The pressure of NASCAR’s playoffs can be a hair-raising experience

Reigning NASCAR Cup champion Joey Logano has a theory why so many drivers have thinning hairlines.

It’s the pressure of the playoffs.

Logano, like 10 of his playoff competitors, can guarantee advancing to the Round of 8 in the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup playoffs by winning the Hollywood Casino 400 on Sunday at Kansas Speedway.

Anything else would be dependent on having enough playoff points to stave off elimination.

”At some point, no matter what during these playoffs, you will be in a do-or-die moment,” Logano said. “Even if you have even the most-smooth nine (playoff) races you can have and you get to the Championship 4, when you go to Miami it is do-or-die. You win or you are out.”

Based on wins in the last two races, Kyle Larson (Dover) and Ryan Blaney (Talladega) are the only drivers assured of advancing to the next round of playoff races at Martinsville, Texas and Phoenix, leading to the finale at Miami Homestead. That leaves 10 drivers competing for six spots.

“There is a reason most of these drivers are bald,” said Logano, who enters Sunday in the eighth overall position, a tenuous 18 points ahead of the cutline. “I don’t know if it is the helmet, but it might be the stress. There is a lot you have to deal with as a driver and as a leader. There is a lot that you have to overcome and figure out. The pressure is on this time of year, and it either makes you better or you are going to fall apart.”

Logano, 29, has been through this scenario at Kansas when he won back-to-back playoff races in 2014 and 2015.

Logano became the first driver to automatically advance to the Round of 8 in 2014 as he took the lead from Ryan Newman with 29 laps to go and held off Kyle Larson to get his career-best fifth win of the season.

And in 2015, Logano ended up dueling with Matt Kenseth and spun Kenseth off the track as they entered turn one with five laps to go, giving Logano the victory and sending Kenseth to 14th place. Two weeks later, Kenseth exacted revenge by drilling Logano into the wall at Martinsville.

Logano expects that kind of fender banging and bashing on Sunday.

“I am an aggressive-style racer,” Logano said. “That has worked for me in the past, and I don’t change my style very much from track to track. Only when it is necessary. I think this track rewards the smart racer, but it also rewards the aggressive racer in a lot of ways. You can’t be scared to make the moves on the re-starts but you don’t want to just make moves to make moves.

“You have to weigh out how aggressive you want to be, but more importantly how smart you are in those situations.”

Logano, like the five drivers ahead of him in the standings, has a little bit of cushion based on wins and stage points accumulated during the season. Denny Hamlin, Martin Truex Jr., Kyle Busch, Kevin Harvick, Brad Keselowski and Logano could advance to the Round of 8 without winning on Sunday, depending on who wins the race and where the contenders finish.

Not so for the four drivers — Alex Bowman, Chase Elliott, Clint Bowyer and William Byron — who are behind Logano and below the cutline to advance.

If they don’t win, they would need near incalculable help to advance

“We can’t approach it any differently than we have every week leading up to this,” said Bowman, who finished second at Kansas last spring. “When you try to step your game up or change what you’re doing, you end up making mistakes and not executing well. We’re kind of business as usual. Obviously, it’s not an optimal point situation. But all we can do is all we can do. We’re pretty much in a must-win situation.”

Bowman finds himself in such a precarious position because of a collision he instigated last week at Talladega. Bowman, trying to hold onto the lead of the second stage and pick up 10 valuable points, erred in trying to block Logano and went careening off the track leading to a 37th-place finish.

“If we don’t make it,” Bowman said of the next round, “the sun is still going to come up on Monday. If we have a good day and still don’t make it, we were a Talladega away from making it. That’s just part of the sport.”