NASCAR Takeaways: Wrecks put Denny Hamlin, Brad Keselowski in playoff hole

WATKINS GLEN, N.Y. — Chris Buescher won at Watkins Glen, a non-playoff driver spoiling the party for the playoff drivers Sunday looking for an automatic bid to the next round.

It wasn’t much of a party at all for the playoff drivers, with three likely Hall of Fame drivers finding themselves below the playoff cutline entering the final race of the opening round next Saturday night at Bristol Motor Speedway.

Denny Hamlin was involved in two accidents, including one on the opening lap, finished 23rd and is six points behind Ty Gibbs and Chase Briscoe, who are currently tied for the final two spots.

Hamlin started in 22nd, and he credited the poor qualifying result as the reason he ended up in the mess.

“My fault on qualifying — I put us on a bad spot there and put us right in the middle of the crashes,” said Hamlin, who now heads to Bristol needing to perform at a track where he has won the last two Cup races.

“I can’t complain if I qualify bad. … I feel like we should be pretty confident [at Bristol]. I can’t think of the last time we didn’t have a race-winning car there.”

Brad Keselowski also had an eventful day, at one point seeing a three-wide situation where William Byron’s car hit the guardrail and ended up on top of the rear of Keselowski’s car. He was 26th and is 12 points behind heading into Bristol, where he finished third in the spring and has three career Cup wins.

“It’s a great track for us,” Keselowski said. “You don’t want to go there behind. If there’s a track to go behind to, that’s probably a good one for us.”

And Martin Truex Jr. had a frustrating day with a 20th-place finish, putting him 14 points back.

Takeaways from the playoff race on the road course where Buescher and Shane van Gisbergen tangled on the final lap with Buescher emerging victorious. The top five drivers were all non-playoff drivers: Buescher, van Gisbergen, Carson Hocevar, Ross Chastain and Zane Smith.

Buescher Triumphs

Buescher came close to winning a couple of races during the regular season and then ended up the first driver to miss the playoffs on points. His near-misses at Kansas and Darlington gnawed at him.

The RFK Racing driver salvaged something out of his season with the victory. He had a commanding lead until some late cautions and then saw van Gisbergen muscle by him on the final restart. With one lap left to take the lead, Buescher was able to snag it back as he forced van Gisbergen into a mistake in the inner loop, they had some contact and Buescher sped to the win.

“We would have liked to have won a couple weeks ago, but this is huge,” said Buescher, who earned his sixth career Cup win and first on a road course. “It’s such a big win for us.  Everybody at RFK has worked so hard and to finally get a road-course win.

“We’ve been so close so many times and to finally pull that off is fantastic.”

There were no hard feelings after the race as van Gisbergen visited Buescher in victory lane.

“I knew Chris was really going to send it and push me if he could get there,” van Gisbergen said. “As I turned and got a bit loose and clipped the inside wall — driver error. I’m gutted.”

Buescher said he didn’t think there was anything dirty about the final laps, so when van Gisbergen came into victory lane, he assumed he was coming to congratulate him (and he was).

“There was a little push and shoving on both sides,” Buescher said. “Ultimately he had a big error there into the bus stop, and we just took advantage of it and really had to be aggressive to get to the hole.

“But I didn’t feel like there was anything that was dirty about it. I didn’t expect him coming over to be mad about anything.”

Wild Wreck With Playoff Drivers

In one of the more wild wrecks, Joey Logano got into Keselowski to trigger the wreck with Byron. Logano said NASCAR did a poor job cleaning the track after accidents, and there were still marbles of tire rubber on the track.

“I needed to check up more,” Logano said. “But the track is a complete disaster — they need to clean it up. … I got up in the marbles and when I went to turn back to the left, I had crap all over the tires and I got into him.

“It’s still on me. But at the same time, clean the damn track.” 

Logano went down to Keselowski to explain what happened.

“The track was really, really dirty,” Keselowski said. “I assume he had marbles on the tires and he just didn’t make the turn. I got hooked in the left rear. It really is a shame.”

Amazingly, both Byron and Keselowski were able to race their wounded cars to the end.

“The 22 [of Logano] and 6 [of Keselowski] were staggered two-wide, and I was going to get to the outside of the 22 and it looked like the 6 was loose and over-corrected back to the left and got us,” Byron said. “It was a bummer.”

Blaney Upset

Ryan Blaney was involved in an opening-lap wreck where his car ended up stalled on the track. He knew the steering was damaged but also with flat tires, he couldn’t move.

NASCAR policy is that it will tow a car that has spun and has flat tires to pit road for work but a car that is stalled after an accident with damage to the car is done for the day.

It is primarily a driver safety issue in that the driver is required to be checked out at the infield care center. But Blaney felt he possibly could have continued with repairs made in the seven minutes allowed for those whose cars are damaged in a wreck but can drive it back to pit road.

“How are they going to dictate if we are done or not?” Blaney said. “They have no idea of the damage. They said because I couldn’t drive it back to the pit box that we were done, but if you have four flats you get towed back to the pit box. You can’t drive that back.”

Bob Pockrass covers NASCAR 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.

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