Playoff Battles
Most people are locked in to the 16th and final playoff spot as something to watch for during Saturday night’s Coke Zero Sugar 400 (7 p.m. ET, NBC, MRN). However, there’s actually 3 different playoff battles to watch though.
Yes you have the cutline between Bubba Wallace, Ty Gibbs and Daniel Suarez. If someone else that’s already won a race this season wins between William Byron, Martin Truex Jr., Denny Hamlin, Kyle Larson, Kyle Busch, Chris Buescher, Christopher Bell, Ross Chastain, Ryan Blaney, Tyler Reddick, Joey Logano, Michael McDowell or Ricky Stenhouse Jr. or even Kevin Harvick or Brad Keselowski find victory lane in Daytona, that final spot is down to these two in driver points.
32 points separate Wallace and Gibbs with 43 between Wallace and Suarez.
The rest (AJ Allmendinger, Alex Bowman, Chase Elliott, Austin Cindric, Justin Haley, Ryan Preece, Aric Almirola, Todd Gilliland, Corey LaJoie, Erik Jones, Austin Dillon, Harrison Burton, Chase Briscoe and Ty Dillon) just have to win.
Simple right?
Well, there’s more races to watch.
Owners Race
The 16th and final spot in the owners field is different than the drivers. That’s because Chase Elliott’s No. 9 Chevrolet has raced all season and has him 14th in points on that side. As a result, he holds the 16th and final spot by 30 over Bubba Wallace. It’s down to just these two on points on this side.
Owners is just like drivers in a sense that if the ride wins, it’s playoff bound. So, the same cars are guaranteed a spot in the playoffs that have won in both. The wildcard is different in which Brad Keselowski (+107), Kevin Harvick (+103) and Elliott (+30) are in.
Bubba Wallace’s No. 23 Toyota is 30 points out in owners but 32 points up in the drivers standings. Ty Gibbs is 62 points out of the owners race.
Which means Wallace does want to go for the win on Saturday night because it would not only put him in the drivers championship, but the 23 car in the owners too and if you ask Denny Hamlin and Michael Jordan, I bet they’d tell you how big of a deal that would be.
So while Wallace has to take it somewhat easy to point his way into the drivers playoffs, it does him no good on both if someone below him in points wins because they’d take a driver and owner spot into the playoffs.
But if he wins, he gets both.
Last season, it was a wild scenario for which Ryan Blaney made the drivers playoffs but not the owners. That’s because Kurt Busch, while hopping out of his ride for the postseason, the 23XI Racing team elected to keep the 45 car in the owners race.
Why not? Most people don’t understand this but the owners standings is where the money is made. The drivers get all the attention and glory but the owners points is a truly underrated thing that remarkably slips under the cracks. I have no clue why but ask most owners and they’d tell you while the drivers title is great, an owners championship is even better.
Most years it lines up.
Bonus money is on the line in the owners race which is why it’s legitimately a thing to watch. Last year was brought to the surface because of Busch and the 45 ride and this year, it could occur again.
Regular Season Crown
Denny Hamlin on Sunday kept his Joe Gibbs Racing teammate of Martin Truex Jr. from celebrating a regular season crown early. That’s because he made up 21 points on him in Watkins Glen via his runner-up finish in the Go Bowling at The Glen. It was all predicated by netting 17 stage points (3rd, 2nd) and his fourth top three finish in the last five weeks to go from a deficit of 60 to -39 heading into Daytona on Saturday night.
“Yeah, I’m happy with my day,” Hamlin said. “It takes me a while to get going, and with McDowell there at the beginning, like he’s just ready and he’s on kill, and I’m kind of working my way into it. I just lost the lead because I looked at the 24’s back bumper the rest of the day.
“It was a fun race. Appreciate the whole Mavis guys here and Toyota and Joe Gibbs Racing for giving me a good car and giving me the tools I need to get better.”
Hamlin joked that if he can get NASCAR to give him his 25 point penalty back from comments about the Ross Chastain incident back in Phoenix on his podcast, things would be even more interesting.
“I mean, it’s doable. You’ve got to have things go your way, but yeah, if we can talk NASCAR into those 25 points they took away earlier in the season, we’d really make it interesting,” he joked.
That’s because Truex Jr. minimized the damage. Despite qualifying 19th and finishing 27th and 15th in the pair of stages, he was helped by that Chase Elliott caution on Lap 55. He had just pit on Lap 52 and that allowed him to cycle to the top 10.
He’d stay there and come away with a sixth place finish for his 10th top 7 in the last 12 races including six straight.
If those points for Hamlin came back, the gap between the two would be 14…
The thing is, Hamlin is great on superspeedways to where Truex is 0-for-77 in drafting races if you include both Atlanta events this season and last and has scored just 6 top 5’s in those 77 starts too. He has just three top 5’s in 36 Daytona tries at that.
Top 10 Positioning
Another underrated thing to watch is the fight within the top 10 of the regular season standings. You get bonus points for finishing there with 15 for 1st, 10 for 2nd, 8 for 3rd, 7 for 4th, 6 for 5th, 5 for 6th, 4 for 7th, 3 for 8th, 2 for 9th and 1 for 10th.
With playoffs coming down to the slimmest of margins, getting an extra spot or 2 in the top 10 is big.
Right now, the top 2 of Truex and Hamlin seem set. William Byron is 3rd but 37 points back of Hamlin. It’s possible he catches him but slim.
Christopher Bell is 33 points back of Byron for third but 31 points up on Kyle Larson for fourth. Larson leads Brad Keselowski for 5th by 24. Keselowski is only two points ahead of Chris Buescher and Ross Chastain for 6th.
In fact, that 6th-10th battle is separated by 4 points as Brad Keselowski has 697, Chris Buescher and Ross Chastain 695, Ryan Blaney 694 and Kevin Harvick 693.
There’s a lot at stake there.
But, so is the hunt to get into the top 10. Kyle Busch (688 points) is only 5 points out. Tyler Reddick is just 10 back. Joey Logano is 27 back.
Which is why this race is something to watch too.
Hendrick Motorsports
William Byron scoring a win last Sunday in Watkins Glen was big for him personally, but for the team overall, they leave Watkins Glen knowing that at least 1 of their drivers won’t be racing for a title this Fall in Phoenix.
Alex Bowman and Chase Elliott each had to win to get themselves in and with neither winning last Sunday, they’ll have to win during Saturday night’s Coke Zero Sugar 400 in order to get by. Unfortunately for them, only 1 of them can win which means the other won’t be in the postseason. If neither win, then only 2 HMS drivers get by to the playoffs.
That has them in a dire situation for survival.
They have qualifying down pat in Daytona, it’s just the finishing part that they’re lacking. Heading into Saturday night’s Coke Zero Sugar 400 (7 p.m. ET, NBC, MRN), Hendrick Motorsports is tied with the Wood Brothers for most Daytona wins in NASCAR Cup Series history. Each have 15.
Also, both teams have won those 15 races with 7 different drivers.
In saying that, HMS’ once dominant prowess has since cooled. They won 11 races between 1995 and 2015. In fact, 7 of those 11 occurred from July 2004 and July 2015. They’ve won this race 6 times even.
Since 2016 though, they have just one win. What’s bizarre is, it’s not like they’ve not shown up down here without speed. They’ve arguably had the fastest cars off the truck. It’s just that they’ve not had race day speed to correlate with race day handling.
Hendrick Motorsports teammates Kyle Larson and Chase Elliott shared the front row of this race last year. It was actually the 4th straight HMS pole at Daytona and 12th in the last 16 tries on the high banked 2.5-mile Florida superspeedway. The only 4 poles they didn’t win was Greg Biffle (July 2016), Joey Logano (July 2019), Ricky Stenhouse Jr. (February 2020) and Kevin Harvick (Aug. 2020).
However, 2 of the 4 weren’t won on speed. Logano’s pole in 2019 was on points. Same for Harvick in 2020 as we didn’t qualify that year.
Still, HMS failed to win with having just 1 win in the last 16 Daytona races now and that’s counting this past February too when they had another front row sweep.
Elliott was runner-up in the 2019 Coke Zero Sugar 400, runner-up in the 2020 Daytona 500, 8th in the 2021 ‘400 and 10th in the 2021 Daytona 500. While he won two superspeedway races last year, he was 38th, 12th and 13th this year.
Larson has never won a superspeedway race and has just 1 top 5 in 39 starts on them at that. He was 18th, 31st, 33rd and 36th on them this season.
Bowman is always quick on superspeedways but he has just one top five finish in his career at Daytona. That was back in February’s Daytona 500. He was 14th, 13th and 26th in the other three superspeedway races.
William Byron is the only one I’d consider looking at. He has two top two finishes in his last five Coke Zero Sugar 400 starts. His Daytona 500 starts? 23rd, 21st, 40th, 26th, 38th and 34th respectively. He’s better here in the summer and won this past July in Atlanta. He was also seventh in Talladega.
How Do Drivers Race Each Other?
On a drafting track, it’s usually predicated by teammates and manufacturers helping one another. However, among the winless drivers on the season, I’m curious on how much they help each other late in the race.
It was a topic brought forth in the last drafting race last month in Atlanta. On the final restart, you had 3 winless drivers against someone that had already won this season. William Byron, the driver with at least one trip to victory lane had the perfect storm. He had a fast car. The leader, AJ Allmendinger, had too much drag in his car to compensate for stability. That combo meant that he couldn’t lead for long as he didn’t have the power to stay there. He had to time his move late instead.
“We had a race car that handled really well. Probably didn’t lead very well,” Allmendinger admitted that night. “We probably had a little bit too much drag in it. But we kind of had that idea that we came with handling, so once I got to the lead I couldn’t really defend because they would get such big runs, but we could stay up front.”
As a result, Allmendinger had a tough time holding off Daniel Suarez too and fell back to third. However, with you have Byron-Suarez-Allmendinger-Michael McDowell as the top four and the one leading with a win and the three behind without, you get yourself in an interesting predicament.
Suarez felt like he had a car capable of getting by Byron. But, he also knew that with drivers like Allmendinger and McDowell behind, there was no way that they were going to work with him and push him by Byron.
All three at the time were winless on the season and selfishly, if they couldn’t win for themselves, having Byron win was far better than one of the other two.
“I wish I had one more shot at it,” Suarez said. “With that being said, I had two cars in third and fourth, they also needed to win. If they could pick somebody to help, it wasn’t going to be me.”
Similar situation here last year. RCR teammates Austin Dillon and Tyler Reddick were 1-2 in the end. Reddick had already won multiple times and had a spot into the playoffs. Dillon’s only path in was to win and win only. Reddick ensured he wasn’t going to pass Dillon and happily pushed his teammate not only to the win at Daytona, but a playoff berth in the process.
“I know that may be hard to believe,” Reddick said of sticking with his teammate. “But certainly, I had no interest and he knew that. I wasn’t going to pass him. I was going to be playing blocker for the rest of the field.”
What happens this time around? What happens if Ty Gibbs (Denny Hamlin’s teammate) and Bubba Wallace (Hamlin’s car that he owns) lines up late for the win? Who does he go with?
What if you get Bowman and Elliott going for a win and William Byron and Kyle Larson are there behind. Who to they help?
What if you get drivers like Suarez, Elliott and Gibbs all up front and someone like Keselowski in front. Who helps who?
Trends
I’m curious if the trends come true once again. Only five drivers have posted consecutive summer race wins at Daytona International Speedway: Fireball Roberts (1962-1963), A.J. Foyt (1964-1965), Cale Yarborough (1967-1968) David Pearson (1972 – 1974) and Tony Stewart (2005-2006). Can Dillon be the 6th? He was 33rd, 29th, 38th and 21st respectively in the four superspeedway races this season.
The last 2 times for a Daytona sweep? 1982 and 2013. Buddy Baker and Jimmie Johnson accomplished those feats. I don’t see Ricky Stenhouse Jr. adding his name to that list on Saturday night. He was 17th, 15th and 10th in his other three superspeedway start this season.
There’s also been 13 different winners in the last 13 Coke Zero Sugar 400’s which eliminates: Kevin Harvick, Aric Almirola, Brad Keselowski, Ricky Stenhouse Jr., Erik Jones, Justin Haley, William Byron, Ryan Blaney and Austin Dillon.
None of the last 12 points paying Daytona races were won by a series champion. That eliminates: Kyle Busch, Martin Truex Jr., Kyle Larson, Joey Logano, Kevin Harvick, Brad Keselowski and Chase Elliott.
Only 1 Daytona pole winner has won here since 2011 (Dale Earnhardt Jr. 2016).
Each of the last 15 Daytona winners started 5th on back. That eliminates the top two rows.
3 of the last 5 Daytona winners started 17th or worst at that. Austin Dillon won by 21st last year and Ricky Stenhouse Jr. from 31st in February.
4 of the last 5 Coke Zero Sugar 400’s the winner led 10 or fewer laps including 2 of the 4 leading just the final lap.
4 times in the last 5 years did a winless driver on the season win this race.
For the Coke Zero Sugar 400 in general, 3 of the last 6 winners have earned their first career Cup victories. 1 of the other 3 was just his second.
For the Daytona 500, Denny Hamlin has won three of the last 8 years, but the other five winners were Austin Dillon (2nd career win), Kurt Busch (1st career restrictor plate win), Michael McDowell (1st career Cup win), Austin Cindric (1st career Cup win) and Ricky Stenhouse Jr. (3rd career win).
So who does this leave?
Chris Buescher, Daniel Suarez, Michael McDowell, Bubba Wallace, AJ Allmendinger, Ty Gibbs, Austin Cindric, Alex Bowman, Corey LaJoie, Ryan Preece, Todd Gilliland, Harrison Burton, Chase Briscoe, Ty Dillon and Noah Gragson.
Ford’s
It seems like the Ford camp has done everything but win on superspeedway’s. They’ve dominated the last 2 February’s in taking the top 3 spots in every practice, qualifying race and the race itself in 2022 and this past February, they went 1-3-4-5-6-8-9 in Duel 1, 1-2-4-7 in Duel 2 and while they didn’t win the ‘500, they did lead 122 of 212 laps in the process.
That’s part for the course on these tracks with this Next Gen.
- They led 122 of 212 in Daytona 500
- They led 88 of 196 in Talladega
- They led 221 of 260 in Atlanta 1 and 145 of 185 in Atlanta 2
- That’s 576 of 853 (67.5%) of all laps led on these tracks by the blue ovals.
- However, they’re 1-for-4 this year.
Chevy is now 3-for-4 this year on superspeedway’s and went 5-for-6 last year. However, even being 3-for-4 this year, they led a combined 137 laps on these tracks this season but won three races.
By comparison, Toyota has led 141.
- Chevy led 44 laps in Daytona, trailing Toyota’s 46 too. For here, they led 19 laps, Toyota led 20. In ‘Dega, they led 43 laps compared to Toyota’s 65. On Sunday night, they led 31 laps and Toyota 10.
Ford’s are leading, Chevy’s are winning and Toyota’s are just there. What happens on Saturday night?
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