After a week off — for the first time since Easter Sunday in early April — the Cup Series will return to the track this week amidst the cornfields of Iowa, making its third-ever trip to Iowa Speedway. The race will kick off a stretch of four weeks to conclude the regular season, taking us through not only Iowa but also Richmond, New Hampshire and Daytona, with berths in the Chase (and seeding) on the line.
In other words, the dog days of summer are just about over now; it’s officially crunch time for drivers and teams with the championship in sight. So let’s go through the key storylines to watch — and the drivers set to do best — in the final stretch run before the Chase begins.
To aid us in that effort, we’ll enlist my track-projection system, which looks at a driver’s recent performance at any given track — as well as its most comparable tracks — to create a projected Driver Rating that serves as a strong predictor of finishing quality at that specific track. As part of that, we can also look at which drivers are projected to perform better at each remaining track than they usually do overall — effectively a measure of schedule favorability (or not) that might make a big difference over the next month of action.
Put it together, and the projections point to a few drivers and teams for whom the remaining schedule could reshape their place in the standings before the regular season is done. Here are four big takeaways from the projected numbers:
Penske is poised for a big stretch run
This time a month ago, we noted how the pressure was on Team Penske in a way they’re not accustomed to: Instead of chasing championships, they were simply trying to get their non-Ryan Blaney drivers — Joey Logano and Austin Cindric — into the Chase at all.
Ever since, both the No. 22 and No. 2 teams have responded with better results. Logano finished in the top 10 at Atlanta (one of his favorite stomping grounds), dominated at North Wilkesboro and scored another podium at Indianapolis. Cindric, meanwhile, was nothing if not consistent: He finished precisely 14th in three consecutive races — and exactly 13th the two races before that — to move into the top 16 and build a 38-point lead over 17th-ranked Ryan Preece.
Now, the Penske cars are in a much stronger position, and it should get even stronger from here. Blaney and Logano have the two highest projected ratings across Iowa, Richmond, Loudon and Daytona. And while Cindric ranks 15th at 76.0, that’s both higher than his usual average and higher than Preece (69.1) and Erik Jones (60.0), the two drivers directly below him in the standings.
Brad Keselowski could be dangerous
Directly below Preece and Jones, sitting 50 points outside the No. 16 spot, is Keselowski — still a jarring sight to see for the 2012 Cup Series champion. Keselowski is looking for a Chase return this year, but if the season ended today, he would miss The Chase (or the playoffs) for the third time in five seasons.
Fortunately for the No. 6 team, though, there are still races left to run — and Keselowski could be the most dangerous name floating below the cutline over these next four weeks.
Keselowski is projected for above-average ratings at each of the remaining four tracks — which is already a step up for a driver with a below-average rating of 68.6 this season — and he rises to an 88.2 at Iowa this week after finishing 10th here in 2024 and third last season, leading 73 total laps. That projection comes with pressure to make the most of it, but it represents a big opportunity for Keselowski first and foremost.
That opportunity is compounded by the fact that the two drivers squeezed between Keselowski and the cutline (Preece and Jones) are projected to do substantially worse over the next month, both relative to their own typical form and Keselowski’s projection. It could be setting up a last-minute charge by Keselowski for the final Chase slot.
Tyler Reddick may see his slide continue
After a remarkable start to his 2026 campaign, one of the dominant midseason storylines this year has been the cooling-off of Tyler Reddick, who, even after a respectable 10th-place run at Indianapolis, has more finishes of 30th or worse than top-10 finishes since the end of May.
The cold stretch saw Reddick lose his grip on the top spot in the standings to Denny Hamlin at Sonoma, and his gap over Blaney for No. 2 is down to 36 points as well. And as noted above, Blaney is projected to be the best performer in Cup between now and the end of the regular season.
More bad news for the No. 45: of all the drivers suited to these last four tracks, Reddick wouldn’t really be included on that list. Yes, he won the most prestigious stock-car race in the world at Daytona to start the season in February, but he only had an 81.7 rating as he did it — a testament to the track where, very often, the best driver and the winner aren’t the same (more on that later). And he has a mixed record at Iowa, Richmond and Loudon — plus comparable tracks — with an average finish of 24.7 at the three tracks when he last ran there a year ago.
He’s not alone. Among Chase contenders, Shane van Gisbergen is also facing an unfavorable set of remaining tracks, though that disadvantage is perhaps overstated if his recent run of improvement on non-road courses is to be believed. And while Chase Briscoe and Chris Buescher are in no danger of losing a spot in the Chase, they could be vulnerable to challenges in their standings positions from Christopher Bell or even William Byron down the stretch due to poor track fit.
Daytona is (as always) the wild-card
Although its power to scramble the postseason field has been muted somewhat by the re-introduction of points racing via the Chase (and the mothballing of the win-and-in policy), Daytona remains singularly capable of turning the season upside down.
For drivers above the cutline, the chaos of superspeedway racing makes for a regular-season finale to be feared — and for a sense of urgency to build up as much cushion as possible in the points beforehand. At the same time, Daytona can offer a lifeline for drivers looking for a last-ditch Hail Mary to keep their championship hopes alive. And no matter who you are, this is the track where everything you think you know going in can get tossed out the window by the time it’s all said and done.
We can see this when comparing the projections at Daytona to the other stretch-run tracks on the schedule:
For most of the top drivers, their projection at Daytona is much closer to the rest of the pack than it is at short tracks and ovals — because we can be much less confident they’ll perform well in the bedlam of the high banking and the draft than at a typical track. By the same token, the lower-rated drivers are much closer to average in their projections at Daytona, due to the same randomness factor.
That means the World Center of Racing carries disproportionate implications for the Chase bubble, even in today’s points-based format. For the drivers currently holding a Chase position, the goal is to make Daytona matter as little as possible. But for those still chasing their spot, it’s the opposite — stay close enough at Iowa, Richmond and Loudon to give NASCAR’s ultimate wild-card a chance to deal you the hand you need.
