BROOKLYN, Mich. – NASCAR has just two races remaining in the regular season and a pair of competitions are on the line.
Tyler Reddick earned his second win of the season Monday at Michigan International Speedway, giving him the points lead in a closely contested, four-driver race for the regular-season championship.
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Reddick is 10 points ahead of Chase Elliott while Denny Hamlin and Kyle Larson are within striking distance.
Reddick moved past Larson into the top spot in the Cup standings, and his win opened another spot in the playoffs because he was one of 12 drivers who already earned an automatic bid with a victory.
That leaves four spots available in the 16-car playoffs with races left at Daytona on Saturday night and Sept. 1 at Darlington.
Five drivers have a shot to get in without a win, but at least one will be left out.
“It’s really tight on speed on the race track, tight on points,” Reddick said. “That’s what this Next Gen era has really done, brought us closer together from the front of the field to the back.”
Martin Truex Jr. is No. 13 in the playoff standings with a 77-point cushion over the cutline, but no lead in the format can be considered safe.
Ty Gibbs, Chris Buescher and Ross Chastain currently have the final three spots and Bubba Wallace slipped to 17th, one point behind Chastain.
“We knew at the beginning of the year before we ever got to Daytona that the only way to really be comfortable at any point before playoffs was a win,” Buescher said.
Kyle Busch, who won his first stage of the season on Sunday and finished fourth, is among the drivers who have to win to get in.
Austin Dillon will be among the desperate drivers, needing to get to a checkered flag first to extend the season, unless he wins an appeal on Wednesday or a subsequent option to fight NASCAR's decision to revoke his spot in the playoffs.
Dillon was 17th in the FireKeepers 400, a week after he wrecked Joey Logano and Denny Hamlin on the final lap to win at Richmond.
Reddick, meanwhile, is at the front of the pack in points thanks to his consistency, leading the series with 11 top-five finishes and 17 top 10s out of 24 races.
He also won at Talladega four months ago in his No. 45 Toyota for 23XI, which is owned by Hamlin and Michael Jordan, to put himself and team No. 1 in points for the first time.
One wreck, as a slew of drivers experienced at Michigan, can change a lot of things in any race and in the standings.
Larson, who was the BetMGM Sportsbook favorite to win the race, lost control of the No. 5 Chevrolet on lap 115 and several cars were tangled up in the mess.
A few laps later, Logano took his damaged No. 22 Ford to the garage and Wallace’s No. 23 Toyota took a hit to stunt the relative success the on-the-bubble driver was having in the race.
The pileup led to Logano finishing 33rd, with Larson one spot behind and Wallace 26th, pushing him from No. 15 to 17 in the playoff standings for the 16-car field.
“The competition out there, it’s a matter of a couple of feet here and there,” Reddick said.
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AP NASCAR: https://apnews.com/hub/nascar-racing