The Oct. 4 race at Talladega Superspeedway not only cemented Denny Hamlin’s advancement to the third round, or round of eight, of the 2020 NASCAR Cup Series playoffs, it factored into NASCAR’s formula to determine race starting grids to give Hamlin the pole for Sunday’s Bank of America 400 at the Roval on Charlotte Motor Speedway’s infield road course.
“We finally got one back,” Hamlin said of his Talladega win. “That win was unexpected to say the least, but I’m proud of this whole FedEx team, Toyota and everyone at JGR for bringing great race cars. Our confidence is high going into Charlotte this week.”
Hamlin will share the front row with Chase Elliott, the defending winner of the yearly race on Charlotte’s Roval and winner of the last three road-course races in the Cup Series, going back to the 2019 season.
“Yeah, just a crazy event, for sure. A lot of good fortune,” Elliott said of his race at the Roval last season. “Obviously, a big mistake on my end and we were fortunate that our car wasn’t tore up very bad, somehow, and was able to fight back up through there. We had just enough time to kind of get back to the front and have a shot at it. First off, I had a really fast car. And, secondly, I made a really big mistake. Third, our car wasn’t tore up as bad as I thought it should have been. So just had a lot of things go in our favor with the way the rest of the race went – the cautions how they fell, a couple of good restarts, and things just went our way. I’m glad it did, for sure. I’d like to eliminate running into the tire barriers if we have a fast car like that again.”
Brad Keselowski and this year’s regular-season champion, Kevin Harvick, will start in the second row in the third and fourth positions. Alex Bowman and Austin Dillon will start behind them in the third row.
In one of the positions in the first three rows, Dillon will be the highest starter among the four drivers in provisional playoff-elimination positions for the elimination race of the second round. Dillon heads into the Roval race ninth in the standings.
“We have the Roval left in the round of 12,” Dillon said. “We just need some help from some of these guys who are higher than us in the point standings, and we have to be in the position to help ourselves some, too. We’re going to rely on our notes from the Daytona Road Course a lot. Kaz Grala was a fill-in driver for me that week, and he did a great job. We will try to use that same setup moving forward. The Roval has never been the greatest track for us, but we’ll see what we can do. We’re going to try our hardest.”
Kyle Busch, the reigning Cup Series champion the first driver in a provisional elimination spot, will start ninth among the 12 playoff drivers.
“The things that we’ve learned is just how to drive the place, how to continue to improve on how to drive the place and also with the race team on trying to find more grip,” Busch said. “The last two times we’ve been there, it just seems that we don’t quite have all of what we’re looking for. We were going to have a decent run maybe the first year, maybe a third or fourth-place finish, and then last year, we were destined for a top-six. Each year, we get caught up in stuff. The first year following everybody off the cliff into turn one and then last year getting hit on a restart with somebody making a three-wide move getting into one and caused damage to our car, got a flat tire and never recovered. Just unfortunate circumstances. We just have to keep ourselves out of trouble. That’s hard to do on such a tight circuit with a lot of stuff going on and a lot of guys making desperation moves and us needing to make some desperation moves, too, most likely.”
Busch is eighth in the points standings, but his brother Kurt Busch, who is behind him in the standings, jumps ahead of him with playoff advancement clinched, courtesy of his win at Las Vegas Motor Speedway two week earlier. Kurt Busch starts 10th for Sunday’s race.
Meanwhile, the other two drivers in provisional elimination spots — Stewart Haas Racing teammates Clint Bowyer and Aric Almirola — will start in the two worst positions among playoff drivers, Bowyer in 11th and Almirola in 12th.
