Ryan Blaney booked the first spot in the quarterfinals of the NASCAR Cup Series playoffs on Sunday. <\/p>\n
The driver of the No. 12 car captured a win at New Hampshire Motor Speedway to advance from the round-of-12 to the round-of-8.<\/p>\n
Blaney beat out Josh Berry in a race dominated by Team Penske. Blaney won the race and his teammate Joey Logano led the most laps. <\/p>\n
Updated NASCAR Cup Series Playoffs Standings<\/strong><\/p>\n Blaney ensured that the next two races will be as stress free as possible for the No. 12 team.<\/p>\n Blaney passed Berry late in the race and held off the push from the No. 21 car to the checkered flag. <\/p>\n The No. 12 car driver is locked into the round-of-8, while the other 11 playoff participants have to fight over the next two races to solidify their spots. <\/p>\n William Byron is in the best spot from a points perspective to advance. He is 47 points above the cut line. <\/p>\n Byron could be in a position to clinch a round-of-8 spot on points sooner rather than later if he replicates the second-place performance he had at Kansas last fall.<\/p>\n Chase Briscoe is in eighth with a 12-point advantage over Ross Chastain on the cut line. Chastain, Austin Cindric, Tyler Reddick and Bubba Wallace all have work to do at Kansas and the Charlotte Roval to make the top eight. <\/p>\n Chastain, Reddick and Wallace are the last three winners of the playoff race at Kansas. <\/p>\n None of the four drivers beneath the cut line finished inside the top 10 at Kansas back in May.<\/p>\n Kyle Larson won that race at Kansas. A win, or a high finish, for the No. 5 car at Kansas this time around would be great for Larson’s round-of-8 status. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ryan Blaney booked the first spot in the quarterfinals of the NASCAR Cup Series playoffs on Sunday. The…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":245148,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[46],"tags":[1406,62,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-245147","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nascar","8":"tag-nascar","9":"tag-sports","10":"tag-united-states","11":"tag-unitedstates","12":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115245239896940723","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/245147","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=245147"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/245147\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/245148"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=245147"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=245147"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=245147"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}