NASCAR Truck Series: Kyle Busch Motorsports the big winners after Iowa

Kyle Busch Motorsports were the big winners following that NASCAR Truck Series race at Iowa Speedway that resulted in Ross Chastain being stripped of a victory.

Niece Motorsports’ Ross Chastain initially won Sunday afternoon’s M&M’s 200 at Iowa Speedway, giving him two victories through the first 10 races of the 23-race 2019 NASCAR Truck Series season and the first that he could use towards locking himself into the playoffs.

But after this 200-lap race around the four-turn, 0.875-mile (1.408-kilometer) Iowa Speedway oval in Newton, Iowa concluded, the driver of the #45 Chevrolet had his victory taken away from him, as the #44 Chevrolet failed post-race inspection since the front of the truck was “extremely low”.

As a result, GMS Racing’s Brett Moffitt, who originally finished the race in second place a total of 2.717 seconds behind Chastain, was declared the winner.

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Had Chastain maintained his position as the winner of the race, he would have effectively been locked into the playoffs. He only declared for Truck Series points ahead of the season’s ninth race, and he was already just 14 points behind Reaume Brothers Racing’s Josh Reaume (112 to 98), who sat 20th place in the championship standings, after averaging 49 points in his first two races as a championship-eligible driver.

His victory, had it stood, would have shaken up the playoff picture, and a key ramification of this was the fact that it would have knocked both full-time Kyle Busch Motorsports drivers below the playoff cut line, and by a sizable margin to the point where both of them would have likely needed to win one of the six remaining races in the regular season to qualify for the playoffs. For most of the season thus far, one of these two drivers has been ahead of the cut line while the other one has been below it.

Here is how the playoff picture would have looked had Chastain kept his victory.

NOTE: PP = playoff points

Rank – Driver – Car, Team, Manufacturer – Points (Difference)
1st – Johnny Sauter – #13, ThorSport Racing, Ford – 326 (1 win, 8 PP (-))
2nd – Ross Chastain – #45, Niece Motorsports, Chevrolet – 98 (1 win, 7 PP (-1))
3rd – Austin Hill – #16, Hattori Racing Enterprises, Toyota – 331 (1 win, 5 PP (-3))
4th – Grant Enfinger – #98, ThorSport Racing, Ford – 426 (+93)
5th – Matt Crafton – #88, ThorSport Racing, Ford – 379 (+46)
6th – Stewart Friesen – #52, Halmar Friesen Racing, Chevrolet – 377 (+44)
7th – Ben Rhodes – #99, ThorSport Racing, Ford – 372 (+39)
8th – Brett Moffitt – #24, GMS Racing, Chevrolet – 371 (+38)
————————- PLAYOFF CUT LINE ————————-
9th – Harrison Burton – #18, Kyle Busch Motorsports, Toyota – 333 (-39)
10th – Todd Gilliland – #4, Kyle Busch Motorsports, Toyota – 293 (-79)
11th – Sheldon Creed – #2, GMS Racing, Chevrolet – 290 (-82)

With Chastain’s victory having been stripped from him, it will not lock him into the playoffs. Instead, Moffitt, who was already well above the playoff cut line before the race began, locked himself into the playoffs by being declared the official winner of this race, and as a result, the playoff picture was not shaken up nearly as much as it would have been had Chastain’s #45 Chevrolet passed post-race inspection.

The big winners of Chastain’s post-race disqualification were Kyle Busch Motorsports.

With all the additional stage points and overall points factored into the point totals for each of the other 10 drivers listed in the above playoff picture stemming from Chastain’s demotion from first to 32nd place in this race, here is how the playoff picture now looks.

Rank – Driver – Car, Team, Manufacturer – Points (Difference)
1st – Johnny Sauter – #13, ThorSport Racing, Ford – 326 (1 win, 8 PP (-))
2nd – Brett Moffitt – #24, GMS Racing, Chevrolet – 378 (1 win, 6 PP (-2))
3rd – Austin Hill – #16, Hattori Racing Enterprises, Toyota – 334 (1 win, 5 PP (-3))
4th – Grant Enfinger – #98, ThorSport Racing, Ford – 429 (+135)
5th – Matt Crafton – #88, ThorSport Racing, Ford – 382 (+88)
6th – Stewart Friesen – #52, Halmar Friesen Racing, Chevrolet – 380 (+86)
7th – Ben Rhodes – #99, ThorSport Racing, Ford – 375 (+81)
8th – Harrison Burton – #18, Kyle Busch Motorsports, Toyota – 336 (+42)
————————- PLAYOFF CUT LINE ————————-
9th – Todd Gilliland – #4, Kyle Busch Motorsports, Toyota – 294 (-42)
10th – Sheldon Creed – #2, GMS Racing, Chevrolet – 293 (-43)

Instead of having two drivers at least 39 points below the playoff cut line, Kyle Busch Motorsports now have one driver, Harrison Burton, who is 42 points ahead of it. The other, Todd Gilliland, as opposed to being 79 points behind it, is now just 42 points behind it, and if Burton trips up, Gilliland is right there to capitalize assuming he can hold off GMS Racing’s Sheldon Creed.

In total, Burton gained 81 points relative to the playoff cut line when Chastain’s victory was stripped from him. Gilliland gained 37. That’s a big 118-point haul for a team needing every point they can get just to get one of their two drivers, much less both of them, into the playoffs, and without going into any details in this article, it’s sure to get the conspiracy theorists talking.

Chastain, meanwhile, sits in 35th place in the championship standings, which is where he began the race. He has 43 points after starting the race with 38 and trails Reaume for 20th by 69 points, which is still a deficit that is completely manageable for the driver who has yet to physically finish a race outside of the top 10 all season.

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The big question is, can Ross Chastain win another race before the 2019 NASCAR Truck Series regular season concludes to lock himself into the playoffs and shake up the playoff picture like he would have had his M&M’s 200 victory not been stripped from him?

He is set to have six more opportunities to do so, and the first of these six opportunities is scheduled to present itself to him this Saturday, June 22 at World Wide Technology Raceway at Gateway in Madison, Illinois in the form of the season’s 11th race, the Gateway 200. This race is set be broadcast live on Fox Sports 1 beginning at 12:00 p.m. ET.

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