Set the NASCAR Cup Playoffs to boil and watch it begin to simmer.
That is what the next 10 weeks will represent for the 16 teams set to chase a championship in the most dramatic and intensity fueled format imaginable. There will be close finishes, closer points battles, the occasional argument and NASCAR’s equivalent of the Game Seven Moment.
It’s a pressure cooker that continually resets over and over until 16 becomes 12, 12 becomes 8 before establishing a final four in November at Phoenix Raceway. There will be upsets and heroics, disappointments and letdowns, all in equal parts.
The format, which has changed the ethics of competition over the past decade, routinely asks those in the gauntlet what they were willing to do to advance and the answers still occasionally shock us year-after-year.
Survive and advance.
NASCAR Cup Series Playoff format
The format begins with 16 different drivers and three rounds 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 on 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 Kyle Larson begins the Round of 16 with 36 more points than Ty Gibbs and Martin Truex Jr. 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, the best finisher amongst them winning the championship – no championship points, no playoff points and just beating the other three head-to-head.
The Playoff Grid
Kyle Larson +35
Christopher Bell +27
Tyler Reddick +23
William Byron +17
Ryan Blaney +13
Denny Hamlin +10
Chase Elliott +9
Brad Keselowski +3
Joey Logano +2
Austin Cindric +2
Daniel Suarez +1
Alex Bowman +0
—
Chase Briscoe -0
Harrison Burton -0
Ty Gibbs -1
Martin Truex Jr. -1
The odds (BetMGM)
Kyle Larson +375
Denny Hamlin +400
Christopher Bell +500
Tyler Reddick +600
William Byron +800
Ryan Blaney +900
Chase Elliott +1100
Martin Truex Jr. +1600
Joey Logano +2000
Brad Keselowski +2000
Ty Gibbs +4000
Alex Bowman +5000
Chase Briscoe +15000
Daniel Suarez +20000
Austin Cindric +20000
Harrison Burton +50000
The Favorites
Last year, Martin Truex Jr. entered as the top seed and despite the points being reset each round, struggled to make it out of the first two rounds before finally succumbing to a terrible stretch in the semi-finals to cement not making to the final four.
That is to say nothing is for certain when the sample size is so small and NASCAR has made the margin for error even thinner by adding a superspeedway race at Atlanta and road course in Watkins Glen alongside the returning first round finale in the Bristol Night Race.
Kyle Larson is the top seed, and championship favorite, but easily sees a forecast where three worst case scenarios eliminate him right from the start.
“Yeah, I don’t love seeing Atlanta in the playoffs at all,” Larson said. “And even Watkins Glen for that matter just because they’re sketchy places.”
Watkins Glen is very much a wild card this year because Goodyear is bringing a brand-new road course tire that has three seconds of falloff built into it over a run.
“If they’re going to be in the playoffs, I would rather them be in the first round than the second or third round,” Larson said. “So yeah, I mean I think having the bonus points and playoff points that we’ve earned throughout the regular season is nice.
“But it still doesn’t guarantee anything. You still have to not run into any trouble, especially in back-to-back weeks, and hopefully you can just make it through.”
At the same time, Larson and crew chief Cliff Daniels have shown the most speed week-after-week and there have not been many races where they haven’t been in the mix in some capacity.
“I think our speed is our strength,” Larson said. “We’re really fast, I feel like, at every race track; road courses, superspeedways, all that. Our execution is, and I know it might not seem like it at times, but I think our execution is great.
“And I think we’ve also overcome a lot of adversity at times, so I think we’re well-rounded as a team. We’ve gone to the final four the last three years, so I think that gives us a lot of confidence, as well.”
A month ago, Denny Hamlin would have been considered the 1B to Larson’s 1A, but a devastating engine seal penalty essentially stripped him of roughly 15 playoff points and left him immediately on the bubble to start the first round.
The Joe Gibbs Racing No. 11 team is also capable of winning on any given week, but they have literally no margin for error in this first round, and arguably every round thereafter unless they win in bunches.
“I feel like our chances are as good as anyone,” Hamlin said. “Now, I would say that the 45 (Tyler Reddick), the 20 (Christopher Bell), the 5 (Larson) have a better chance because they have more playoff points going into the Playoffs.
“But, ultimately, we’re one of the very few cars that can win any given week. So, no matter what points position we might find ourselves in, and we will be in a precarious points position at some point of the Playoffs. We always feel like we can go to the next track and win, so that’s on something that only a few cars can do.”
To his point, Reddick warrants favorite status as the regular season champion and Bell too with his three wins and the No. 2 seed.
It’s been a case of déjà vu for William Byron, who five times in the regular season last year but went through a mid-season slump where they simply struggled to break into the top-10, before making a deep run into the Final Four by November.
The Hendrick Motorsports No. 24 won thrice early in the season and are once again mired in this stretch where they are simply not contending for the win.
“I just think we’ve been trying to… we’ve been waiting for this for a while,” Byron said. “As you soon as you win early in the season, your goals shift to what can we do to get bonus points and what can we do to get ready for the fall. That’s really what has been it’s about. Now we get to put that to the test and take it one race at a time.”
Lastly, when you enter as the defending champion, Ryan Blaney has to be counted amongst the favorites, especially if he gets to Phoenix because Team Penske is so good on the flat one-mile tracks.
“Obviously, I’m going to have 1000 percent confidence that we can get to Phoenix, right,” Blaney said. “The first round is going to be an oddball right, and I do think there will be some surprises that get eliminated because Atlanta, Watkins Glen and someone will need to throw a Hail Mary at Bristol.
“Hopefully we’re not one of those people but you just never know. It can happen.”
It happened to the defending champion last year, Joey Logano, after he crashed out in the first round finale.
“The Round of 8 is really strong for us,” Blaney said. “And I think the rounds get stronger for us each time we advance. So for me, I just think it’s a matter of avoiding anything foolish and all of us just doing our job.”
The contenders
This batch is tough because the argument could be made that several of these contenders could count as favorites because they are all champions.
Chase Elliott, Martin Truex Jr., Brad Keselowski and Joey Logano account for five championships over the past 12 years.
And yet, they are mid-level seeds or lower because they simply haven’t won enough this season in a format that requires winning above all else.
Elliott led the championships standings for a stretch this season and contended for the regular season championship all the way to the end of the campaign with a second best 11.6 average finish but won only once at Texas.
On the other hand, he has only two finishes outside of the top-20 all year and that’s what he will need to do in the absence of winning.
“I think our odds are good,” Elliott said. “I don’t really take a look at a particular round being a problem any more than any other. I think that if we can just get the things that we need to do, going right, I think we can be good all the way through it.
“Obviously, Darlington was bad for sure,” but he also finished 11th on a night where he lost a lap early and still rallied nearly to a top-10.
“I think it’s just having that type of pace and that type of competitiveness. If we are doing that, we are going to give ourselves opportunities to win and eventually they are going to go your way,” Elliott said. “So, it’s just about being there on a weekly basis. You do that, and you will get your chances.”
Meanwhile, not that this is predictive, but Logano has been to five Championship race appearances and they have come every even year since the format was introduced in 2014.
2014, 2016, 2018, 2022 … 2024?
“It’s ironic that’s how it worked out,” Logano said. “But this year I’ll say I’m superstitious. Does that sound good? Next year I won’t.
“I’m pretty basic and maybe more factual about things than that stuff. That stuff can get in your head more than anything. So, I’ll go do my thing, and if it works out like that, we’ll have a cool story to talk about again.”
He’s also just won once this season, at Iowa, and has just seven playoff points compared to 25 last year when he made a swift exit … not that it changes his approach.
“It doesn’t right now,” Logano said. “It can change (later), because you’re just in a different spot, but the first race of each round I always look at as maybe the most important race of each round, because it sets you up.
“How we get out of Atlanta (the first Playoff race) will adjust how we go to Watkins Glen and the approach of how we get through the race. It’s one race at a time. Is it nice to have more Playoff points? Absolutely. Can we win from where we’re at? Absolutely, we can win from where we’re at.
“We can do that for sure, but it’s just a more challenging position.”
Keselowski said you can’t count anyone out, pointing to the 2018 season with the Big Three of Truex, Kyle Busch and Kevin Harvick, and that it was Logano who ended up joining them in the Championship Race and won it all.
“Remember the big three conversation,” Keselowski said. “It was the big three, the big three, they’re going to win it and then all three of them were on the press conference stage after the race because none of them won it.
“That’s what we all get for trying to predict this. We always start the playoffs every year thinking we know what’s going to happen and then every year we’re like ‘I didn’t see that coming.’
Keselowski says it makes filling out brackets fun if nothing else.
“There’s no way you’re getting this right,” Keselowski said. “Like last year, just five percent of them were right or something after the first round. It was ridiculous. So I expect the same thing this year.”
And then there’s Truex, in his final season, entering as the lowest seed simply because he hasn’t won a race and only scored a handful of playoff points for finishing 10th in the standings and three stage wins.
“It’s definitely possible,” Truex said. “You win one race in the first two rounds, that’s a good chunk of points. You know, the confidence and momentum that come with it, it’s totally doable. We’re going to have to win. I don’t think we’ll be able to point our way into the final four from where we’re at. We’re going to have to win some races.”
He was the first seed last year, making it all the more wilder than now he’s the lowest seed.
“Yeah, not optimal, but happy to be there. Certainly, better than being out so we’ll give it our best shot.”
The longshots
There is a very narrow path for the likes of Alex Bowman, Daniel Suarez, Austin Cindric, Chase Briscoe and Harrison Burton.
That path involves chaos and the 2024 playoff schedule provides that in spades.
The first round features a superspeedway race, a road course with a radically different tire and a race at Bristol that NASCAR is desperately trying to replicate what happened in the spring. Suarez won at Atlanta, Burton won the most recent superspeedway race and Bowman won the most recent road (street) course event.
The second round features Talladega and the Charlotte ROVAL where the same standards of chaos and unpredictability apply.
But the things that can bite the favorites can bite underdogs like Bowman too.
“I think the superspeedway races, obviously, can be a big wild card,” he said. “Watkins Glen has been pretty hard on us over the years, so we’re super focused on being better there. But beyond that, if we get rolling in the right direction, we can be good anywhere.”
Suarez is embracing the role.
“If you compare Trackhouse this year against the Gibbs teams, the Hendrick teams and things like that, yes,” Suarez said. “In 2022, Trackhouse was actually one of the best teams. This year hasn’t been the same.
This year we’ve been working extremely hard, but the results have been slower than what we thought they were going to be.
“I wouldn’t consider myself one of the favorites for the championship right now, but is that going to change my mentality of who am I as a racecar driver and the potential of the 99 and Trackhouse in the playoffs? Of course not. I know how good we are on road courses; how good we were at Atlanta. I know how good we can be at some of these racetracks and the first two rounds are very critical.”
And he believes they can go on a run.
Gibbs, meanwhile was a popular sleep pick to get a win and advance to at least the Round of 8, most believing in his poise and how much he’s grown as a driver this summer.
“I really appreciate that, and I would love to and hopefully we can get the best of what our deal is,” Gibbs said. “I feel like we were really strong at the upcoming tracks, just have to get through Atlanta. 16th through eighth is separated by four points. It is really tight.”
The races
Sept. 8 Atlanta USA
Sept. 15 Watkins Glen USA
Sept. 21 Bristol USA
Sept. 29 Kansas USA
Oct. 6 Talladega NBC
Oct. 13 Charlotte ROVAL NBC
Oct. 27 Homestead-Miami NBC
Nov. 3 Martinsville NBC
Nov. 10 Phoenix NBC
