How Can Chase Elliott Make The Playoffs?
How Can Chase Elliott Make The Playoffs?
NASCAR's most popular driver doesn't have much margin for error left this year.
In terms of immediate success, it’s hard to do better than Chase Elliott since his first full-time NASCAR Cup Series season in 2016. In those seven full seasons, Elliott has finished among the Top 6 drivers in the final standings five times, making the Championship 4 three times and winning the Cup title in 2020. He’s also never once missed the playoffs during that span, giving him a perfect seven-for-seven track record of competing for championships down the season’s final stretch.
But that streak is in jeopardy this year. Back in March, Elliott broke his leg in a snowboarding accident, sidelining him for for six races. Then, six races into his return, he picked up an additional 1-race suspension for intentionally wrecking Denny Hamlin at Charlotte:
Absent for seven of the season’s 15 races to date, Elliott now ranks just 27th in the driver standings — far from the cutoff point for the 16-driver playoff field. With only 11 races to go before the playoffs are set, is there enough time left for NASCAR’s five-time defending most popular driver to avoid catastrophe for himself (and the sport, if we’re being honest)?
Because NASCAR’s playoff system places an inordinate amount of emphasis on checkered flags, the easiest way for Elliott to still sneak into the postseason is to just win, baby. While Elliott has zero wins in 8 starts so far in 2023 (which would be his first winless season since 2017), his career record of 18 wins in 265 starts (6.8%) speaks better of his chances over the rest of the season. The odds that a driver with a 6.8% chance of winning each race gets at least 1 win in 11 tries is 53.9%.
Those odds look even better if we improve on that approach by accounting for the types of tracks that are left to race at before the playoff cut is made. While Elliott has just a 3.6% career winning percentage at the types of intermediate ovals that make up the bulk of the Cup Series schedule, he has a 5.8% winning percentage at short tracks (like Richmond on July 30), 6.7% at superspeedways (like Daytona on Aug. 26) and, most importantly, a whopping 28.0% career winning percentage at road courses.
As I’ve written before, Elliott is far and away NASCAR’s best active road-course driver — and fortunately for him, there are three road courses coming up, starting this weekend at Sears Point, plus the Chicago street race on July 2. While that will be the first street-course race in NASCAR history, we can assume at least some of Elliott’s road-racing skills will translate. For the sake of argument, let’s set the winning percentage there as halfway between a totally naïve estimate (all 36 cars have an equal chance) and Elliott’s 28% track record at road courses. If we do that, here’s what his chances to win might look like at each remaining race before the playoffs:
Given those odds, the probability that Elliott wins at least 1 of the next 11 races rises to 76.9%. In other words, there’s a fairly solid chance that Elliott can just get into the playoffs through the front door, and make his bid for the championship from there.
However, if Elliott doesn’t win his way in, things get a lot more dicey. Like I said earlier, Elliott is just 27th in the driver standings at the moment, 98 points behind the driver sitting on the No. 16 cut-line, Daniel Suárez. Of course, Elliott has done that in about half as many races as everyone else — on a per-race basis, his points rank 11th. But as many playoff waivers as he receives, Elliott can’t make up for the lost time of those events he missed earlier in the season.
If nothing changes about the mix of race winners and non-winners between now and the playoff cut-off, and Elliott continues to produce points as his per-race average this season, he would have 511 points by the end of Round 26 — good for 19th in the standings, 68 points behind projected No. 16 Bubba Wallace. That’s not good enough to make the playoffs! But it should be said that this has been a down year for Elliott on a race-by-race basis; his average finish (14.6) and standings points per race (26.9) are decidedly worse than they were last season (12.5 and 33.4, respectively). If Elliott produces points over the rest of this season at his per-race average from last season, he’d end up with 582 — just clear of Wallace for the 16th and final playoff spot.
The big danger with this backdoor strategy, as we mentioned on this week’s episode of
(the weekly NASCAR podcast I co-host with Tyler Lauletta), is that a lower-ranked driver could potentially leapfrog over Elliott in the standings with a win — therefore pushing the threshold to get into the playoffs on points even higher, and putting even more pressure on Elliott to make up for the points he left on the table when he missed all those races. If Elliott has a 6.8% chance to win any given race over his career, that means the field has a 93.2% chance — and “the field” could include guys who haven’t won yet this year.(It bears mentioning that we also don’t know how much residual effect the broken leg is having on Elliott’s feel for driving. In a recent interview with Kenny Wallace, the great Tony Stewart told a story about how much work it took to regain his foot and ankle control on the throttle after breaking his right leg in 2013. While Elliott’s injury was on his left side, that foot still does a lot of work — especially at a place like Sonoma. So it may not be fair to expect him to keep putting up points at the same rate as a year ago.)
All of this puts Elliott’s playoff status in a fascinating spot. A possible 77% chance to win your way in sounds pretty good, particularly given how rocky the start of his 2023 season has been between the injury and the suspension. But if that doesn’t work out as Plan A, the Plan B of getting in on points is going to be tricky to pull off — meaning there’s a real risk that the biggest draw in NASCAR will no longer be in the championship hunt come playoff time.
Filed under: NASCAR