Potential Playoff Spoilers at Talladega
The NASCAR Playoffs continue Sunday at Talladega Superspeedway for the second race in the Round of Eight. Denny Hamlin won at Las Vegas in the opening race of the round to lock himself into the Championship Four in Phoenix. Three spots remain with seven drivers eligible to make the finale. Talladega is always seen as one of the biggest Wild Card races in the playoffs, and this year should be no different, as it is the first time Talladega has been this late in the playoffs. Since 2014, when elimination rounds were introduced to NASCAR, there have been two non-playoff winners: Bubba Wallace in 2021 and Ricky Stenhouse Jr. last year. While those two will be threats to upset the field again, here are three other non-playoff drivers that could capture the flag Sunday.
Austin Cindric
Though Austin Cindric was in the playoffs, he isn’t anymore after being eliminated in the Round of 12. To get to the playoffs, Cindric made it via the win-and-in opportunity at, ironically, the spring Talladega race. It was his third win of his career and second on a drafting track, as his first career win was the 2022 Daytona 500 in his rookie season. At drafting tracks in the Next Gen car, Cindric has two wins in 23 races and has led 393 laps, the most of any full-time driver. Cindric would be the first driver to win both Talladega races in a season since Jeff Gordon in 2007. He would be the first to win back-to-back Talladega races since his Team Penske teammate Ryan Blaney, when he won the races in fall 2019 and spring 2020.
Erik Jones
The first win of Erik Jones’ career came at Daytona, like Cindric, but it came in the 2018 summer race. In the Next Gen car, Jones has the sixth-best finish at Talladega at 14.6. Throughout those seven races, Jones finished in the top 10 four times. To start the year at Daytona, Jones was on the losing end of a photo finish in the second duel race. The winner that night was CIndric. Jones has gotten progressively better in his Legacy Motor Club Toyota as the season has gone on, and Talladega may be the place where everything comes together for his first win of the season.
Kyle Busch
It’s been a season of doom and gloom for the two-time Cup Series champion. Kyle Busch only has two top-fives and nine top-10s this season, and the most recent for both was a fifth-place finish at Watkins Glen. Since then, Busch has finished outside the top 20 in eight of the past nine races. Busch hasn’t won a race since Gateway in 2023, over two years ago. That year, he won three races, starting with a win in California. His second win that year was the Talladega spring race. If there were ever a time for Busch to pull a rabbit out of his hat, it would be now, as this might be his last realistic shot to win in 2025.
