The NASCAR drivers who likely need a win at Charlotte or their 2022 playoff run is over

Sunday's NASCAR Cup Series race at Charlotte Motor Speedway presents a must-win scenario for several drivers hoping to stay alive in the playoffs. Crashes, mechanical failures or bad finishes could spell disaster for any of the contenders.

Drivers are looking to advance to the Round of 8 after the checkered flag falls at the roval - road course-oval combination (2 p.m., NBC). With only one winner going to victory lane, there could be quite a few long faces leaving the 2.280-mile road course Sunday night.

Points leader and two-time roval winner Chase Elliott, driver of the No. 9 Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet, knows how hard vying for a Cup Series championship can be. The 2020 Cup Series champion has seen many ups and downs during his eight-year career.

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“I feel like I’ve been doing this long enough now to understand the roller coaster that is racing,” Elliott said. “It’s going to roll on, right? You either learn to ride it during the good days, during the bad days, too, or you don’t. That’s just part of the deal.

Ryan Blaney, Ross Chastain, Denny Hamlin, Joey Logano, Kyle Larson, Daniel Suarez, Chase Briscoe, Austin Cindric, William Byron or Christopher Bell would clinch a spot in the Round of 8 with a victory at Charlotte.

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In Alex Bowman’s case, he had a waiver and did not compete at Talladega Superspeedway and will not be in the race for the second consecutive week after suffering a concussion at Texas Motor Speedway on Sept. 25. His chances for winning the 2022 Cup Series championship are lost by having to sit out two weeks consecutively. Noah Gragson will once again drive the No. 48 Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet at Charlotte.

Following a playoff race at Talladega Superspeedway last weekend, Stewart-Haas Racing’s Chase Briscoe resides in the eighth and final transfer spot in points. Outside the cutoff looking in are Team Penske’s Austin Cindric, who is tied with Briscoe in points, but Briscoe owns the tie-breaker of best finish in this round, then Hendrick Motorsport’s William Byron (-11) in 10th, Joe Gibbs Racing’s Christopher Bell (-33) in 11th, and Hendrick Motorsports' Bowman (-54) in 12th.

Briscoe, a native of Mitchell, Indiana, is looking for his second victory of the season to go along with his win at Phoenix, Arizona, on March 13 and a win at CMS would be the biggest of his racing career thus far.

What’s the key to making that happen?

“Stay out of trouble,” Briscoe said. “There can be a lot of chaos at the roval, just like we see at superspeedways and some of the bigger tracks. You can lose a ton of positions on restarts and certain turns. If you miss a turn, it can put you behind. We just need to run a good race and stay out of trouble. We’re not in a terrible position to be able to advance but we also can’t have a bad day. It’s tough to gain points but all it takes is us not getting stage points and one of the guys in the bottom four spots winning to knock us out.”

Briscoe has had his struggles on road courses in 2022, with finishes of 13^th at Sonoma, California, 14^th Elkhart Lake, Wisconsin, 23^rd at Indianapolis and 25^th at Watkins Glen, New York. He knows what’s been wrong and is working to correct the problem.

“It’s honestly just this car,” Briscoe said. “It’s not anything we were doing that took away the advantage I felt I had coming to road courses. This car is made to drive better on those kinds of tracks. It used to be I could find areas to gain on guys under braking or figure out how to drive in harder and make a pass. The bigger brakes and things like that make it so much easier for everyone to do those things. So, I don’t know that there’s anything we need to figure out. We just have to run our race and try to be there with a shot at the end.”

Two-time Cup Series champion Kyle Busch, driver of the No. 18 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota, was eliminated from the playoffs at Bristol Motor Speedway on Sept. 17. The Las Vegas native has five Cup Series races remaining in 2022 before joining RCR Enterprises in 2023 for a multi-year deal.

He has yet to win on the roval but does have road course wins at Watkins Glen and Sonoma during his 20-year career.

When asked about the most difficult part of figuring out the roval track, Busch said, “I think the hardest part is just trying to understand the different dynamics between the slow sections in the infield portion of the track versus the high-speed and high-banked portion of the oval track. You are slipping in every corner, there’s not a corner where you are necessarily feeling really good about it. It’s going to be a technical challenge all the way around yet again this year.”

Playoff standings

This article originally appeared on The Fayetteville Observer: NASCAR playoffs: These drivers need win at Charlotte roval