Following up on Tuesday’s deep dive into the playoff bubble drivers, let’s pivot to the top contenders for the regular season championship, which provides a big advantage to the driver who finishes No. 1. (Just look at Martin Truex Jr. last season, who advanced to the Round of 8 despite an average finish of 21.3 through the first two rounds.)
How might the regular season crown be won over the course of the next four races — at Richmond, Michigan, Daytona and Darlington?
Just like with the bubble drivers, we’ll enlist the help of 10,000 simulations of the rest of the regular season using my Adjusted Points+ index, rating every driver’s ability at each remaining track type and their projected odds of finishing in each position, each race. Results that have the biggest differentials between simulations where a driver wins the regular season championship or not are the ones that are most essential along their path to glory.
Here are the scenarios for the four drivers with a realistic shot at the crown:
Kyle Larson
Status: No. 1 in standings, 10-point lead
What he needs: Dominate at Michigan.
Larson is in solid shape for the regular-season title at the moment, leading Chase Elliott in the standings and looking ahead to three of the final four races being at tracks he’s excelled at before. (Larson has combined for six wins and 26 top-10 finishes at Richmond, Michigan and Darlington.) Of the three, Michigan is probably the most important; in simulations where he wins the regular-season title, Larson wins 21% of the time there, with an average finish of 4.9 — compared with a 1% win rate and 22.8 average finish in the simulations where he doesn’t win the regular-season title. When Larson finishes in the top five at Michigan, he wins the regular-season crown 86% of the time.
Chase Elliott
Status: No. 2 in standings, 10-point deficit
What he needs: Beat Larson head-to-head.
Elliott has a 586-196 record against all opponents head-to-head this season, including a 26-19 mark against his fellow Hendrick Motorsport teammates other than Larson. But Elliott is just 8-13 against Larson head-to-head, after going 36-29 against his teammate over the previous two seasons. He’ll need to tap into that earlier form down the stretch of the regular season to wrest the title away from Larson — particularly at Richmond and Michigan. In the subset of simulations where Elliott wins the regular-season crown, he finishes ahead of Larson at Richmond 79% of the time, and he beats Larson at Michigan 86% of the time. Those figures are only 37% and 32%, respectively, in the simulations where Elliott doesn’t win the crown.
Tyler Reddick
Status: No. 3 in standings, 15-point deficit
What he needs: Outduel Larson on the ovals.
Larson has a reputation as NASCAR’s best on the bread-and-butter ovals that make up so much of the sport’s calendar on a week-in, week-out basis. But so far this season, it’s Reddick who actually has a slightly higher Adjusted Pts+ index at ovals (defined as anything that isn’t a short track, restrictor-plate track or road/street course) than Larson, 225 to 215. That sets up opportunities for Reddick at both Michigan — a classic large speedway — and Darlington — a steep, high tire-wear intermediate like Homestead and Dover. When he wins the regular season, Reddick finishes ahead of Larson at Darlington and Michigan 92% of the time, beating him by an average margin of 17.2 places. In other words, Reddick needs to drive the wheels off his No. 45 Toyota Camry and try to keep building up his oval edge.
Denny Hamlin
Status: No. 4 in standings, 43-point deficit
What he needs: Go on a winning streak.
Hamlin is just at the outer edge of striking distance on Larson and the rest of the regular-season title contenders, but he needs to go on a big run over these next four races to overcome his deficit. In 44% of the simulations where Hamlin takes the crown, he wins at least one of the next four races — and he wins multiple races down the regular-season stretch 31% of the time when he also wins the title. Or at the very least, he needs to start piling up the points, fast. In roughly half of the scenarios where Hamlin wins the title, he finished among the top five in at least three of the four remaining races. Such a heater is not out of the question, but it will be hard to make up the points Hamlin needs without that kind of performance coming out of the break.