Hendrick Motorsports And Unintended Playoff Consequences

When the dust settled after an electrifying finish at Martinsville Speedway, Chase Elliott was almost an afterthought. For NASCAR’s most popular driver, that must have felt unusual. But it was hard not to marvel at Christopher Bell’s second clutch win of the playoffs, a victory that locked him into the championship race. Even more astounding was Ross Chastain riding the wall through turns 3 and 4 on the final lap, picking up just enough points to qualify for the championship race. With Joey Logano already in the final round of the playoffs, Elliott became the fourth and final driver to clinch a title race spot at Martinsville.

Mission accomplished for Elliott, right? Well, kind of.

Thanks to the positions that Chastain picked up with his last lap banzai move, he earned enough points to outscore Elliott in the third round of the playoffs. That doesn’t matter for the driver’s championship since Chastain and Elliott both got to advance. However, Elliott’s No. 9 team does not advance in the playoffs for the owner’s championship. The story of why that scenario exists hinges on several unintended consequences of an unpredictable playoff race.

The inconsistency between the driver’s playoffs and the owner’s playoffs goes back to the beginning of the postseason. Although Kurt Busch elected to withdraw from the playoffs, his No. 45 car was still qualified for the owner’s title by virtue of Busch’s win at Kansas Speedway. Ryan Blaney was thus able to qualify for the postseason due to Busch’s withdrawal, but his No. 12 team did not. Effectively, the No. 45 car was in the owner’s playoffs without a driver, while Blaney was in the driver’s playoffs without his car.

If Blaney or the No. 45 car, now driven by Busch’s teammate Bubba Wallace, had exited the playoffs simultaneously, the difference in the driver’s and owner’s championships would have been a non-story. But things got weird during the second round. First, at Texas Motor Speedway, there was the incident where William Byron spun Denny Hamlin under caution. NASCAR allegedly missed the spin and did not punish Byron mid-race. Instead, the sanctioning body fined and penalized Byron 25 points a few days later. Hendrick Motorsports appealed the penalty the following week and got all the points restored to Byron’s team.

Then, in the last race of the second round at the Charlotte Motor Speedway ROVAL, Larson hit the wall and damaged his car. Unable to recover in the closing…