Posted on September 2, 2021September 3, 2021 by Terrin Waack

The 2021 NASCAR Cup Series Playoffs begin Sunday – a 10-race battle among 16 title-eligible drivers for the championship. First up is the Round of 16, featuring Darlington Raceway, Richmond Raceway and Bristol Motor Speedway. Four contenders will then be eliminated before the Round of 12, which will include Las Vegas Motor Speedway, Talladega Superspeedway and the Charlotte Motor Speedway Roval. After another four are cut, the Round of 8 will commence at Texas Motor Speedway, Kansas Speedway and Martinsville Speedway. The Championship 4 will finally be determined and compete at Phoenix Raceway on Nov. 7. in a straight-up race for the ultimate Bill France Cup trophy.

Here are the 16 drivers (and how they qualified) vying for the title: Kyle Larson (five wins), Ryan Blaney (three wins), Martin Truex Jr. (three wins), Kyle Busch (two wins), Chase Elliott (two wins), Alex Bowman (three wins), Denny Hamlin (points), William Byron (a win), Joey Logano (a win), Brad Keselowski (a win), Kurt Busch (a win), Michael McDowell (a win), Christopher Bell (a win), Aric Almirola (a win), Tyler Reddick (points) and Kevin Harvick (points).

Now, a Round of 16 track-by-track breakdown:

DARLINGTON RACEWAY

(📅 Sunday | ⏰ 6 p.m. ET | 📺 NBCSN | 📻 MRN, SiriusXM)

Name: Cook Out Southern 500
Location: Darlington, South Carolina
Length: 1.366 miles
Distance: 367 laps, 501.3 miles
Previous winner: Martin Truex Jr. (2021)

Sunday will mark the NASCAR Cup Series’ second trip to Darlington Raceway this season. Martin Truex Jr. won the first race back in May. Playoff drivers Kyle Larson (second), Kyle Busch (third), William Byron (fourth), Denny Hamlin (fifth), Kevin Harvick (sixth), Chase Elliott (seventh) and Ryan Blaney (eighth) all finished within the top 10.

Kevin Harvick has yet to win a race in 2021, but he has the best stats line among all of the playoff drivers, taking the cake in four of the five categories listed below. Kyle Larson manages a better career average finish, Kurt Busch matches Harvick’s start tally, and Denny Hamlin ties Harvick for most wins.

RICHMOND RACEWAY

(📅 Sept. 11 | ⏰ 7:30 p.m. ET | 📺 NBCSN | 📻 MRN, SiriusXM)

Name: Federated Auto Parts 400 Salute to First Responders
Location: Richmond, Virginia
Length: .75 miles
Distance: 400 laps, 300 miles
Previous winner: Alex Bowman (2021)

Richmond Raceway will also be a second-stop destination. Alex Bowman captured his first of three regular-season wins here. There were seven other playoffs drivers in the top 10 then, too – Denny Hamlin (second), Joey Logano (third), Christopher Bell (fourth), Martin Truex Jr. (fifth), Aric Almirola (sixth), William Byron (seventh) and Kyle Busch (eighth).

Busch statistically has a better history at Richmond than the rest of the postseason contenders, boasting the best marks in wins, top fives and average finish. Kurt Busch and Kevin Harvick have the most experience, and Harvick holds the most top 10s.

BRISTOL MOTOR SPEEDWAY

(📅 Sept. 18 | ⏰ 7:30 p.m. ET | 📺 NBCSN | 📻 PRN, SiriusXM)

Name: Bass Pro Shops Night Race
Location: Bristol, Tennessee
Length: .533 miles
Distance: 500 laps, 266.5 miles
Previous winner: Kevin Harvick (2020)

The series did race at Bristol Motor Speedway earlier this season, but it did so on the dirt surface (FWIW, Joey Logano won), which basically made it a different track. The playoffs race – aka the classic Bristol Night Race – will take place on the normal concrete oval, which Kevin Harvick last won on in 2020. Kyle Busch (second), Tyler Reddick (fourth), Aric Almirola (fifth), Chase Elliott (seventh) and Michael McDowell (10th) also placed within the top 10 at the time.

Once again, Busch has the most wins and top-five finishes at Bristol. Elliott, though, has the best average finish. Harvick and Kurt Busch have tallied more starts, and that Busch has more top 10s than his younger brother.

Posted on September 1, 2021 by Marcus DiNitto

With a 28-point cushion from the second- and third-place drivers – and a path of little resistance to the Championship 4 – Kyle Larson heads into the 2021 Cup Series Playoffs as the clear betting favorite to claim the title. But with Larson priced at less than 3/1 odds at all three of NASCAR’s official betting partners, many gamblers will be looking elsewhere for value.

It’s probably wise not to dig too deep. The top half of the oddsboard, reset after the 16-driver playoff field was finalized, is owned by the Big Three teams: Hendrick Motorsports, Joe Gibbs Racing and Team Penske. While Kevin Harvick’s chances shouldn’t be completely dismissed, he’s yet to win a race this season, and it’s hard to envision the 2021 champ not emerging from one of Cup’s top three garages.

Here are the championship futures odds (as of Wednesday at 3 p.m. ET) from NASCAR’s partner sportsbooks ahead of Sunday’s Cook Out Southern 500 (6 p.m. ET on NBCSN/NBC Sports App, MRN, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio) at Darlington Raceway, the first event of the 10-race playoffs:

DRIVER	BetMGM	Barstool	WynnBET
Kyle Larson	+225	+240	+250
Chase Elliott	+650	+650	+650
Kyle Busch	+700	+700	+750
Denny Hamlin	+800	+750	+750
Martin Truex Jr.	+800	+800	+900
Joey Logano	+1200	+1200	+1000
Ryan Blaney	+1200	+1200	+1400
William Byron	+1200	+1200	+1200
Alex Bowman	+1400	+2000	+1600
Kevin Harvick	+1600	+1600	+1600
Brad Keselowski	+1600	+1600	+1200
Christopher Bell	+2500	+2200	+2000
Kurt Busch	+3300	+3300	+3000
Aric Almirola	+6600	+6000	+5000
Tyler Reddick	+8000	+5000	+5000
Michael McDowell	+20000	+10000	+10000

A mid-season eight-race stretch of three wins and four seconds (plus an All-Star Race victory in the middle of it) made Larson look nearly unbeatable. But the pack has closed the gap on the No. 5, and even if he coasts into the Championship 4 at Phoenix, he’ll have to contend with three top drivers for the title.

With an emphasis on the 750-horsepower, low-downforce package (six of the remaining 10 races will employ that package, including the first three and final two), one school of thought says the NASCAR Playoffs set up well for JGR.

Jim Sannes, a quantitative NASCAR betting and fantasy analyst at numberFire, made a case for Martin Truex Jr. back in July, and he still likes the pick.

“I think he’s still the best value on the board,” Sannes told NASCAR.com in a DM this week. “I got him at +850 at the beginning of August, and I’m content with it. Was hoping it would have moved by now (to shorter odds), but the main point was anticipating he’d be great on the playoff tracks.”

Pro sports bettor Zack White was on the Hendrick team early, including taking a substantial futures position on Alex Bowman, and he isn’t buying the notion that the schedule puts Gibbs at an advantage.

“It’s a long playoffs, so these guys like Larson and Bowman, people with multiple wins, they’re going to cruise past the first round,” White said. “So they can kind of sit back and say, ‘I’m going to save the best of my equipment for when I need to perform the best.'”

While he still likes his Hendrick investment – his four-figure wagers on Bowman to win the 2021 title at odds ranging from 28/1 to 35/1 look pretty good with the No. 48’s price shrinking to the 14/1 to 20/1 range – White knows others must be respected.

“Eyes on Kyle Busch and Gibbs cars, always,” White added. “There’s going to be a hell of a playoffs run this year. My initial idea earlier in the season was that it was going to be all Hendrick cars (in contention), but obviously teams have made some strides in the second half of the season. Should be a good show.”

Longer shots

The current hot hand is Penske’s Ryan Blaney, who has earned two consecutive victories (Michigan, Daytona) and starts on the pole Sunday in Darlington. While Blaney is tied for second with Truex in the standings, his double-digit odds are enticing.

“Blaney is pretty easily a value now at +1700 (at FanDuel) once you combine his playoff points with how well he tends to run on the short, flat tracks. …. I had been super worried about what he’d do in the first round. But he ran really well (relative to his baseline) at Darlington and Richmond this year, and he gave himself a nice cushion at the end of the regular season.”

When we spoke a few weeks ago, sports betting media personality Todd Fuhrman said, “If we see prices on any of the Penske drivers drift out further, that might be relatively attractive.”

In addition to the nice price on Blaney, Joey Logano and Brad Keselowski are offered at +1200 and +1600, respectively, at BetMGM and Barstool.

Former NASCAR driver Brendan Gaughan, who knows a thing or two about gambling (even though he doesn’t bet NASCAR), said beyond the obvious favorite, Larson, “if I got a dark horse sitting there, it’s William Byron.”

Fuhrman said he has a small position on Christopher Bell and still likes the No. 20 Toyota at the 40/1 odds some Vegas shops, including SuperBook USA, are offering.

Wait-and-see approach

Rather than firing before the playoffs start, bettors may want to consider watching how things play out and picking their spots as the postseason progresses. That may present opportunities to find title contenders at longer prices.

“One thing we’ve seen over the last couple of years, you’ll get some interesting numbers once the field is set, but when you get into those elimination races, you can get a significantly better number,” Fuhrman said.

A combination of two strategies can also be effective – make a small investment early with the intention of increasing it later.

“This playoff format can create some wild swings based on just one race,” Fuhrman said, “so it’s always better to be willing to add to certain drivers than go all in right away.”

Marcus DiNitto is a writer and editor living in Charlotte, North Carolina. He has been covering sports for nearly two-and-a-half decades and sports betting for more than 10 years. His first NASCAR betting experience was in 1995 at North Wilkesboro Speedway, where he went 0-for-3 on his matchup picks. Read his articles and follow him on Twitter; do not bet his picks.

Posted on September 1, 2021September 1, 2021 by Cara Cooper

Terry Schultz has been racing for 31 years, but this is the first he’s competed full-time at a NASCAR-sanctioned track.

And while he’s had a lot of success – more than 300 wins and, he estimates, about 15 championships – racing for national NASCAR points wasn’t something he and his team thought about this season. In fact, he had to be reminded just how high in the NASCAR Advance Auto Parts Weekly Series Division II standings he is.

“I thought we were dead in the water in that deal,” Schultz said.

“I knew, but earlier in the year we had a rough patch, so I assumed we had fell way back. I didn’t know we were still competitive. I’m not sure we deserve to be right now, but we’ll take it.”

In 22 races this season between dirt tracks Lakeside Speedway, in Kansas City, Kansas, and Central Missouri Speedway, in Warrensburg, Missouri, Schultz has six wins and 17 top-5 finishes. He’s currently second in the NWAAS Division II points, four points out of first.

Schultz has been racing at CMS since 1990, and at Lakeside Speedway for the last five years. Both tracks went NASCAR-sanctioned this season for the first time in decades.

He currently leads the B-Mods standings at CMS by 17 points, and is third in the B-Mods points at Lakeside, 60 points behind the leader.

When Schultz was a kid, his dad did mud racing at coliseums all around the Midwest. Even though Schultz grew up around the racing community, it was a trip to the track with a friend that really sparked the interest for him.

“A buddy of mine had a car and I went with him to the track one time and I said, ‘Well that looks like fun,'” he said. “Two weeks later I had my own car and I’ve been going after it ever since.”

Terry Schultz drives around a competitor during a recent race at Lakeside Speedway in Kansas. Schultz is second in the NASCAR Advance Auto Parts Weekly Series Division II standings. (Photo by Joshua Allee Photography/Courtesy Karen Darling, Lakeside Speedway)

The 22 NASCAR races for Schultz is about half of all the races he’s done this season. He drives for owner Bobby Russell as his primary car, and has another of his own he has for a backup.

His job – he owns his own demolition company – helps make it possible for Schultz to race more than once every weekend.

“It could have been something I went out the first time and didn’t like and moved on,” he said of racing. “I’ve been fortunate I’ve got a job that allows me to do it and family that allows me to do it. And financially it’s never been a burden, too bad of a burden anyway.”

After competing for many decades in the A-mods divisions at both Lakeside and CMS, he dropped down to racing B-mods this season, and said he’s had a lot more fun in a new class.

“We do a lot of racing,” Schultz said.

“I’m not a young fella anymore so it was getting to be a lot of work. We were spending a lot of time and spending a lot of money and going out and racing against half the cars. You’d look over and there would be 30 B-mods and we’d have 10 cars in my class. I was almost jealous of it. I thought it might be fun to try that. It seems to be working good. It fits our schedule better time-wise.

“We’ve been having a ball. It’s a lot less pressure. You don’t have to run well every time you’re out there and feel like you’ve wasted the whole week.”

Rainouts and a couple DNFs has made this an up-and-down season for Schultz and his team, adding to his surprise at how well he’s doing nationally.

The veteran diver has never gone into a season racing for a championship or points. He prefers to compete with the motto “the only important race is the next race.” The rest will take care of itself.

“We try to finish up towards the front and let the wins take care of themselves,” Schultz said. “Let the cards fall how they may.”

Schultz and his team will continue to race that way through the end of the season, although he said they might start thinking about chasing points now that they know they’re close.

For a sport Schultz said he “just kind of fell into,” the championships have all come, and they may keep coming this season.

“Some days you’re so mad at it you don’t want to go racing gain. Then the next day you’re a little less mad, and the day after that you can’t wait to go again. I don’t know what it is,” Schultz said.

“We’re just going to keep racing and doing as well as we can.”

Central Missouri Speedway will host Labor Day Weekend races on Saturday and Sunday. Night 1 will feature the track’s second annual Big Bad B-Mod Blowout, as well as A-Mods, Super Stocks, and Pure Stocks. Night 2 will feature A-Mods, B-Mods, Super Stocks, Pure Stocks, and Lightning Sprints.

Lakeside Speedway will host racing on September 10 for the Tom Karrick Memorial, featuring A-Mods, B-Mods, Stock Cars, Pure Stocks, and Mod Lites. Racing will begin at 7:45 p.m.

Posted on September 1, 2021September 1, 2021 by Sponsored Content

Tony Stewart is teaming up with the Mobil 1™ brand to give NASCAR fans a chance to win more cash during the 2021 NASCAR Playoffs. Stewart, a three-time Cup Series champion who knows a thing or two about winning at this time of year and who is the co-owner of Stewart-Haas Racing, took to the streets of Charlotte, North Carolina, in a Mobil 1 branded armored truck to prove it.

The vehicle, nicknamed the Mobil 1 Thousand Money Truck, had the same golden paint scheme that Kevin Harvick, a NASCAR Playoffs driver and 2014 champion, had on the No. 4 Stewart-Haas Racing Ford for the race at Circuit of The Americas in Austin, Texas, this season. Stewart surprised fans outside the NASCAR Hall of Fame in downtown Charlotte by showing up in the armored vehicle and then making it rain dollar bills with a pair of money guns.

The Mobil 1 brand, the Official Motor Oil of NASCAR, launched the Mobil 1 Thousand sweepstakes earlier this year, awarding $1,000 or more to fans each time a driver running Mobil 1 lubricant technology wins any NASCAR Cup Series race. So far $15,000 has been awarded and the brand has announced that the prize totals will increase during the playoffs, giving fans more opportunities to win more money.

Harold Hinson

“Throughout my partnership with my good friends at Mobil 1, they’ve had me drive some crazy things. I mean, anyone remember the tank? So, it’s been fun to continue that tradition here,” Stewart said. “What’s so special about this promotion is that Mobil 1 is rewarding fans in a way that really no one else can, as both a league sponsor and technology provider for so many NASCAR teams. The chance at weekly cash is exciting for everyone, and the bonuses they’ve added all season, including special prizes to celebrate 10 years as an SHR partner, make signing up a no-brainer.”

At the start of the playoffs and for each cutoff race, an extra prize will be up for grabs: $1,000 for every Mobil 1 driver advancing to the next round, awarded as a lump sum. Additionally, if a Mobil 1 driver wins the NASCAR Cup Series Championship, one lucky fan will walk away with $15,000.

“The Mobil 1 Thousand sweepstakes is about celebrating drivers, teams, and wins right along with the fans that make NASCAR such an incredible sport,” said Bryce Huschka, North America Consumer Marketing Manager for ExxonMobil. “Now, with the playoffs right around the corner, we are thrilled to ramp it up and give fans the opportunity to win even bigger prizes as the stakes get higher. Whenever you see a Mobil 1 decal on track, you can be sure that our technology is in that vehicle, and it’s both a privilege and a responsibility that we don’t take lightly.”

The NASCAR Cup Series Playoffs get underway Sept. 5 at Darlington Raceway with cutoff races scheduled for Sept. 18 at Bristol Motor Speedway, Oct. 10 at the Charlotte Motor Speedway Road Course and Oct. 31 at Martinsville Speedway. The NASCAR Cup Series Championship race is set for Nov. 7 at Phoenix Raceway.

The Cup Series teams that benefit from Mobil 1 technology include Stewart-Haas Racing, Joe Gibbs Racing, 23XI Racing, Front Row Motorsports, Live Fast Motorsports and Gaunt Brothers Racing, so look for their cars on the track as you root them on to victory and more cash prizes.

Posted on September 1, 2021 by Staff Report

NASCAR penalized the No. 17 team in the Xfinity Series for having one lug nut not safe and secure in post-race inspection after last weekend’s race at Daytona International Speedway.

RELATED: Daytona results | Xfinity standings

Crew chief Jason Miller of SS Green Light Racing was hit with a $5,000 fine for violating Sections 10.9.10.4 of the NASCAR Rule Book: Tires and Wheels. JJ Yeley drove the No. 17 Chevrolet to a 13th-place finish in the Wawa 250 that was won by Justin Haley.

NASCAR also announced on Wednesday that crew member Michael Leoncini has been reinstated and is eligible to return to all NASCAR activity.

Posted on September 1, 2021September 2, 2021 by Sponsored Content

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Posted on September 1, 2021September 1, 2021 by Staff Report

See where your favorite driver will pit for Sunday’s Cook Out Southern 500 (6 p.m. ET, NBCSN, NBC Sports App, MRN, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio).

Posted on September 1, 2021September 1, 2021 by Zack Albert

Ever since the NASCAR Cup Series went to an elimination structure for its 10-race playoffs in 2014, the 16-driver field has had its share of underdogs starting on the bottom end of the grid. Rarely has that lower handful had the top seed from the year before among its ranks.

Yet here is Kevin Harvick, a nine-time winner in 2020, opening the Cup Series postseason as the 16th seed and one of three winless drivers among the title hopefuls. The Stewart-Haas Racing veteran is part of a hardy group of lower seeds aiming to survive the opening round of three races, avoiding being among the first four cut.

RELATED: Meet the Playoffs field | Power Rankings

It would seem to be an unfamiliar spot for Harvick, a five-time qualifier for the Championship 4 final. He insists, however, that he’s seen plenty in his 20 years racing at NASCAR’s top level — “there’s really not anything that can surprise me at this point.”

“You obviously want to win, but some years just don’t go exactly how you want them to go and I think those are the years that you’ve got to dig down and do the things that our guys have done this year,” Harvick says, “so, gotta be in it to win it, and we’ve given ourselves a chance and see where it all falls in the end.”

All 16 will kick off their playoff journeys in Sunday’s Cook Out Southern 500 (6 p.m. ET, NBCSN, MRN, SiriusXM) at historic Darlington Raceway. Two short tracks — Richmond Raceway (Sept. 11) then Bristol Motor Speedway (Sept. 18) — follow before the field will be whittled down to 12 championship-eligible contenders.

To keep those title hopes thriving, those drivers on the lower rungs will need to claw out of the bottom four. Daytona 500 winner Michael McDowell is among those. The Front Row Motorsports vet clinched his playoff berth in the 2021 opener and finished 21st in the regular-season points; he ranks in a three-way tie — with Christopher Bell and Aric Almirola — for 12th place, sitting 47 points behind top-seeded Kyle Larson.

Jared C. Tilton | Getty Images

Instead of patiently waiting for other drivers ahead of him to make mistakes, McDowell says his team’s tack is to go on the offensive with a more proactive strategy. In other words, he says, “we have to crush it in order to move on.”

“We’re kind of taking the other approach of just being as aggressive as we can on the track, strategy, everything,” McDowell says, “because we realize for us to advance that we’re going to have to have the three best races of our careers. And so if you’re not in the top 10 and challenging in the top 10 those first three races, it’s going to be hard to advance, I feel like.

“So there’s always the chance that somebody has some misfortune, a crash, whatever it might be, but that’s only going to be one, one or two guys — and you’ve got to beat four. So our approach is really just to be super-aggressive. You know, every point, every spot, every lap, and knowing that we have an uphill battle, that really is our only approach. So we just have to go for it.”

Almirola — like McDowell, a one-time winner this year — is in a similar place. The Stewart-Haas Racing driver salvaged a rocky campaign with a stirring surge to victory in New Hampshire, ending the regular season in 23rd place before the standings reset.

MORE: Darlington weekend schedule | Buy tickets

But Almirola says his No. 10 Ford team is opting against an all-out approach for something a little more risk-averse, playing to his organization’s strengths. In this case, it’s the Cup Series’ 750-horsepower, low-downforce rules package — an SHR strong suit and a configuration that will be used at all three tracks in the Round of 16.

“Yeah, honestly taking big swings and going off on science experiments and stuff rarely works out,” said Almirola, who is making his fifth playoff appearance. “You’re just throwing darts at a board hoping that one sticks, so you really have to go off of knowledge that you currently have, a notebook that you currently have, and make really smart, educated decisions based on that. So yeah, we are not in a situation or are willing to, you know, throw caution to the wind and have these big Hail Marys or science experiments for setups. It really is just about maximizing what we do have, that’s our mentality is, hey, we know that our 750 package is good. Let’s go be great at that. …”

“If we find ourself in a situation to where we can pull something off strategy-wise or something, then we’ll evaluate that at the time, but really our mindset going into playoffs is just really focus on the details, do every all the little things right, score every single point you can. If you can finish sixth instead of seventh in one stage, you know, take it and be aggressive to get that point because we’ve seen time and time again that the round to round, you can be eliminated by a single point.”

That theory of perseverance has already applied to 15th-seeded Tyler Reddick, who survived a topsy-turvy night in the regular-season finale last weekend at Daytona. The effort was enough to seal his first Cup Series playoff appearance as the final qualifier on the postseason grid.

Reddick has won two championships in the NASCAR Xfinity Series, so his experience with deep runs in an elimination format could serve as an intangible benefit, even though he says he’s not sure if it’s 100 percent applicable. The bigger indicator for his playoff potential: a stretch of five top-10 finishes in the last eight races — a closing kick that helped him erase a 50-point deficit to overtake Richard Childress Racing teammate Austin Dillon for the final postseason berth.

“I think we can do some damage with where Tyler’s at mentally and where our cars have been,” said Randall Burnett, crew chief of Reddick’s No. 8 Chevrolet. “We’ve had good speed, run top 10 week in and week out. We’ve got to turn some of those top 10s into top fives and wins, so that’s going to be the main goal for us. We’ve proved we can run up front, we’ve got speed every week. We’ve got to take that, and we’ve got to be consistent, we’ve got to get points and race for wins. That’s the only way you’re going to be there at the end in Phoenix. I think everybody on the team knows that and everybody’s ready to step up and do it.”

Posted on September 1, 2021September 1, 2021 by Staff Report

Ryan Blaney captured the Busch Pole Award for Sunday’s Cook Out Southern 500 (6 p.m. ET, NBCSN/NBC Sports App, MRN and SiriusXM NASCAR Radio), the 2021 NASCAR Cup Series Playoffs’ Round of 16 opener at Darlington Raceway.

Blaney will start his No. 12 Team Penske Ford from the first spot for the first time this season, in search of his first Darlington victory. Blaney, a playoff driver, is coming off back-to-back wins to close out the regular season.

Daniel Hemric claimed the pole for Saturday’s NASCAR Xfinity Series Sport Clips Haircuts VFW Help A Hero 200 (3:30 p.m. ET on NBCSN/NBC Sports App, MRN and SiriusXM) in the No. 18 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota, while Sheldon Creed, playoff driver of the No. 2 GMS Racing Chevrolet, earned the pole for Sunday’s NASCAR Camping World Truck Series In It To Win It 200 (1:30 p.m. ET on FS1, MRN and SiriusXM).

As NASCAR adapted to COVID-19 protocols last season, practice and qualifying were eliminated at a majority of national-series events to limit at-track time, exposure and to cut race weekend costs. To determine starting lineups, competition officials used grouped draws, added inversions for weekend doubleheaders, and eventually adopted a performance-metrics formula. That metrics format remains in place this season, drawing on performance from both individual races and season-long results.

NASCAR’s metrics formula for 2021 weighs:

25 percent: Driver’s finishing position from the previous race
25 percent: Car owner’s finishing position from the previous race
35 percent: Team owner points ranking
15 percent: Fastest lap from the previous race

See the full lineup for Sunday night’s Cup Series race below.

Start pos.	Driver	Car #	Team
1	Ryan Blaney	12	Team Penske
2	Denny Hamlin	11	Joe Gibbs Racing
3	Kurt Busch	1	Chip Ganassi Racing
4	Chase Elliott	9	Hendrick Motorsports
5	Alex Bowman	48	Hendrick Motorsports
6	Kyle Larson	5	Hendrick Motorsports
7	Tyler Reddick	8	Richard Childress Racing
8	Aric Almirola	10	Stewart-Haas Racing
9	Kevin Harvick	4	Stewart-Haas Racing
10	Martin Truex Jr.	19	Joe Gibbs Racing
11	Joey Logano	22	Team Penske
12	Kyle Busch	18	Joe Gibbs Racing
13	Christopher Bell	20	Joe Gibbs Racing
14	William Byron	24	Hendrick Motorsports
15	Michael McDowell	34	Front Row Motorsports
16	Brad Keselowski	2	Team Penske
17	Bubba Wallace	23	23XI Racing
18	Ryan Preece	37	JTG Daugherty Racing
19	Ryan Newman	6	Roush Fenway Racing
20	Justin Haley	77	Spire Motorsports
21	Austin Dillon	3	Richard Childress Racing
22	Erik Jones	43	Richard Petty Motorsports
23	Ross Chastain	42	Chip Ganassi Racing
24	Chase Briscoe	14	Stewart-Haas Racing
25	Corey LaJoie	7	Spire Motorsports
26	Daniel Suarez	99	TrackHouse Racing
27	BJ McLeod	78	Live Fast Motorsports
28	Josh Bilicki	52	Rick Ware Racing
29	Ricky Stenhouse Jr.	47	JTG Daugherty Racing
30	Matt DiBenedetto	21	Wood Brothers Racing
31	Cole Custer	41	Stewart-Haas Racing
32	Anthony Alfredo	38	Front Row Motorsports
33	Cody Ware	51	Petty Ware Racing
34	Chris Buescher	17	Roush Fenway Racing
35	Joey Gase	15	Rick Ware Racing
36	James Davison	53	Rick Ware Racing
37	Quin Houff	00	StarCom Racing

Practice and qualifying are tentatively scheduled for eight Cup Series races this year. Just one race remains with Busch Pole Qualifying on the schedule — the season-ending championship race Nov. 7 at Phoenix Raceway.

Posted on August 31, 2021August 31, 2021 by Pat DeCola

The 2021 NASCAR Playoffs are officially here, so we can probably go ahead and pencil in Kyle Larson as this year’s champion, right?

Wrong. So very, very wrong.

The No. 5 Hendrick Motorsports driver rolls into the 10-race jaunt to cap the year as the Regular Season Champion and heavy favorite (9-4) to hoist the trophy in November at Phoenix Raceway. Enjoying easily the best season of his career already, it’s not hard to picture a world in which Larson adds onto his series-leading five wins over the next two and a half months and battles for the title out in the desert, as the odds and every expert under the sun suggest.

MORE: Full championship odds | Latest Power Rankings

There’s no such thing as a guarantee in auto racing, however, and we don’t have to look too far to see that regular-season dominance doesn’t necessarily pave a clear path to a Bill France Cup.

At this point a year ago, Denny Hamlin and Kevin Harvick had combined to win 13 of the 26 regular-season races. In total, Harvick finished the year with nine victories to Hamlin’s seven, as the pair sat in a class of their own above the rest of the field.

Only one of them made it to the Championship 4 to compete for the title. Exactly neither of them walked away from the desert as champion.

Being the favorite is one thing. Fulfilling that destiny is another.

So, after seeing that drama unfold last fall, how does it feel to be the favorite before the postseason officially kicks off this Sunday for the Southern 500 (6 p.m. ET, NBCSN) at Darlington Raceway?

“Yeah, I don’t know, I mean, it means you’re in a fast race car and you’re doing a good job, so it’s good,” Larson said Tuesday during NASCAR Cup Series Playoffs Media Day. “I mean, it’s not like everybody’s gunning for you and you have a target on your back or anything like that. It’s just a cool spot to be in.

“It’s been a lot of hard work to get to this point. Now we’ve got a great opportunity to go chase a championship. We’ve been doing a great job doing what we’ve been doing. We’ve just got to continue that and execute well. Hopefully, it will all kind of take care of itself.”

Hearing Larson say he doesn’t think other top drivers are gunning for him is interesting, as he’s clearly been the driver to beat after Hamlin opened the season as a top-five machine before cooling slightly and remaining winless to present day.

Perhaps drivers have finally adjusted to the fickle nature of a 10-race, elimination-style format, knowing anything is possible and a season’s fortune can turn on a dime. Perhaps the top talent is just that — top talent — because focusing on things beyond one’s control, such as what other drivers are doing, only serves as a distraction from the ultimate goal.

That doesn’t mean they haven’t noticed what Larson has put in the books so far, just that the slate is now wiped clean to a degree, the focus turns forward and it’s anyone’s ballgame.

“Certainly the last 12-13 races (the No. 5 team has) been on top of their game,” said Hamlin. “Kyle’s been on top of his game and really evolved as a driver. He’s gotten better at all different types of race tracks and they’ve got super-fast race cars. Doesn’t matter whether it’s road courses or 550 (horsepower tracks) but I believe we’re slowly creeping in on that and I believe that we’re a team that is just as dangerous on all different types of race tracks.

“Ultimately, yeah, we’ll need to beat him in the end, and I wish we could race these last 10 races out like the regular season has been going; so tight back and forth these last six, seven weeks. It’s a reset now and it’s a three-race season. You’re not really racing him until the final race if he makes it and I make it. You’re racing that cut line.”

If he makes it.

That’s almost all you need to know right there.

Hendrick Motorsports has been sensational as a whole this year, and with its four cars comprising a quarter of the playoff field it seems extremely unlikely at least one of them won’t be competing in the Championship 4. It’s even possible one of Larson’s teammates — last year’s champion, for instance — could knock him out.

“It’s definitely unique, for sure. But I think we’ve all — a lot of us have been around racing long enough, have been doing it long enough, to kind of understand how that dynamic works,” 2020 champion Chase Elliott said Tuesday. “At the end of the day, I feel like for Mr. Hendrick especially, he’s done a lot for the sport, he’s changed a lot of people’s lives in the sport, mine included. If his cars are racing against each other for a championship, I think he deserves that.

” … I’m for it. And it really doesn’t matter who you’re racing against, you just hope you’re around at the end of this thing and have a shot. … Like, a lot of these teams have four cars. If you’re at a solid organization, there’s a good chance you’re going to be racing against your teammates for big moments, big opportunities. Ultimately, I think it’s a good thing. It means we’re at a great organization and you have a chance to win and have won some races.”

It could be Larson alone in the Championship 4. It could be Larson vs. Elliott. Heck, it could even be Alex Bowman (three wins) and/or William Byron (series-best top-10 streak from Miami to Dover). You just don’t know, and fate doesn’t play favorites.

Another note worth mentioning: only one of the tracks Larson has won at this season (Las Vegas) appears again the rest of the way, and it’s relatively early on as the Round of 12 opener. It’s potentially a dire need for him to be successful in that race, with a pair of wild cards in Talladega Superspeedway and the Charlotte Motor Speedway Roval (which Larson hasn’t raced on since 2019) making up the back two-thirds of the Round of 12. He hasn’t raced on Bristol (Round of 16 cutoff) without dirt since ’19, too.

Nearly all of the remaining tracks appeared on the schedule earlier in the year, with all of the repeats ending with a current playoff driver in Victory Lane: Darlington (Martin Truex Jr.), Richmond (Bowman), Bristol, albeit dirt (Joey Logano), Las Vegas (Larson), Talladega (Brad Keselowski), Kansas (Kyle Busch), Martinsville (Truex), Phoenix (Truex). Texas (Round of 8 opener) hosted the All-Star Race, which Larson did win.

His competitors know he’ll be tough to beat despite some of the factors working against him.

They also know a team, when the pressure ramps up, can just as easily beat itself.

“Larson obviously is a top talent. We’ve all known that for a long time,” said 2015 champ Kyle Busch. ” … I think they won Vegas was their first one, so he’s been right there all season long and been competitive and fast, and probably could’ve had a few more wins. I think we stole one from him at Kansas; they lost one on the last corner of the last lap at Pocono, so things could’ve looked a hell of a lot worse for the rest of us if he had a few more wins under his belt with the playoff points. It is what it is, but we all know that he’s going to be a force to be reckoned with and it’s just going to be a matter of who are the other three that join him in the (Championship 4).

“And look, the wheels can fall off of it at any time. I’ve been there and done that. Look at the 2008 playoffs and I think there was another year where I got wrecked at Talladega and that took us out of the championship right there, so anything can happen. But those guys certainly have just got to be weighing their options as to limiting their mistakes.”

Nobody knows what’s to come over the next 10 weeks — but, if history has taught us anything, we know it won’t be a cakewalk for Kyle Larson.