Previewing the NASCAR Cup Series Playoffs’ Round of 8

Can anything stand in the way of Kyle Larson, William Byron and Denny Hamlin en route to Phoenix?

With the NASCAR Cup Series playoff field cut down to just eight drivers, things will only get more intense from here. Over the next three races — at Las Vegas, Homestead-Miami and Martinsville — that group will be sliced in half yet again, leading up to the final championship battle in Phoenix on November 5. To help get a sense of who the favorites are, let’s make some predictions with the help of a statistical system I’ve been using all playoffs long.

A quick refresher on how it works: For each driver in the playoffs, we created a three-year average of Adjusted Points+ at each playoff track — and similar tracks — with performance in more recent races (and at more similar tracks) getting more weight. Using that metric, we can rank the drivers relative to their playoff peers at all of the remaining tracks on the schedule. (For instance, Kyle Larson is predicted to be the best playoff driver at Las Vegas, based on his recent performance both there and at tracks like Kansas, Michigan, Charlotte, Fontana and Texas, all of which share a lot of the same characteristics.)

With that out of the way, let’s move on to the playoff schedule, the driver rankings, and break down the names most — and least — likely to move on to the Championship 4.

Round of 8 schedule

• October 15: South Point 400 at Las Vegas Motor Speedway, 2:30 p.m. ET on NBC

• October 22: Dixie Vodka 400 at Homestead–Miami Speedway, 2:30 p.m. ET on NBC

• October 29: Xfinity 500 at Martinsville Speedway, 2 p.m. ET on NBC

Best bets: In a sport as chaotic as NASCAR, our ranking system is not foolproof — just ask Kyle Busch, who looked like the strongest pick during the Round of 12, only to finish dead last among that group of drivers. (Damage from wrecks in the first two legs of the round will do that.) That being said, however, the system thinks Kyle Larson is a clear championship favorite on paper right now.

Larson ranks as the playoff driver most likely to win at each remaining race this season, including all three from the Round of 8. He has a recent victory at five of the six tracks deemed most similar to Vegas, at all seven of the tracks similar to Homestead and at three of the four tracks similar to Martinsville. While Larson was more impressive during the Round of 16 than the Round of 12, his ability to survive and advance there in the face of adversity might end up paving his way to a second championship in three seasons.

Among the rest of the playoff field, all eyes have to be on Denny Hamlin to move one step closer to his first career championship. Among active drivers, Hamlin has the most career wins (9) and podiums (20), plus the best career average finish (11.0), at the three tracks from the Round of 8. He’s also scored four top 10s in the six playoff races so far. And it would be shocking if William Byron didn’t advance as well, given both his record at these tracks — 3 wins in 27 starts (11.1%) places him second to Hamlin in career winning percentage among active drivers — and his recent form. Byron has an average finish of 5.5 in playoff races so far, miles better than the next-best playoff driver (Tyler Reddick at 10.8).

One huge question: Which version of Martin Truex Jr. will show up? Truex was a deserving regular-season champion based on his eight podiums, 15 Top 10 finishes and 11.4 average finish, all of which led regular drivers going into the playoffs. In the playoffs, though, Truex has zero Top 10s and an average finish of 21.3, which ranks second-worst among all playoff drivers — ahead of only Michael McDowell — and a distant last among entrants in the Round of 8 (Ryan Blaney sits at 14.0).

Truex hasn’t finished any better than 17th in a race since the playoffs began, and that won’t be enough to get it done against seven extremely tough drivers this round. However, Truex does get a clean slate from here — starting with a 15-point cushion over the cutline — and these upcoming tracks look much more favorable for him than the previous three did. His six career wins at Round of 8 tracks is second only to Hamlin, and the projection system ranks Truex among the top half of championship hopefuls at both Martinsville and Vegas. (Plus, Homestead was the site of his greatest victory, the 2017 championship finale.)

As poorly as he’s driven recently, Truex still has decent odds to turn things around and advance toward another title. 

Don’t count on: One of the best stories of this NASCAR season has been Chris Buescher’s ongoing transformation from a journeyman on underfunded teams early in his career to a legitimate title threat recently with RFK Racing. Buescher won three times and finished the regular season as the No. 4 seed ahead of the playoffs; since then, he’s delivered two Top 5s, three Top 10s and an average finish of 12.3 in six playoff races so far. But the bad news is that Buescher is up against a tough set of tracks in the Round of 8, and it could spell the end of his championship hopes.

Our system ranks Buescher no better than sixth among the eight contenders at any of this round’s tracks, projecting him eighth at Las Vegas and seventh at Martinsville. Buescher has never finished in the Top 5 at any of the Round of 8 sites, and he only has a pair of Top 10s in 36 career starts. While his recent success at Darlington — four Top 10s in his past six races — might offer hope for the same at Homestead, a similar high-tire-wear intermediate track, there is little else in Buescher’s resume to suggest that he will excel at this trio of tracks.

Championship roadmap: Aside from Buescher, whose combined record at Las Vegas, Homestead and Martinsville is decidedly below-average, the other drivers in the championship chase can all claim some level of past success at the Round of 8’s tracks. Christopher Bell has a win at last year’s Martinsville race under his belt, and this time he’ll have no Ross Chastain to upstage him. Ryan Blaney has a 12.6 average finish at these tracks, tied for third-best among active drivers. Tyler Reddick finished top-four at Homestead in two of the three starts he’s made there.

But at a certain point, it becomes a numbers game for the drivers not named Larson, Hamlin and Byron. Those three are so good — and project so well specifically on this next set of tracks — that it’s hard not to pencil all of them into the final round, making the Round of 8 really about five drivers battling for just one remaining spot in the Championship 4. If Truex reclaims his form, that makes the path even harder for Buescher, Bell, Reddick and Blaney; even if not, it may well be that only one of them can sneak into the title showdown at Phoenix.

NASCAR may be a sport known for havoc and mayhem, but this year is shaping up to provide an unusually predictable set of drivers going for the championship. Now we’ll just have to see whether that sense of order will get turned on its head when the cars hit the track.

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Filed under: NASCAR