Stenhouse hopes playoff bubble won't pop at Dover

Should Ricky Stenhouse Jr. advance to the Round of 12 after Sunday's race at Dover, he can thank the playoff points he earned earlier this year for making it possible.

Going into the postseason's first elimination race, it is Stenhouse on the bubble. Kasey Kahne, Kurt Busch, Ryan Newman and Austin Dillon are all gunning for him. And Stenhouse has no advantage at all since he holds the final spot just through a tie-breaker.

But Stenhouse is happy to take it considering he has not had the best performances in the first two postseason races. Hitting the wall at both Chicago and New Hampshire, Stenhouse has finished 25th and 15th, respectively, the last two weeks. It left Stenhouse and crew chief Brian Pattie thinking they were all but eliminated until they looked at the points and saw the benefit of having 10 playoff points from two wins during the regular season.

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"After our poor performance at Chicago I thought we were kind of out of it," Stenhouse said Friday morning. "Then when I got done, with the issues some of the other cars had, we were right there within striking distance. We didn't have a great Loudon, but we managed to gain some points there, and that's what we have to keep doing.

"We have to keep our head down and fight to the end."

The No. 17 team has had some of its best finishes this year on the fast, short tracks. That includes a ninth in the spring Bristol race, which has many similarities to Dover. In preparing for this weekend, Stenhouse looked back at the June race where he was caught up in a wreck but said he felt he, along with his playoff competition, all had fast cars.

"It's going to be a battle. I think there's some strategy you could play to maybe get some stage points, but you don't want to give up too much track position here," Stenhouse said. "It will be a fine line of what your crew chief wants to do, but it will be a heck of a battle for sure."

In 10 starts at Dover, Stenhouse has just one top-10 finish. He was 25th in opening practice Friday morning while Dillon was 27th.