RESOLVING THE LEDGER
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Just two races remain until the postseason begins for the NASCAR Cup Series.
And, you might remember, the format is different this season.
Following 12 years of the win-and-in elimination-style playoff format, the Chase is back. This postseason system is designed to award consistency and drivers who have achieved success over the stretch of a long season — that began all the way back in February at the Daytona 500 — rather than drivers who simply won one race amid an otherwise mediocre season.
"I feel like how I've approached racing in the Cup Series was probably better suited for the Chase format," Tyler Reddick, driver of the No. 45 Toyota, recently told USA TODAY Sports. "I feel like one of our strengths as a team is consistency. Another one of our strengths is the fight we put up, the grit that we have. We have days that don't go smooth, but we don't let it derail us.
"So, I feel like for us, what we've been through, how we handle the things that come our way, we have the right qualities to be good in the Chase."
The point standings have been interesting to follow all season long.
After winning five of the first nine races, including three in a row to start the season, Reddick built a massive lead at the top of the standings. But 45-year-old Denny Hamlin, still in pursuit of his first championship, had a midseason surge amid some struggles for Reddick and ripped off three consecutive wins at Nashville , Michigan and Pocono. Hamlin has maintained his place at the top of the standings with top-five finishes in five of the last six races.
Other contenders include Ryan Blaney, who is second in the standings with wins at Las Vegas and Atlanta . Blaney’s No. 12 Ford is the only non-Toyota in the top five. He also has six stage wins this season, which leads all drivers.
Ty Gibbs is third in points with wins at Bristol and Iowa, Reddick is fourth and another Toyota, Chase Briscoe in the No. 19 for Joe Gibbs Racing, is fifth.
A driver who is making a late-season push is three-time champion Joey Logano. Following the Sonoma race at the end of June, Logano was 20th in points and looked like a longshot to even make the Chase. Since then, he won races at North Wilkesboro and Richmond, and then notched two other top 10 finishes at Atlanta and the Brickyard 400. Logano is now ninth in points. He has the chance to clinch his spot in the Chase this weekend at New Hampshire, where he has an average finish of 12.7 and a pair of victories.
"We’ve been able to switch our goals from making the Chase to winning the championship. It’s quite the turnaround in a month and a half’s time or so," Logano said after winning at Richmond last weekend. "This team fought harder and kept trying to figure it out. That’s what to me is one of the most impressive parts about this team. A lot of that is, we are the team that won the championships together, right? We know we all can do it."
Here’s everything to know about the Chase with two races remaining in the regular season.
When does the Chase begin?
The Chase opens at one of NASCAR’s crown jewels, the Southern 500 in Darlington, South Carolina on Sept. 6. It’s the first of 10 races in the postseason.
Races that follow Darlington include stops at Gateway, Bristol, Kansas, Las Vegas, Charlotte, Phoenix, Talladega and Martinsville before the championship run wraps up at Homestead — just outside Miami, Florida.
How many drivers make the Chase?
The postseason field will be made up of the top 16 drivers in the point standings. Unlike the previous format, there won’t be any elimination rounds. Points will be reset and reseeded based on regular season standings, but drivers will have advantages based on how they fared in the first 26 races of the season.
Points will be reset this way, with the regular-season leader getting a 25-point cushion over second place.
1st: 2,100
2nd: 2,075
3rd: 2,065
Then decreasing by five-point increments each spot through 16th.
Who has clinched a spot in NASCAR’s postseason Chase?
With races remaining at New Hampshire and Daytona, the following drivers have already clinched spots in the Chase, no matter their results in the last two regular season competitions: Denny Hamlin, Ryan Blaney, Ty Gibbs, Tyler Reddick, Chase Briscoe, Chase Elliott and Christopher Bell.
Remarkably — and in a show of how strong the Toyotas have been this season — all four drivers for Joe Gibbs Racing have already clinched spots. Despite not winning a race yet this season, Bell is still viewed as a contender for the championship with seven second-place finishes this year.
Who is mathematically eliminated from the Chase?
The maximum number of points a driver can earn in a single race is 76: 55 points for winning, 10 points apiece for winning Stages 1 and 2, and one point for notching the fastest lap. That gives us a total of 152 points a driver can earn if everything goes perfect for them in the last two races.
Even if that happens for the following drivers, it still wouldn’t be enough to put them inside the top 16. Drivers already eliminated include Austin Dillon, Riley Herbst, Ricky Stenhouse Jr., John Hunter Nemechek, Alex Bowman, Josh Berry, Noah Gragson, Cole Custer, Ty Dillon, Connor Zilisch and Cody Ware.
Austin Hill, who replaced Kyle Busch at Richard Childress Racing following the two-time champion’s shocking death in May , is ineligible for the championship. Even if he were, Hill hasn’t performed well enough to start a debate with no top-15 finishes in 14 races. Hill is eligible for the O’Reilly Series championship where he is also running full-time for RCR .
Who is on the bubble for NASCAR’s postseason Chase?
The three drivers just inside the cutline are Bubba Wallace, Austin Cindric and Shane van Gisbergen. Wallace and Cindric can’t afford to make any major mistakes at New Hampshire and Daytona, while van Gisbergen needs to perform well to hold onto his final spot.
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