As the window for the Round of 12 opens for business on Sunday, the NASCAR Cup Series’ playoffs certainly have a different look and an important question after three races.
For starters, can any team stop Joe Gibbs Racing right now?
JGR swept the first trio of the 10-race postseason and will look to make it four straight in Sunday’s Mobil 1 301 at New Hampshire Motor Speedway in Loudon, N.H., where the attention from last Saturday night’s action in the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains shifts to New England.
Whatever NASCAR did to stress the tires at Bristol Motor Speedway and create Saturday’s chaos is a direction the sanctioning body needs to continue pursuing. At the end of the crazy 500-lapper — when it was often hard to figure out who was leading, who had the best strategy or who was where on the track — it all came down to Christopher Bell.
You remember Bell, right? That driver who won three of 2025’s first four races (Atlanta, Austin and Phoenix) and then pulled a David Copperfield disappearing act for six months?
Well, he’s back to lifting trophies and heading to his best track at “The Magic Mile.”
Since the 2017 season, the 29-year-old Bell has held part-ownership of the Granite State by recording seven victories in NASCAR’s top three series — once in trucks, four in Xfinity (going 4-for-4) and two of the past three Cup races, including last year’s.
Almost everyone at Gibbs is seeing checkers lately.
Chase Briscoe opened the playoffs by repeating as the Southern 500 winner at Darlington. Denny Hamlin added on by winning in Illinois. Then Bell. Heck, even fourth JGR driver Ty Gibbs — 0-for-116 in his four-year career — has stepped up his game and been leading laps lately despite his non-playoff status.
All of this doesn’t bode well for the rest of the competition, including the four drivers who now find themselves below the cut line among the dozen remaining competitors.
The best part about ending the Round of 16 is trimming away four drivers and realizing there are now 12 who were breathing sighs of relief after Bristol’s craziness but whose breaths now quicken with concern.
Those four lurking beneath the cut line are ninth-place Austin Cindric (one point behind Bubba Wallace), Joey Logano and Ross Chastain (both -2), and Tyler Reddick (-3).
Maybe Hendrick Motorsports drivers can slow JGR’s roll and find Victory Lane themselves.
Two weeks ago at the flat, 1.25-mile track outside of St. Louis, Chase Elliott finished third in his best outing at the oval. Teammate Kyle Larson led 52 laps before getting shuffled back during a cycle of pit stops.
Larson has posted runner-up finishes at the Magic Mile in Loudon three times, but the organization’s last victory there was 2012 with Kasey Kahne driving the No. 5 Farmers Insurance Chevrolet.
That’s a far piece back for a racing group that has 318 Cup wins.
Maybe the answer lies in a notebook.
“We’ve been building a notebook for those (flat) tracks, and I feel like those tracks are making more sense than they used to, and that’s a really good sign for us,” Hendrick’s William Byron said. “The notebook is starting to click a little bit more, which is really nice to see.”
Hendrick Motorsports may have a notebook, but right now JGR is teaching class and everybody else is scribbling down notes trying to keep up.
–Field Level Media
