Comments from the eliminated drivers

Proceeding the Bass Pro Shops NRA Night Race Saturday night, four drivers were eliminated from NASCAR Cup Series Playoff contention.

Below is a breakdown of each racer’s night at Bristol.

Kevin Harvick (-4 points)

Harvick, in his final season, started 21st and finished 29th, five laps down.

“I didn’t really have many expectations with how up and down the year has been,” Harvick said. “It is what it is and that’s probably about what we deserved.”

Joey Logano (-4 points)

Logano started 28th and finished 34th after a multi-car crash on lap 262 eliminated Logano from the race.

This is the first time in the current format of the playoffs where the defending series champion is eliminated in the first round of the playoffs.

“Obviously, it’s a real bummer,” Logano said. “You get out of the race like that and you’re behind the wall and you’re in denial for a minute.

“You don’t want to believe that it happened and you want to think that it’s fixable, but the car was tore up too bad.”

Ricky Stenhouse Jr. (-7 points)

Stenhouse started 25th and finished 10th.

“We went as far forward as we could, but it just wasn’t enough,” Stenhouse said. “We’ll keep learning and trying coming back better next year.”

Michael McDowell (-16 points)

McDowell started fourth and finished sixth, the only eliminated driver to earn stage points.

“The performance was there,” McDowell said. “I don’t want to downplay that, but we just didn’t execute well and we had some issues.”