Here are the NASCAR drivers on the points bubble after Thursday’s race at Kansas

Denny Hamlin’s fifth win of the year didn’t come as much of a surprise. The No. 11 driver has dominated the field since the first race of the NASCAR season at Daytona, and did so again Thursday at Kansas.

“We can win any given week and that’s something that is really hard to come by,” Hamlin said.

Other drivers, including Hamlin’s Joe Gibbs Racing teammate Kyle Busch, should know. The reigning Cup Series champion still has not won a race in 2020. Busch, who finished 11th at Kansas, falls above the playoff cutoff based on points, and is not quite in jeopardy of missing the postseason, but at least one Cup champion now is.

Seven-time Cup Series champion Jimmie Johnson, ranked 15th in points before the race, fell below the 16-driver cutoff for the postseason after crashing out at Kansas. Johnson was involved in a mid-pack wreck in the final stage of the race, suffering yet another unpredictable blow during his final season of full-time Cup racing.

“There’s just a lot of challenges that we weren’t expecting,” Johnson said on NBCSN before the race. “But we, as a group, need to do a better job working with those challenges and bring some faster cars to the track.”

“I can say the last couple weeks I have had those cars, I just haven’t gotten the car to the finish line,” the Chevrolet driver added.

Johnson finished 11th in the first stage and raced in the top-three off a two-tire call before the restart to close Stage 2. He couldn’t hold the momentum through the stage finish, but ended up in ninth place for some points.

Bad luck struck Johnson late again, though, when he was caught up in a wreck sparked by a Joey Logano flat tire. The damage from the crash eventually forced Johnson out of the race and 18 points behind William Byron, the last driver to make the playoff cutoff, into the 19th slot.

“Just one of those racing deals…” Johnson tweeted along with a video of the impact between Austin Dillon’s No. 3 car and the right front of Johnson’s No. 48 after the race. “I didn’t have anywhere to go.”

Johnson’s poor finish was compounded by the fact that other drivers, earlier ranked below him, like Byron, Tyler Reddick and Erik Jones all finished above him Thursday. Jones finished in fifth place, Byron was 10th and Reddick was 15th. After points were awarded, the order now stands with Byron as the 16th driver (452 points), then Reddick below the cutoff (442), followed by Jones (440) and Johnson (434).

“I think there’s been a lot of (those conversations within Team Hendrick) about how we get the speed there,” Byron said earlier in the week about the recent finishing struggles for him and Johnson.

He said the team’s had “some bright spots” and predicted that Kansas and Dover would be in their “wheelhouse” in terms of performance.

Kansas was looking solid for Johnson until the wreck, which also took out Dillon and Matt DiBenedetto. Dillon, however, already secured his way into the postseason with a victory at Texas last Sunday, as did Cup rookie Cole Custer at Kentucky with a surprise win. DiBenedetto had a solid cushion in points before the race through some top-five finishes, so while the crash was frustrating for him, it wasn’t nearly as detrimental as it was for Johnson.

In contrast, the driver who helped himself most at Kansas was Jones, who made a jump from a 24-point deficit from the cutoff to 12 points behind Byron.

“We started really deep, and just could never quite get up to the front and get clean air,” Jones said on NBCSN after the race, adding that it was a “good” No. 20 Toyota Camry and a “good” effort.

“We just gotta keep doing that and racking these points up and hopefully get a win,” Jones said.

Earlier in the week, Jones said securing points sooner rather than later was a priority with the unpredictable races at the Daytona road course and oval added to the schedule.

While Hamlin and Harvick are becoming names all too common in Victory Lane, based on where drivers on the bubble are running, it’s a matter of time before any one of those names — Byron, Reddick, Jones or Johnson — snag a win in the next seven races.

Perhaps Johnson’s luck will turn in New Hampshire, and it will be another champion, Busch, holding his breath.

NASCAR at Kansas full results

This story was originally published July 24, 2020 at 6:00 AM with the headline "Here are the NASCAR drivers on the points bubble after Thursday’s race at Kansas."

Alexandra Andrejev

The Charlotte Observer

NASCAR and Charlotte FC beat reporter Alex Andrejev joined The Observer in January 2020 following an internship at The Washington Post. She is a two-time APSE award winner for her NASCAR beat coverage and National Motorsports Press Association award winner. She is the host of McClatchy’s podcast “Payback” about women’s soccer. Support my work with a digital subscription