Las Vegas Turning Point: The secret to making the Championship 4 from here

Here’s what’s happening in the world of NASCAR with the Charlotte Roval in the rearview and Las Vegas (Sun., 2:30 p.m. ET, NBC) up next.

THE LINEUP

1️⃣ Want to make the Championship 4? Win in the Round of 8

2️⃣ Who will cash in at Vegas for the first Championship 4 spot?

3️⃣ Analyzing the rules behind No. 48 car’s Roval disqualification

4️⃣ The youth movement isn’t coming, it’s here

5️⃣ Catch the pack — news and notes from around the garage

1. Want to make the Championship 4? Win in the Round of 8

History shows that to advance to the title-deciding round at Phoenix, a driver shouldn’t rely on pointing their way into the Phoenix finale.

With the Round of 8 roster now officially official after Hendrick Motorsports announced it would not appeal the post-race penalty to the No. 48 Chevrolet that knocked driver Alex Bowman out of the field, go ahead and look up and down the list of names still in contention for the 2024 NASCAR Cup Series championship.

It is, to put it bluntly, stacked.

Four races remain in the hunt for a title and we’ve chopped the playoff field in half at this point, separating the wheat from the chaff. Every single one of the remaining drivers feels like a championship contender. Each remaining championship-eligible driver has a past appearance in the Championship 4 — a few of them have several — except for Regular Season Champion Tyler Reddick, clearly no fluke advancer to the Round of 8.

With such a talent-laden field, the road to get there again for any of them, even current top dog Kyle Larson (+33), isn’t going to be easy.

There is, however, a secret, simple recipe to advance — just win, baby.

“For us, these next three are great tracks for us,” Larson said in his post-race winner’s conference after claiming the Round of 12 finale at Charlotte Motor Speedway’s Roval. “I just look at it as a really good opportunity. We would love to win, but if we could just go there and perform how we typically do, we could have a really good point gap before we get to Martinsville.

“That’s my goal; is just to be up front all race long at these next two races especially, but even Martinsville as well.”

This is an interesting strategy — and one that arguably only Larson, with his points cushion, can deploy — but it may not be the wisest, based solely on trends.

The historical Round of 8 numbers tell a compelling story: 57.1% of drivers who’ve advanced to the Championship 4 in the stage era secured their spot with a win in this round. Even more telling? The eventual champion has tasted victory a staggering 70% of the time in this pivotal phase. These aren’t just statistics; they’re a roadmap.

RELATED: Playoff Grid Challenge: Make your Round of 8 picks now!

That does leave room for at least one driver to get in on points — and we know at least one will, with four spots up for grabs and only three opportunities to clinch a berth via win, but drivers obviously would rather be in the 57.1% demographic there rather than the 42.9% group — especially with just how many points it typically takes to move on from here.

Championship 4 drivers in the stage era have averaged an eighth-place finish and averaged an accumulation of 39.5 points per race during the Round of 8.

That’s … a lot of points.

To put that into context, consider Reddick’s roller coaster season in which he boasted an average finish of 11.2 before just scraping by to advance to the Round of 8 with an 18.1 finish in the playoffs thus far. Barring a win, there’s no way he’ll advance if that trend continues.

It’s a tough balance, though, especially when it comes to this weekend at Vegas — because that’s the one to win and drivers could put themselves in a hole if things go sour trying to squeeze too much juice out of it. It’s still worth it, however.

Though it’s anybody’s game among the four remaining drivers once we get to Phoenix, a win to open the Round of 8 is a significant advantage that offers a two-week leg-up on the rest of the title chasers with extra time to prep for the 1-mile track in the Arizona desert. Winning the first race in the Round of 8 is like planting your flag on top of Camelback Mountain, declaring to everyone else they’ve got to come through you once they get to Phoenix if they want to fly home with the Bill France Cup.

Given how crucial this opening race is on top of how competitive these eight drivers are from top to bottom — not to mention how wild 1.5-mile races have gotten, in general — expect Sunday’s race to up the ante.

(Oh, did you think you’d read a whole story about the Las Vegas race and not get a gambling pun?)

You can feel pretty confident that more than likely, the three Round of 8 races will all be won by remaining playoff drivers given what’s at stake. And for those who aim merely to point their way into the Championship 4 — you may find yourselves watching the eventual champion celebrate in Phoenix from the proverbial sidelines.

Because in NASCAR’s playoff crucible, it’s not just about finishing well — it’s about finishing first.

So now that you know just how crucial it’ll be to win in this round and this coming Sunday, in particular, it boils down to one question: who’s going to be the one to actually do it?

The list, arguably, is one driver long, beginning and ending with Larson.

Obviously, we still have a race to run and if there’s one guarantee in this sport it’s that whatever you think is going to happen often doesn’t, but the underlying theme here screams back-to-back wins for No. 5 in consecutive weeks — and back-to-back-to-back wins for the 2021 champ when it comes to Las Vegas Motor Speedway.

Currently in a tier of his own with no signs of slowing, this is a track his competitors aren’t happy to have him try to make the Championship 4, because it’s essentially a slam dunk he’ll find the front of the field. In the Next Gen era, Larson has already led 404 laps at Vegas; more than double his nearest competitor. Nobody has been better than him there since joining Hendrick Motorsports in his title-winning year, with top-two finishes in five of his seven Vegas starts with the team.

That said, for his competitors — there is, however, some hope.

“For whatever reason, the opening race of each round this playoffs hasn’t been very kind to us,” said No. 5 crew chief Cliff Daniels after Charlotte. “And we want to go to Vegas with a lot of confidence just in our recent run there, but we’re going to have a healthy amount of respect for that race and really for all of them.

“Yes, we look forward to them and think we have a good opportunity ahead of us, but it’s going to take the little details to get it right and make sure of where we need to be.”

The No. 5 team is clearly faster on a consistent basis than everyone, but Larson and Co. aren’t immune from mistakes — and mistakes in big spots, in particular.

Despite Hendrick winning four of the last five races at the track (keep an eye on teammate William Byron this weekend, too), it’s not like the remaining playoff drivers haven’t been competitive there as well. Six of the eight postseason drivers finished in the top 10 at Vegas in March. And Christopher Bell, the lone outlier after a 33rd-place finish due to misfortune, has been arguably the best driver of the playoffs despite no wins yet. A victory by any of the eight wouldn’t be shocking.

The one that might be a little surprising (but not if you really think about it) would be a win by Joey Logano, who initially appeared to have been eliminated after the Roval before the No. 48 DQ upended things. One of just two multi-time champions still racing full-time in Cup, of course Logano is a championship-caliber driver, but his 784 race points scored this season are the second-fewest by a Round of 8 driver ever in the stage era.

But even-year juju and all that, you might as well start thinking about what No. 22 championship apparel you want to order if he does win this weekend, because each time Logano won the title, he won the first race of the Round of 8 — including at Las Vegas in 2022.

His teammate and defending Cup champ Ryan Blaney, however, could be one that sneaks up on people this weekend, despite having no past Vegas wins to Logano’s three. While not a direct comp because of some track differences, a 49-point, fourth-place run at 1.5-mile Kansas Speedway last round could point to No. 12 being a bigger threat this weekend than some realize. And if not Vegas, another intermediate track follows right behind it at Homestead-Miami Speedway.

“I feel like we are in a pretty decent spot,” Blaney said after the Charlotte Roval Round of 12 finale. “I was really happy with our speed at Kansas and I thought that was huge at a place we have struggled at. We hadn’t been the best there the last few years but to go there and have race-winning pace was really impressive for our group.

“Hopefully, we can carry that over to Vegas and Homestead and learn from the spring at Martinsville. I think we are in a good spot. We just have to go perform. It is a new week next week and I am looking forward to getting started.”

As the checkered flag waves on Sunday, it’s possible — perhaps even probable — that we won’t just be crowning a race winner. We might just be looking at our next NASCAR Cup Series champion.

In the high-stakes world of playoff racing, Vegas isn’t just another stop on the schedule — it’s often where championships are born.