The NASCAR Cup Series playoffs start now. After a long and interesting regular season, 16 drivers will compete to see who will be the champion in 2022. The first race of the playoffs, the Cook Out Southern 500 at Darlington Raceway in Darlington, South Carolina, will take place on Sunday at 6 p.m. ET on the USA Network and the NBC Sports app.ย
Of the 16 drivers who have qualified for the playoffs, Denny Hamlin, Kevin Harvick and Kyle Busch have the most experience. Hamlin and Busch will make their 16th appearance in the playoffs this year while Busch will be making his 15th. But Busch is the only driver in the Cup Series to win multiple championships with two. Harvick won the title in 2014 while Hamlin has yet to win a Cup championship despite being close multiple times.ย
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“Yes, I would say that you have less control this year,” Hamlin said during the Cup Series playoffs media day. “You can control your execution. There’s no excuse for us to have race-winning cars and blowing it through some other way, shape or form that you find a way to do, but we have to make sure we do our best job to execute on our good days and our bad days. That’s what’s going to keep us going through these playoffs. We don’t have enough playoff points to have one or two bad races. We’re going to be out pretty soon if that happens.” ย
Joey Logano is making his ninth appearance in the playoffs and is poised to win his second championship. After winning two races this season and finishing in the top-five seven times, Logano finished second in the regular season standings behind Chase Elliott. And with him winning at Darlington earlier this season, Logano is ready to collect more trophies before the year is all said and done.ย
“When you’ve done it once, you can do it, but things change too as well,” Logano exclusively told PopCulture.com recently. “Things are going to be different when we get there. Track temp is one thing that’s definitely going to be different. The cars have evolved a lot, even though it wasn’t that long ago, still a lot of things have changed.” ย
