With four races left in the NASCAR Cup Series regular season, Denny Hamlin holds an 84-point lead over Tyler Reddick as the two drivers battle for the No. 1 seed in the Chase. 

It’s not only bragging rights, but a 25-point advantage over second place on the line for the driver who starts the Chase first in the standings. 

Hamlin’s 84-point lead over Reddick is far from insurmountable. So too is Reddick’s 36-point advantage over third-place Ryan Blaney and his 51-point gap back to fourth-place Ty Gibbs. 

But as far as the race for the points lead is concerned, Hamlin has the edge over Reddick as August begins. 

Numbers favor Denny Hamlin

NASCAR will return from its final off-weekend of the season at Iowa Speedway on Aug. 9. The 0.875-mile short track hasn’t been kind to either Reddick, who has a 20.5 average finish in the two Cup races at the Newton, Iowa venue, or Hamlin, who has an average finish of 24th. 

Hamlin is the far superior short-track racer, however, picking up 15 of his 64 career wins on short tracks. Reddick and his No. 45 team, and 23XI Racing as a whole, on the other hand, are still struggling to find consistent speed at short tracks, though Bubba Wallace did finish sixth at Iowa in 2025. 

Reddick needs to make up an average of 21 points a race on Hamlin in order to catch him for the points lead, and while that’s possible, it will take four straight weeks of speed and execution combined with a little bit of bad luck on the part of Hamlin and the No. 11 Joe Gibbs Racing team. Iowa is a major opportunity for Reddick to cut into Hamlin’s lead. 

If Reddick fails to gain on Hamlin at Iowa, things don’t look promising for the No. 45 team’s chances of catching Hamlin. Hamlin is a five-time winner at Richmond, where the Cup Series will race on Aug. 15, and has 20 top fives and 25 top 10s at the Virginia short track in 37 starts. 

Reddick, meanwhile, has only two Richmond top 10s in 10 starts. If he can’t gain on Hamlin, he at least needs to break even. 

New Hampshire (Aug. 23) is another track where Hamlin has an edge on Reddick. He’s won thrice at the “Magic Mile” in 32 starts and has 19 top 10 finishes at the track. Reddick hasn’t been bad at New Hampshire — he has three top 10s in six starts — but only one of them has come with 23XI. 

The regular season finale on Aug. 29 is where the standings could be shaken up at the top, in the top 10 as drivers race for Chase seeding, and all the way down to the bubble as drivers try just to make the Chase. 

It’s hard to say that either Hamlin or Reddick has an advantage at the 2.5-mile Florida superspeedway. Hamlin has been an excellent superspeedway racer throughout his career and is a three-time Daytona 500 champion, but he’s never won the summer race at the track. 

Reddick won the Daytona 500 on Feb. 15 and followed that up with another superspeedway win at Atlanta on Feb. 22. 23XI has always brought fast cars to drafting tracks in the Next-Gen era, while Hamlin has not won a superspeedway race since the Next-Gen car was introduced in 2022. 

Still, it’s Daytona, where anything can happen and where chaos will certainly rein as drivers try anything and everything to either make the postseason or score a much-needed win. If Reddick is within a race of Hamlin when the green flag flies, he’s still in contention. Hamlin likely won’t feel safe unless he’s already clinched the No. 1 seed.