CHARLOTTE, N.C.— Unlike in previous years, none of the frontrunners competing in this season’s NASCAR Cup Series Playoffs could — or were willing to — name an absolute favorite to hoist the champion’s trophy Nov. 2 at Phoenix.
In fact, Joe Gibbs Racing’s Christopher Bell, a three-race winner, said he’s feeling as calm as he’s ever felt entering the 10-race playoff stretch that begins Sunday in the Cook Out Southern 500 at historic Darlington Raceway (6 p.m. ET, USA Network, MRN Radio, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio, NBC Sports App).
That was a pervasive vibe throughout Wednesday’s Playoff Media Day among the 16 drivers who will race for the 2025 title.
Joe Gibbs Racing’s Denny Hamlin was first to meet with reporters at the Charlotte Convention Center. His 19-year string of playoff appearances is the longest in the series. Hamlin’s four victories this season are also tied for most in the series, but the 44-year-old insisted his expectations are no different this year as he tries once again to secure a first championship.
“It’s too hard to predict because it’s unpredictable,” said Hamlin, who goes into the championship run ranked third in the points standings, three points behind co-leaders Kyle Larson and William Byron.
“Our average finish drops every year in the playoffs,” he continued. “We run better in the final 10 (races) than we do the rest of the season. It’s just a matter of all the other variables. Does someone below the cutline win and get in and knock us out, or does someone ride the wall and knock us out?
“I’m so tainted that I’m just very nonchalant and like, ‘Let’s just win races and see where this thing ends up.’”
Although he has qualified for the playoffs for seven straight years, 2025 Regular Season Champion William Byron is also looking to land his first NASCAR Cup Series title after finishing third the previous two seasons.
The driver of the No. 24 Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet won his second consecutive Daytona 500 in February, added a win at Iowa earlier this month and ultimately wrapped up the regular-season title with one race still remaining.
“I think in our position, we’ve had that conversation of just trying to stack some more points and stack some more race wins,” Byron said. “We’ve been in this position before and feel like we kind of understand the cadence of this first round.
“It’d be really nice just to go out there and win one of these just to take the pressure off and have some forward momentum as well. They are good tracks for us.”
Here’s what’s happening in NASCAR with the Coke Zero 400at Daytona International Speedway in the rearview and Sunday’s Cook Out Southern 500 at Darlington Raceway up next (6 p.m. ET, USA Network, MRN Radio, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio, NBC Sports App).
Hendrick Motorsports drivers Kyle Larson and William Byron enter tied for the points lead — with just 26 points separating them from the cutoff line. It’s the smallest cushion any top seed has ever possessed in the current playoff format, turning what has historically been a comfortable advantage into barely enough breathing room right from the get-go.
Previous No. 1s entered with cushions ranging from 40 to 57 points; margins that could absorb a mechanical failure or late-race accident in the opening round. Larson and the Regular Season Champion Byron’s predicament reflects a season where excellence found peaks and valleys, competition at the top was spread super thin, and no driver truly separated themselves from the pack for the bulk of the 26-race regular season.
The implications ripple throughout the entire field, too.
Historical data shows the bubble to advance from the Round of 16 typically has been five or fewer points in eight of the past 11 seasons, meaning roughly half the field could realistically flip positions based on a single race’s outcome. When the supposed championship favorites are this vulnerable, everyone below them becomes a legitimate threat.
Alex Bowman, who made the playoffs about as narrowly as one can, exemplifies this volatility. Sitting five points below the cutline in 16th place, he needs to average 24.3 points per race to advance; historically achievable but requiring consistency he hasn’t demonstrated at playoff tracks. His spring performances at Darlington (35th) and Bristol (37th) netted just 20 total points, second-fewest among playoff drivers. Yet Bowman has won poles at the two most recent Bristol races and led significant laps before mechanical failures intervened. The margin between disaster and triumph has never been thinner.
The compression extends beyond individual drivers to entire teams. Hendrick Motorsports, with four playoff entries, could hypothetically see half its roster eliminated in the opening round despite dominant regular-season statistics. Its drivers combined have won seven races this year, yet three of them — Chase Elliott (7th), Byron (2nd) and Larson (1st) — start with smaller point advantages than any top-seven seeds in playoff history.
The tight standings also amplify the importance of track-specific performance. Tyler Reddick enters 14th, one point below the cutline, but has led 317 laps at Darlington in the Next Gen era — third-most of any driver. His spring fourth-place finish demonstrates the speed that could vault him forward at a track that feels tailor-made for him. Conversely, 2023 champion Ryan Blaney’s six-race top-10 streak — including a Daytona win — masks concerning struggles at Darlington, where his 18.8 average finish ranks among his worst at any track.
Historical precedent suggests this compression could also produce dramatic swings.
Chase Briscoe overcame a 21-point deficit in 2024’s opening round, while Joey Logano advanced to win last year’s championship despite earning the 12th seed. With the top seeds this vulnerable, the entire hierarchy becomes fluid.
And the psychological pressure compounds the mathematical reality, as drivers accustomed to points cushions must now toil with elimination urgency from the opening green flag.
Ross Chastain, making his 250th career start at Darlington, sits just one point above the cutline and risks being eliminated in the playoffs’ first round for the first time. Even his proven track record — seventh or better in three of the last four Darlington races — provides little comfort, when a single mistake could end his championship hopes at one of the most volatile tracks on the schedule.
Shane van Gisbergen’s presence adds another variable. The road course specialist’s 16-point cushion looks substantial (relatively speaking) until considering his oval inexperience. His 20th-place spring finish at Darlington, though, represents unknown territory for a driver whose four wins came exclusively on road courses. If the rookie van Gisbergen struggles, as some but not all anticipate, it creates opportunities for drivers currently below the cut.
The 2025 playoffs begin not with the usual collection of safe favorites and desperate long shots, but with 16 drivers genuinely threatened by elimination. When mathematical certainty dissolves, racing’s fundamental truth emerges: on any given Sunday, anyone can win.
And this year, everyone must.
Meg Oliphant | Getty Images
2. The Denny Hamlin paradox: Master of Darlington, stranger to championships
The future Hall of Famer dominates Darlington yet struggles to secure a NASCAR title, embodying a career of individual-race brilliance but playoff heartbreak.
Denny Hamlin’s talent level when he’s holding a steering wheel and whipping around Darlington Raceway borders on the supernatural.
The No. 11 Joe Gibbs Racing driver owns a pristine 7.9 average finish there, standing as the best in track history among drivers with more than two starts. He’s led laps in 11 consecutive races at the track, a streak spanning five years and rivaling legends like Darrell Waltrip’s 17-race run from the 1970s and ’80s. Hamlin owns five wins at the South Carolina venue, including this past spring, and scored stage points in all but six of the 30 stages attempted.
Yet Sunday night’s Southern 500 serves as the perfect metaphor for Hamlin’s career: complete mastery of individual moments — and persistent failure when championships hang in the balance. At 44 years old, turning 45 in November, he would become the third-oldest champion in NASCAR history if he finally breaks through 10 weeks from now. It’s almost poetically fitting how it starts, though: the track that loves him most opens the playoffs that have consistently rejected him, specifically.
By every measurable standard, Hamlin should dominate the playoffs’ opening round, at least. He arrives Sunday having won the spring Darlington race, finishes of second at Gateway each of the past two years and has recorded four consecutive top-four finishes at Bristol, two of which were wins.
But NASCAR’s elimination format has never played out on logic alone, especially where Hamlin is concerned.
Despite 19 playoff appearances — more than any active driver — he’s reached the Championship 4 just four times and never captured the title that would put the final stamp on his already locked-down Hall of Fame credentials. His playoff history reads like a catalog of near misses: second in points in 2010, an appearance in the debut Championship 4 in 2014 and then three more consistent Championship 4 bids from 2019-2021.
All were opportunities. All came up short.
Darlington rewards patience and punishes desperation — idiosyncrasies that should favor the experienced Hamlin against a field containing two first-time playoff participants and several drivers with poor track records. Shane van Gisbergen finished 20th here in April, his best Cup oval finish. Josh Berry managed just 36th in the spring despite a third-place run in 2024. Alex Bowman, sitting five points below the cutline, scored just three points in his last Darlington start.
The strongest threats to Hamlin come from drivers who, like him, have mastered Darlington’s unique demands. Tyler Reddick — his 23XI Racing employee — has three top-three finishes there in the Next Gen era, more than any other driver, and his 319 laps led at the track represent his highest total anywhere. Chase Briscoe won here last September when facing elimination, proving the track rewards aggressive racing under pressure — if a driver can keep his cool.
William Byron presents the most intriguing challenge. His spring performance, leading the first 243 laps before finishing second, demonstrated both speed and the kind of pit-strategy mistakes that can doom championship campaigns if they happen at the wrong time. Byron has the best average finish (9.14) among active drivers at Darlington in the Next Gen era, but his tendency to excel early and struggle late (both in races and as a season-long trend) mirrors Hamlin’s career-long championship timing issues.
Sunday night, then, will determine whether Darlington rewards its most accomplished master or delivers another cruel lesson about the difference between individual excellence and championship timing.
And whether that’ll be the case for Hamlin the rest of the way, like it historically has been.
The hosts of NASCAR Inside the Race break down what Shane van Gisbergen needs to do to advance out of the Round of 16 in the Cup Series Playoffs.
4. Playoff stalwarts — drivers, teams with most postseason wins
Four of the six winningest organizations and three of the seven winningest drivers in playoff history will be competing for this year’s title as well. Will their past successes portend future postseason gains? (Credit: Racing Insights)
Team
Wins
Driver
Wins
Hendrick Motorsports
60
Jimmie Johnson
29
Joe Gibbs Racing
37
Kevin Harvick
16
Team Penske
32
Joey Logano
15
Roush Fenway Keselowski Racing
24
Denny Hamlin
13
Stewart-Haas Racing
19
Kyle Larson
11
Richard Childress Racing
12
Tony Stewart
11
–
–
Martin Truex Jr.
10
5. Catch the pack — news and notes from around the garage
The NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series heads to Darlington Raceway on Saturday for the Sober or Slammer 200 (Noon ET, FS1, NASCAR Racing Network Radio, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio) to kick off the seven-race playoffs. Truck Series qualifying will begin at 4:10 p.m. ET on Friday after practice, which starts at 3:05 p.m. ET. Practice and qualifying will both air on FS2.
The NASCAR Cup Series begins the 2025 postseason with a crown jewel in the Cook Out Southern 500 at Darlington Raceway. Qualifying at the 1.366-miler begins at 10:10 a.m. ET on Friday (truTV, MRN Radio, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio).
The NASCAR Xfinity Series treks to the Pacific Northwest for its penultimate regular-season contest in the Pacific Office Automation 147 at Portland International Raceway on Saturday (7:30 p.m. ET, The CW, MRN Radio, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio). Qualifying will be earlier that day at 4:05 p.m. ET on The CW App.
Saturday’s qualifying session will consist of one round, split into two 20-minute groups. The groups below are determined via a metric that combines the previous race finish by owner (70%) and current owner points position (30%). There will be a 50-minute practice session for all cars beforehand, which will be available on The CW App at 3 p.m. ET.
The ejection of crew chief Rudy Fugle at Daytona International Speedway occurred during NASCAR’s ongoing effort to reduce the rate of prerace inspection failures.
During the latest episode of the “Hauler Talk” podcast, NASCAR managing director of communications Mike Forde said a team member was spotted pushing down the splitter of William Byron’s No. 24 Chevrolet after the car passed prerace inspection. The underbody was re-examined after the unapproved adjustment, and the car’s subsequent failure resulted in Fugle’s ejection from the track.
“We want fans to understand that every car here has been closely scrutinized and is on an even playing field,” Forde said. “So, when you make an adjustment with an official’s back turned, that’s going to be a bigger penalty than just if you fail a body measurement. You very rarely hear of a crew chief getting ejected; probably 90% of the time, it is the car chief. So, when you see the crew chief ejected, that is why. When you do something after inspection’s clear, we ramp it up.”
Byron, who had clinched the regular-season championship before the finale at Daytona, also was hit with a loss of pit selection, starting from the rear and a stop-and-go penalty. Because it was applied entirely at the track (without a fine or points deduction), the penalty could not be appealed, but Forde said there was no pushback from Hendrick Motorsports.
“It was even the opposite,” Forde said, alluding to a discussion between NASCAR senior vice president of competition Elton Sawyer and Hendrick executives. “I think the Hendrick brass themselves were not thrilled with their team on this one because it does draw attention to the Regular Season Champion in a negative way.”
During a meeting with Cup teams in mid-July before the Dover Motor Speedway race, NASCAR announced a new policy in which a prerace inspection failure would relegate a team to the back of the inspection line for the next race. (Prerace inspection order is set through the points standings.)
Forde said NASCAR recorded a 55% failure rate for prerace inspections during the season’s first 20 races. The goal of the policy change was to reduce the inspection failure rate to about 25% because the delays from the failures adversely affect the cadence of the weekend schedule. On race weekends with practice sessions, starting from the rear of the prerace inspection line makes it a larger scramble to prepare the car.
At Watkins Glen International, 38 of 40 cars passed inspection on the first attempt, which Forde said was a Cup series record. The failure rate was about 50% at Daytona, which had no practice sessions.
Other topics covered by Forde and NASCAR senior director of racing communications AmandaEllis during the 30th episode of “Hauler Talk,” which explores competition issues in NASCAR:
— Whether NASCAR would review its policy of crediting relief drivers with a victory after Connor Zilisch turned his No. 88 Chevrolet over to Parker Kligerman in an Xfinity Series win at Daytona.
— How car numbers are assigned by NASCAR.
— The efficacy of the new A-post flaps at Daytona and why they were painted orange.
Click on the embed above to listen or search for “Hauler Talk” wherever you download podcasts to hear it on your phone, tablet or mobile device.
Nate Ryan has written about NASCAR since 1996 while working at the San Bernardino Sun, Richmond Times-Dispatch, USA TODAY and for the past 10 years at NBC Sports Digital. He is a contributor to the “Hauler Talk” show on the NASCAR Podcast Network. He also has covered various other motorsports, including the IndyCar and IMSA series.
Just five races remain in the 2025 NASCAR Whelen Modified Tour season as the series returns to historic Oswego Speedway in New York for the running of the Toyota Mod Classic 150 this Saturday night (8 p.m. ET on FloRacing).
Saturday’s race marks the Modified Tour’s 18th visit to Oswego, with the first four visits occuring in 1988. Brian Ross captured the first two checkered flags at the track, with Mike McLaughlin and George Kent Jr. capturing the next two at the 0.625-mile oval.
Additional winners at Oswego through the years include Tony Hirschman, Mike Stefanik, Doug Coby, Ryan Preece, Matt Hirschman, Justin Bonsignore, Ron Silk and the most recent winner, Patrick Emerling.
Tickets for Saturday’s Toyota Mod Classic 150 at Oswego Speedway are available here. Below is everything you need to know about the 12th race of the 2025 Modified Tour season.
A rainbow forms over Turn 4 prior to the start of the Toyota Bud Mod Classic 150 for the NASCAR Whelen Modified Tour at Oswego Speedway on Sept. 3, 2022. (Photo: Bryan Bennett/NASCAR)
Toyota Mod Classic 150 at Oswego Speedway
Entering Saturday’s race at Oswego, the battle for the Modified Tour championship appears to go through 22-year-old Austin Beers.
The driver from Northampton, Pennsylvania holds a 10-point advantage on defending series champion Justin Bonsignore with five races left in the season. Statistically speaking, Beers has been the class of the Modified Tour field throughout the 2025 campaign.
He only has one win this year, but he leads all drivers in top fives, top 10s, average qualifying position, average finish and laps completed. He’s also the only driver to finish on the lead lap in all 11 events held thus far.
Bonsignore’s advantage lies in the experience he and crew chief Ryan Stone have at the remaining venues on the schedule. Oswego is a prime example. Bonsignore has two wins and seven top-five finishes at the track, whereas Beers has only made four starts at the track during his short career.
Could that prove to be the difference at Oswego and the other four venues — Riverhead Raceway, New Hampshire Motor Speedway, Thompson Speedway Motorsports Park and Martinsville Speedway — on the schedule? Only time will tell.
If Beers or Bonsignore hope to win Saturday night, either will have to go through defending race winner Patrick Emerling. The driver of the No. 1 Fleetworks Modified isn’t out of the championship battle, either, as he sits 22 points behind Beers. A strong performance Saturday will be vital if he hopes to make up pivotal points going into the stretch run.
Ron Silk, who won the 2023 event at Oswego Speedway, returns to the Modified Tour in pursuit of his third victory this season. The Catalano clan will field cars for brothers Tommy, Trevor and Tyler during Saturday’s event.
One driver, Andy Lewis Jr., will make his Modified Tour debut Saturday night. Lewis will pilot John-Michael Shenette’s No. 8 during the Toyota Mod Classic 150. Other notable entries include Matt Hirschman, Mike Christopher Jr., Stephen Kopcik, Jake Lutz and Kyle Bonsignore.
The full entry list for Saturday’s Toyota Mod Classic 150 is available here.
Patrick Emerling (1), Justin Bonsignore (51) and Matt Hirschman (60) battle for position last season at Oswego Speedway. (Photo: Bryan Bennett/NASCAR)
SCHEDULE: Saturday, Aug. 30; Practice from 3 – 3:30 p.m. ET … Final practice from 4 – 4:30 p.m. ET … Qualifying at 5:30 p.m. ET … Start of the Toyota Mod Classic 150 at 8 p.m. ET.
QUALIFYING: Two consecutive qualifying laps. Faster lap determines qualifying position. Adjustments or repairs may not be made on the vehicle after the vehicle has taken the green flag at the start/finish line. NASCAR reserves the right to have more than one vehicle engage in qualifying runs at the same time. Starting field for the Toyota Mod Classic 150 is limited to 28 starters including Provisional Positions.
TIRE ALLOTMENT: The maximum tire allotment available for this event is eleven (11) tires per team. All tires used for qualifying and the race must be purchased at the track and scanned by Hoosier, unless otherwise approved in advance by the Series Director. Four (4) tires must be used for qualifying and to begin the race. All qualifying tires must remain in impound until released by NASCAR Officials. The remaining tire allotment may be used for practice and/or change tires during the event. Maximum of nine (9) tires may be used for the race, not including Emergency Change Tires. Teams will declare to NASCAR Officials at the conclusion of practice the tires they will use during the race. The tire change rule is two (2) tires per stop.
CONCORD, N.C. — Standing in the lobby of Hendrick Motorsports’ race shop for the Nos. 5 and 9 teams, Jeff Gordon sees the scuffed, blackened right side of the No. 24 Chevrolet he drove to Victory Lane in the 1997 Southern 500 at Darlington Raceway.
The memories come flooding back. But instead of the pure elation that comes with winning the race and the $1 million bonus it paid, Gordon is overcome with another emotion.
“I look at that and that actually makes me mad because I almost lost that race,” Gordon says, pointing out his late wall contact while trying to fend off a hard-charging Jeff Burton. “He ran me down, and then I got in the wall. And then he really ran me down. One more lap and it would’ve been over.”
That 30-second exchange offers an incredible insight into the competitive nature that helped make Gordon one of NASCAR’s best, particularly at the track dubbed “Too Tough to Tame.”
Now the vice chairman of the team he drove for over two decades, Gordon was nearly unstoppable atop the “Lady in Black’s” rough, abrasive and narrow pavement, where his rainbow-schemed Chevrolet seemed to shine brightest. As Darlington celebrates its 75th anniversary this year, the time feels right to reflect on Gordon’s unbelievable statistics at NASCAR’s oldest superspeedway ahead of Sunday night’s Cook Out Southern 500 (6 p.m. ET, USA Network, HBO Max, MRN Radio, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio, NBC Sports App).
No one has won more Southern 500s than Gordon’s six, including an outrageous stretch of four consecutive from 1995-1998. His seven total wins at the South Carolina track are the third-most all-time, only behind fellow NASCAR Hall of Famers David Pearson (10) and Dale Earnhardt (nine). In eight races from the 1995 Southern 500 to the spring race of 1999, Gordon finished no worse than third. And in 36 starts across his 23 seasons, Gordon led laps in 27 of those events.
Ray Evernham was Gordon’s crew chief during those peaks in the 1990s, together winning three NASCAR Cup Series championships and 47 points-paying races. They still can’t believe their Darlington successes all these years later.
“We’re both in awe of what we did together and the things that, in some ways, will never be done again,” Gordon said. “Certainly, it never was repeated in either one of our careers after we split up, so we do revel in those seasons and those moments of how great that was and get to relive it now.”
The unique, asymmetrical 1.336-mile oval remains one of the biggest challenges on the NASCAR schedule. Gordon’s last start came in 2016, already nine years ago, with a 14th-place finish while substituting for an injured Dale Earnhardt Jr. Since then, cars have changed, former contemporaries have joined him and retirement and fresh faces have joined NASCAR’s big leagues. As the environment has changed, so too has the on-track intensity.
“These guys are pushing the car so much harder every lap, so I think physically, mentally, I think that’s where you’re seeing the difference of today’s driver,” Gordon said. “It’s always been a challenging race track, but we could pace ourselves in the late ’90s, right? And I think that now, you’re just living on the edge even that much more because you can’t give up a position. There’s just not as much give-and-take. When you hit pit road, every detail of entry to pit road, pit-road speed, the pit stop, the exit, everything is so precise now — and even the level of detail that you go into getting your qualifying lap, your track position, and then maintaining it through the race.”
Gordon was a quick adapter to a track notorious for wearing drivers and equipment to their cores. In four Xfinity Series starts before leaping to Cup, Gordon earned one top five and two top 10s around two mechanical DNFs. His early Cup starts weren’t as fruitful, with one top 10 in six starts. But that seventh start produced the first win of his incredible eight-race stretch from 1995-1999.
“The cars were better than I was, and I had to catch up. And then, as my experience level grew, we grew together and did a lot of great things together,” Gordon said. “So to me, Darlington was always a track that I felt pretty comfortable at, where a lot of other people were, ‘oh, it’s so intimidating,’ and, ‘oh man, this is the most difficult track.’ And I didn’t see it that way because, right away, it just was a track that I seemed to feel comfortable at. To me, I raced a lot of the very intimidating tracks from Eldora to Knoxville to Winchester and Salem. So to me, driving a midget and a sprint car around some of those places was a lot tougher than going to Darlington. But the difference was 500 miles. That’s where it got challenging.”
Through the track’s 75 years of history, there have been plenty of iconic moments, some featuring Gordon’s incredible successes. That history is felt as soon as you walk onto the property at the track “Too Tough to Tame.”
“You can’t recreate history, and yet we can celebrate it,” Gordon said. “And I feel like every time we go to Darlington, everybody is celebrating what the track means, whether it be drivers talking about the surface being old and sliding around just like you have for years at Darlington, or you see the throwbacks. You see the fans. And you can just tell when the fans are at Darlington, they feel like they’re going back in time, as well as playing into the future of the sport. And it just seems like everybody is on board with its place and its history with NASCAR.”
Team Penske’s Ryan Blaney ended the 2025 regular season on a high note, claiming a thrilling win on the high banks at Daytona International Speedway. A fellow former Championship 4 driver will look to build some momentum of his own this weekend, as Trackhouse Racing’s Ross Chastain aims to ride the wall at the “Lady in Black” right into the Round of 12.
NASCAR.com’s Pat DeCola ranks the 2025 NASCAR Cup Series Playoffs contenders after the Coke Zero Sugar 400 at Daytona and before Sunday’s Cook Out Southern 500 at Darlington Raceway (6 p.m. ET, USA Network, HBO Max, MRN Radio, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio, NBC Sports App).
Analysis: If that didn’t look like a championship-winning kind of driver delivering a signature moment on Saturday night at Daytona, well, it’s tough to say what you’re seeing. Blaney has all the pieces in place, momentum included, for title No. 2, and things have started working a little bit more at Darlington than earlier in his career. Feels like a grand time for his first Southern 500 win.
Analysis: The Regular Season Champion will actually begin the playoffs as the No. 2 seed, but not to worry — Byron and the No. 24 team have a very, very deep run ahead of them despite just two top 10s in the last six races. A Southern 500 win is within reach for him as well, and after leading 243 laps in the spring at Darlington only to finish runner-up, he’ll be hungry.
Analysis: Larson briefly looked like he had a shot to end his unbelievable drafting-track drought, but he’ll happily settle for a sixth-place run that allowed him to walk out of Daytona as the top seed in the playoffs. Darlington is such an interesting track for him, because he could have many more wins at it than the singular one he has. In his lone victory there, he led 55 laps — but he has four other races he did not win in which he led 124-plus laps each.
Analysis: Here we go again. Another year, another legitimate shot at title No. 1 for Hamlin, who enters with a nice cushion that should help him sail through the first round. No. 11 is also one of the best all-time at Darlington — which is really saying something, given the track history there — and could easily assert his dominance over the field in Race 1.
Analysis: It’s legitimately wild that the guy who won three of the season’s first four races is entering the playoffs as the fifth seed, but, hey, he hasn’t won since then. There’s no denying the championship potential here, though, and No. 20 has an excellent shot to make it to a third Championship 4 in four years. Though he’s yet to win at Darlington, Bell is riding two straight top threes there and could remind everyone why he was such a force earlier this year.
Analysis: After such a display of consistency the whole year, the No. 9 team can’t feel good about finishing the regular season with just one finish better than 13th (10th, Daytona) since mid-July. Darlington has been a bit of a mixed bag for him, and even after 17 total starts there he’s finished exactly where he starts, on average (15.8 for each).
Analysis: Two Chases in these playoffs, two legitimate title contenders. Briscoe has been an elite driver in the second half of the year and enters as a sneaky yet obvious driver capable of taking home the championship, and he might immediately enter favorite status before we even hit Labor Day. The defending Southern 500 winner locked in last year with a resounding win, and is only even better positioned this year to take home that crown.
Analysis: Chastain finds himself in the unusual position of having just two top 10s since Michigan — which ran on June 8 — yet still being in position to advance after the Round of 12. Of course, three weeks separate him from now until then, and much can change in that time, but No. 1 has a better handle on Darlington than most these days and should be right in the mix for his first Southern 500 win on Sunday despite the summer lull.
Analysis: The reigning Regular Season Champion entering the playoffs with single-digit top 10s and having to fight for his life to even make the postseason certainly wasn’t how Reddick and Co. likely drew it up, but here we are. He’s in, and still has an excellent shot to return to the Championship 4. No. 45 owns three top 10s in the last four Darlington races, with a whopping 307 laps led in that span.
Analysis: A bummer of a day for Wallace at Daytona, where he likely could have contended for the win but got caught up in the big wreck. Still, it didn’t affect him all too much as he still enters the playoffs on the right side of the bubble and heading to a track at which he had four straight top-nine finishes from 2022-24.
Analysis: Bowman had a not-so-enjoyable Saturday night, sweating out the future of his season from outside the car with no ability to influence his outcome, but that’ll happen when a driver is not locked in by Race 26. The No. 48 has advanced, however, but could get off to a dreadful start. Bowman has just one lap led at Darlington apart from a 41-lap showing in a runner-up in 2020, and just four top 10s in 15 starts there.
Analysis: What an interesting, ever-changing sport we’ve got — not only is the 2024 Regular Season Champion exhaling because he barely made this year’s postseason, last year’s champion — a three-time one, at that — enters this year’s 10-race gauntlet just a point off the elimination line with fewer top 10s than three drivers who missed the cut. It doesn’t look great, but this is Joey Logano, so would you be surprised in the least if he added another Darlington win to his resume on Sunday? Me neither.
Analysis: Before wrecking out at Daytona and collecting a single point, Cindric had averaged 29.4 in the five races prior, which is exactly the kind of consistency that rewards drivers in the playoffs. A Team Penske car in the postseason is a dangerous thing, and he’ll look to get started off on the right foot at Darlington, where he typically finishes in the top 20 but has yet to land a top 10.
Analysis: It’s really something to see SVG, a Cup Series rookie, in sixth place in the standings entering his first playoffs; it really shows the value of not just making the postseason but coming in with a plethora of bonus points. He’s said right along how excited he is to get to Darlington, too, where he has a legitimate shot to collect a top 10 and really start to make his peers sweat.
Analysis: Look past him if you want, but don’t act like Dillon isn’t capable of making at least a little noise in these playoffs; he’s got 10 top 10s combined at the Round of 16 tracks and at least one at each. If he pops off at least two, he’s got a great shot to control his own destiny, before even factoring in anybody else’s potential bad luck. Half of those top 10s came at Darlington, so he needs to get off to a good start.
Analysis: Berry picked a good time to compile his first back-to-back top 10s since March as he gains a little mojo entering his first Cup Series Playoffs. He’s an old-school kind of driver that should excel at an old-school kind of track like Darlington, and a P3 there last spring for Stewart-Haas Racing inspires confidence he can start off on the right foot.
Entering Saturday’s race at Oswego, the battle for the Modified Tour championship appears to go through 22-year-old Austin Beers.
