The 2025 NASCAR Cup Series playoffs kick off this weekend, and a few insiders debated who will be eliminated after the first round. On the Door Bumper Clear podcast, Jeff Gluck of The Athletic, Karsyn Elledge and Tommy Baldwin predicted their first four drivers out of the playoffs.
Gluck believes Shane van Gisbergen, Ross Chastain, Bubba Wallace and Austin Dillon will be the first four out. Elledge predicted Dillon, Wallace, Alex Bowman and Chastain will be eliminated. And Baldwin’s first four out are defending champion Joey Logano, Josh Berry, Dillon and Austin Cindric.
When it comes to Berry, Gluck believes that he will survive the Round of 16 because of what he’s done on the short tracks. “This is why this forman’s been frustrating,” Gluck said. It’s just about the lineup of the tracks, and if your strength is a certain track, you have a great chance of moving on.”
Which drivers are at the bottom of the NASCAR playoff standings?
In NASCAR’s playoff standings, the bottom four are Berry, Reddick, Dillon and Bowman. Logano and Chastain are one point above the playoff cut line, and Wallace and Cindric have a two-point advantage. For the Round of 16, the playoff drivers will compete at Darlington, Gateway and Bristol.
Of the 16 driverss in the playoffs, two are competing in it for the first time — Shane van Gisbergen and Josh Berry. During the NASCAR Cup Series Playoff Media Day, Berry shared his reaction to reaching the postseason for the first time in the Cup Series.
“It’s really cool and it’s definitely been unusual as early as we won, and that was a big goal for us setting out this year – it was to win my first Cup race,” Berry said. “I hadn’t won a Cup race up to that point, so it’s easy to look at that as the first goal on the list, so to accomplish that and obviously make the playoffs is something that we’ve been looking forward to throughout the year and really it just comes down to three races at a time now and we just have to have solid races and keep ourselves in contention and see what happens.”
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