After four races in the Chase, the standings have been shuffled like a deck of cards, emphasizing the importance of coupling race victories with Stage wins, a factor that didn’t exist in the previous Chase format that NASCAR used 2004–2013.
It’s that fact that has surprised Joey Logano the most about this year’s post-season.
“How you can quickly make up a fair amount of distance with the 70-point day,” says Logano, who has jumped from ninth to fourth and is now 67 points behind leader Kyle Larson.
“If you have somebody like Larson last week (Kansas) that was already right there at the points lead and has a 70-plus point day and he’s checked out really quickly. He puts together a couple of those and he’s out there, but just as quickly if he has a couple bad ones and someone else has a couple big days like that, it closes right up.”
Under NASCAR’s point system, a driver can earn 76 points on a perfect race day. That’s winning the first and second stages, for a total of 20 points, producing the fastest lap during the race, which is one point, and then winning the race for 55 points. Larson, who snapped a 51-race winless streak in the Chase’s second race at World Wide Technology Raceway, recorded a perfect point day a week ago at Kansas Speedway.
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Kyle Larson turned in a perfect point day at Kansas.
Using a 2.5 average finish and two victories in the Chase’s first four races, Larson has jumped from seventh to a surprising 26-point lead over Denny Hamlin. The other two huge surprises in the first four races have been Team Penske’s Logano and Austin Cindric. Logano has moved from ninth to fourth, 67 points out of the lead, while Cindric has jumped from 15th to ninth, 140 points behind Larson. The most surprising freefall has been Tyler Reddick who has dropped from third to seventh and now sits 111 points behind Larson.
“Tyler Reddick at the beginning of the year, he was checked out,” Logano said. “I already penciled him in as the regular season champion. I figured that was for sure, but as quickly as they get out there and take a big lead it can change just as quick if someone else gets hot at the right time. We’ve seen it. We’ve lived it.”
Hamlin finished the 26-race regular season in first, 89 points ahead of second place Ryan Blaney. Reddick finished third, 133 points behind Hamlin.
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Denny Hamlin finished the regular season in first place.
This week the Cup Series moves to its second of four 1.5-mile tracks in the Chase. Hamlin has won the last two races at Las Vegas, and the Toyotas have excelled on those intermediate tracks this year. In fact, they were expected to distance themselves from the rest of the field during this three-week period. However, Logano has earned four Cup victories at Las Vegas while Larson has posted three. Logano says his 20th-place finish at Kansas was “an average to below average kind of day.”
“But at the same time, a little bit more optimistic about our mile-and-a-half stuff, seeing that as a company there’s potential there,” Logano said.
Cindric produced his first runner-up finish this season at Kansas, while Blaney took fifth. The 28-year-old Cindric is possibly the most relaxed driver in the Chase.
“The mentality since the Chase has started is to have fun and be loose… not having anything to lose and all to gain,” Cindric said. “I think for us to go from one of the lowest seeds to the top 10 in the standings is great.”
Qualifying has been rained out for three of the four Chase races, requiring NASCAR to use its metric system to determine the starting lineup. Logano says he doesn’t have a “huge issue” with it even though it has sometimes adversely affected Chase drivers’ ability to score Stage points when they start in the second half of the field.
“It still rewards performance and it rewards for running well,” Logano said. “It rewards the points and those type of things. Tell me a better way and maybe I’ll change my opinion, but it seems to be OK.”
A North Carolina native, Deb Williams is an award-winning motorsports journalist who is in her fourth decade covering auto racing. In addition to covering the sport for United Press International, she has written motorsports articles for several newspapers, magazines and websites including espnW.com, USA Today, and The Charlotte Observer. Her awards include the American Motorsports Media Award of Excellence, two-time National Motorsports Press Association writer of the year, and two-time recipient of the Russ Catlin award. She also has won an award in the North Carolina Press Association’s sports feature category. During her career, Deb has been managing editor of GT Motorsports magazine and was with Winston Cup Scene and NASCAR Winston Cup Scene for 18 years, serving as the publication’s editor for 10 years. In 2024 she was inducted into the NMPA Hall of Fame.