2024 NASCAR Cup Series Playoff Odds: Larson and the Lot
Updating the forecast model for the Round of 8, and a look at each remaining driver's make-or-break race.
When last we left our NASCAR Cup Series playoff updates, 12 drivers were fighting for eight remaining spots going into an elimination race at the Charlotte Roval. And despite a gallant effort from Joey Logano (the nemesis of every driver above the cutline), it appeared in the immediate wake of the race that all of our highest-probability drivers to advance had indeed done so.
Then, as is sometimes the case in NASCAR, a post-race inspection changed everything.
Well, maybe not everything. But Alex Bowman’s shock disqualification for coming in underweight1 allowed Logano to make the Round of 8 after all, opening up the door for the 2022 champion to continue his playoff run — and ensuring that each of the series’ past four champs are in the penultimate round of the 2024 postseason.
Will the title go to one of those familiar faces, or to a new name? Once more, we’ll be looking at the odds using my NASCAR forecast model, which simulates the rest of the playoffs 10,000 times to determine who has the best chance of advancing and, eventually, winning the Cup Series championship:
At the top of the list, not much has changed from the past handful of model updates: Kyle Larson is still your favorite, with somewhere between a 1-in-3 and a 1-in-4 chance of capturing his second career championship.
It makes sense — he was mostly a heavy favorite to advance throughout the Round of 12, thanks to a combination of plentiful playoff points at the start of the round, and a few strong tracks to work with in the round itself. (The latter was proven out when he posted a perfect 150.0 Driver Rating en route to victory at Charlotte.) So his odds to win the title conditional on advancing to the Round of 8 were pretty much his odds to win the title. Now the condition has just become a certainty.
What can derail Larson, then? Let’s run through each of the eight remaining drivers, looking at which race carries the highest leverage for their chances of making the Championship 4 in three weeks.2
⚙️ Kyle Larson
Margin vs. cutline: +33
Current odds to advance: 91.9%
Highest leverage race in Round of 8: Las Vegas (Oct. 20), +/- 6.2%
Upside scenario: Finish Top 10 at Las Vegas (odds rise to 97.2%)
Worst-case scenario: Finish 31st or worse at Las Vegas (odds drop to 62.6%)
Larson starts the Round of 8 with a healthy 33-point lead over the cutline and a set of three tracks where he tends to be at least above average, if not much better (in the case of Las Vegas). The downside for Larson comes if he doesn’t continue his hot streak and clean up at Vegas, which could significantly reduce his margin for error at Homestead and Martinsville.
⚙️ Christopher Bell
Margin vs. cutline: +13
Current odds to advance: 66.8%
Highest leverage race in Round of 8: Las Vegas (Oct. 20), +/- 15.4%
Upside scenario: Finish Top 10 at Las Vegas (odds rise to 81.2%)
Worst-case scenario: Finish 31st or worse at Las Vegas (odds drop to 29.0%)
Bell isn’t anywhere near as good at Vegas as Larson, but he is good on ovals writ large — 78 percent better than the Cup Series average in 2024, per Adjusted Points+ — and he could set a strong tone for himself early with a good run at a place where he’s won the pole twice.
⚙️ Tyler Reddick
Margin vs. cutline: +10
Current odds to advance: 59.1%
Highest leverage race in Round of 8: Las Vegas (Oct. 20), +/- 15.7%
Upside scenario: Finish Top 10 at Martinsville (odds rise to 75.3%)
Worst-case scenario: Finish 31st or worse at Homestead (odds drop to 24.7%)
As befitting a driver who started 2nd at the Roval but had to fight from 34th place at midrace to finish 11th and make the playoffs, then begins Round 3 in 3rd position… Reddick’s battle plan for this round is all over the place. He’s a great oval driver, so Las Vegas represents an important make-or-break race early, but Homestead carries even greater downside if things go poorly — and Martinsville has more upside because Reddick usually isn’t quite as good on short tracks as some of his peers in the title chase (so a strong run there is less baked into the baseline odds).
⚙️ William Byron
Margin vs. cutline: +4
Current odds to advance: 49.5%
Highest leverage race in Round of 8: Homestead (Oct. 27), +/- 16.4%
Upside scenario: Finish Top 10 at Homestead (odds rise to 65.5%)
Worst-case scenario: Finish 31st or worse at Martinsville (odds drop to 18.8%)
Byron is truly teetering on the edge as he rides into the Round of 8. He has almost exactly 50-50 odds to move on, and he faces the two highest-leverage races of any playoff driver this round: both Las Vegas (with a potential swing of +/- 16.0 percentage points) and then Homestead (+/- 16.4%) a week later. If Byron rattles off a pair of Top 10s — perhaps tapping into his oval prowess of 2023 — he would have an 81 percent chance of returning to the Championship 4. If he has a pair of finishes outside the Top 20, though, his odds drop to 7 percent. Lots of pressure!
⚙️ Ryan Blaney
Margin vs. cutline: -4
Current odds to advance: 34.6%
Highest leverage race in Round of 8: Homestead (Oct. 27), +/- 14.5%
Upside scenario: Finish Top 10 at Homestead (odds rise to 51.1%)
Worst-case scenario: Finish 31st or worse at Martinsville (odds drop to 12.5%)
The defending Cup Series champion kept things rolling in the Round of 12 with a pair of Top 10s sandwiched around a 39th-place finish at Talladega. Blaney gets to test his two best track types from the season — short tracks (181 Pts+)3 and ovals (145) — in this round, and this is a stretch of the playoff schedule where he absolutely dominated (finishing 6th/2nd/1st) a year ago. The pressure will be on to do it again.
⚙️ Denny Hamlin
Margin vs. cutline: -8
Current odds to advance: 45.7%
Highest leverage race in Round of 8: Homestead (Oct. 27), +/- 15.3%
Upside scenario: Finish Top 10 at Homestead (odds rise to 59.6%)
Worst-case scenario: Finish 31st or worse at Martinsville (odds drop to 14.9%)
Hamlin is further below the cutline on points than Blaney, but he has an advancement probability more than 10 points higher. What gives? It has to do with Denny being a much better match for this set of tracks… in theory, at least. Like we mentioned above, Blaney killed it at Vegas, Homestead and Martinsville last season while Hamlin’s disastrous 30th-place finish in Miami caused him to miss the Championship 4 by eight points despite finishing 3rd in the elimination race. The potential is there for redemption this year, but the window on Hamlin’s first career title is closing fast.
⚙️ Chase Elliott
Margin vs. cutline: -9
Current odds to advance: 34.8%
Highest leverage race in Round of 8: Homestead (Oct. 27), +/- 14.5%
Upside scenario: Finish Top 10 at Homestead (odds rise to 50.3%)
Worst-case scenario: Finish 31st or worse at Martinsville (odds drop to 13.2%)
Elliott’s formula is similar to that of both Hamlin and Blaney, since he was also aces on ovals (155 Pts+) and especially on short tracks (241!) this season. If NASCAR’s most popular driver can keep things steady with Top-15 finishes at both Las Vegas and Homestead — something he’s done in nine of his past 12 races dating back to Pocono in mid-July, he would go into Martinsville with a 55 percent chance to make his fourth Championship 4 appearance in five seasons.
⚙️ Joey Logano
Margin vs. cutline: -11
Current odds to advance: 17.8%
Highest leverage race in Round of 8: Martinsville (Nov. 3), +/- 10.3%
Upside scenario: Finish Top 10 at Homestead (odds rise to 33.2%)
Worst-case scenario: Finish 31st or worse at Martinsville (odds drop to 6.3%)
By all rights, Logano probably shouldn’t even be here. He and crew chief Paul Wolfe positioned themselves well on strategy at the Roval, but ultimately they didn’t have the pace or grip to make up enough positions for the playoff transfer. And yet! Joey was spared elimination by Hendrick Motorsports’ epic blunder with the No. 48 car. With this new life, Logano has a chance to revive the spirit of his 2022 title run at a trio of tracks where he has a strong record. But he also has the worst season-long Pts+ of any driver in the Round of 8 by a mile,4 and needs to immediately make up 11 points while leapfrogging four other great drivers. It’s not going to be easy.
Let’s end with what has become a staple of these columns — a chart of the drivers under the most pressure to perform at the next race (Las Vegas’ South Point 400 at 2:30 p.m. ET Sunday on NBC) according to my leverage measure:
With basically every playoff driver needing to finish Top 10 to avoid seeing their Championship 4 probabilities drop, one thing is for certain — the playoff odds are going to look a lot different next week, one way or another.
Filed under: NASCAR, NASCAR Playoff Odds
We gave him a 96.2 percent chance to advance, which it seemed he did comfortably… but I suppose the 3.8 percent got its revenge in the end.
In a nutshell, this measure of leverage is calculated by looking at the absolute change in a driver’s advancement odds (versus their current number) with different types of finishes at each race. Those swings are then weighted within each race by the likelihood of that finish happening, producing an “average” swing of plus-or-minus a certain number of percentage points that we might expect the driver to experience during that race.
Logano is at 114; the next-worst is teammate Blaney at 145.