Ross Chastain crashed the playoff party at Kansas Speedway on Sunday (Sept. 29), winning the Hollywood Casino 400 for his first victory of 2024 and the fifth of his NASCAR Cup Series career.
Many of the 12 remaining playoff drivers had a rough go of it in the Heartland, with six of them finishing outside the top 10 and four championship contenders placing outside the top 20. Poor execution on pits stops played a contributing role to the struggles of some playoff teams.
Here are some of primary pit road plotlines from Kansas.
Team Penske’s Wheel-y Big Problem
It was setting up to be a potentially strong day for Team Penske as Joey Logano, Ryan Blaney, and Austin Cindric all earned points in stage one, finishing the stage in second, third, and seventh, respectively.
Then, peril hit the Penske teams on pit road. During yellow-flag pit stops following stage one, Cindric left pit lane in 10th. However, the No. 2 crew failed to get the right rear wheel completely tight, forcing Cindric back to his stall to tighten the lug nut to avoid a bigger issue.
This was the beginning of the downslide for Cindric, finishing four laps down in 34th to leave Kansas last on the playoff grid at 29 points below the cut line.
Blaney and Logano also got hit with loose wheels during the second half of the race. Under caution on lap 161, Logano had to pit twice due to a loose left rear wheel. Thirty-one laps later, the exact same issue caused Blaney to pit under green.
Blaney rebounded for a fourth-place finish, tying his second-best Cup finish ever at Kansas. Logano was not nearly as fortunate, settling for 14th and going to Talladega Superspeedway clinging to final Round of 8 spot, just four points above the cut line.
The Next Gen car has greatly transformed pit stops at the Cup Series level with its single lug nut wheels. The average time of pit stops has dropped significantly, but so has the margin of error for these pit crews. After Kansas, all three Penske teams will likely spend extra time practicing their pit stops in the hopes of cleaner stops for the rest of the playoffs.
Denny Hamlin Hurt by Slow Pit Stops
It has been far from a clean playoff run so far for Denny Hamlin and the No. 11 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota team.
Hamlin was able to survive and advance to the Round of 12 with a strong fourth-place run at Bristol. But Kansas brought about a new set of issues…
Click Here to Read the Full Original Article at …