September 16, 2019 | By Lee Spencer

Who can escape the Playoff cellar at Richmond?

Martin Truex Jr. and the No. 19 team gambled and won big in the South Point 400 on Sunday.

That wasn’t the case for several of his fellow Playoff competitors. Some went all-in and got burned. Others simply folded.

But with the first race from the first round of the postseason in the books, four drivers have already fallen a full race behind Truex, who left Las Vegas Motor Speedway with the points lead.

Although Ryan Newman sits 13th in the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup standings, it’s a vast improvement considering he entered the Playoffs tied with Clint Bowyer—in the cellar. While the 41-year-old Indianan showed the same exuberance entering Las Vegas as Bowyer, Newman backed up his bravado on Sunday. He gutted out another top 10 in the No. 6 Oscar Mayer Bacon Ford—his 10th such finish of the season.

“I’m surprised we were as loose as we were, but we had a good car and made some decent points but not the day that we wanted to have,” Newman said.

Still, he gained on 12th-place Aric Almirola and now trails the No. 10 Stewart-Haas Racing driver by just six points.

Certainly, this is best the No. 6 Roush Fenway Racing Ford has performed in ages. But while Newman has relied on baby steps to make this team a contender, he will need to take a giant leap not only to advance into the second round but to have any shot at the third.

Newman finished ninth at Richmond in the spring. His sole win there came in 2003. He won his only pole the following season. In 2014, Newman made it all the way to the Championship 4 on gritty runs sans wins, given the addition of Playoff points to the championship format. Unless the competition falters, it will be difficult to match that feat, given that Newman didn’s score a Playoff point in the first 26 races, compared with 45 for regular-season champion Kyle Busch.

Kurt Busch had not been outside of the top 10 in the standings since finishing 25th in the Daytona 500. The 2004 champion had been the class of the field at Ganassi Racing this season. His win at Kentucky Speedway in July was the first victory for the No. 1 Chevrolet since 2013. But bad luck at Indianapolis, where his car was damaged after he encountered an errant tire on pit road, along with a tire failure at Vegas following contact with Truex, mired Busch to 14th on the Playoff grid following two finishes of 30th or worse.

As Busch said after the race, “It just happens that fast.” Busch was running in the top 10 with a tire rub. A split second later he crashed into the outside wall, leading to a last-place finish. The moral of the story is that, when a champion says he needs to pit, his team should listen.

The good news for Busch is he’s solid at Richmond Raceway—the site of this weekend’s Federated Auto Parts 400. He has won twice at the .75-mile oval and has only one DNF in 37 starts. In the last 10 races at Richmond, Busch’s average qualifying effort is 5.7.

Bowyer had the benefit of the pole for the South Point 400—and failed to capitalize. Sure, he was raced hard by his teammate, Daniel Suarez, and lost the point after the first lap, but intensity during the Playoffs is to be expected. What’s not expected is for Bowyer to fall off the lead lap before the end of the first stage, especially when teammate Kevin Harvick is contending for the win in an ill-handling car and Suarez and Almirola also earned stage points in the first segment. After finishing 25th, one lap off the pace, Bowyer knew he had no one to blame but himself.

“We just weren’t very good tonight,” Bowyer said. “We were just off. Off in all areas…It just wasn’t our night. It wasn’t anybody's fault…We shouldn’t have been back there, though.” 

Bowyer, 40, remains 15th in the standings, 70-points out of first and 21 points behind 12th-place Almirola. Bowyer has two wins at Richmond, his last in 2012 while still with Michael Waltrip Racing. He should be encouraged by running third at Richmond in April.

Erik Jones started 2019 strong but has been streaky throughout the season. Although he made a valiant effort over the summer to climb from 18th to ninth in the regular season, lady luck has turned her back on the 23-year-old Joe Gibbs Racing driver of late. After hitting the wall and finishing 22nd at Bristol, Jones locked himself into the Playoffs with his Darlington win.

But similar to Kurt Busch, Jones’ good fortune failed at Indy and Vegas with an average of 37.5 in the last two races. He now trails his JGR teammate Truex by 75 points—a deficit that might just be to difficult to overcome.

“It’s a bummer,” Jones said after his throttle stuck and he plowed into the wall. “I think we could have run top three. Twenty-five points out (of 12th-place), we just have to focus and run well the next two.”

Jones believes with The Roval at Charlotte Motor Speedway being a wildcard race, Richmond is his “shot to win” even though he’s never led a lap at the track and has just one top-10 finish of sixth in five starts.

“We have to push hard,” Jones continued. “We can’t outdo ourselves and beat outselves, but we definitely have to race hard.”