Kyle Petty gives his Round of 16 playoff outlook heading into Darlington

NBC's Kyle Petty dives into the Round of 16 as the NASCAR Cup Series heads to Darlington for the first race of the NASCAR Playoffs.

Transcript

00:00 For me, once again, Daytona proves to be the perfect ending to the regular season.

00:04 We crown a champion, Martin Truex.

00:08 But in the end, this was all about Bubba Wallace and Chase Elliott, two of our most popular

00:12 drivers.

00:13 Who's going to be in, who's going to be out?

00:15 Chase is going to be watching the playoffs this year, and that's sad for a lot of fans.

00:19 Bubba's going to be in the playoffs.

00:20 That's good times for a lot of fans.

00:23 So it's amazing as we go into this how competitive this last race was.

00:27 I think what stands out to me at Daytona more than anything else was the safety innovations

00:31 that NASCAR has implemented in the car and in the tracks with the safer barriers.

00:36 We see Ryan Blaney walk away, the safer car.

00:39 We see Ryan Priest walk away.

00:42 Those are big, big moments in our sport.

00:44 Those were two incredible hits.

00:47 I want to move a little forward, though.

00:48 I want to move into the playoffs.

00:50 As I look at the playoffs this round, if we look at Darlington, Kansas, and Bristol, it's

00:55 a tough round.

00:56 You have old school, our first super speedway, Darlington.

00:59 First super speedway ever in NASCAR.

01:01 We have Kansas, which is a new market.

01:03 Even though we've been there for a while, this racetrack is worn out, slick, hard to

01:07 get a grip on.

01:08 And then you've got good old Bristol, man.

01:10 It's Bristol, baby.

01:11 You've got to make something happen.

01:12 So in this round, each one of these drivers has to come out of this round with as many

01:18 points as possible or that elusive win.

01:21 And that's going to be tough for that bottom four.

01:23 If I look at Kevin and Michael and Bubba and Ricky Stenhouse, it's going to be tough for

01:28 those guys, I believe, to win in this first round.

01:31 They've got to garner as many points as they can.

01:34 First race, first round, always critical.

01:36 I'm not worried about Truex.

01:38 I'm not worried about Byron.

01:39 I'm not worried about Denny Hamlin at this point.

01:41 But somebody's got to make something happen at Darlington to move on to the next round.

01:46 And it's going to be interesting to see if it's one of our playoff contenders.

01:53 (explosion)