Chase check-in: Five drivers vying for three Chase spots at Daytona

It all comes down to this, one regular-season race Saturday night at Daytona to determine the final Chase field. Five drivers are battling for three spots with the rest either locked into The Chase or eliminated from contention. We’ll dive into the details in “The Cutline” section below, but here’s what you need to know: The five drivers (in order of the standings) are Bubba Wallace, Austin Cindric, Shane van Gisbergen, Ryan Preece and Brad Keselowski with 31 points separating SVG and Preece at the cutline.

Besides the cutline, though, there are multiple “micro” battles throughout the standings where point swings for starting The Chase could be directly impacted by the Daytona outcome. For example, 31 points separate Christopher Bell in fifth place from Chase Elliott in eighth place, with the top driver in that cluster starting The Chase with a 15-point advantage over the bottom driver. So these battles within the standings will also be worth watching at Daytona, and we’ll try to outline those as well.

Reminder: The top 16 drivers in points make The Chase. There is no more win-and-in. The regular-season points leader starts The Chase with 2,100 points and second place starts with 2,075. Third place starts with 2,065 points, then drivers are separated by five-point increments through 16th place.

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The Race for No. 1

The race for the No. 1 seed is over. Denny Hamlin clinched the top spot with a seventh-place finish at New Hampshire. The Joe Gibbs Racing veteran will now enter The Chase with a 25-point advantage over the second-place driver. This will be the biggest gap between any of The Chase drivers entering the Sept. 6 Southern 500 at Darlington Raceway. We’re all familiar with Hamlin’s championship heartbreaks, including the most recent one last year at Phoenix, but he is now in prime position to finally make good on a trophy run.

While 25 points don’t seem like a lot to overcome in a world where wins are worth 55 points, Hamlin has shown amazing consistency throughout the season that is going to be tough to beat. Hamlin’s seventh-place finish at Loudon was his sixth result of seventh or better in the past seven races. A few races before that, he rolled off a string of three straight victories at Nashville, Michigan and Pocono. With favorable tracks lined up at Darlington, Gateway, Bristol, Kansas, Las Vegas, Charlotte and Phoenix to start The Chase, Hamlin will be tough to catch.

The Mythical Top Six

Following Hamlin in the standings are Ryan Blaney, Ty Gibbs, Tyler Reddick, Christopher Bell and Chase Briscoe, making up the “Mythical Top Six,” the group where Racing Insights predicts the most likely champion will come. The battle is tight with only 31 points separating Bell in fifth place from Elliott in eighth place. Kyle Larson and Elliott are separated by one point in seventh and eight place, respectively. Places could change hands during the race at Daytona, and that could make a big impact on who has the advantage heading into The Chase.

Blaney, who won at New Hampshire, is safely in the top six. So to are Gibbs, who finished sixth, and Reddick, who netted an eighth-place showing at Loudon. But Reddick’s performance was a microcosm of his summer slump: He qualified on the pole despite not having good long-run speed in practice, spun out on the opening lap of the race and had to spend the rest of the time making up for that early mistake. He’s clearly searching for whatever magic he had early in the season when he won five of the first nine races.

Below the top six, Larson and Elliott are lurking. Larson lies 19 points below Briscoe for the sixth spot while Elliott is 20 points back. Both are former Cup champions, so they are formidable forms showing up in the rearview mirrors of those above them in the standings. Larson has posted a pair of top-six finishes and seems to be getting his act together at the right time, but he’ll be hard-pressed to make up more ground at Daytona because of his historic struggles on superspeedways. Elliott is known for his consistency, but lately he hasn’t produced the finishes to make a charge up the standings. Besides a top-five finish at Richmond two weeks ago, Elliott’s last top-10 finish before that was back in late June at Nashville.

The Middle Ground

The summer of Penske continues with Blaney’s win, marking four wins for the team in the past six races. However, Joey Logano’s torrid run slowed down a bit with a 14th-place finish at Loudon. Logano qualified 20th and was involved in an early spin that set him back. He rallied for a respectable finish but is 45 points behind making the top six, meaning it’s unlikely that he will be in the pantheon of favorable championship contenders to start The Chase.

What’s more is Logano has to worry about the drivers right behind him in the standings. Chris Buescher is only six points behind Logano in 10th and Carson Hocevar is only 10 points back in 11th. As it is, Logano would start The Chase 65 points behind Hamlin, but a drop to 11th in the standings would make it a 75-point deficit.

Looking ahead to Daytona, Logano and Team Penske are generally thought of as strong superspeedway racers, but Logano has four finishes of 27th or worse in his past five races there. Meanwhile, Buescher has been good at Daytona with four consecutive top-10 finishes and a win there in the late summer of 2023. And while Hocevar’s career Daytona performances have been uneven at best, he still has the superspeedway win from earlier in the season at Talladega that could bode well for his confidence.

The Cutline Battle

Bubba Wallace only needs two points to clinch a spot in The Chase, so provided he doesn’t crash out of the race early, he should be safely in. But there’s also plenty of room for Wallace in 14th place in the standings to move up because he only trails 12h-place William Byron by 14 points. And it’s also not crazy to think Wallace could move up even higher than 12th given a Daytona history that includes three runner-up finishes.

In the same vein, it’s very unlikely that Brad Keselowski, who sits 66 points back of the cutline, will make The Chase. He would essentially need a 70-point race and some help to make it in. Keselowski finished fifth in the Daytona 500 this year and scored 39 points. His second-place finish in 2023 during the Daytona summer race netted him 45 points when he won Stage 2. Look for Keselowski to be eliminated from The Chase, possibly by the end of Stage 1.

So that makes Shane van Gisbergen and Ryan Preece essentially the two drivers to watch here as 31 points separate them on the cutline. Austin Cindric looks relatively safe with a 44-point cushion and has a Daytona 500 trophy to his credit. SVG and Preece, meanwhile, are locked in a battle on a superspeedway, which is a bit odd considering one is a road-course ace and the other’s strong point is the shorter tracks like the one we were just on at New Hampshire.

What will go down here? Well, it’s really anyone’s guess, which is why it’s exciting. Van Gisbergen has four starts at Daytona in Cup and his best finish of the bunch was 16th while the other three were all finishes of 30th or worse. Preece has a more extensive history with 13 Daytona starts and three top-10 finishes to his credit. But he hasn’t had a top-10 finish there since 2021.