2024 NASCAR Cup Series Playoff Odds: Byron and Blaney Up, Reddick and Larson Down
2024 NASCAR Cup Series Playoff Odds: Byron and Blaney Up, Reddick and Larson Down
Updating the forecast model — and checking in on who's under the most pressure — ahead of Talladega.
Last week’s NASCAR playoff odds column was all about the greatness of Kyle Larson. And heading into Kansas, one of his best tracks, there seemed to be a good chance we’d still be lavishing Larson with praise this time around, too. But then he blew a right rear tire early on, hit the wall and spent the rest of the race struggling to salvage positions from the back of the field. Just like that, the championship favorite had opened the door for everyone else, with chaotic Talladega looming ahead on the calendar.
So let’s break down the fallout from last weekend and look ahead to the final superspeedway of the 2024 schedule. As always, we’ll be looking at things through the lens of my NASCAR forecast model, which simulates the rest of the playoffs 10,000 times to determine who has the best odds of advancing and, eventually, winning the Cup Series championship:
🏁 2024 NASCAR Cup Series playoff odds 📊
Though Larson’s status as overall favorite remains unchanged this week, he was also one of the biggest losers of the weekend at Kansas, with roughly 11 percentage points shaved off his chances of advancing from the Round of 12 — and nearly 5 points trimmed from his championship probability.
He still has an 87 percent chance to make it further, owing to an 18-point cushion over the cutline and a favorable elimination-race track at the Charlotte Roval. In the meantime, Larson is no restrictor-plate king, but Talladega poses a similar promise of reward or ruin to just about everybody there anyway. If Larson can just avoid a couple more fates like he had at Kansas (or worse), he should be just fine to keep his championship bid rolling:
There were even bigger losers than Larson last Sunday, though. In the advancement odds, Chase Briscoe’s 24th-place finish dropped his chances by 17.5 percentage points, Austin Cindric lost 22.0 percentage points by finishing 34th and, interestingly, no driver saw a bigger dip than Tyler Reddick — whose chances fell by 22.9 points after he finished 25th.
Not coincidentally, all three drivers are currently below the cutline — joining Daniel Suarez down there at the moment — though Reddick has by far the best odds of the bunch to escape that placement over the next two races. (He sits at 70 percent; the other three are all below 35 percent, with Briscoe and Cindric both checking in below 15 percent.) Like we did with Larson, here’s Reddick’s matrix of advancement odds by finish type over the next two races:
As one of the premier road-course drivers in the sport, a lot for Reddick is riding on finishing well at the Roval — though he can also make his life a lot easier, and buy himself more margin for error, with a strong run at Talladega. (Again, who couldn’t?)
The big winners at Kansas — aside from Ross Chastain, who actually won the race but isn’t in the playoffs — were William Byron, Ryan Blaney and Christopher Bell, each of whom saw their advancement odds rise north of 95 percent (and their championship odds rise by multiple percentage points, especially in the cases of Byron and Blaney) with Top-10 finishes. Alex Bowman’s sixth-place showing also allowed him to tack 29 percentage points onto his advancement chances, the highest of any driver.
But the pressure will continue to rise at Talladega. And who is under the greatest amount of it? It’s anyone near the cutline who can’t afford a disaster, that’s who. Two drivers in particular stand out for having the worst swing in advancement odds if they finish 31st or worse in Alabama on Sunday: Chase Elliott and Joey Logano, both of whom would see their chances fall by exactly 35.8 percentage points in that situation.
Here are those figures for everyone in the playoff field:
If we weight each potential swing by its odds of happening, Logano has the highest leverage of any playoff driver at Talladega; his odds project to swing by +/- 21.4 percentage points on average, depending on how he finishes. Others with at least a 15-point projected swing, positive or negative, on average: Suarez, Reddick, the eternally-under-pressure Denny Hamlin, Elliott and Bowman.
Since we’re headed to the track where The Big One is always lurking, it’s the perfect recipe for drama at Talladega on Sunday. And by the end of the race, these odds are certain to have changed a lot — for the good, in some cases, but also for the bad in plenty of others.
Filed under: NASCAR, NASCAR Playoff Odds