NASCAR Crash Course: Cinderella stories push championship hunt aside at Watkins Glen

Sunday's 38-car Cup Series grid at Watkins Glen featured 16 playoff drivers. That's nearly half the field at a track that typically caters to NASCAR's elite.

Instead? This road course became a bigger championship wild card than Talladega Superspeedway. A record-low two top-10 finishers, just 20 percent, were playoff drivers. None of them placed better than sixth or were in contention for much of the race.

In their place stepped a whole long line of Cinderella stories. Chris Buescher won a last lap for the ages, beating and banging past Australian Shane van Gisbergen as both drivers reminded fans the championship isn't everyone's end goal.

"If we're going to be blunt about it," Buescher said after the win, "Not having to think about points at all on the playoff side of it … opened up more opportunities for us today to be able to go out there and get that win."

That aggression showed during an overtime finish where Buescher clawed back from some initial contact that knocked him out of the lead. With no title on his mind, neither was settling for second as he roared back to put himself in position to battle SVG.

One slip-up gave Buescher an opportunity to cash in.

"I gave him a little bump to get the spot, and I knew it was going to come back," van Gisbergen said. "So, I was just pushing the entries and trying to get away and just made an error. Pissed because these races are hard to win."

Buescher knows that more than anyone this season. He lost out at Kansas Speedway to Kyle Larson by one-thousandth of a second. At Darlington the following week, he was battling for the lead late when contact from Tyler Reddick took them both out of contention. That left last year's Round of 8 participant on the outside looking in at the championship.

But Buescher didn't lose his burning desire to win. And he entered the playoffs hot, posting three straight top-10 finishes to close the regular season, arguably running better right now than teammate (and playoff driver) Brad Keselowski.

"The guiding principle at RFK is that we exist to win races and compete for championships," RFK Racing president Steve Newmark said. "I think their ability to go out there and win a race despite not being in the playoffs and despite having that disappointment is a testament that they are relentless."

The surprises out front didn't stop there. Rookie Carson Hocevar posted the first top-five finish of his Cup career (third). Ross Chastain won the pole and had arguably his best 2024 performance, leading a race-high 51 laps while coming home fourth. And 48-year-old Juan Pablo Montoya thrilled the crowd running his first Cup race in a decade, climbing up inside the top 10 before late problems left him limping home 32nd.

"Our sport is not like others, right?" Buscher added. "We have this playoff format that starts, but nobody goes home. We bring the same 36, 38 cars to the racetrack every week. We race the same drivers and teams every week no matter if there's a playoff going on or not.

"Our sport is not like others in that sense. We're here to race to win. We're going to play spoiler as much as we can in the next seven or eight weeks coming up as well."

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Green: Spire Motorsports. This underdog three-car effort shined posting three cars inside the top 10: Hocevar (third), Zane Smith (fifth) and Corey LaJoie (eighth). That's a first for an organization still seeking its first postseason appearance after six years running full-time.

Yellow: Chase Elliott. On a day where so many title contenders ran into problems, a 16th (plus some stage points) was all Elliott needed to post a comfortable 30-point cushion on the playoff bubble. But for a driver whose first career Cup win came at this track in 2018, runs of 32nd and 19th the past two seasons have ended his reign as the sport's best road course racer.

Red: Ricky Stenhouse Jr. Not every driver who missed the playoffs has risen up to Cinderella status. A first-lap incident that roughed up the field took out Stenhouse along with it, the fifth time in the last 10 races he's crashed out. Last year's Daytona 500 winner now sits 26th in the standings, tied for the worst performance he's had since joining JTG Daugherty Racing in 2021.

Speeding Ticket: NASCAR playoff drivers. The list of woes for the supposed 16 best drivers on tour were never-ending. Ryan Blaney? Caught in a wreck without a single lap complete. Kyle Larson? A costly penalty for vehicle interference. Regular-season champion Tyler Reddick? Left to the mercy of Kyle Busch's front bumper.

Denny Hamlin was perhaps the biggest loser of all, multiple spins and pit road incidents leaving him a mediocre 23rd and sitting on the outside of the Round of 12 looking in. And consider he still finished 11th-best out of 16 playoff drivers.

Some carnage in the final laps, forcing overtime was the cherry on top for playoffs drivers not used to getting stuck in mid-pack. Frustration was evident all over the garage.

"You get green-white-checkered at the end of the race," Martin Truex Jr. said after running 20th, "And you know people are just going to drive through someone. We were on the wrong lane, on the short end of the stick as usual."

Oops!

The day's scariest wreck came with five laps to go when Joey Logano and Brad Keselowski made contact. That sent the No. 6 Ford right into William Byron, leaving Byron's No. 24 Chevrolet climbing up the side of his car.

"Those guys got connected together," Byron said. "I am not sure exactly what happened, but I was trying to get to the outside of the No. 22 and the No. 6 kind of hooked back to the left."

It led to a disturbing visual where Byron's tire looked like it came inside Keselowski's cockpit. The RFK Racing co-owner did go on to finish the race, but was a notable absentee in the victory lane presser where the winning driver (Buescher), crew chief and owner come to take questions. The 2012 Cup champion let his frustration show in a post-race summary on X.