By Jared Turner Martin Truex Jr. entered the playoffs as a heavy favorite to capture his first Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series championship. Sunday’s playoff opener at Chicagoland did nothing to change Truex’s standing. Already the No. 1 seed in the 16-driver playoff field based on the playoff points he amassed for race wins and stage wins in the regular season, Truex cruised to his fifth win of the season and in the process punched his ticket to the Round of 12. Now guaranteed of advancing, Truex can spend the next two races fine-tuning for the next round and trying to add…

By Jared Turner With each year, it seems to get harder and harder for a non-playoff driver to win in the final 10 races. If Sunday’s Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series playoff opener at Chicagoland is any indication, expect non-playoff drivers to face a similar uphill battle this time around. Of the top 11 finishers on Sunday afternoon in Joliet, Illinois, 10 were playoff drivers. The only top-10 finisher not in the playoffs was seventh-place Joey Logano, who despite running well, never seriously contended for the win in his No. 22 Team Penske Ford. So, how likely is it that a non-playoff…

By Jared Turner Before the first lap was ever logged in the 2017 Monster Energy Series playoffs, the familiar late-season smack talk had already commenced. And, you can thank Brad Keselowski. Clearly peeved by Toyota’s dominance in recent weeks, the Team Penske/Ford driver used Twitter as his medium to suggest that Toyota currently has a major aerodynamic advantage over the other two manufacturers in NASCAR’s top series. “We are all in for a rude awakening,” Keselowski tweeted on Friday. “Haven't seen NASCAR let a manufacturer get this far ahead since the 70s.” Quick to challenge Keselowski’s bold statement was, not surprisingly, one…

By Jared Turner Kyle Busch began the playoffs on a sour note by finishing 15th in a race in which he started from the pole and led a race-high 85 laps. Busch’s day at Chicagoland took a turn for the worse when, after winning the first stage, he was forced to make an unscheduled green-flag pit stop to tighten some loose lug nuts. Matters took an even direr turn for the 2015 Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series champ when he was issued a pass-through penalty for his pit crew coming over the pit wall too soon. Between the lug nut issue and…

By Jared Turner The Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series playoffs are historically a time when some drivers and teams who’ve enjoyed minimal success in the regular season come to life and turn up the proverbial heat, so to speak. Will it happen again this year? The results from the playoff opener at Chicagoland suggest it just might. While Chicagoland winner Martin Truex Jr.’s race victory came as no surprise, the drivers who finished second and third, respectively — Chase Elliott and Kevin Harvick — had one of their better performances in recent memory. In fact, Chicagoland matched Elliott’s best finish of the…