'Wild Card' Opening Round of NASCAR Cup Playoffs Begins at Atlanta

There are a lot of words that drivers have chosen to describe the 2024 NASCAR Cup Series Playoffs Round of 16 race schedule, but none of them have used the word comfortable. Because it's not, in fact, far from it. An opening Playoff round schedule filled with unknowns, and trouble seemingly around every corner, has drivers and teams loading up on Tums heading into Sunday's Playoff-opener at Atlanta Motor Speedway.

Atlanta Motor Speedway, a 1.54-mile track that was once a bad-fast traditional intermediate oval, was reconfigured in 2022. Since the reconfiguration, the track in Hampton, GA has become one of the least predictable tracks on the entire circuit as it now plays host to the fevered pack-style racing traditionally showcased only at Daytona and Talladega.

“I’ll be honest, the first round is the scariest it’s been in a long time with Atlanta, a superspeedway, starting us off,” Christopher Bell, who is looking for his third-consecutive Championship 4 appearance, said. “We all know how that can go."

Disastrous is how that can go.

A driver and team will not be able to win a NASCAR Cup Series championship by virtue of their result in Sunday's Quaker State 400 at Atlanta Motor Speedway, but they sure as hell could lose any hope of hoisting the Bill France Cup by the end of the weekend.

If Playoff drivers do survive the certain chaos that will undoubtedly erupt within the 400-mile contest at Atlanta, things don't get any less stressful over the following two race weekends.

Following a trip to The Peach State, the NASCAR Cup Series will move on to Watkins Glen International, a tight, high-speed seven-turn road course is enough to worry drivers and teams under normal conditions. However, this time around, there will be the uncertainty of a Goodyear tire, which is supposed to wear quite a bit more, as well as changes to the curbing and rumble strips in portions of the track.

After fighting the unknowns at Watkins Glen, drivers will then have to tussle with a now-known at Bristol Motor Speedway, which chewed tires up and spit them out in April. Goodyear is supposedly bringing the same tire compound back this time around.

But, let's be real, knowing that the tires will potentially wear to the levels we saw in the spring won't make knowing it's coming any easier to deal with. It will just cause competitors to get less sleep heading into what is always a stressful event anyway, the night race at Bristol.

Usually, the Round of 16 is where the cream of the crop is expected to easily move on to the Round of 12, where they will then need to begin buckling down for their potential championship run. With the wild gauntlet of races in the opening round in 2024, many expect some top contenders could be on the outside looking in after the Round of 16.

“I think that you have the oddballs, like right in the first round is a really weird oddball, and you’re going to see some surprise people go home,” Ryan Blaney, the defending NASCAR Cup Series champion, explained. "I feel like you’re going to have issues at Atlanta, you’re going to have issues at Watkins Glen and you’re going to have to throw a Hail Mary at Bristol.”

While trouble lurks around every corner in the Round of 16, the perplexing thing for NASCAR Cup Series championship hopefuls is that if you want any shot at winning any of the three races, which would guarantee your advancement to the Round of 12 no matter what happens the rest of the round, you'll have to push hard all race long. Because as Ty Gibbs explains, none of the three tracks are ones where you can make a massive late-race rally to win.

“I think [the first round] is the most track position race round in the Playoffs," said Gibbs at NASCAR Cup Series Playoffs Media Day. "Atlanta, the top four are basically the guys that win it. Watkins Glen, you have to be up-front, you couldn’t pass last year. I felt like we were so much faster than the guys in front of us and we finished fifth. It takes so much to pass. Bristol, you have to be up-front as well. That is another track position race.”

For guys like Gibbs below, or near the cut line, winning is important. But even for drivers like Kyle Larson, Christopher Bell, or Tyler Reddick, who have accrued a mountain of Playoff Points this season, they can't go fully conservative. As we've seen over the years, sometimes when you lay back in an effort to avoid calamity, calamity will find you.

And in the case of Watkins Glen, if you try to go easy and not put your car on the ragged edge, you're not going to finish top 10. You're not going to even finish top 15 or 20. You're likely going to be near the very back of the entire running order.

“Yeah. I think it’s easy to say [be] conservative, but at a road course, you have to be fast," William Byron stated. "You can’t just show up and try to ride around there. I think it’s important not to make mistakes, but you have to make sure you’re gathering points."

We'll know who the 12 drivers are that advance to continue clashing for a chance at winning the 2024 NASCAR Cup Series championship in three weeks, but there will be an unwavering cloud of uncertainty until the final lap of the Night Race at Bristol. One bad race, one silly mistake, such as the one Martin Truex Jr. made on Lap 3 at Darlington Raceway last weekend, can turn a once-promising season into a disappointment.

The NASCAR Cup Series Playoffs Round of 16 gets started on Sunday, September 8 at 3 PM ET. The race will be televised on USA Network and the NBC Sports App. The Performance Racing Network (PRN) and SiriusXM NASCAR Radio will carry the radio call of the event.

Photo Credit: Alex Slitz, Getty Images