LAS VEGAS — Putting Talladega Superspeedway as the middle race in NASCAR’s semifinal Round of Eight wasn’t designed to make Cup Series drivers comfortable.
When Talladega was previously in the quarterfinal Round of 12, it made drivers nervous enough. And now? With the stakes arguably even bigger, they face one of the most unpredictable events of the season with championship hopes on the line next Sunday.
“It is an interesting place to place that event, there’s no doubt” said Chase Elliott. “It was done by design. It was done that way on purpose from an entertainment perspective, I assume, in mind.
“And that’s what they’re going to get.”
The field races to the finish in April during the NASCAR Cup Series Jack Link’s 500 at Talladega Superspeedway.
The superspeedway drafting style of racing is unpredictable because NASCAR has to limit horsepower in order to keep the cars from getting airborne on their own on the 2.66-mile high-banked oval. That puts all the cars in a close pack, and they have to use the aerodynamic draft to advance, needing a push from the cars behind them.
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A driver can prevent being passed by switching lanes — a risky move that can often result in a wreck if the driver is too slow to make the block and keep his momentum ahead of the faster lane. With little time to react in the pack, crashes of a dozen cars or more can occur.
For drivers already in a hole in the playoffs after the opening race of the round Sunday at Las Vegas, they know they need a little bit of luck Sunday at Talladega to either win or put themselves in a good position to advance in the elimination race the following week at Martinsville.
A win automatically advances a driver to the next round. The four winless drivers who finish the round with the fewest points among the eight semifinalists are eliminated. The four drivers who advance out of the round vie for the title in the season finale Nov. 2 at Phoenix.
Austin Cindric celebrates in victory lane after winning at Talladega in April 2025.
“I don’t know if I’m a huge fan of where it is in the playoffs, but the rules are the rules and we’re going to play by them,” said three-time Cup champion Joey Logano. “That’s the whole thing with this whole playoff system.
“When we start in Daytona, those are the rules. We all know it. We all know the schedule. We all know how everything goes, and it’s up to us to figure out how to do it the best. They’re not going to change because we don’t like it. They are what they are, so let’s go figure out how to win with it.”
Chase Elliott (minus-23 to the cutline), Logano and Ryan Blaney (minus-31) all likely face a must-win situation at Talladega or Martinsville — unless at least three of the four drivers ahead of them have trouble at Talladega.
Kyle Larson, who finished second at Vegas, enters Talladega with a 35-point cushion, while Christopher Bell is plus-20. Chase Briscoe leads William Byron by 15 points for the last spot.
“[My 20-point margin] doesn’t mean anything,” said Bell, who got knocked out in this round last year. “It doesn’t mean anything. This is déjà vu to last year. And we all know you got to win in this round.”
Denny Hamlin clinched a spot in the title round, thanks to his Vegas win.
“If you leave here in a hole, then you’re now counting on a good Talladega race and you can’t really count on that,” Hamlin said the day prior to his win.
“You might as well budget yourself to finish 25th in points with [some] stage points. That’s like a realistic, how many points you’re usually going to get when you go to that racetrack unless you get fortunate.”
Denny Hamlin (No. 11 car) has punched his ticket to the next round of playoffs.
Briscoe totally understands that.
“We just have to go there and race and hope and pray that you survive,” Briscoe said. “I would obviously have loved to win [at Vegas]. … We have to go and just race as hard as we can and try to execute and let the points be what they are. And if it’s enough, it’ll be enough.”
Larson actually views having Talladega in this round as a potential plus because the chances of one of the playoff drivers winning is actually less than usual. Last year, non-playoff driver Ricky Stenhouse Jr. won the playoff race at Talladega.
“If it’s in the Round of 12, there’s more [playoff] guys that can fluke into a win and take a spot away from getting to the Round of Eight” Larson said. “Where everybody in the Round of Eight, if you win at Talladega, all of us are deserving of being in the final four at this point.
“So, the crashes and whatnot. It can kind of [happen] anywhere. Me, personally, without putting a whole lot of thought into it, I think I like it better in the Round of Eight than other rounds.”
Byron and Blaney found out that crashes can happen anywhere as they wrecked out of Las Vegas.
Blaney blew a tire in the second stage and finished with one point on the day. Byron led 55 laps and was having a strong day when he ran into Ty Dillon, who had slowed on the track in preparation to pit for the final time.
“Everything has to go right in this Round of Eight,” Byron said. “That’s something major that went wrong that I feel like was out of our control. We’ve just got to probably go and win one of the next two.”
Byron, Larson, Briscoe and Bell have never won a Cup race at Talladega. Blaney and Logano each have three wins at Talladega, while Elliott has two.
“You’ve got to be optimistic,” Blaney said. “We’ve had good success at the next two events, so hopefully we can come and bring the speed and try to overcome the hole we put ourselves in.”
And Blaney noted the day before that even if he entered above the cutline at Talladega, it could be gone in a split-second.
“You could be in a pretty good spot, plus-30 on the cutline. And you go to Talladega, and you wreck early. And you get one point, and your competitors go have big days, and [then it’s] what do you got at Martinsville?” Blaney said.
Elliott points to Blaney as a driver whose approach to Talladega is one they have to emulate.
“I use Blaney all the time as a great example. The guy runs really good at all the speedways,” Elliott said. “He puts himself in contention to win all the time. So I do think that there is a way to get yourself to that level.
“He doesn’t win every race. Yes, he still gets caught up in crashes every now and again. But it does seem like he does a better job hedging his bet than the rest of us.
:And I think that’s the type of effort that you can strive to have. But it’ll be chaos.”
Bob Pockrass covers NASCAR and INDYCAR for FOX Sports. He has spent decades covering motorsports, including over 30 Daytona 500s, with stints at ESPN, Sporting News, NASCAR Scene magazine and The (Daytona Beach) News-Journal. Follow him on Twitter @bobpockrass.
