What to Watch: As the eve of The Chase approaches, Daytona defines regular-season showdown

Track: Daytona International Speedway
Location: Daytona Beach, Florida
Track length: 2.5 miles
When: 7:30 p.m. ET
Where to tune in: NBC, HBO Max, MRN Radio, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio
Race purse: $11,233,037
Race distance: 160 laps | 400 miles
Stages: 35 | 95 | 160
Saturday’s starting lineup | Pit stall assignments

Storylines, rules uncertainty abound at Daytona

DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. — NASCAR’s regular-season finale weekend hits a little differently this year. There’s been no change to the venue; the venerable Daytona International Speedway still looms as a befitting showcase for the event, a hulking behemoth on the Florida coast. How the 16-driver postseason field will gain clarity and closure, however, is a drastic change.

All will be decided in Saturday night’s showdown when the Coke Zero Sugar 400 wraps up the regular season, locking in the championship-eligible contenders for The Chase. Daytona stands again on the eve of the 10-race postseason stretch, but the method for obtaining a ticket to entry has been far different this year, with cumulative regular-season points as the path — rather than a victory guaranteeing an automatic playoff berth.

Ryan Blaney won last season’s edition at Daytona in a dynamic finish, holding off three fellow front-runners — Daniel Suárez, Justin Haley and Cole Custer — by less than a car-length. A fender more would have tilted the postseason field, swinging the “win and you’re in” door wide open for a trio who were otherwise ineligible. This year, Blaney said there’s been no shortage of compelling stories and subplots to track in a season when Tyler Reddick and Denny Hamlin have at times both held seemingly insurmountable points leads, plus all the leapfrogging in the standings behind them.

“I myself have looked at the points way more than I used to because it really matters and you’re curious as to where you’re going to be seeded, but then also there’s really good storylines,” said Ryan Blaney, who enters Saturday’s race solidly second to Hamlin in the Cup Series standings. “For a while, it was can anyone catch Reddick? Denny Hamlin caught Reddick, and Reddick started to cool off after the hot start that he had, so that’s kind of fluctuated. The second-place battle between me, him, and Ty (Gibbs) was really, really good for a while, and then you have kind of this sixth-to-11th tight battle going on, and then the cutline battle is always something to be talked about. So I think there’s been plenty of storylines with it, and I’m excited to see how The Chase plays out, how everyone’s going to approach it. There’s going to be plenty of storylines there, too.”

MORE: Weekend schedule | At-track photos: Daytona

Three Chase berths remain open for the taking Saturday night, with a baker’s dozen already clinched and in. 23XI Racing’s Bubba Wallace sits in the best position to cinch an unclaimed spot, 75 points clear of the elimination line and needing just two points to advance. Meanwhile, Team Penske’s Austin Cindric is also in a slight comfort zone at plus-44 above the cutoff.

The true bubble pits two drivers with far different backgrounds at opposite ends of that cutline. Shane van Gisbergen, a New Zealander who stood out on the road-race circuits of the Australian Supercars tour before his stateside arrival, is 31 points up on Ryan Preece, the hard-driving NASCAR Modified hotshot from Connecticut. Preece starts fourth with SVG sixth, and though it’s not exclusively a head-to-head face-off, both are no-nonsense champions from their motorsports disciplines with their postseason hopes resting on how Saturday’s wild-card event plays out.

How exactly it unfolds is anyone’s guess. The field will get its first taste of a new superspeedway rules package in Saturday’s 400 miler, without the benefit of practice or testing to sort it out. Competition officials mandated a shorter rear spoiler (7 inches down to 4) plus a reduction in engine output (510 horsepower to 465) with the intent of promoting passing and curbing fuel-saving strategies. The setting for its debut will be the pivotal regular-season finale, where there’s already enough uncertainty to go around.

“Man, we’re going to have 40 cars deep into this thing and have no idea how it’s going to drive and how the draft is gonna work,” Logano said. “Nothing’s scienced out. It’s kind of fun. It’s just kind of old school. Like, go figure it out. I like it. I think it’s cool.”

Feeling a draft

Though the rules configuration will be shaken up for the season’s second trip to Daytona, the mix of aerodynamic acumen and good fortune on drafting-style tracks still applies. Saturday’s 400-miler will be the fifth of six races this year at ovals where drafting is imperative, with the Daytona 500, a trip to 2.66-mile Talladega Superspeedway and two visits to EchoPark Speedway outside of Atlanta already in the books.

That quartet of races so far may offer a hint for who might be best suited to repeat their feats at the 2.5-mile venue. Here are the top average finishes on drafting tracks in the Cup Series this season, with the best performances highlighted:

Speed reads

Race-day essentials:

– Daytona hub: Key information, pit stalls, additional results | Read more
– Saturday Setup: Crew chiefs brace for new rules configuration at DIS | Read more
– Paint Scheme Preview: High art on the high banks; this week’s designs | View gallery
– Neil Paine: Summer’s relative calm coming to an end at Daytona | Read more
– NASCAR Classics: Dig into the video vault for full-race replays from Daytona | Watch now
– Power Rankings: Bubba Wallace moves up the list, sets sights on Chase | This week’s ranks