Now that we’re nearing the midway mark of the 2019 season, the playoff race is heating up. We’ve still only had just six drivers reach victory lane this year, meaning there’s 10 wildcard spots available at the moment. With only one superspeedway race left in the regular season, it’s likely we’re going to have a race among several drivers for some wide open playoff spots.

Currently, there’s six drivers within 36 points of the bubble. Two of them though, aren’t in.

Right now, Daniel Suarez is +31 in 13th while William Byron is +29 in 14th. Kyle Larson is just +18 while Ryan Newman holds a one point lead over Jimmie Johnson for the final spot. Erik Jones is just five points out while Paul Menard (-38) and Ricky Stenhouse Jr. (-43) are hoping to make up ground.

With such a slim margin, stage points are crucial now. Johnson, has one more stage point than Newman and trails him by just one point in the standings. See why these are crucial?

That means strategy is going to be key as some drivers, like these ones in particular, may need to forego race wins and positioning for them and just get as many points as they can get.

Just look at how Sonoma went last weekend. William Byron went for stage points, not the win, and it worked. He may have only finished 19th but he scored the fifth most points for the race (36). That propelled him up in the playoff standings.

Kyle Larson only finished 10th himself in Sonoma but he too went for stage points instead of the race win. He scored the third most points (39) of the day.

Both drivers are on the playoff bubble and that strategy worked out for each. While we can’t predict how Sunday’s race will go, do the bubble drivers position themselves on pit strategy to go for stage points even if it means being on the wrong end of strategy for the race win in the end?

Plus, you have to start to realize that it’s going to be tough to beat the Joe Gibbs Racing or Team Penske camps in terms of straight up speed. Combined, they’ve won 15 of the 16 races run in 2019. Do you really want to bet the mortgage on a race win when you know you’re going to have to beat them, or do you play it safe and go for stage points knowing that there’s ways to finish outside the top 10 but still bank enough points to have as many points to rank you in the top five of all drivers that day?

Race wins are guaranteed playoff spots but with how dominant JGR and Penske have been, it may not be worth the risk.