Turning Point: Are we already looking at the 2025 Championship 4?

Here’s what’s happening in the world of NASCAR with Bristol Motor Speedway in the rearview and Talladega Superspeedway (Sun., 3 p.m. ET, FOX) up next.

THE LINEUP

1️⃣ Are we already looking at the 2025 Championship 4?

2️⃣ Will regular-season winners hit double digits?

3️⃣ Skip Flores on move off No. 12: ‘Just part of the business’

4️⃣ Right back at it — drivers to win after a bye week

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

1. Are we already looking at the 2025 Championship 4?

The Cup Series has seen a “Big 4” win eight of the season’s nine races. Is it too early to pencil them in as this year’s Championship 4?

Ask any diehard NASCAR fan what they remember about the 2018 Cup Series season and you’re bound to get a whole lot of answers mentioning “The Big 3 and Me” — referring to Kyle Busch, Kevin Harvick and Martin Truex Jr., who dominated all year, before Joey Logano bested them in the finale to win the damn war and take home his first career title.

The fearsome foursome combined to win 23 races that year, including 12 of the first 14. That is … pretty ridiculous.

Of course, this was pre-Next Gen, when the degree of parity throughout the field was a bit less evident, so surely a repeat of that dominance by a select handful of drivers is a thing of the past, right?

Wrong. So very, very wrong.

We’re seeing a similar trend play out in 2025, with this year’s version featuring Christopher Bell, William Byron, Denny Hamlin and Kyle Larson thus far only allowing one other driver (Josh Berry at Las Vegas) to claim victory. The season’s five winners through nine races is the fewest the sport has seen since just four did it in 1992 (Davey Allison, Bill Elliott, Alan Kulwicki, Mark Martin).

It’s never a foregone conclusion who’ll be racing for the Bill France Cup until the checkered flag falls in October at Martinsville (and sometimes even a little bit later than that), but we sort of knew what the Championship 4 was shaping up to be in 2018 before we even hit the All-Star Race. It’s hard not to feel the same way with what we’ve already experienced in 2025 — right now, you’d absolutely pencil in these four drivers to compete for the title come November.

MORE: Biggest Cup Series story lines after off weekend

Byron leads the series in points, thanks in part to a season-opening win in the Daytona 500 — a rare, successful defense of a “Great American Race” crown — and a series-best average finish of 9.1. That alone is championship material, but Byron’s superspeedway prowess takes it to another level and merits mentioning with Talladega on deck. In the Next Gen era, Byron has four drafting-track wins and more points on those tracks than anyone else since the start of last year. Byron has evolved into a true superstar, executing like a veteran title contender — smart, steady and opportunistic.

Bell is also no stranger to the Championship 4, but he’s taken a major leap in 2025 and has clearly “arrived.” His three consecutive wins — including Joe Gibbs Racing’s first superspeedway victory in the Next Gen era — propelled him to early championship-favorite status, and he briefly appeared to be in a class of his own. He might still be.

At 42, Hamlin continues to rebuke Father Time as the only driver to finish on the lead lap in all nine races — winning two of them. He’s fresh off a Darlington win earlier this month and riding a three-race streak of top-two finishes — the first time he’s done that since 2020. He’s been in the mix at nearly every kind of track, collecting valuable playoff points and avoiding the sort of mistakes he’s often been knocked for in the past. If he and the revamped No. 11 team continue to keep it clean, his experience could make him stand out above the other three come crunch time.

And of course there is our most recent victor in Larson — he’s as fast as heck, and arguably a more complete driver than ever before, phantom spins be damned. The 2021 champ has led 503 laps already, far more than anyone else, and has won twice. The big shift? His performance on drafting tracks. For years, superspeedways were Larson’s Achilles’ heel, but he’s had top fives in two of the last three and nearly stole Atlanta from Bell in a photo finish. That’s a game-changer, and Talladega looming in the Round of 8 doesn’t feel as big of a threat to his championship chances as it once did.

The bigger picture is this: these four drivers aren’t just the best in 2025 — they’re becoming the only reliable picks in a season full of unpredictability and head-scratching slow starters (reigning champ Logano included). They’re consistent where others aren’t. Fast where others fade. And they’re smart enough to survive chaotic races while still collecting playoff points in bulk, which could provide just the cushion necessary to propel them to Phoenix several months from now.

Unless something dramatic changes, the road to the Bill France Cup runs directly through these four garages. Whether it’s Byron’s balance, Bell’s breakout, Larson’s all-around power, or Hamlin’s hunger — this might be the Championship 4 in waiting.

With 17 contests remaining before the 2025 NASCAR Playoffs lock in its 16-driver field, how many new winners are we actually going to see?

Given what we’ve witnessed so far, with three of them already hitting for multiple wins and Byron, the lone driver among them with just one, running arguably the best of the bunch, it feels like a safe assumption that at least two more victories are coming for each of them by the time we return to Darlington.

That’s eight wins right there, leaving just nine more for potential new winners. If that were to happen, that would bring us to 14 total victors and likely two drivers relying on points for their playoff berths. For context, the 2018 season mentioned above didn’t experience its ninth driver (Kurt Busch) celebrating a win until Race 24, with the 10th and final regular-season victor (Brad Keselowski) claiming the last two.

A case can be made that these four drivers are off to an even more dominant start than the Class of ’18 was, too. Harvick led the bunch with seven wins at that point, with Busch tallying six, Truex four and Logano just one. That’s 18 total, and the current quick quartet, thus far, is on pace for about 23.

MORE: NASCAR off-week superlatives – awarding 2025 standouts so far

We’ve typically seen regular-season winners total in the 13-to-14 range in this playoff format, rising to a high of 16 in 2022, so we’d be bucking the trend in a big way. So, will we get to 10? It’s possible — but the path is narrower than usual.

Consider the usual suspects still searching for a win: Chase Elliott, Ryan Blaney, Tyler Reddick, Joey Logano, even Kyle Busch. All playoff staples.

Elliott has five top 10s but hasn’t looked as dominant as his Hendrick teammates. Blaney has led races but hasn’t been able to finish the job for a multitude of reasons, though often not of his own doing. Reddick came close at Daytona and remains a driver to watch, particularly at road courses. Logano, the defending champion, has led 260 laps yet has zero top-fives to show for it. These are all superstars, but they are displaying nowhere near the consistency of the 2025 elite. Still, it’s likely that at least three or four of those five drivers will win a race. Getting closer.

Then there are the long shots, who certainly come into play this weekend down in Alabama. Ricky Stenhouse Jr. — last fall’s Talladega winner — is always dangerous on drafting tracks. Ross Chastain has found rhythm again with three straight top 10s. Bubba Wallace is having his best start to a year ever and Chris Buescher, Alex Bowman, Chase Briscoe, Ryan Preece and AJ Allmendinger all continue to quietly run well.

But every week, the “Big 4” keep asserting control. Their consistency is suffocating.

What might change the math is schedule diversity in the coming months, which could produce surprises. If not, we might cruise into the playoffs with a throwback stat line — a year where eight or nine winners through the first 26 races is all we get.

And what happens if that’s the case? It doesn’t break the playoff format a bit; it instead reemphasizes the importance of consistency. It could also create the most dramatic last few weeks of the regular season to date, where point accumulation among bubble drivers suddenly matters more than striving for an opportunistic win.

Will we hit double digits? The answer might depend less on who’s ready to break through — and more on whether the “Big 4” ever cool off.

And believe it or not, they might just be warming up.