By David Morgan, Associate Editor
Bristol Motor Speedway hosted the first elimination race of the 2022 NASCAR Cup Series Playoffs, marking the end of the road for four drivers and their championship aspirations.
Several drivers entered the night within striking distance of the top-12 in points, but when Saturday night’s wild outing in Thunder Valley ended, Tyler Reddick, Kyle Busch, Austin Dillon, and Kevin Harvick were the unlucky drivers to be on the outside looking in.
For all four, it would be a combination of mechanical issues, on-track incidents, and just plain ol’ bad luck that would be their downfall at the end of the night.
Tyler Reddick – No. 8 Richard Childress Racing Chevrolet
Reddick entered Bristol with a points advantage of just two points and though he didn’t have the outright speed he has shown at other races this season, was holding his own as the race progressed, but a crash on lap 278 changed everything.
The driver of the No. 8 Chevrolet would be among the 12 cars involved in the pileup on the backstretch, sustaining heavy damage that would force extended repairs to get the car back in the race.
Though he returned to the race afterwards, Reddick could only log laps until the end of the race, hoping for more attrition to work in his favor, but he would finish in 25th place, 31 laps down.
“Frustrating for sure,” Reddick said. “We just — I don’t know, we thought qualifying was better for us in our Cheddar’s Scratch Kitchen Chevy, but we didn’t quite have the pace or the balance really to make our car better, and unfortunately the balance issues we were fighting, we were pretty much limited.
We couldn’t really adjust on it without hurting downforce of the car overall, so we were kind of boxed in. Then we just kind of got collected in that accident back there. I checked up in time, but yeah, I got absolutely ran over from there. Caught the right front and broke the upper control arm for the second week in a row.
Kyle Busch – No. 18 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota
Kyle Busch would also finish just two points out of being able to transfer on, marking the earliest exit ever for the driver of the No. 18 Toyota as three bad races in the first round of the Playoffs would be his ultimate downfall.
An engine failure at Darlington, followed by a 26th place finish at Kansas left Busch two points below the cutoff line coming into Bristol, where he had won eight times previously, including…
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