Kyle Petty breaks down trouble for playoff drivers at Kansas

Kyle Petty watched in amazement as Kansas caused a stir in the NASCAR Cup Series Playoffs on Sunday afternoon.

From Martin Truex Jr. to Bubba Wallace, some of the top drivers in the sport had immense trouble at the track. As we’ve learned since NASCAR implemented this system for the Playoffs, one bad race could spell the end of your season, and that’s the barrel multiple drivers are staring down at the moment.

“The rest of the field, if you had a P by your name for Playoffs, it meant plenty of trouble,” Petty started. “We saw Martin Truex cut a tire early in the race. We saw Bubba Wallace look like he was going to dominate the race, cut a tire later on. We saw the No. 24, William Byron, a guy that I thought was just going to dominate the entire Playoffs, spin on the backstretch.

“The No. 20 car of Christopher Bell, and the No. 12 car of Ryan Blaney, have trouble on pit road, and have to recover. So there’s so many things that happened to those guys.”

Even though four drivers are on the outside looking in at the moment, they’ll still have a shot at moving to the next round, with Bristol taking place over the weekend. However, Petty relented that it’s incredibly hard to gain points at the moment, and believes the writing could be on the wall.

“As I look at the Playoffs, I talk about it every year, it’s tough to gain points in this system, it is incredibly easy to lose points in this playoff system,” explained Petty. “As we go into Bristol, we look at Martin Truex. He lost 32 points yesterday. 32 — 32 points! Coming out of Kansas. He’s not going to make up 32 points in Bristol, I can tell you that. We look at Bubba Wallace, he lost 18 points. [Ricky] Stenhouse, loses 18 points. Michael McDowell lost 21 points. I am going to say this, and I’m going to go out on a limb here and I might be the only person in America that believes it, we may have seen this round set at Kansas, because I don’t believe that these four teams can recover that many points at a place like Bristol.

“We talk about Daytona being a wild card in the regular season, Bristol is the same type place. You get caught up in somebody else’s mess, you’re headed home. These guys may have been headed home from Kansas.”

Regardless, all that matters is taking care of business on the track, and the drivers on the outside looking in won’t go down quietly. It’s going to be a dog fight at Bristol, and we can’t wait to see who comes out on top.