2024 NASCAR Cup Series Playoff Odds: Reddick Clutch; Larson On The Brink
2024 NASCAR Cup Series Playoff Odds: Reddick Clutch; Larson On The Brink
After one of the greatest races in NASCAR history, what do the Cup Series playoffs have in store next at Martinsville?
With just a week to go before the Championship 4 of NASCAR’s 2024 Cup Series is set, things are reaching a fever pitch of pressure and anticipation.
One of those last four drivers (Joey Logano) was already known going into Sunday’s action at Miami. Another of them (Tyler Reddick) punched his ticket with a strategic gamble and brilliant last-lap pass in one of the most thrilling races we’ve ever seen:
Now that half of the final four spots are locked up, all eyes are now on Martinsville, Virginia — and on the remaining six drivers fighting for just two available chances to keep their title hopes alive in the season finale at Phoenix. Needless to say, things are about to get very intense.
To help quantify all of the stakes involved, we’ll be looking at the updated odds from my NASCAR forecast, which simulates the rest of the playoffs 10,000 times to determine who has the best chance of advancing and, eventually, of winning the Cup Series championship:
Like we do every week, let’s run through some of the big items that jumped out to me from this and other datasets:
⚙️ Reddick’s Path to the Championship Favorite
I wrote last time about how improbable of a playoff charge Logano had made when he overcame a 13 percent chance of making the Championship 4 at the beginning of the Round of 12 and an 18 percent chance before the Round of 8. But Reddick has also beaten long odds throughout his own path to the final four.
When he dropped to 34th place in the middle of the elimination race at Charlotte three weeks ago, Reddick’s odds to advance from the Round of 12 were below 30 percent. But he kept grinding, and gritted out an 11th-place finish that allowed him to qualify for the Round of 8. After an early wreck that saw his car flip at Las Vegas, however, Reddick was down again to just an 18 percent probability of making the Championship 4:
But like Logano, Reddick was able to beat those odds with a playoff victory. He secured a spot among the final four drivers with the help of a gutsy call from crew chief Billy Scott, who had Reddick stay out on older tires while the rest of the leaders came into the pits, waiting for a yellow flag that ended up coming when Kyle Larson spun on Lap 256.
Restarting from the lead without having to worry about the battle off of pit lane, it seemed like Reddick might still yield to the fresher tires of Denny Hamlin or Ryan Blaney — but then Reddick charged back to the front using the high line through Turns 3 and 4, and his first career Championship 4 berth was locked in. Now he is your new title favorite, with a 29 percent chance of winning the 2024 Cup Series championship.
⚙️ Don’t Discount Bell
Despite making the Championship 4 in both 2022 and 2023, it feels like there’s a tendency for Christopher Bell to be underrated in discussions around the best drivers and/or potential champions. (I’m not sure if that’s just my perception, so feel free to correct me if I’m wrong.)
But though he has not technically clinched a spot in the Championship 4 yet, Bell is in better shape than anyone not named Logano or Reddick. He has a 29-point cushion over the cutline, is currently running on a streak of six consecutive Top 7 finishes, and is returning to the place where he won the Round of 8’s walk-off race in 2022. (Maybe the fact that everyone remembers Ross Chastain’s antics from that race, rather than Bell’s win, still weighs down his perception as a star?)
For these reasons, Bell is rated by the model as a very strong favorite (95 percent) to muscle his way into the Championship 4 on Sunday. And if he does, watch out. Bell won at Phoenix earlier this season, and he has the same title odds as Kyle Larson and Tyler Reddick (29 percent) conditional on making the final four.
⚙️ Larson In Big Trouble?
A recurring theme throughout all of these columns has been Larson leading the model forecast, a product of both his high performance ratings and the points he’s stashed away all season long. With odds consistently ranging between 19 and 29 percent, there wasn’t a single previous week of the playoffs in which Larson wasn’t the title favorite… until now.
As dominant as Larson was at times earlier in the playoffs, such as when he posted a perfect 150.0 Driver Rating at the Charlotte Roval — or during his near-perfect 149.7 a few weeks earlier at Bristol — he has battled mid-race issues in each of the past two weeks, limiting him to a mere 2 total laps led at Las Vegas and Homestead. While the finishes (11th and 13th) haven’t even been bad in a vacuum, he ranked fifth among eight active playoff drivers in Vegas and seventh out of the seven who hadn’t yet clinched in Miami. During the latter race, a needlessly risky attempt to thread the needle between Ryan Blaney and Austin Dillon with 13 to go resulted in a spin and ruined any chance at the W.
Now we see a sight that was seemingly unthinkable earlier in the playoffs: Larson below the cutline (by 7 points behind teammate William Byron) with just a 33 percent probability of advancing to the Championship 4. Larson still controls his own destiny in a certain sense; statistically, he is the best projected driver at Martinsville and the co-betting favorite. But without a win, Larson’s advancement odds are just 41 percent even if he finishes elsewhere in the Top 10. This could very well be the end of the road for a guy who has been the best driver in the sport (if not the world) all year long.
⚙️ Byron Under Pressure, Part III
Ever since I began calculating a measure of playoff race “leverage” — i.e., how much the race projects to swing each driver’s advancement odds (for good or bad) — William Byron may as well have been blaring this out his car window the whole time:
Despite the string of do-or-die races, Byron has responded with five consecutive finishes of sixth place or better. But while his Championship 4 odds had crept up from 50 percent to 64 percent after Vegas, running behind five other playoff drivers (the entire Top 5 of the race) at Miami has left Byron back at 47 percent to make the final four. And it also leaves him with the highest possible swing of advancement odds at Martinsville as well — making him 3-for-3 in leading our pressure rankings during the Round of 8:
If Byron can survive this extended run of riding on the razor’s edge, surely he’d be unfazed by any additional pressure at Phoenix in what would be his second career Championship 4 appearance (after making his debut last year). But he does still have to get there first, and that means another high-stakes drive on Sunday.
⚙️ Do or Die For Denny
Speaking of drivers making their last stand, this is yet another case of Denny Hamlin needing a clutch moment to keep fighting for his first career title — and being set up kinda perfectly for it.
The Virginia native will go into Martinsville sitting 18 points below the cutline, with Larson and Byron directly between him and advancement. That striking distance means a win isn’t completely necessary in order to move on; Denny would have a 14.4 percent chance to advance if he finished Top 5 even without a win. But let’s be honest: He probably needs to go out and add a sixth grandfather clock to his collection, or at least go down trying to do that.
And it could happen! By Adjusted Points+ index, no driver was better on short tracks this year than Hamlin; his 253 Pts+ beat out fellow Round of 8 drivers Chase Elliott (241), Kyle Larson (238), William Byron (181), Ryan Blaney (181) and Christopher Bell (172). He has more wins at Martinsville (five) than any other active driver, and it’s not close.
If Denny does get into the Championship 4 again, for the first time since 2021, it could be another case of “watch out”. He has the highest title odds in the model, conditional on making the Championship 4:
⚙️ It’s Really Must-Win Time Now
Last week, I noted that after just one race in the Round of 8, the model already considered it must-win time for three big brand-name playoff drivers: Tyler Reddick, Chase Elliott and Ryan Blaney. And they acted like it all race long at Miami, with the trio combining to lead 225 of 267 total laps (84 percent) on Sunday. With everything on the line, they were right in the middle of pretty much everything that played out.
And of course, Reddick ended up actually getting his “must-win” victory. But that left Blaney and Elliott in even more desperate situations. The former is 38 points below the cutline; the latter 43 points below. They now, almost literally, must win to advance.
While Bell still makes the Championship 4 in 94.4 percent of simulations where he fails to win at Martinsville, not everyone else is sitting as pretty — and nobody is in an uglier set of situations than Blaney and Elliott. Here’s everyone else’s average odds of advancing conditional on not winning at The Paperclip:
William Byron - 42.9%
Kyle Larson - 26.1%
Denny Hamlin - 5.9%
Chase Elliott - 0.0%
Ryan Blaney - 0.0%
Technically, those numbers aren’t exactly zero for Elliott and Blaney. But they’re 1 in 4,667 and 1 in 4,732, respectively. The point is, both talented drivers need a checkered flag, they can’t both have it, and there are a bunch of other fast cars vying for it, too. That should be just one of the main factors that make for a special race at Martinsville this weekend.
Filed under: NASCAR, NASCAR Playoff Odds