The first elimination race of this year's NASCAR Cup Series playoffs has a pair of former series champions and a three-time Daytona 500 winner in danger of being bumped from title contention Saturday night at Bristol Motor Speedway.
The trio also happen to be among stock-car racing's biggest stars in a 16-driver playoff field that was already missing two-time Cup Series champion Kyle Busch and popular drivers Ross Chastain and Bubba Wallace after all three failed to qualify for the 10-race postseason.
Now the parity shown in the regular season, when 14 drivers won at least one points race during the seven-month grind, seems to have carried over with the playoff field about to be cut to 12 after the third and final race of the first round. Denny Hamlin, Brad Keselowski, Martin Truex Jr. and Harrison Burton are all below the cutline headed into Saturday's race at Bristol.
So what's the plan at the Tennessee short track?
For Hamlin, a four-time winner at the venue, the goal will be very simple once he gets behind the wheel of his Joe Gibbs Racing No. 11 Toyota.
"I'm coming here to win," the three-time Daytona 500 winner said Friday. "That strategy won't change unless the situation changes in the race. I'm going on the offense starting right away, and I'm going to be fine with the result, either way.
"I just know that, over 500 laps here, things will work themselves out."
Team Penske's Joey Logano, a two-time Cup Series champion, is the only driver locked into the second round based on his victory in the playoff opener two weekends ago at Atlanta Motor Speedway. That leaves the other 11 spots open, with the bottom four in the most trouble.
Atlanta (a 1.5-mile track that races more like the superspeedways at Daytona and Talladega) and the road course at Watkins Glen International (where no playoff driver was among the top five finishers last Sunday and only two made it into the top 10) were new additions to the postseason schedule this year.
The unpredictable nature of those tracks and the effect on the entire field — not just playoff drivers — are part of the reason why Hamlin, whose 54 Cup Series wins are the most for any driver without a season championship, 2012 champion Keselowski and 2017 champion Truex landed in their precarious positions.
Keselowski's 19th-place finish at Atlanta was the best among the three drivers in both races. Truex, who was 20th at Watkins Glen, was seething after that race over the lack of respect among drivers on NASCAR's top circuit.
The 44-year-old Truex is exiting the JGR No. 17 Toyota when he retires from full-time competition at the end of the season, and he figured it's probably too late to turn into a dirty driver now. He said he didn't know if he'd be willing to step outside his ethical beliefs to advance into the next round, which begins Sept. 29 at Kansas Speedway.
"I really don't know. I think it will just kind of depend on the situation — what we find ourselves in and what is going on," Truex said. "But most likely not. I will most likely race the same way I always do, and hopefully we are good enough to get the job done in that way."
Truex will start fourth on the 0.533-mile concrete oval Saturday, with his qualifying effort Friday giving him the highest lineup position for a Toyota driver after Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolets swept the top three spots. Hamlin will start eighth, but Keselowski's RFK Racing Ford will begin 23rd in the 37-car field.
Alex Bowman qualified at 126.720 mph in his No. 48 Chevy to earn the fifth pole position of his Cup Series career, and he was followed by teammates Kyle Larson — who leads the circuit with four wins this year — and William Byron.
Playoff participants will fill the top six spots in the lineup, with Stewart-Haas Racing's Chase Briscoe fifth in the best slot for a Ford driver and Christopher Bell sixth in a JGR Toyota. Spire Motorsports rookie Carson Hocevar, coming off a career-best third-place finish last Sunday, will start seventh in a Chevy, with Hamlin followed by Spire's Corey Lajoie, who is not in the playoffs.
Chase Elliott, who is in the playoffs, was next in qualifying, putting all four Hendrick drivers in the top 10 when the green flag drops.
Bowman is fourth in the playoff standings, behind Logano, Bell and Penske's Austin Cindric.
In the starting positions for the remainder of the playoff drivers, Ty Gibbs is 13th, Tyler Reddick 15th, Logano 20th, Ryan Blaney 22nd, Cindric 27th and Daniel Suárez 35th.