Kyle Busch, Brad Keselowski, Bubba Wallace, and Ross Chastain's seasons end here.
Sunday's NASCAR Cup Series cutoff race at the Charlotte 'Roval' infield road course eliminated four drivers, marking the end of the Round of 12 and setting the stage for the four most important races of the NASCAR season.
Kyle Busch, Ross Chastain, Bubba Wallace, and Brad Keselowski were the four drivers eliminated from championship contention.For Kyle Busch, the disappointing second round marks the end of what started as a promising first season with Richard Childress Racing. The former Joe Gibbs Racing driver and series champion won three races in the regular season, but a DNF at Texas and a finish of 25th at a surprisingly clean Talladega race made this an effective win-or-go-home race. He finished third, coming up short of the next round.Ross Chastain started the round with a second at Texas. A DNF at Talladega put him in trouble for this race, and a recovery to tenth was not nearly enough for him to make the field on points. Bubba Wallace's season ends in a similar way, with Wallace losing a battle to win in the closing laps at Texas, then falling to 23rd at Talladega, and finally missing the playoffs after pitting from the top ten under caution in both stages, fighting up into the top ten under green, and being wrecked late in a chain reaction crash involving contact between two drivers behind him on track.Brad Keselowski, the final eliminated driver in this round, had a season that race results do not accurately capture. While Keselowski himself was winless, he was able to qualify for the playoffs on points in his second season since joining the Roush Fenway Keselowski team he now co-owns. His teammate and employee, Chris Buescher, was able to win three times in five races late in the regular season and has moved on to the Round of Eight. Keselowski joins Denny Hamlin as one of two active drivers with a car owned by his team in with a shot at the Championship Four.Hamlin, Buescher, and Hamlin's 23XI Racing driver Tyler Reddick are joined by William Byron, Christopher Bell, Ryan Blaney, Kyle Larson, and Martin Truex Jr. in the Round of Eight. Truex, notably, qualifies with the help of the playoff points he earned in the regular season despite failing to secure a top fifteen finish in any of the six playoff races held so far. After a round consisting of races at Las Vegas, Homestead, and Martinsville, four of those drivers will head to Phoenix with an equal shot at a championship.
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