With only Christopher Bell locked into the next round of the playoffs, the first thing every other driver has to do is survive Bristol.
If a driver takes himself out of the race, it’s the worst thing that can happen.
Another driver taking him out is the worst thing that could happen.
The host of the show asked if some drivers run into each other more than others.
Here are the numbers that I thought they did.
The method
If you don’t know what data was used, where it came from, and how the results were arrived at, you won’t trust statistics.
All accidents and spins involving two or more cars were selected by me. There were 69 incidents in which 280 cars were involved.
Cautions aren’t usually caused by incidents at road courses. I compiled the incidents from the video of the road course races. There were more incidents involving 48 cars.
I was able to identify all the correlations. I found all the pairs of drivers who were involved in the same accidents.
I counted the number of accidents in which the No. 1 car was involved.
The number of accidents that a pair of drivers had in the same area is what counts. Zero to six were the numbers.
There is never an analysis that is absolutely perfect. The caveat is that here are some things.
- Counting accidents is subjective. I may not have counted one or two incidents in the road course races that someone else might. NASCAR didn’t count accidents that didn’t cautions.
- I haven’t discriminated between two-car incidents and multi-car crashes. They all potentially hamper the driver’s finish. But drivers take two-car altercations a little more personally. They thus get more attention and we remember them better.
Who contacts the most cars?
I look at how many pairwise crashes each driver had this year. A pairwise collision is just an accident or spin.
There are two rookies at the top of the list. Todd Gilliland was involved in 70 pairswise interactions.
It doesn’t mean you get in trouble with more cars. Austin Cindric had a lot of interactions.
Denny Hamlin is the third driver with a 66. There have been no more than 60 pairwise crashes this year.
There are six drivers who scored between 50 and 59.
The lowest score of all full-time drivers is held by the man. There are other low- scoring drivers.
Specific pairs
Every car would have the same collision score with every other car. We know not to expect that, because where cars run influences who collide with whom.
Cars that run at the front of the field run into other cars that run at the back of the field. Mid-pack and back-of-pack drivers hold the same. At superspeedways crashes tend to collect a larger swathe of positions.
The two drivers involved in the most accidents this year are Cindric and Burton. Burton was a part of one-ninth of the incidents.
Running position can’t explain everything.
Burton has an average running position of 22.9 and Cindric has an average running position of 18.0. The playoff driver has an average running position of 18.2 and no incidents with Burton.
The two men have no incidents.
The other two drivers have high scores with Burton. Gilliland and LaJoie have accidents with the same number. Both LaJoie and Gilliland have an average running position.
One accident with Gilliland has been shared by La Joie.
The diagram below could help if this makes you spin. Each driver is marked by his number. You can see how many incidents each pair has by looking at the arrows.
There were five mutual encounters between the Burton/Gilliland and Burton/LaJoie drivers. Denny Hamlin has accidents with other people.
How to survive Bristol
The driver pairs with the highest scores are shown in the table. If you want to survive Bristol, you should avoid these cars. The network is on Saturday. None of them had scores of four or above, so they weren’t included.
Noah Gragson won his third race in a row on the circuit.
Brandon Jones, who will be replacing Gragson in the No. 9 next season, finished second to win the race by 0.145 seconds.
It was Gragson’s sixth victory of the year and he set a JR Motorsports record for most wins by a driver in a season.
The field for the 12-driver playoff was set after Austin Hill finished third in the regular season finale.
Click here for the results of the race.
The final two spots in the playoffs went to Daniel and Ryan. The last was taken by Sieg when he passed the car that had a mechanical failure.
In his attempt to make the playoffs, Creed was slammed into the wall by Ty Gibbs, who bumped him up the track.
The JR Motorsports teammate of Gragson finished ninth because of a speeding penalty.
There are points.
The regular-season championship was won by Allmendinger. The rest of the top five in points were: Noah Gragson, Ty Gibbs, and Josh Berry.
Gragson will enter the playoffs as the top seed because of his wins and stage wins.
Let the #NASCARPlayoffs begin for the @XfinityRacing Series!@NoahGragson has the most points thanks to his six wins on the year. pic.twitter.com/Ly8ad4pFPS
— NASCAR on NBC (@NASCARonNBC) September 17, 2022
Click here for the current points after Bristol.
The regular season ends after Bristol.
Noah Gragson held off Brandon Jones to win his third race in a row, while Ryan Sieg raced his way into the playoffs with a fifth place finish.
Gragson was the only one who didn’t pit and took the lead. He held off Jones, who was going to take over Gragson’s car.
Gragson has six victories of the year.
MORE: Xfinity race results, driver points
Third place went to Austin Hill, followed by Sam and Riley. A speeding penalty on the final pit stop resulted in a ninth-place finish for Allgaier.
After finishing 10th, Sieg advanced to the playoffs, despite being 19 points behind the last spot.
The chance for Creed to make the playoffs ended with a crash. Noah Gragson hit Ty Gibbs from behind while he was racing side by side with him. Creed was sent up the track by the contact. They were eliminated after going into the wall.
Creed told Dave Burns that his year had been like that. At times, we have speed and then things happen.
Not sure the score between the 9-54 is but eye test says it’s heavy on one end.
— Denny Hamlin (@dennyhamlin) September 17, 2022
Less than 20 laps after he went behind the pit road for repairs, the incident occurred. The man finished 35th.
There was a winner in the Stage 1.
The winner of Stage 2 isJustin Allgaier.
Brandon Jones had his best result in 13 starts at Bristol, finishing second.
He was collected in an incident when he was battling for the lead and the automatic transfer to the second round.
The playoffs start at Texas on September 24. On the USA network.
#NASCAR … Ryan Sieg made the playoffs at Bristol. He talks about the stress of this race … pic.twitter.com/Kj9yEJhXpD
— Dustin Long (@dustinlong) September 17, 2022
#NASCAR … Justin Allgaier called his pit road speeding penalty late in the race a “rookie mistake” … he explains pic.twitter.com/xCaxv5fyDT
— Dustin Long (@dustinlong) September 17, 2022
It will be a challenge for Tyler Reddick to go through next season without his crew chief.
On Friday, Reddick spoke publicly for the first time since it was announced that Busch would drive the No. 8 car. They won a title in the Xfinity Series and a Cup race this year.
Two months after Reddick’s deal to join 23XI Racing became public, an announcement was made.
The car owner said he told Reddick of the changes about an hour before the press conference. Since Reddick will be gone after next season, he made the changes.
Reddick said that the changes didn’t surprise him.
I will be moving on to a new team in the year 2024. It is a challenge to be able to go through that with a new group. It will probably help me when I get used to working with different people, because I’ll be moving on to (23XI Racing in 2024)
He said this week that he would keep Reddick and Busch with him next year. All three teams would need to have a charter in order to play.
Questions remain if Reddick moves to 23XI Racing a year early because of the lack of details on how he will have three teams.
Reddick doesn’t know where he’ll race next year. I will finish what I agreed to do at R CR. I want to see that through the end, no matter what car it is. Richard will give me a lot of those details.
Reddick is the only driver in NASCAR history to win back to back titles with different teams. He won the championship for the second year in a row with Richard Childress Racing.
Reddick said that it doesn’t hurt. I’ve been through that before. Just like any of us would do, we just try to make the most out of what lies ahead, or what our situation is, and give it 100% effort each day and hope it is enough.
Reddick is focused on getting to the second round. He is two points above the cutoff after finishing 35th at Kansas last weekend.
Reddick will start the race in 17th place.
Reddick said that even though they had a rough weekend at Kansas, they still approach it like any other race they have had so far this season.
Aric Almirola will take the green flag in front of eight playoff drivers in the Cup starting lineup Saturday night as the first round concludes at Bristol Motorspeedway. There is an hour and a half time.
After re-signing a contract extension for his No. 10 Ford, Aric Almirola captured the fourth pole of his Cup career. Last year at Nashville Superspeedway, he started 47 times.
The Stewart-Haas Racing driver became the 14th pole-sitter in Cup this season by turning a lap of 14.946 seconds on the half-mile track.
MORE: Click here for Bristol Cup starting lineup by row l By car
In seven races at the short track, Almirola has six top 10 starts and a second place finish.
What a lap!
Retweet to congratulate @Aric_Almirola on winning the pole for Saturday night’s race at @BMSupdates. #NASCAR pic.twitter.com/InKjswzQuk
— NASCAR on NBC (@NASCARonNBC) September 16, 2022
There are 16 drivers in the playoffs.
Denny Hamlin (fourth), Chase Briscoe (second), Alex Bowman (third), Ryan Blaney (sixth), Kevin Harvick (seventh), Christopher Bell (eighth), Austin Cindric (ninth) and William Byron (16th) all finished in the top 16.
There are details for the race at Bristol.
The first round of the playoffs will end with a 500-lap race. Bell is the only one who is going into the second round.
The first race on Bristol’s high-banked concrete with the Next Gen car is below the cutline. They’re trying to avoid first-round elimination for the first time.
Harvick won at Bristol in 2020.
In the past eight races at Bristol, Busch has six top-five finishes and has won eight times.