Trackhouse Racing's Ross Chastain finished 19th, and teammates Shane van Gisbergen and Daniel Suárez finished 26th and 37th in Saturday night's 500-lap NASCAR Cup Series race at Bristol (Tenn.) Motor Speedway.
The Bristol race marked the third of NASCAR's 10 playoff races and served as the cutoff race, marking the end of the first round.Suárez staged a frantic rally, driving from 19th to second with four laps remaining before finishing just 0.031 seconds short of his third career victory and an automatic playoff berth. The finish equaled a season's best and marked his third consecutive top-10 finish.
The points earned in the first three playoff races were enough for Chastain (+25 points) to join 11 other drivers and advance to the second round.
Van Gisbergen (-18 points), along with Josh Berry, Alex Bowman and Austin Dillon, were eliminated from playoff contention Saturday.
The second round begins Sunday at New Hampshire Motor Speedway in Loudon.
Four drivers will be eliminated every three races, with the four remaining drivers competing in a winner-take-all Championship race at Phoenix Raceway on Nov. 2.
On Saturday, Chastain regained a lost lap on lap 328 and climbed to 12th late in the race, but a caution in the final laps trapped him a lap down, and he finished in 19th.
Van Gisbergen had two spins and finished three laps down, but survived the chaotic race and finished 26th.
Suárez, who ran in the top-10 early before an issue dropped him four laps off the leader, regained three of those laps, but the rally was cut short when he was sent into the wall by Kyle Larson on lap 363. The accident left him with a 37th-place finish.
It was very apparent in the first stage that tire wear would be a story in the race. Teams were wearing out a set in fewer than 40 laps. Chastain finished 21st, Van Gisbergen 29th, both a lap down, and a broken air gun during a pit stop after pitting from 10th left Suárez in 37th-place - three laps behind the leader.
Tire strategy continued in the second stage. Chastain finished a lap down in 25th, Suárez made up three laps in the stage and finished 28th one lap down, and Van Gisbergen endured a spin and finished 34th, three laps down.
ROSS CHASTAIN
“We survived. For tonight in our No. 1 Moose Chevy, to run those couple laps at the beginning of the race, we were just ripping and rolling along. I saw the No. 16 tank and realized it was a tire wear race. We just had no idea. I think the whole field was caught off guard, but we’ve got to understand when that’s coming. We’ve got some data points now from this track to see what was the same. "Across the board, we just survived. We’re qualifying better, and we have to take that to New Hampshire and on. I’ll be leaning on my teammate, Shane van Gisbergen, for the Charlotte ROVAL. We just have to keep working. The coolest part about this is we’ll wake up Monday morning and go to work.”
SHANE VAN GISBERGEN
“It was a pretty wild night. I just needed to put myself in better spots and understand what was going on earlier in the race. I just made it hard on myself early. Our No. 88 Wendy’s Breakfast Baconator Chevrolet was decent at the end. We got the car handling better for what I needed. I was just too hard on the tires with the way I was driving the car.”
DANIEL SUAREZ
“We dug ourselves a big hole early tonight but we had a pretty good car. I think we were going to regain all four of the laps we lost, but we just got put into the wall. Its more than frustrating.”
