NASCAR Xfinity Series drivers start the second round of their playoffs Saturday, and a driver who has arguably had a championship-caliber season is set to get eliminated after the next three races.
Although eight drivers vie for four spots, when looking at the number of top-5 finishes, five drivers are way above everyone else: Christopher Bell (17 top-5s, including six wins), Justin Allgaier (16, including five wins), Daniel Hemric (13, with no wins), Elliott Sadler (13, with no wins) and Cole Custer (12, with no wins).
Thanks to their bevy of victories, Bell enters this round 33 points ahead of the current cutoff, and Allgaier is 28 points ahead. That cutoff is a tie for fourth between Sadler and Custer, two points behind Hemric and one point ahead of Tyler Reddick, seven in front of Matt Tifft and nine ahead of Austin Cindric.
One different dynamic this year is that there are no Cup drivers in the field for these races. Last year, only drivers with more than five years of experience in Cup were banned from the races in the second round. Bell won at Kansas last year, with Cup driver Erik Jones winning at Texas and then eventual series champion William Byron winning at Phoenix.
"This year, we probably know somebody that we are racing for the championship is going to have a legitimate shot to win their way [at Kansas] on to Homestead, which will give them a huge advantage where they can turn their focus to that," Sadler said.
"The win is up for grabs between all of us. We feel these eight teams probably have the best chance to win this race and hopefully we'll be in that position."
Anything, of course, can happen in the round that consists of races at Kansas, Texas and Phoenix. But barring an upset, one of the five drivers who consistently have run top 5 over the first 29 races will find himself out of the hunt.
"We felt like going into the first round, all we had to do was just finish the races," Sadler said. "Our cars were fast enough and our team was good enough. ... Now that we're in the second round, it has changed.
"Justin and Christopher have a pretty good lead points-wise. The final two positions are what's up for grabs. You're going to have to run in the top 5 all three races to advance. You'll have to average under a fifth-place finish."
The driver who has struggled the most as of late to earn top-5 finishes is Sadler, who is retiring from full-time racing after this year. The JR Motorsports driver has just three top-5s -- all fifth-place finishes -- in the last 12 races.
How does a driver earn three consecutive top-5s?
"You're going to have to be fast," Sadler said. "Christopher Bell is going to be fast. We've seen that -- he was really good in the first round. Allgaier has been really good the whole season. Hemric and Custer have been lightning the last few weeks.
"You're going to have to qualify up front, try to get stage points. The first round was determined by people not making mistakes. The second round is going to be determined about who is going to be legit, who is going to be fast and who is going to get the best finishes."
Hemric might also wonder about his consistency. The Richard Childress Racing driver has four top-5s in his last nine starts but also had entered that first round of the playoffs with six finishes outside the top 10 in the previous nine races.
"There are five or six cars that legitimately that if they hit the right adjustment on the first stop, they can go get control and contend for wins," Hemric said. "It's going to be the same group we're going to have to battle as we try to battle through the next round.
"I'm proud of the speed we had in this round, and our results should have been substantially better, but due to things out of my team's control but in my control, I hurt our finishes in this round and luckily had enough of a cushion to get us by. ... [I need] to get myself right to where I need to be before we get to Kansas because this team deserves that and deserves to win races."
Custer has surged with five top-5s, including a pair of seconds, in the past eight races as his Stewart-Haas Racing team continues to improve.
"It would be nice to win a race," said Custer, who won the finale at Homestead-Miami Speedway last year but wasn't among the four finalists. "I think we'll have a shot to do it at the mile-and-a-halves [at Kansas and Phoenix].
"Those are definitely our strong suit, but we just have to keep doing what we're doing."
The top two should have confidence.
Bell has been on fire with four consecutive top-5s, five wins in the past 12 races and he's going to the track where he earned his first Xfinity Series victory for Joe Gibbs Racing one year ago.
"We're in really good shape right now," Bell said. "The bottom line is my race cars have been so fast. ... Our cars have been so fast all year long [but] now we're just proving that.
"To able to win two of three [in the first] round is really cool. We've added to our bonus points going into the next round. It would be nice to win Kansas and be on offense again the entire next round. Kansas is a good race track for me and for Joe Gibbs Racing as well."
Allgaier got off to a slow start in the first round, with crashes in the first two races but rallied with a third-place finish in the elimination race at Dover. The JR Motorsports driver has three wins and seven top-5s in his past 10 races and doesn't think it was a bad thing that his team had to sweat a little bit going into Dover.
"Sometimes when you have a season like we've had so far, it's easy to get comfortable by gaining all those bonus points and then you get to a situation like we were in, and it was like, 'How do we rally out of this?'" Allgaier said.
"As a team, that is where I think our strength is, getting behind each other and rallying around each other. ... We have to go in and execute and not get crashed in the first two races and if we do that, we've got a great shot of moving to the final four at Homestead."
Sadler says he sees improvement out of drivers such as Reddick and Cindric, and knows with 11 points separating himself, Custer, Reddick, Tifft and Cindric that everyone is in the hunt.
"Some really good race teams are not going to be able to go to Homestead and race for a championship," Sadler said. "We'll see who that is going to be. ... Kansas is a huge race to get that final round started on the right foot."
And the key to that?
"It's going to be my job to communicate correctly and make sure I'm giving them the right feedback," Sadler said. "The car will be fast. My car at Dover was fast, I just didn't do a good job on the communication part from practice on Friday to the race on Saturday.
"I've got to do a better job as a driver and a quarterback to give my guys the best information they can."