The opening race of the Round of 8 is upon us. Sunday’s South Point 400 (2:30 p.m. ET, NBC, PRN) at the Las Vegas Motor Speedway has a lot at stake.

• Race Winner Is Championship Front Runner – How does winning a race at Las Vegas equate to a championship next month in Phoenix? Well, more than you’d might think. Six times has the winner of the 7th playoff race gone on to win the title later that season including in each of the last two seasons – 2007 Jimmie Johnson (Atlanta), 2011 Tony Stewart (Martinsville), 2016 – Jimmie Johnson (Martinsville), 2018 – Joey Logano (Martinsville), 2021 – Kyle Larson (Texas), 2022 – Joey Logano (Vegas). That’s 3 times in the 6 year history of this new format of stage points and playoff points being introduced in 2017 that the winner of this race has gone on to win the championship in the next round. In fact, it’s occurred in 3 of the last 5 years at that. Last year, Logano had the rare advantage as well as being the only driver from the Round of 8 to spend the last two weeks knowing that he’s racing for a championship in Phoenix. He won the third-round opener in Las Vegas. With Kyle Larson winning in Homestead a week later, it meant that Logano came into Martinsville (the cutoff race) as the only one still knowing that he’s racing for a championship. Why would the other 7 dream of Phoenix when they first have to get to Phoenix? Similar the year prior for Larson who won here and would later win the championship. It’s a huge advantage to know you’re automatically going to be racing for a championship next month.
• Aggression vs. Conservative Strategies – The drivers that made it to this point are here for a reason and mostly because they weren’t as aggressive as others in some key moments during this postseason. Whether it’s not pushing the car to places it shouldn’t be in, or lifting in sketchy moments or even to a more conservative approach in air pressures, the key to advancing in this year’s playoffs was determined by playing it safe. Now that we’re down to 8 drivers left, most are saying the aggression has to match the round. It’s time to ramp it up. You absolutely have to go for broke now. Being conservative won’t get you to the final four. However, in a round to where you have to be perfect, how do you balance the aggression and perfection? Being too aggressive on tire strategy could have a repeat of Texas last year and if a playoff driver now has that in this round, forget about making the Championship 4 without a win. However, not being aggressive and too conservative can force an elimination this round too because top 10’s are likely going to cut it. So where’s the balance? On Saturday, 4 drivers had tire problems in practice. All were Chevrolet related. Do they have a problem or was it a byproduct of a cooler track in cooler temperatures to where Sunday will be more in the heat of the day.
• Youth vs. Experience – Joey Logano’s spring win in 2020 was the first time that a Cup winner was under the age of 30 in any of the previous races run at the track. Kyle Larson then won a year later and was 28 at the time. The last two springs, Alex Bowman was 29 in his spring race a year ago and William Byron being 25 this spring. win this past year giving us 4 of the last 7 winners being under the age of 30.
• Stage Points for Buescher/Blaney – Both drivers know that they’re taking a knife to a gun fight. Similarly, it’s the same situation that both were in at Texas in the last round. They know that the Toyota’s and Chevrolet’s are going to have the most speed. Which means stage points are these two drivers’ friend on Sunday. That Texas strategy is why they’re here. They had the top two stage points among playoff drivers on that day. This weekend, accumulate as many as you can in order to minimize the loss of finishes that are likely outside the top 5 for both. The reason being is that the blue ovals as a whole have led just 1,939 total laps for the season, lowest by over 1,000 compared to the other two manufacturers.
  • At Daytona, Talladega and Atlanta, they’ve combined to have led 806 of the 1,204 laps (66.9%). That’s most among the three manufacturers with Chevy leading 231 and Toyota 167. It’s just that 41.5% of their overall laps (806 of 1,939) are on those tracks and we’re now finished racing at those places in 2023.
  • 2 of the 3 races in this round are on intermediate tracks. Ford has led only 552 laps combined on them this season. Chevy has led 2,113 and Toyota 1,591.
  • In Vegas this past spring, Ford led 37 laps that day. Kansas is a similar track and Ford’s led 9 laps in the spring race and 27 in the playoff race in the opening round.
  • Really, if you look at laps led this postseason, Ford’s led 2, 27, 1, 5, 120 and 6. That 120 was at Talladega.
• Pole Sitter – 4 of the last 5 races were won from the top 3 Rows. However, there’s only been 1 pole sitter to ever in in Vegas history (31 races). That was Kyle Busch back in 2009. Christopher Bell scored his 6th pole of the season on Sunday. He’s 0-for-5 in regards to wins from the top starting spot too.
• Stage 2 Winner – The winner of this stage at Vegas has won eight times, was runner-up last year and was fifth in another in 12 tries. 2020 was the only outlier when Chase Elliott swept both stages in the spring race but cut a tire in the end. Kurt Busch snuck up and stole a win in the Fall race. That’s 5 of the last 8 races this stage produced the race winner too. Logano was second in both stages in this race last year. Byron swept both stages this past spring.
• Past Champions – 21 of the last 26 Vegas races were won by a past champion. The only ones not? Carl Edwards (2008, 2011), Denny Hamlin (Fall 2021), Alex Bowman (Spring 2022) and William Byron (Spring 2023).