Will there be enough playoff spots for each NASCAR race winner this season?
By Bob Pockrass
FOX Sports NASCAR Writer
Now that the last two NASCAR Cup Series races have had repeat winners, is it time to stop worrying about whether there will be enough playoff spots for every winning driver this season?
Yes, it is that time, but not just because Martin Truex Jr. and Alex Bowman won the past two events, giving their trophy cases multiple pieces of 2021 hardware.
Halfway through the 26-race regular season, 10 drivers have won races. There are 16 spots in the playoffs: the regular-season champion plus 15 drivers. Every driver with a win is supposed to earn a spot, with the remaining going to those with the most points. Right now, six spots are available on points, and fans can expect at least one driver to get in without a win.
Of the 13 remaining regular-season races, five are on road courses (Circuit of the Americas, Sonoma, Road America, Watkins Glen, Indianapolis); five are on ovals that are 1.5 miles or bigger, where NASCAR will run with engines at 550 horsepower (Charlotte, two at Pocono, Atlanta and Michigan); two will come at tracks less than 1.5 miles (Nashville, New Hampshire); and the regular season finishes with the superspeedway race at Daytona.
Those who want to see an unprecedented situation with more winners than playoff spots look at 13 races and believe there could be six or seven different winners. But that isn’t all that likely, even though the road courses could produce different winners by their nature.
Think of it this way: Drivers who win races typically are the ones who run near the front. Run in the top-5, and a driver can find the way to victory lane when everything falls together.
There are only three drivers with more than two top-5 finishes who haven’t won this year: Denny Hamlin (nine), Chase Elliott (five) and Kevin Harvick (four). There are only five winless drivers who have even won a stage: Hamlin (five), Elliott (one), Chris Buescher (one), Matt DiBenedetto (one) and Bubba Wallace (one).
Hamlin has led an astonishing 751 laps but has not won a race. No worries there. He’ll win.
"I don’t think we’ll have less than two or three going into the playoffs," Hamlin said a week ago following Darlington. "I’m pretty confident we’re going to get it figured out and get our wins when they really count.
"I don’t have any doubt because just the law of averages. You can’t continue to be in the top two or three the entire race and not win a race."
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Elliott (five wins last year including the championship race) likely will be a winner, too. He has served notice as the dominant driver on road courses the past two years, with Truex a close second. Elliott’s 76 laps led this season rank second behind Hamlin's among those who haven’t won this year.
"Chase has been so close, [and] we got some great tracks for him coming up," said Rick Hendrick, who has seen three of his drivers win this year, while Elliott has gone winless.
Harvick? He won nine times last season, and though he has led only 39 laps, he appears to be inching closer to regularly finishing in the top-5.
"We’re just a little bit off on the speed side of things," he said earlier this season. "We just have to methodically work through the problems and get the cars back to where they need to be. It’s a long year.
"From our standpoint, we’ve been the dominant car, we’ve been the not-so-dominant car, we’ve been good, we’ve been bad, we’ve done it perfectly, and we’ve made mistakes. This is not a scenario that we’ve not been in before."
Hamlin, Elliott and Harvick can smell, or at least sniff, victory.
The rest of the field? Not really. Even adding a couple of upsets along with wins by Hamlin, Elliott and Harvick would leave room for a spot in the playoffs on points. Considering that four of the top-5 finishers Sunday at Dover were drivers who have already won races this year – while Elliott was third, Harvick sixth and Hamlin seventh – it’s not difficult to see that it will be tough for anyone else to crack that crowd.
Some drivers, such as Austin Dillon, Chris Buescher and Tyler Reddick, have shown improvement the past several weeks. DiBenedetto was surging but has fallen a little flat the past couple of weeks.
What about drivers who normally are looked at as possible winners? Former Cup champion Kurt Busch has led just three laps this year and has one top-5. Ricky Stenhouse Jr., known for his prowess at Daytona and Talladega, also has just one top-5.
Beyond Hamlin and Elliott, none of the winless drivers has consistently led laps. They might have a race or two in which they find themselves in the lead but never for a full race and often as the result of strategy.
Fans will say that strange things can happen, that there are 10 drivers in Cup who have won races in their careers who haven’t won in 2021 and that the playoff format encourages drivers and teams to take chances and roll the dice for a win.
Rarely, though, does that come to fruition. This year already has seen a couple of somewhat surprising winners in Michael McDowell at the Daytona 500 and Christopher Bell at the Daytona road course (Bell was a more likely candidate to win at other tracks).
While it makes good water cooler talk, that probably is all it is – just talk. As Hamlin said, the law of averages says he will win a couple of races by the time the playoffs come. The law of averages, when looking at who has led laps and run near the front this year, says there won’t be more winners than playoff spots.
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Thinking Out Loud
It was a little weird to be at Dover and know that the series won’t return to the 1-mile track later this year. Dover moved its other Cup weekend to its Nashville Superspeedway, which last hosted races in 2011 and never has had a Cup race.
Dover races the past couple of decades have provided some thrilling battles and some long green-flag runs with little dicing for the lead. While its location is near major population centers, moving a race from Dover to a track in the Southeast hungry for a Cup event doesn’t seem like a bad move.
But because it is just a few hours from New York, Philadelphia, Washington and Baltimore, the track shouldn’t be dismissed as a one-race track for eternity. If the Next Gen car provides compelling racing at the unique concrete oval, it might not be a bad idea to find a way to race there twice.
Stat Of The Day
Since his first season in 1984, Rick Hendrick had never seen his cars finish 1-2-3-4 until Sunday at Dover.
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Bob Pockrass has spent decades covering motorsports, including the past 30 Daytona 500s. He joined FOX Sports in 2019 following stints at ESPN, Sporting News, NASCAR Scene magazine and The (Daytona Beach) News-Journal. Follow him on Twitter and Instagram @bobpockrass. Looking for more NASCAR content? Sign up for the FOX Sports NASCAR Newsletter with Bob Pockrass!