The 16-driver NASCAR Cup Series Playoff field was whittled down to just 12 drivers after 500 laps of wild unpredictability at Bristol Motor Speedway on Saturday in the Bass Pro Shops Night Race. Saturday night’s race served as the end of the line as far as the 2025 championship aspirations go for Alex Bowman, Austin Dillon, Shane van Gisbergen, and Josh Berry.
Standings: NASCAR Cup Series Playoff Standings After Bristol
Bowman went down swinging as he found himself in a position to potentially win Saturday night’s race, but ultimately didn’t have enough tires to contend for the win in the final laps. Bowman would exit the Playoffs with an eighth-place run.
It was a rough night for the other three drivers, who failed to advance as van Gisbergen finished 26th, Dillon was 28th, and Berry suffered his third last-place finish in the three races of the Round of 16 after a fire broke out on his No. 21 Ford on Lap 76 of the event.
Race Results: Bass Pro Shops Night Race at Bristol
What’s next for the four drivers and teams who were bounced from the Playoffs in the opening round?
Alex Bowman
Hardly any driver in the NASCAR Cup Series garage has carried more pressure, justified or not, about the status of their seat than Bowman, who has driven for Hendrick Motorsports full-time in the series since the 2018 season.
While Bowman has just seven races left to notch his first win of the season, the 32-year-old driver hasn’t had a bad season. With 15 top-10 finishes on the season, Bowman is just one away from the series lead of 16, which is held by Kyle Larson, Christopher Bell, and Ryan Blaney.
Bowman has been super streaky this season, and when he and crew chief Blake Harris have been on, they’ve been very on. When they’ve been off in the final results, it’s typically due to an extenuating circumstance, which ended their day early.
The driver of the No. 48 car started the season off with five top-10 finishes through the opening six races. Bowman would then endure a mid-season slump, where he’d finish 27th or worse in seven of nine races. And then he’d close out the regular season on a hot streak, which saw him collect seven top-10s over an 11-race stretch.
Provided Hendrick Motorsports doesn’t decide to make a change at driver for the No. 48 team, for which there has been no actual evidence to suggest that they will, the goal for Bowman and the No. 48 team for the remainder of the season is to figure out what has made their team so hot and cold. And if they can figure out how to limit the rough days, they’ll be among the most consistent driver/team pairings in the NASCAR Cup Series garage.
Austin Dillon
It’s hard to call a first-round exit from the Playoffs a disappointment for Austin Dillon and the No. 3 Richard Childress Racing team, as they weren’t realistically expected by many in the preseason to work their way into the Playoffs this year.
However, until Dillon and the No. 3 team don’t unload from the team trailer at Richmond Raceway, where Dillon took his second consecutive win this year, with speed, they have to be considered a fringe Playoff contender, regardless of how they perform leading into that race each season.
That being said, Dillon has taken a slight step forward this season with new crew chief Richard Boswell, who joined RCR after a stint with Stewart-Haas Racing. With seven races remaining this year, Dillon has matched his stat line from 2024 of one win, one top-five, and five top-10 finishes.
Dillon and the No. 3 team have shown solid speed at the shorter, flat tracks on the schedule, and they always seemingly have fast superspeedway cars, although luck dictates a lot of how those races play out for the team. If they can continue taking steps forward on the places where they struggle, which is primarily the intermediate ovals and road courses, Dillon and the No. 3 RCR team could become dangerous.
Shane van Gisbergen
Due to four regular-season road course wins, Shane van Gisbergen entered the NASCAR Cup Series Playoffs with a bountiful harvest of Playoff Points, which many felt could potentially be enough for the driver to overcome his oval racing shortcomings to advance to the Round of 12 of the Playoffs.
Unfortunately, a 32nd-place finish at Darlington Raceway, the lone oval track that SVG had comfort at going into the Round of 16, set the tone for what turned out to be a humbling Round of 16 for van Gisbergen.
Van Gisbergen averaged a finish of 27.667 in the Round of 16, which was contested at three very different oval track layouts.
While we know van Gisbergen will likely win bunches of road course races throughout his NASCAR Cup Series career, which will continually keep him in the NASCAR Cup Series Playoffs, as long as we have a ‘win and you’re in’ format. The focus for the New Zealander and his No. 88 Trackhouse Racing team for the next seven races needs to be to allow the driver to log as many laps as possible and gain as much valuable oval racing experience as he can.
If SVG can gain speed on ovals, watch out. Until then, he’s likely a first-round exit each year.
Josh Berry
If it could go wrong, it did go wrong for Josh Berry and the No. 21 Wood Brothers Racing team in the Round of 16 of the NASCAR Cup Series Playoffs. The latest issue for Berry was a massive fire that broke out in the right-front wheel area on his No. 21 Ford Mustang Dark Horse on Lap 76 of Saturday night’s race at Bristol, which ended his night early.
Berry, who had considerable speed in all three races in the Round of 16, walked away from the round with nothing to show for it as he finished dead last in all three races due to weird situations every week.
That being said, there should be some real optimism at Wood Brothers Racing. While the results weren’t always there this year, the No. 21 team with its new driver Berry and crew chief Miles Stanley, was much improved speed-wise from last year’s pairing of Harrison Burton and Jeremy Bullins.
Berry picked up a stirring win at Las Vegas Motor Speedway early in the season, and he had some truly solid runs at some tracks where it takes a full team effort to do so. If the No. 21 Wood Brothers Racing team can find a way to turn its luck around and limit mistakes as well, they could make a long Playoff run next year, provided they lock into the Playoff field.
The next seven races will provide Berry and the team a platform to ready themselves for their second season together in 2026.
