Unless someone comes up with a clutch victory at Phoenix, the 2017 NASCAR Cup Series championship is going to be a strictly Toyota vs. Ford affair.
When the 2017 Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series playoffs began in mid-September, seven of the drivers, or nearly half the field, were Chevrolet drivers. Yet unless Chase Elliott or Jimmie Johnson pull off a win at Phoenix on Sunday, none of them will run for the championship at Phoenix.
For those who have been beating the “Toyota has more speed than the other manufacturers” drum, maybe this is no surprise. On the other hand, Chevy drivers won 10 of the 26 regular season races, and back during the summer, both Kyle Larson and Jimmie Johnson figured to be there right until the end to push the likes of Martin Truex Jr. and Kyle Busch.
But the fall of the Bowtie Brigade has been as sudden as it has hard, and now the battle for the title figures to be settled between Toyota’s Truex and Kyle Busch and Ford’s Kevin Harvick and Brad Keselowski. The most likely other driver to squeak in would be Denny Hamlin, who also drives a Toyota.
How did we get here?
The Chevrolet playoff contingent was never that strong to begin with
Though numbers were on Chevy’s side when the playoffs began, it wasn’t because there was overwhelming strength throughout the group of seven. Three of the drivers — Kasey Kahne, Austin Dillon and Ryan Newman — qualified for the playoffs on the strength of a single win and never figured to be factors. Chase Elliott and Jamie McMurray only made the field on points.
Johnson won three races by June 4 but nothing since, and he and the 48 team seemed to lose their way during the second half of the season when they traditionally come to life and start taking names. That only left one car left that looked like a real contender, and well …
Kyle Larson’s engine failure at Kansas was a huge blow
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In truth, the only Chevrolet that ran up front or at least was fast all year was Larson’s 42. He won more races than anyone else in a Chevy and appeared to be a lock for the Round of 8, if not the Championship 4.
Then disaster struck at the worst possible time. An early end to his day at Kansas left Larson helplessly waiting for points help that never came. Alas, his horrible finishes in the two races since then means he might have bombed out anyway, but none of this would even matter if he had won sometime during the playoffs.
Speaking of which …
Chevy drivers have zero combined playoff wins
Who knew that Denny Hamlin spinning out Chase Elliott would spell doom for not only the young driver of the 24, but the hopes of a manufacturer as well?
Since Larson won at Richmond, Toyota drivers have dominated, winning six of the eight races. Only Brad Keselowski, who held on against a comically attrition-reduced field at Talladega, and Kevin Harvick, have kept then from a clean sweep.
Elliott was close at Chicagoland, Dover and Charlotte and just two laps shy of his first Cup Series win at Martinsville. Larson was the runner-up at New Hampshire, and Newman nearly stole one at Talladega. But close doesn’t count when only wins lock you into the next round, and Chevy drivers just haven’t had the right combination of speed and good fortune since the playoffs started.
Next: 2017 NASCAR Cup Series playoffs standings update
That doesn’t mean it’s going to be doom and gloom going forward. If there’s one constant in the NASCAR Cup Series, it’s the ebb and flow of power between the three manufacturers. Toyota isn’t guaranteed to be the force it was in 2017, though it figures to have a number of the top drivers again.
Larson looks like he’ll be a championship contender for years, and Elliott is just on the verge of a breakthrough. No one in the garage would bet against Johnson, Chad Knaus and company bouncing back, and Hendrick’s incoming duo of William Byron and Alex Bowman, while they might have some growing pains, look like the real deal.
But it’s going to be a long wait until Daytona rolls around in February to see if they can right the Chevy ship. Until then, if you’re a diehard Chevrolet fan, it’s time to pull for the 48 and 24 like never before on Sunday, because they need to win to crash the Toyota/Ford party that appears to be just around the bend,