two races. Because it cost them [the 48 team] 20 spots, plus they had a speeding penalty, let’s not forget about that [at Gateway] … and then you have the pit stop fiasco at Darlington. That’s easily, somewhere in there is 10 points, easily. Easily!”

The NASCAR Playoffs are not for average performances. You have to be at your best.