Trackhouse Racing's Shane van Gisbergen started the NASCAR Cup Series playoffs sixth out of 16 in the point standings, thanks to the abundance of playoff points he racked up throughout the regular season by winning four consecutive road and street course races.
His 25th place finish in the regular season standings was effectively thrown out the window, and you wouldn't have known by looking at the opening playoff standings that he finished no higher than 14th in any of the 21 regular season oval races.
But what literally everybody anticipated would happen has happened throughout the first two weekends of the playoffs. After finishes of 32nd place at Darlington Raceway and 25th at World Wide Technology Raceway at Gateway to open up the postseason, van Gisbergen has plummeted to below the round of 12 cut line.
SVG out, Joey Logano in?
SVG sits 14th of 16 playoff drivers, ahead of only two when he needs to be ahead of four to advance, and he's 15 points below the cut line.
While he dropped below the cut line after Gateway, Team Penske's Joey Logano was the driver who moved back ahead of it.
Logano dropped from above to below the cut line after the Southern 500, and it looked as though he may be poised to repeat the exact kind of history he would not have wanted to repeat from two years ago.
Logano won his second career championship in 2022, but he was eliminated in the following year's opening round of the playoffs after the round of 16 finale at Bristol Motor Speedway, which is where this year's round of 16 is set to conclude on Saturday night.
It marked the first ever elimination for the reigning series champion in the opening round of the playoffs since the modern playoff format was implemented back in 2014.
Last year, Logano continued his inexplicable trend of getting to the Championship 4 in every single even-numbered year since the format was introduced, and he capitalized on going six-for-six by winning a third championship.
Ironically, he did it after having already been eliminated, or so everyone thought.
He was initially out of the playoffs following the round of 12, up until Alex Bowman was disqualified from the round of 12 finale at the Charlotte Motor Speedway Roval. The standings implications moved Logano into the round of 8, where he won at Las Vegas Motor Speedway on fuel mileage to get to the Championship 4. He then won the winner-take-all season finale at Phoenix Raceway to become a three-time champion.
Could SVG's inevitable drop from sixth place to out of the playoffs the round of 16 be the catalyst to another surprise Logano run, or will the driver of the No. 22 Ford make it zero-for-six in terms of getting to the Championship 4 in odd-numbered years?
Logano finds himself 21 points above the cutoff heading into the "Last Great Colosseum" this weekend.
Tune in to USA Network this Saturday, September 13 at 7:30 p.m. ET for the live broadcast of the Bass Pro Shops Night Race from Bristol Motor Speedway. If you have not yet started a free trial of FuboTV, do so now and don't miss the final race of the 2025 NASCAR Cup Series playoffs' opening round!