The 2026 NASCAR Cup Series season is only four races old, but the honeymoon phase is basically over: By the time drivers fire up their engines on Sunday at Las Vegas Motor Speedway (4 p.m. ET, FS1, HBO Max, FOX One, PRN Radio, SiriusXM Radio), we’ll be exactly one month into the points-paying schedule. And while that sounds like a drop in the bucket, it means more than 10% of the season is already in the rearview mirror — yes, time flies by faster than a Team Penske car zooming around the track at Phoenix.
As part of that, the clock is already ticking for drivers buried in the standings below The Chase cutline. Not only does the new standings format give an extra bonus for wins versus the old system, widening the separation between the “haves” and the “have-nots,” but the elimination of win-and-in also means a lack of steady point accumulation can no longer be made up for in a single race.
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As a result, an early deficit is going to be harder to climb out of than it might have been in the past. Here are five drivers whose slow starts have already got them in trouble so far — along with the number of points per race they’ll need to average from here to get to 580, roughly the average number it has taken in recent seasons to finish 16th in The Chase standings by the end of the regular season (after we reconstructed the new points for older seasons). And, for fun, we also issued a Panic Rating scored in 1-4 anxious emojis 😰, with four being the most.
Chase Briscoe, Joe Gibbs Racing
Standings rank: 33rd
Deficit vs. 16th place: 53 points
Points/race needed for 580: 24.2
2025 points/race: 31.1
One of the great breakout stories of 2025, Briscoe rode his midseason hot streak well into the fall and the Championship 4. That was always going to be a tough act to follow, but Briscoe has been especially snakebit to begin 2026. Aside from a second-place finish at EchoPark (from 34th on the grid), he has finished either 36th or 37th in three of his four races, with his day ending early twice due to either a crash or mechanical failure. That string of poor finishes has landed him 33rd in the standings, but there are reasons to think Briscoe can climb out. For one thing, he piled up points last year at a rate that would easily clear 580 by regular season’s end. Second, he hasn’t actually run badly despite the tough finishes. His Driver Rating was 82.5 or higher in three of his four races, with Phoenix (60.2) standing out as his only truly subpar drive. As a result, he ranks 11th in average rating (83.2) — much better than his standings placement.
Panic Rating: 😰
Josh Berry, Wood Brothers
Standings rank: 31st
Deficit vs. 16th place: 50 points
Points/race needed for 580: 24.1
2025 points/race: 18.4
Berry was another feel-good underdog story last season, improving from 27th in the standings to 16th, notching his first career Cup win at the Vegas spring race and making the playoffs. This year has seen the No. 21 unable to build upon a top 10 at Daytona with finishes outside the top 25 in each of the three races since (including a pair of crashes). Unlike Briscoe, who can be relatively optimistic on the basis of past performance and underlying 2026 stats, Berry needs a 24.1 points-per-race pace that well exceeds anything he’s done in the past — he ran at a career-high 18.4 rate last season — to reach 580. He’s going to need to turn it up a notch to make a playoff return.
Panic Rating: 😰😰😰😰
Austin Cindric, Team Penske
Standings rank: 30th
Deficit vs. 16th place: 48 points
Points/race needed for 580: 24.0
2025 points/race: 19.6
Coming off one of his best career seasons in 2025, Cindric’s 2026 hasn’t quite followed suit. He’s had one top-30 run — a 26th-place finish at EchoPark, a track where he traditionally runs very well — and has crashed twice en route to an ugly average finish of 31.5. The rest of Cindric’s numbers are all over the place: He does have an above-average Driver Rating of 70.5, courtesy of better days than the final placement indicated in Atlanta and Phoenix. But aside from his No. 3 spot on the grid this past weekend, a lack of qualifying pace — his average start is 24.3 — is uncharacteristic from a guy who’s usually one of the fastest Fords on the track. He was a much-improved oval and short-track driver last year, so we’ll see what he can do in this upcoming stretch of races, but he needs to surpass his career-best points pace (23.3 per start in 2022) to be near the Chase cutoff.
Panic Rating: 😰😰😰
Ross Chastain, Trackhouse Racing
Standings rank: 23rd
Deficit vs. 16th place: 26 points
Points/race needed for 580: 23.0
2025 points/race: 25.3
It feels odd for Chastain to be so far down the points list right now, as he has seemingly been in the middle of plenty of action to start the year, with plenty of speed. (He’s spent an average of 64% of each race running in the top 15, with an average running position of 15.3.) He’s even finished every race. But Ross hasn’t paired that with strong finishes yet — his average in that department is just 21.5. That being said, it’s probably a safe bet the results will follow going forward, considering his 84.4 average Driver Rating ranks 10th in Cup so far. He also simply needs to drive like he did last year, in terms of points per race, to eventually put himself in position to leapfrog his way into the top 16.
Panic Rating: 😰😰
Kyle Busch, Richard Childress Racing
Standings rank: 20th
Deficit vs. 16th place: 19 points
Points/race needed for 580: 22.7
2025 points/race: 20.5
Good ol’ Rowdy is a master of engineering respectable results from less-than-favorable conditions, and he’s provided one of his finest examples of that so far this year — coaxing three top 20s and an average finish of 19.5 out of a car that has seldom run up front (aside from starting on pole at Daytona). But that may not be enough to overcome a nearly 20-point early deficit relative to The Chase cutline, as Busch hasn’t produced enough points per race to reach 580 from here since 2023, his first season with RCR. Despite the fine-enough finishing results, Busch has a below-average Driver Rating of 63.5, never breaking 80.0 in any race thus far. With a low ceiling for top-end performances, it might be tough to catch The Chase drivers.
Panic Rating: 😰😰😰