The path to NASCAR’s final four is wide open this year

If there was ever a year in the NASCAR Cup Series playoff era that the initial seeding was prognostically irrelevant, this would be the one.

Consider that Shane Van Gisbergen, who is most certainly not winning this championship, is a No. 6 seed due to his four road course wins, while three-time champion Joey Logano is a No. 12 seed.

An argument that could be made is that No. 16 seed Alex Bowman could reach the final four while it’s a certainty that one (or more) of the perceived favorites in Kyle Larson, William Byron, Denny Hamlin, Ryan Blaney and Christopher Bell will not.

From that standpoint, there is a tremendous amount of intrigue because their playoff points actually mean something but both sides of the contender/pretender pool are going to move closer to the mean in this first round and beyond.

It makes for a really dynamic set-up, and no matter where you stand about this polarizing format, it will produce a familiar final four of some kind by the first weekend of November at Phoenix Raceway. And despite all the variables, Chase Elliott says the same cast of characters will surely be in the mix come the penultimate race at Martinsville Speedway in October.

“I think it’s the same crowd,” said Elliott during the Media Day event in Uptown Charlotte on Wednesday. “Personally, even though there have been a lot of different winners, I think you have to go through the same crowd.”

That crowd in recent seasons, at least during the NextGen era, has been Logano, Blaney, Bell, Byron, Hamlin and Elliott. Sure, Ross Chastain rode the wall into the championship race in 2022 and Tyler Reddick rode his regular season championship into it last year but the math points towards some combination of those six in the Round of 8.

Bell doesn’t see an obvious favorite within that group either.

“No, it feels like there is less and less than we’ve had the last couple of years,” he said. 

The format

The format begins with 16 different drivers and three rounds comprised of three races that eliminate four drivers at a time.

Just like the regular season, eligible drivers automatically advance with a win, but they can also get in via championship points. That’s where the seeding plays a factor. Drivers are reseeded at the start of the playoffs, and each round, based on the number of playoff points they have accumulated to this point.

This is why Larson begins the Round of 16 with 32 more points than Bowman. The points also reset for the start of each round, with the exception of the four drivers who were eliminated — those playoff points giving the top contenders a greater margin of error as the field begins to tighten.

Once the final four are established, they race amongst themselves in the finale at Phoenix Raceway, the best finisher amongst them winning the championship — no championship points, no playoff points and just the requirement to beat the other three head-to-head.

The Playoff Grid

Kyle Larson +26
William Byron +26
Denny Hamlin +23
Ryan Blaney +20
Christopher Bell +17
Shane Van Gisbergen +16
Chase Elliott +7
Chase Briscoe +4
Bubba Wallace +2
Austin Cindric +2
Ross Chastain +2
Joey Logano +1

Josh Berry -1
Tyler Reddick -1
Austin Dillon -2
Alex Bowman -5

Penske perfect

Joey Logano, Team Penske Ford

Photo by: Jared C. Tilton/Getty Images

Of those likely favorites, note that the Team Penske trio have won the championship in each of the first three years of the current NextGen era, and with one more finale at Phoenix before it moves back to Homestead-Miami Speedway, they’re still the favorites should they run the gamut.

Even Logano doesn’t take any stock in being ‘under the radar’ as a No. 12 seed because he is the defending champion who triumphed despite long odds last year. In fact, some would argue that he completely broke the format with a season-long body of work that was arguably the least impressive in the history of the sport. 

“I think we’ve kind of ruined the under the radar thing at this point, which is fine,” Logano said. “It’s just kind of a unique position for us to be in. I think if you look at our stats, people would say you’re under the radar but I think they look at the whole body of work over the last 10 years and they’d say, ‘Well, I don’t think they’re under the radar that much.

“It’s a very unique spot to be in. I think we have a really solid race team in the playoffs and that’s why I look forward to this part of the year every year.”

Logano won the 2022 and 2024 championships while Blaney did it in 2023, each at Phoenix. So, is there any reason Blaney wouldn’t expect the trends to continue into the rapidly approaching winter?

“You’ve got to get there first,” Blaney said. “It’s a gauntlet to get there. Everyone thinks it’s easy to get to Phoenix and you go win Phoenix. You’ve got to go through nine weeks of hell to get there. It’s tough but I do think it’s nice to have all three of our cars and (Josh Berry in the Penske-affiliated Wood Brothers) 21 in it, so it’s just about execution through the rounds, minimizing mistakes and not falling into a hole.

“I do like where our group is at, our company as a whole, with pace and people and things like that and just preparation. You just hope you can execute when the day comes and try to just take it one race at a time. That’s all you can do.”

And then there’s Austin Cindric, who is generally recognized amongst the first four to be cut in brackets already filled out, including one from Hamlin himself. 

 “That’s the first I’m hearing of it,” Cindric said. “Okay, I guess we’ll have to watch.”

The underdogs

Shane van Gisbergen, Trackhouse Racing Chevrolet

Photo by: Chris Graythen – Getty Images

Who else beyond Cindric did Hamlin have as the first four eliminated after the Bristol Night Race? That would be Van Gisbergen, Berry and Austin Dillon.

These are all low-hanging fruit selections, obviously, as their bodies of work suggest not having enough performance to contend with the other 12 without some small sample size shenanigans. ‘SVG’ is a road course specialist who otherwise finished 25th in the regular season standings. Dillon finished 26th and advanced via his second consecutive Richmond victory earlier in the month. Berry was 21st and Cindric was 15th.

Cindric won the race at Gateway last year, and he knows that the first round always tends to feature some small sample size shenanigans. Darlington is tricky and Logano was eliminated from the first round at Bristol last year.

“Every year about a third of the playoff grid hits a wall (at Darlington) figuratively and kind of stunts the first round,” Cindric said. “I would expect some of that. It’s a challenging track.”

Cindric said he ‘does not care’ that he’s viewed as an underdog while Dillon uses it as motivation.

“I always use it as fuel but I feel like I have really good confidence and a calm about it,” Dillon said. “I don’t have anything to prove in that sense. I’m just really happy with where we’re at as an organization because first quarter of the season I would have said differently.

“But now I feel confident. I feel good that we can execute and make a good push. We’re one of the last teams to win on a regular oval, so…”

Van Gisbergen is the most interesting case out of the four because there is already a familiar scenario in which he advances within the championship tournament, albeit last year in the Xfinity Series. He won four times and earned 22 playoff points, meaning he has a 16-point buffer ahead of the cutline.

Stated simply, he has a third of a race advantage heading into the Southern 500 that just might be enough to coast to the second round if he can simply run about 15th, which he did at Richmond two weeks ago.

“I think it’s just going to be law of averages for us, right,” said Van Gisbergen. “We’ve got to be above average and that’s the shot we’re going to have to make to get through. We’ve got to have three decent finishes and we’ll be able to get through the round, right?

“But I don’t know about the points total, how many certain points is the average to get through. But I know I need to get better to make it work.”

And if he can make the second round, it contains the Roval, and the third round contains the always unpredictable Talladega, meaning there is at least the faint pathway for the No. 88 Trackhouse team to reach the championship race.

“Every race is tough but we’ve had an amazing run on the road courses,” said Van Gisbergen. “Hopefully it continues, but it certainly won’t be easy, that’s for sure. If we get to that point, it’ll be a nice one for us.”

The dogfight

Ryan Blaney wins the final race of the regular season, beating five drivers in a must-win situation

Photo by: Jonathan Bachman – Getty Images

Beyond the talk of favorites and underdogs, with such a small sample size in each round, every three races are just going to be a dogfight for stage points, the best finish possible and the pursuit of win and advance. Ultimately, winning renders every other outcome moot as best articulated by Hamlin.

“Our average finish drops every year in the Playoffs,” Hamlin said. “We run better every year in the final 10 than what we do in the regular season. It’s just a matter of all the other variables.

“Does someone who’s way below the cut that ran horrible, do they win and get in and knock us out? Or does someone ride the wall and knock us out? Again, I’m so tainted that I’m just very nonchalant with like ‘let’s just win races’ and then we’ll see where it stacks up.”

To his point, Hamlin very well could be eliminated by someone like his Joe Gibbs Racing teammate Chase Briscoe, who will likely need to win his way into Phoenix.

“Once (we) get to the Round of 8, at our points deficit, there’s a chance you’re going to almost have to win the race,” Briscoe said. “Somebody’s going to be able to point their way into the final four but realistically for us, it’s probably not going to be an option.

“We’re already starting 20-30 points behind, so that’s the big thing I think for us is we have to be able to execute in these first two rounds and hopefully win a race or two. If we can do that and shorten that gap in terms of playoff points, it puts us in a better spot.”

Remember that last year, all three Round of 8 races were won by drivers who were below the cutline in the form of Logano, Reddick and Blaney. They knocked out drivers with better on-paper seasons like Hamlim, Bell and Larson.

Ultimately, there just comes a point where winning this championship will be defined by winning a race when that is the only path forward.

Bowman secured the final playoff spot on points, without having won a race this season, but he knows that is going to have to change before the season ends if he intends to reach Phoenix.

“Really, I think you can ‘consistency’ your way to the Round of 8 pretty solidly,” he said, making the air quotes with his fingers. “Past that, you’ve got to win races.”