By Holly Cain, NASCAR Wire Service
DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. – Five NASCAR Cup Series regular season races remain, four drivers are currently Playoff eligible based on points and three more are within striking distance. And there’s a new championship leader.
That’s the situation as the series moves to the iconic Indianapolis Motor Speedway this weekend for the annual Brickyard 400 summer classic (Sunday, 2 p.m. ET on TNT, HBO Max, IMS Radio and SiriusXM NASCAR Radio).
A thrilling 400-miler at Dover (Del.) Motor Speedway on Sunday only heightened the dramatic expectations of the five remaining races – at Indianapolis Motor Speedway, at the .875-mile Iowa Speedway, the Watkins Glen, N.Y. road course, the traditional Richmond short track and the grand Daytona International Speedway big track.
Currently last year’s regular season champ, 23XI Racing’s Tyler Reddick is tops in points among those without a win – a full 156-points up on the 16th place cutoff line. Hendrick Motorsports’ Alex Bowman, RFK Racing’s Chris Buescher and Reddick’s teammate Bubba Wallace round out the fortunate four above the Playoff cutoff line heading to Indianapolis.
However, only a slight 16-points separates Wallace in that 16th and final Playoff position from RFK Racing’s Ryan Preece. Two-time series champion, Richard Childress Racing’s Kyle Busch is 39 points off the cutline and Joe Gibbs Racing’s Ty Gibbs is a more distant 52 points off the pace.
The outstanding news for fans and all the drivers is that these final five venues that will ultimately firm up the 16 Playoff drivers are as unpredictable as they are diverse. Outside of road course ace Shane Van Gisbergen possibly working his magic at the famed Watkins Glen course, there are no absolute odds-on favorite to win at any of the upcoming tracks.
Among the four drivers in the Playoff field on points, only Bowman and Buescher have NASCAR Cup Series wins at any of these upcoming five tracks. Bowman won at Richmond in Spring, 2021. And Buescher has a Daytona victory in Fall, 2023, a Richmond trophy in 2022 and is the defending race winner at Watkins Glen.
Buescher finished ninth on Sunday at Dover, his fifth top-10 in the last seven races, which included a runner-up finish at Michigan in June.
“We got a decent finish out here today with this No. 17 Trimble Mustang and I’m proud of everyone for that,” said Buescher, who was encouraged by his pace at Dover. “We stayed with it all the way until the end. We were really great at the end of the day.”
As for the closest contenders to that Playoff line, Preece and Gibbs are still racing for their first career NASCAR Cup Series victory. The two-time former champ Busch, however, has Cup Series wins at four of the next five tracks; claiming, back-to-back Indianapolis Motor Speedway trophies in 2015-16, the 2013 victory at Watkins Glen, six Richmond wins and a big victory at the 2008 summer race at Daytona.
Precedence also bodes well for a group of drivers farther back in the championship standings needing a race win, a championship Hail Mary of-sorts. HYAK Racing’s Ricky Stenhouse Jr. and Richard Childress Racing’s Austin Dillon, for example, have both won the Daytona 500 and a summer race at the big track.
RFK team owner-driver Brad Keselowski has won at Indianapolis, Richmond and Daytona. Spire Motorsports teammates Michael McDowell and Justin Haley both have Daytona victories.
Not to be overshadowed in all the Playoff eligibility drama at the bottom of the eligibility rankings is who will win the hotly contested regular season championship trophy.
Hendrick Motorsports is certainly poised for a big trophy hoist, it’s just a question of who’s hoisting. Chase Elliott’s summer resurgence coupled with his teammate William Byron’s summer slump have created more drama atop the standings.
Elliott’s sixth-place finish on Sunday at Dover – he also led more than 200 laps – coupled with his teammate Byron’s 31st-place finish gave Elliott the championship lead (by 17-points) for the first time this season.
Elliott, driver of the No. 9 Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet, has finished sixth or better in five of the last six races including a win at Atlanta, while Byron has three DNFs in the last four races and only a pair of top-20 finishes in the last seven.
Elliott’s only two wins at the remaining regular season tracks, however, came at Watkins Glen, where he earned his first career NASCAR Cup Series in 2018 and answered with another the next year. Byron also won at Watkins Glen in 2023, and scored his career first series win at Daytona in the summer race in 2020. He is the reigning and two-time defending Daytona 500 champion (2024-25).
Their teammate, 2021 series champion Larson – who is ranked third, 38 points off Elliott – has had a similarly disappointing summer stretch. His fourth place at Dover marks only his second top-10 in the last six races. As with Byron, however, he has a strong resume at the remaining five tracks with a pair of wins at Richmond and Watkins Glen and he goes into this weekend as the defending Indianapolis Motor Speedway race winner.
“It’s good to get a top-five finish and get back on the horse there,” Larson said of his work at Dover, “Hopefully we can string together some good runs now.”
Not to be lost in all the championship talk is the In-Season Challenge $1 million-to-win championship this week pitting Ty Gibbs and Ty Dillon – grandsons of team owners (Joe Gibbs and Richard Childress, respectively). Whoever finishes higher at Indy claims the big check.
It all makes for a compelling run for Playoff contention. No matter where you are in the championship standings there is plenty still to be decided.
