Grid Notes: NASCAR Cup Series Playoffs This Year Are Wild and Stressful

Verstappen takes the crown, a sloppy mess in Japan, NASCAR's wild playoffs.   [View in Browser]( [Road & Track logo]( [Grid Notes logo]( Hi! Alanis King here. It's Friday again, in case you didn't know. Congrats on making it through the week! Let's talk about what happened during it. [SHOP]( [EXCLUSIVES]( [SUBSCRIBE]( Philip Fong | Getty Images [Max Verstappen Wins the F1 Drivers’ Championship]( Formula One had yet another weird race on Sunday. The series was at Suzuka Circuit in Japan for its 18th race of the season, and we entered the weekend knowing one thing for sure: Red Bull’s Max Verstappen had a good chance of winning the championship. But when it came time to race, Suzuka was covered in rainwater. F1 sent the cars out for about two laps of chaos and crashing, then brought them into the pits again for a red flag due to weather conditions. Everyone sat around for a couple of hours before F1 finally got the race going again, but it wouldn’t go the full distance: F1 places time limits on races, and at the time of the restart, there were only about 40 minutes left. F1 awards partial points for shortened races depending on length, meaning commentators and viewers alike did constant math to figure out how many laps drivers might complete—all while Verstappen led the race. The final tally was 28 of 53, leading most people (including Verstappen) to assume he’d only get partial points for the victory, thus wouldn’t win his title that weekend. We were all wrong. F1 awarded full points, since, as we all learned, partial points are apparently just for situations in which a race stops and doesn’t resume. Because the race resumed—even if drivers only ran about half of the laps—everyone got full points, and Verstappen won the title with four races to go. There’s a [video]( of Verstappen standing in F1’s post-race cooldown room saying he didn’t win the title, then being corrected. “But I’m not [champion], no?” he says. “Yes, you are,” he’s told. “I am?” “Yes, you are.” “You sure?” “Yes.” Verstappen now has two F1 titles, both of which had [bizarre endings](. You have to imagine he just wants a little normalcy in his life. [Read More](     Clive Mason | Getty Images Pierre Gasly and the Tractor Though the F1 field managed just two laps in before returning to the pits, that small window allowed plenty of time for chaos. Carlos Sainz crashed at the start of the race, forcing the safety car out immediately. Visibility on the track was horrible to the point of mortal danger. AlphaTauri driver Pierre Gasly narrowly sped past a tractor that had made its way onto the track to clear crash wreckage. In-car footage shows the tractor virtually appearing from nowhere (you can see that clip [here](), right off the racing line. The incident led drivers to call for accountability from the FIA for the safety concern this crash response posed. [In 2014](, driver Jules Bianchi died in Japan after [crashing into a large recovery vehicle](. "We lost Jules eight years ago in similar conditions with a crane on track in the gravel," Gasly told [Motorsport.com](. "It was a dramatic incident, and I think on that day, we learned we don't want to see any tractors in this kind of conditions ... If I would have lost it and hit a 12-ton crane, I would've been dead right now." The FIA announced [a formal review of the situation]( and penalized Gasly for speeding around the time of the incident. Jared C. Tilton | Getty Images [NASCAR’s Wild Playoff Elimination]( These days, the NASCAR Cup Series championship is decided by a 10-race stretch of elimination playoffs. The Cup Series starts with 16 playoff drivers, drops to 12 after three races, then drops to eight after three more and sends the final four to the last race of the season to compete for the championship. The highest finisher in that race among the four remaining contenders wins the championship. At the Charlotte Motor Speedway roval (a "roval" mixes the track's infield road course with its banked oval) on Sunday, NASCAR whittled down the championship field from 12 to eight. It looked to be a straightforward cutoff race: Christopher Bell, tanking in the points standings, was all but out. Defending champion Kyle Larson was pretty much safe. That's where the playoffs will surprise you. Bell's only realistic hope of advancing to the Round of Eight was to win the roval, since wins in one round automatically qualify a driver for the next. Larson just had to have a decent finish. Larson ended up hitting the wall, and the repair time tanked him in the running order—and the points. Bell pulled off a shock victory, putting Larson one spot under the cut line and knocking him out of contention. There's always next year, I guess. [Read More](   What’s Coming Up This Weekend? Hello! Fred Smith here! I’m Road & Track’s Motorsports Editor. I’m also the person who will be keeping Grid Notes readers up to date on the storylines and TV times for upcoming top-level races. This week, F1 and NASCAR are both in action: NASCAR Cup Series — Las Vegas Motor Speedway Sunday, 2:00 p.m. ET on NBC As the NASCAR Playoffs turn to the Round of Eight, the contenders enter the four-race stretch to decide the Cup Series champion. A chaotic Round of Twelve, however, left reigning champion Kyle Larson on the outside looking in. With Kyle Busch and Kevin Harvick already eliminated, that leaves just Denny Hamlin, Joey Logano, and Chase Elliott among the preseason favorites in contention for a spot in the Championship Four. Will a year with 19 winners over 32 races produce a surprise champion? Ross Chastain, Christopher Bell, Ryan Blaney, William Byron, and Chase Briscoe still have their shot. Bell, Blaney, and Byron have an uphill climb, entering as junior teammates at a manufacturer's top team. Each junior driver will be locked in very real competition with a senior teammate—equipped with far more Championship Four experience—still in contention. Chastain and Briscoe, the lone drivers left from Trackhouse Racing and Stewart-Haas Racing (SHR) respectively, face a different challenge. Both are also young and relatively inexperienced, but there is no risk of either bumping out a teammate with a surer shot at a title. At this point, both drivers are guaranteed to finish their season with a better championship finish than any reasonable expectation they could have had when the season started. For Briscoe, a Championship Four appearance would establish him as a leader at SHR. For Chastain, a Championship Four appearance would establish the entire Trackhouse operation as real contenders. Heading into this three-race round, only Chase Elliott is more than 11 points ahead of the cut line at 31 points clear. No driver is more than nine points behind the cut line. With half of this weekend's field set to be eliminated on points, expect a stressful race at Las Vegas Motor Speedway on Sunday.     [The BMW M4 CSL Makes Way More Power Than It's Supposed to on a Dyno]( [The BMW M4 CSL Makes Way More Power Than It's Supposed to on a Dyno]( [The BMW M4 CSL Makes Way More Power Than It's Supposed to on a Dyno]( [READ MORE]( [Why Doesn't Subaru Sell a Crosstrek WRX?]( [Why Doesn't Subaru Sell a Crosstrek WRX?]( [Why Doesn't Subaru Sell a Crosstrek WRX?]( [READ MORE]( [Is NASCAR Too Expensive For Dale Jr.?]( [Is NASCAR Too Expensive For Dale Jr.?]( [Is NASCAR Too Expensive For Dale Jr.?]( [READ MORE]( [The Lotus Evija Fittipaldi Edition Uses Recycled Aluminum From an F1 Car]( [The Lotus Evija Fittipaldi Edition Uses Recycled Aluminum From an F1 Car]( [The Lotus Evija Fittipaldi Edition Uses Recycled Aluminum From an F1 Car]( [READ MORE]( Follow Us [Unsubscribe]( | [Privacy Notice/Notice at Collection]( RoadandTrack.com ©2022 Hearst Magazine Media, Inc. 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