NASCAR Playoff Standings 2017: Monster Cup Schedule, Grid Post-AAA Texas 500

For Kevin Harvick, it wasn't just the fact that he won Sunday to advance to the Championship 4 in Miami that was important—it was who he passed to get the win.

After leading for most of the race, Martin Truex Jr., who had a 0.144-second lead on Harvick with 10 laps remaining, bobbled on Lap 324, allowing Harvick the window to pass he was looking for. Harvick ran down, went to the outside and passed Truex, the most dominant racer on the mile-and-a-half track this season, and held on for the remaining nine laps at Texas Motor Speedway in Fort Worth to take the checkered flag at the AAA Texas 500.

It was Harvick's first victory ever at Texas and put him in a great position to fight for another title. No. 4 won his last title in 2014.

Playoff Leaderboard

The full playoff standings are per NASCAR.com.

1. Martin Truex Jr. (4,168 points)

2. Kyle Busch (4,118 points)

3. Kevin Harvick (4,112 points)

4. Brad Keselowski (4,111 points)

5. Denny Hamlin (4,092 points)

6. Ryan Blaney (4,089 points)

7. Chase Elliott (4,062 points)

8. Jimmie Johnson (4,060 points)

Upcoming Schedule

The remaining schedule for the 2017 playoffs can be found on NASCAR.com.

The final race in the Round of 8 is the Can-Am 500 at Phoenix Raceway on Sunday, Nov. 12. The playoffs then culminate in the championship race at the Ford EcoBoost 400 at Homestead-Miami Speedway on Nov. 19.

Unlike last week's race at Martinsville, there was no racer-on-racer drama on the quad-oval track. Just a few cautions, a couple of drivers logging a "did not finish," and the 10 minutes and 29 seconds under red flag conditions.

The real drama in this race was Harvick's win, which set up a scenario where there is now only one spot remaining for the Championship 4. With a win last week, Kyle Busch secured his spot, and Truex secured his spot by points. Harvick is a lock for Homestead because of his win at Texas, so now it's a game of musical chairs. There is just one chair remaining for one of the five drivers left in the final eight.

On the television broadcast, Harvick said:

"Our cars have improved so much since the playoffs have started, so I just really wanted to thank everybody at our shop. It's been quite a year. It's been a lot of work for the guys to get to where we are today. Really really proud of everybody at Stewart-Haas.

"The biggest thing is the confidence we had once we raced Chicago knowing that we were able to compete with the [No.] 78 and the [No.] 18, and to beat the [No.] 78 today for us is quite an accomplishment. We hadn't won as many races as we'd liked to, but to change your whole company over to Ford race cars and had a lot of work to do and to be here in November winning at Texas for the first time with a chance to go to Homestead and race for a championship, it's just a really huge credit to our people."

Truex, who led for 107 laps, felt Harvick on his tail but, ultimately, couldn't hold him off.

After the race, Truex said the following on the broadcast:

"I knew he was quicker, and once he got around 11, he started coming real fast, and that's all I had. So just struggled a little bit on the long run today. Typically that's where we're at our best, but he seemed to be really good when he got up towards the front, and we were really good when we got out front towards the middle of the race. It's just we get too loose in those long runs, so there's only so much I can do inside. And then you had the [No.] 6 and some other dummy racing side by side in front of us. I was way loose in traffic when I try to catch somebody, and I just got loose going into one and Harvick jumped to my outside, so it's one of those deals where I think we could have held him off in a clean racetrack, but with six cars in the damn way every week, so it's pretty normal."