Chaotic Night in Daytona Sets the Stage for Final Charge to the Playoffs – Motorsports Tribune

By David Morgan, Associate Editor

DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. – It all comes down to Darlington.

With Harrison Burton claiming a season and career defining win to punch his ticket into the 16-driver NASCAR Cup Series Playoff field, just three spots remain up for grabs to finalize the list of drivers that will be eligible to contend for the championship.

As it stands after Daytona, Martin Truex, Jr. is in the best position of those still not locked in, carrying a 58-point advantage into the regular season finale even after getting collected in a crash and finishing 24^th when all was said and done.

Likewise for Ty Gibbs, who finished the night exactly where he started, sitting 39-points up on the cut-line. As such, both of the Joe Gibbs Racing drivers should be safe to move on when the checkered flag falls at Darlington.

Chris Buescher now sits on the cut-off line, holding onto a 21-point advantage heading into the track that he very nearly won at earlier this year.

“Darlington, you’re always racing the track. I don’t want to be in the position leaving here where we have to have too many of those internal thoughts, but it’s a tricky place,” Buescher said ahead of Saturday’s race already looking ahead to the regular season finale 

“I love that racetrack. I love how difficult it is and what it makes you think of as a driver. For us, you will pay attention. If that’s the scenario we’re in, we’ll pay attention to where others are at, but you’ve got to race that racetrack first, run our own race, make sure we don’t make mistakes. 

“You’re right at the edge at any given point there and while the cars have proven to be quite robust when you are right there up against the fence, they’re certainly not indestructible. 

“We have to have our mindset right going in, but it’s about how we’ve gone about the last couple weeks is go to figure out how to win the race. For whatever reason, many different reasons, we haven’t found ourselves with a chance to really compete for a win in the closing stages of these things and with that you kind of turn your attention to those that we are racing on the other side of it and knowing what their situation is and kind of helping decide how we need to approach the ends of these things. You want to ultimately be fighting for the win first and then worry about the rest of it.”

Then there are those below the cut-off line.

Bubba Wallace entered the night within…