It’s elimination time in NASCAR’s playoffs at the reconfigured Charlotte Motor Speedway, where changes to the hybrid road course/oval called The Roval have created an uneasiness for the drivers racing for a championship.

The field of 12 will be cut by four drivers after today’s race and Joey Logano, Daniel Suarez, Austin Cindric and Chase Briscoe are all below the cutline. William Byron is the only driver already locked into the round of eight, but Christopher Bell basically only needs to start the race to advance.

It means anything could happen on the reconfigured The Roval, the final race in what’s already been an unusual second round of the playoffs. A championship-eligible driver did not win at Kansas Speedway or Talladega Superspeedway, which took a chaotic turn last week at Talladega when 28 cars wrecked with five laps remaining in regulation to mark the biggest crash in NASCAR history.

Now comes The Roval, which Speedway Motorsports created in 2018 as an update to the traditional 1.5-mile speedway fans had grown weary of because of the lack of diverse courses on the NASCAR schedule. The original layout produced its own share of chaos, but drivers didn’t feel as if the course had enough passing zones.

Well, be careful what you ask for: The Roval now has a pair of “passing zones” that look a whole lot more like “crashing zones.”

The changes begin at Turn 5 where a high-speed downhill corkscrew has shown cars launching off all four wheels during simulator sessions. Instead of taking a right, the straightaway has been extended towards a new Turn 6 in a section that includes an elevation change that will alter driver visibility until they reach the crest of the hill.

The drivers will have to slow going into Turn 6, then make a sharp entrance into a tight left-handed Turn 7 in what is essentially a 180-degree turn onto the banked oval. The final chicane also has a sharper apex for the drivers to navigate at Turn 16.

“The reconfigure was designed to create more chaos. You’re going to have to convince me otherwise of that,” said Denny Hamlin. “They made corners sharper and tighter. They want you to drive straight in the corner, I believe, and wipe out whoever is in front of you, and then it’s going to be a parking lot in Turn 7. Then it’s just going to be who can navigate and get through there.

“There’s a blind spot when you go through 5 to 6, you go over a rise and your car gets really high. In the (simulator) it gets airborne. It probably won’t in real life, but we get to experience this new Roval config and I don’t know what else to say about it other than try to qualify and try to avoid the wrecks. That’s about it.”

Xfinity Series

Sam Mayer won on The Roval at Charlotte Motor Speedway in a controversial overtime finish Saturday that allowed Mayer to advance in the Xfinity Series playoffs.

It came at the expense of Parker Kligerman, who not only was denied his first career Xfinity Series victory in regulation by a NASCAR scoring call, but also was eliminated from the playoff field.

Kligerman was leading headed toward the white flag that would have signified the final lap of the race when Leland Honeyman ran into the tire barrier. NASCAR could have thrown the caution immediately — that’s how deep into the tire barrier Honeyman was — but the yellow inexplicably didn’t flash until the split second Kligerman was about to cross under the white flag that would have made the race official.

Kligerman’s team was celebrating on pit road when NASCAR ruled that he had not taken the white flag and the race would go to overtime. It was a record-tying 14th overtime race of the Xfinity Series this season.

Mayer, who won this race a year ago, caught Kligerman in the two-lap sprint to the finish to win the race and advance in the playoffs. The two made contact on Mayer’s winning pass, which caused enough damage that Kligerman, who is in his final season of full-time NASCAR racing, faded to a sixth-place finish.

“I want to cry,” said Kligerman, “but I’m not gonna. I really love this, and I really, really wanted that. It would have made the world.”