2024 NASCAR Cup Series Playoff Odds: Racing to the Finish Line

What to watch for in Sunday's Cup Series Championship race at Phoenix.

Nov 06, 2024

**The fate of the 2024 NASCAR Cup Series Championship will be decided at Phoenix Raceway in Avondale, Arizona.** (Joe Scarnici/Getty Images)

The long, chaotic campaign has finally come to its bitter conclusion — and not without controversy, anxiety or unprecedented situations that might change the course of history forever.

No, I’m not talking about the election! I’m talking about a different kind of absurd spectacle: the NASCAR Cup Series playoffs. Last week at Martinsville, one of the best races in recent memory was followed by about 98 percent of another thrilling event… until all hell broke loose. Race manipulation from multiple teams, a second wallride to the finish in two years, and a long, awkward wait before officials reversed the final available playoff spot from one driver to another due to a safety penalty — it was, to put it mildly, a mess.

The chaos has many wondering if the playoff system should continue as we know it.1 But those debates are for another day. Right now, we know that Ryan Blaney won his way into the Championship 4 for the second straight year, and that William Byron (eventually) joined him on points over Christopher Bell. With one race at Phoenix left to decide the season crown, Byron, Blaney, Tyler Reddick and Joey Logano are all still in the hunt. So let’s dive into the key numbers behind each driver’s shot at winning the title.

First, we’ll update the odds from my NASCAR forecast, which simulates the rest of the playoffs 10,000 times to determine who has the best chance of winning the Cup Series championship, for one last time this season:

I’ll also provide an important disclaimer: Because this model uses four very broad definitions of track types (oval, short track, road course, plate/drafting track) to determine a driver’s projected performance, it is best suited to tracking the big picture of the entire playoffs from the beginning. Now that we’re down to a single, relatively unique track with its own distinctive attributes, however, it’s of less value to know that Reddick is favored over the rest of the Championship 4 on a generic “oval”.2

That’s where my track-scouting ratings can help as well. They are comprised of a multi-season weighted average of Adjusted Points+ Index at both the specific track in question and its most similar other tracks (according to ifantasyrace.com’s classifications).3 Based on recent performance at Phoenix and, to a lesser extent, Richmond, Gateway and New Hampshire, here are the rankings for the Championship 4:

Using all of this data (among other sources), let’s run through each of the final four drivers and make the case why they can — or can’t — win the 2024 title.

⚙️ Ryan Blaney

The argument for Blaney as favorite is simple — he is the master of running well at Phoenix. While he’s never won there before, Blaney is currently on a streak of eight consecutive Top 10s at the track, including six straight Top 5s. He won the title here last fall by outdueling Byron and Kyle Larson, and his 2024 season has followed a similar arc of performing at his best when it counts the most. Between Blaney and Logano, Team Penske seems to have really figured out something on the setups at this track, and Blaney is the No. 1 Penske driver — he had a head-to-head record of 45-25 versus his teammates this year (Logano was just 33-37). The main argument against Blaney might simply be that, in a larger sample of races overall, he isn’t as good as Byron or Reddick… but performance at this specific track is more relevant than overall record, for better or for worse.

⚙️ William Byron

Byron’s case is a fascinating one. He is the second-best Phoenix-specific driver in the Championship 4 field, having won here early last season and finishing fourth in the title race a year ago, facts that are clearly fueling his co-favorite status in the betting odds. But if we expand our sample to look at the other shorter flat tracks like Phoenix — Gateway, Loudon and Richmond — Byron fares much worse: In 23 career races there, he has zero wins, one Top 5 and four Top 10s. (This is why the track-scouting ratings do not especially like Byron here despite his being a Phoenix winner.) And yet, of the last four remaining contenders, Byron has also had the best overall season, with an Adjusted Pts+ of 173 and a 91.8 average driver rating. Despite advancing via Chevy’s Martinsville manipulation, it would probably be “fairest” for Byron to win if you want to see the best driver get the trophy.

⚙️ Joey Logano

By contrast, Logano has by far the worst full-season Adjusted Pts+ (121) and average driver rating (84.2) of any Championship 4 driver — so in that sense, it would be odd to see him walk away with his third career title, and second in three years, this season. However, he undeniably knows how to win at Phoenix. Among active drivers, only Kyle Busch is on equal footing (3 wins apiece) in terms of career victories here, the most recent of which was the 2022 championship race. Add in his record at Phoenix’s other similar tracks (5 career wins) and Penske’s aforementioned ability to set up a car for this track, and there’s a reason why Logano is a perennially feared competitor at Phoenix. The argument against him, though, isn’t simply that his full-season performance doesn’t match his short/flat track reputation, but also that he hasn’t quite lived up to that rep at Phoenix recently, either. Ever since winning the 2022 finale, he has zero Top 10s in three starts, including a 34th-place run in March — so Logano isn’t completely bulletproof here.

⚙️ Tyler Reddick

Reddick is sort of the opposite of Byron: His record at Phoenix-like tracks is solid, especially this season (he finished no worse than 10th at Richmond/Loudon/Gateway in four starts), but he is surprisingly mediocre at Phoenix itself. He’s finished 19th or worse here twice as often (six times) as he’s run in the Top 10 (three times); his career driver rating at Phoenix is more than 10 points worse than any of the other Championship 4 drivers. Which makes it a shame that Reddick’s first career title bid comes down to one of the worst tracks from what has otherwise been an excellent set of performances over the course of his recent rise. If there is hope for Reddick, it involves both regression to his means at Phoenix-style tracks and “regular” ovals — remember, he projects as the best of the final four on that basis — and the fact that he has been subtly improving his Phoenix-specific performance recently. He scored a Top 10 here in March and, perhaps surprisingly, his average driver rating at Phoenix over the past three seasons (92.9) is actually higher than Logano’s (86.7).

And c’mon: You have to admit it would be pretty fitting, in light of last week’s spectacle, for the 2024 Cup Series championship to go to a driver whose team is actively suing NASCAR for antitrust violations.

Filed under: NASCAR, NASCAR Playoff Odds

Yes, extensive post-race penalties were handed down to those involved in the Martinsville malfeasance, but this is yet another case of the system incentivizing bad behavior.

Especially considering that Phoenix is only a mile long, making it the co-shortest oval on the schedule (alongside Dover).

Next season, I’d like to try unifying the two systems — using more a granular track-similarity system for the overall playoff sims.