CHARLOTTE ROVAL RACE REVIEW

Date: 10-9-2022. 
Name of the race: Bank of America Roval 400.
Track: Charlotte Roval Road Course.
Laps: 109.
Pole winner: Joey Logano. 
Outside pole: William Byron. 
Stage 1 winner: Joey Logano. 
Stage 2 winner: Ross Chastain. 
Stage 3 winner (won the race): Christopher Bell.
Top 5: Christopher Bell, Kevin Harvick, Kyle Busch, AJ Allmendinger, and Justin Haley. 
FYI: The Charlotte Roval, host of the Round of 12 elimination race, is one of the most anticipated races of the season and has been since its debut in 2018. Every year the Roval has produced exciting road course-related drama, with a mix of surprise winners and just who you would expect to see in victory lane; the addition of the road course has, in recent years, made fans retake interest in NASCAR’s “home track.” With the race being an elimination race to determine which eight drivers would move on to the next round of the playoffs, tensions were high for the four below the cutline. Christopher Bell had put himself in a must-win situation going into the race, having two less-than-stellar runs at Texas Motor Speedway and Talladega Superspeedway the two weeks prior. With one previous road course win in 2021 at the Daytona Road Course, he was in no way the favorite to win it all and advance to the round of eight. Austin Cindric, struggling in his rookie year after winning the season opener at the Daytona 500 back in February, was also in jeopardy of elimination, as well as his Ford teammate racing for Stewart-Haas Racing, Chase Briscoe, and Alex Bowman and the 48 team already out of the playoffs by the start of the race. Bowman had been out with a concussion since the week previous at Talladega, following his nasty wreck at Texas the week before that, and would have Xfinity Series driver and points leader Noah Gragson step in for him for the second week in a row. NASCAR’s first Mexican winner, Daniel Suarez, who grew up road racing in NASCAR’s Peak Auto Mexico series, had won his first cup series race at Sonoma back in June and seemed to be one of the favorites to take home another clutch win and advance but after William Byron had his penalty of wrecking Denny Hamlin under caution two weeks ago in Texas appealed, it put Suarez closer to the cutline, while still being in the good. Kyle Larson, going into the race and last year’s Roval winner, was on track to have a solid day as long as he and the Hendrickcars.com #5 team could stay out of trouble, but far in away the favorite to take home the trophy, was the road course ace himself, Chase Elliott, who had yet to win on one yet in the 2022 season. The week previous, Elliott had become the first driver of the playoffs to win a playoff race and the only one to lock himself into the round of 8. Joey Logano won the pole in qualifying with Byron to his outside, coming to the green flag with Suarez starting in third. The top three would finish the first stage in their starting positions by lap 25 after some savvy pit strategy, claiming more oh-so-important stage points. The race would resume after the leaders would pit, putting two more of the sport’s top road course drivers, Tyler Reddick and AJ Allmendinger, in the top two spots, while Elliott would continue to climb towards the lead. On lap 50, Ross Chastain, who won his first race at COTA back in May, would win stage two. All seemed right for Trackhouse Racing going into the final stage until lap 65 Suarez radioed that his power steering was beginning to fail on him, and he began to drop like a rock through the field, running in 33rd and dropping him in points drastically. Suarez would continue to fight, and four laps later had dropped below the cutline and would continue to get lapped by the leaders. With no real way to replace the power steering pump without losing more track position or dropping out of the race entirely, the 99 team’s fate was essentially sealed. His teammate Ross Chastain would make contact with the wall and go to the garage to get the now broken control arm repaired and hope to regain some track position late in the race. With Elliott now in the lead and the final cycle of pit stops looming, all three leaders would pit, cycling out with Elliott having a huge four-second lead over Tyler Reddick and Aj Almendinger. Daniel Suarez, still struggling to wheel his injured race car around the track, would make contact and spin Corey Lajoie, in what some called retaliation for previous contact causing the 99’s power steering to fail. Lajoie would respond in kind later on lap 98. With 10 laps to go, the unthinkable happened to defending champion Kyle Larson, as he would make contact with an outside wall and cause similar right rear suspension damage to his Chevy Camaro, and began to sink in the points standings. The last thing the 5 team needed was a caution to come out and give Chase Briscoe, running 9th in points, the opportunity to make up some track position and gain more points over Larson, giving Briscoe the transfer spot. But, unfortunately for the 5, a caution came out on lap 104, caused by a piece of signage that had according to Denny Hamlin, been sitting on the racing surface since the beginning of the 3rd stage, leading many to speculate that NASCAR had manufactured the caution to prevent the race from having a boring walk-off finish. The race would resume with two to go, and Allmendinger would drive into turn 1 wide, shoving Elliott to the outside and making him lose the lead. Into the next series of turns, Kevin Harvick would do the same to ‘Dinger and would claim the lead, while the 8 and the 9 made contact in the background, causing Elliott to spin and fall further away from the lead. On lap 110 the race was red flagged when a piece of curbing had come loose on the track, bunching up the field one last time, all helping Briscoe close in on Larson who was now 5 laps down and stuck in 35th position. The only hope Larson had to advance was if Briscoe wouldn’t pass enough cars and gain enough points to transfer to keep the 5 team’s chances of winning their second consecutive title alive. When the race restarted on lap 111, Christopher Bell, who had clawed his way towards the front, with much fresher tires, would easily overtake Kevin Harvick for the race lead and would hold it for the rest of the race while cars would spin going into heartburn turn in a cloud of dust and smoke. On the backstretch, Cole Custer (Chase Briscoe’s teammate) would throw aggressive blocks to help his teammate pass enough cars and gain enough points to eliminate Kyle Larson from the playoffs and advance to the round of 8. Bell won his second race of the year and became the second driver of the 2022 playoffs to lock themselves into the next round on a win. Larson and the 5 team would leave the Roval defeated and out of the playoffs. NASCAR’s current playoff format has been the topic of heated debate since its original inception in 2004 and in its current state has really divided fans against not only themselves, but the legitimacy of the sport and its crowning of a champion, leaving top-tier drivers like Larson to be put in these tight situations and lose the opportunity at a title in such a way that brings the authenticity of the racing into question. Should the playoffs be abolished and have a year-end points total (Winston Cup) format be the way to determine the champion? When does the entertainment factor of a sport outweigh the authenticity of crowning a champion? And how much trouble is NASCAR in if they don’t fix their broken and flawed points system? Time will tell.
Next race: Las Vegas Motor Speedway on Sunday afternoon for the first of the third round of the playoffs.