Playoff competitors Tyler Reddick, Chase Elliott and Ryan Blaney found early trouble in Sunday’s NASCAR Cup Series Playoff race at Las Vegas Motor Speedway, with a wild crash at the start of Stage 2 leaving all three drivers with finishes outside the top 30.

Tyler Reddick was sidelined after his No. 45 23XI Racing Toyota rolled through the frontstretch grass in the 89th of a scheduled 267 laps in the South Point 400. Reddick, Elliott and Martin Truex Jr. had squeezed together at the exit of Turn 4 shortly after the restart that put Stage 2 underway. Blaney and Brad Keselowski also caught damage in the aftermath.

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Elliott and Blaney continued, with both drivers making multiple pit stops for their crews to fix the damage, but Reddick and Keselowski were done for the day. Both sidelined drivers were evaluated and released after a check at the infield care center. Elliott later brought his No. 9 Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet to the garage on Lap 107 for extended repairs, with both he and Blaney reaching the minimum speed to continue. Elliott returned to the race on Lap 131, 26 laps down in 33rd place.

Reddick, the Cup Series’ Regular Season Champion, entered the first race of the postseason’s Round of 8 with a 10-point advantage to the provisional elimination line. He advanced from the three-race Round of 12 on the basis of points.

Reddick had led nine laps and won Stage 1. He said he was playing offense on the restart, trying to gain as much ground as possible in the middle segment of the race, but said he also felt like the transition from infield grass to the paved quarter-mile inside the 1.5-mile track might upend his car.

“You have to be aggressive on the restart,” Reddick said. “It is hard to pass after a while. Being myself on a mile and a half, being aggressive — by the time I realized I was in trouble, the 19 (Truex) started sliding and the 9 (Elliott) was coming up, and I was pretty much already on their outside at that point, with nowhere to really go. I needed to make the decision earlier when I saw them sliding to be more conservative to avoid an incident — just not who I am, but it is unfortunate. It took us out of the race.

“We had a really, really fast Jordan Brand Toyota Camry, probably would have been in the mix all race long, but we will go to Homestead — a place where I have had to get it done before — and go for it there.”

Blaney, who had started last in a reserve No. 12 Ford after a crash during Saturday practice, finished eight laps down in 32nd place. Elliott was 33rd, 37 laps off the lead pace. Reddick ended up 35th in the 37-car field, completing just 89 laps.

“We‘re still alive,” said Blaney, who now sits 47 points below the provisional elimination line. “It‘s definitely not the best of days. It was just a rough weekend overall. I don‘t know what to do about it, to be honest with you, running over something and having a hole in it in practice. And then just getting clipped by the 6 (Keselowski) there. I thought I could get around him and didn‘t know if he‘d come up the race track and then by the time he was kind of on the track it was too late. I got clipped and bent everything all to hell, so it was just a rough weekend. We still have two more weeks, so we‘re definitely not out of it.”

Reddick is now minus-30 points relative to the elimination border, and Elliott sits minus-53 — last among the eight remaining postseason-eligible drivers.

Two races — Oct. 27 at Homestead-Miami Speedway and Nov. 3 at Martinsville Speedway — remain before the playoff-eligible field is trimmed to the Championship 4 quartet who will vie for the Cup Series title in the Nov. 10 season finale at Phoenix Raceway.