Ryan Blaney spoiled any potential Cinderella stories Saturday night at Daytona by winning the final race of the regular season and solidifying the playoff field.<\/p>\n
Blaney\u2019s victory came at the expense of four drivers behind him who needed a win to get into the NASCAR Cup Series postseason. Instead, it was Alex Bowman taking the final spot in the playoffs on points.<\/p>\n
Tyler Reddick, who also earned a postseason spot on points, did so in the first stage of the race. Reddick\u2019s path was secure once Bowman fell out of the race from a lap 27 crash.<\/p>\n
NASCAR now reseeds the playoff grid by awarding the drivers who finished in the top 10 in the championship standings with additional playoff points. William Byron, who won the regular season championship, earned 15 points. It was 10 points for second-place Blaney, and then eight points for third-place Kyle Larson. The scale then decreases by one point to the 10th-place driver.<\/p>\n
The top 10 in points after the regular season finale:<\/p>\n
1. William Byron<\/p>\n
2. Ryan Blaney<\/p>\n
3. Kyle Larson<\/p>\n
4. Chase Elliott<\/p>\n
5. Christopher Bell<\/p>\n
6. Denny Hamlin<\/p>\n
7. Tyler Reddick<\/p>\n
8. Chase Briscoe<\/p>\n
9. Alex Bowman<\/p>\n
10. Chris Buescher<\/p>\n
Buescher did not make the postseason. He was winless in the regular season and was the first driver on the outside looking in when the 16-driver field was set.<\/p>\n
Kyle Larson goes into the postseason as the No. 1 seed over teammate Byron. Denny Hamlin is the third seed.<\/p>\n
The playoff grid as the postseason begins at Darlington Raceway:<\/p>\n
1. Kyle Larson: 32 playoff points<\/p>\n
2. William Byron: 32 playoff points<\/p>\n
3. Denny Hamlin: 29 playoff points<\/p>\n
4. Ryan Blaney: 26 playoff points<\/p>\n
5. Christopher Bell: 23 playoff points<\/p>\n
6. Shane van Gisbergen: 22 playoff points<\/p>\n
7. Chase Elliott: 13 playoff points<\/p>\n
8. Chase Briscoe: 10 playoff points<\/p>\n
9. Bubba Wallace: 8 playoff points<\/p>\n
10. Austin Cindric: 8 playoff points<\/p>\n
11. Ross Chastain: 7 playoff points<\/p>\n
12. Joey Logano: 7 playoff points<\/p>\n
13. Josh Berry: 6 playoff points<\/p>\n
14. Tyler Reddick: 6 playoff points<\/p>\n
15. Austin Dillon: 5 playoff points<\/p>\n
16. Alex Bowman: 2 playoff points<\/p>\n
Darlington Raceway, World Wide Technology Raceway, and Bristol Motor Speedway are the races in the first round of the postseason.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ryan Blaney spoiled any potential Cinderella stories Saturday night at Daytona by winning the final race of the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":95423,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[446],"tags":[49,48,634,82],"class_list":{"0":"post-95422","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nascar","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-nascar","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/95422","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=95422"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/95422\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/95423"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=95422"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=95422"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=95422"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}