The remaining eight drivers are closer together than ever before in the stage-point era. Prepare for a nail-biting final run as the 2023 Cup Series enters its last three-race elimination round with the opening race at Las Vegas (2:30 p.m. ET, NBC.)
William Byron wins the Round of 12
As I’ve noted before, re-seeding drivers after elimination races can bury useful performance data. The graph below shows race and playoff points earned by the Round of 12 drivers. The cross-hatched bars indicate drivers who won’t continue to the Round of 8.
William Byron earned 135 race points and five bonus points from winning Texas. That’s an improvement over his 99 race points and no bonus points in the Round of 16. Byron’s Texas win also bodes well going into the Round of 8, which starts with two 1.5-mile tracks.
Byron outscored his closest rivals, Christopher Bell and Ryan Blaney, by 39 points each. Bell earned all of his 101 points from race finishes in this round. Blaney won 95 race points and five playoff points from winning Talladega. Tyler Reddick is just behind them with 94 total points.
Round of 12 warning signs
The four eliminated drivers (Kyle Busch, Brad Keselowski, Ross Chastain and Bubba Wallace) fall in the lower half of the points winners. They are not, however, the lowest four.
Martin Truex Jr. scored 66 points in this round. That’s 26 more points than he scored in the first round, but it’s also the second-lowest number of points any driver scored. Truex earned his best finish of the playoffs in this round: 17th place at Texas.
Kyle Larson also struggled, finishing 31st at Texas after being involved in an accident. His other two finishes were 15th at Talladega and 13th at the Roval — after crashing during Roval practice. That’s a far cry from the 3.33 average finish position he earned in the first playoff round.
Although Wallace and Denny Hamlin earned the same number of points in this round (85), Wallace had no playoff points to boost him into the Round of 8.
Christopher Bell least-winning driver left
The most recent cut eliminated the last winless drivers still in contention. It also eliminated Kyle Busch, who won three regular-season races.
All drivers left in the playoffs have two or more wins except Bell. His only win this year was at the Bristol dirt race. The Oklahoman does, however, have the fourth-best average finish across the six playoff races.
Truex leaps up in the re-seeded standings thanks to the 36 playoff points he earned during the regular season. In the last round, those points tied him with Byron. Having earned five more playoff points in this round, however, Byron now holds the lead by himself.
Byron remains the driver to beat with a 5.5 average finish during the playoffs. As the graph below shows, his average is almost twice as good as the next-best driver.
Byron also has the best overall season average finish at 11.5. He beats second-best Chris Buescher by 0.7 positions.
Playoff points unlikely to save Martin Truex Jr. in the Round of 8
The playoff structure doesn’t allow a dominant regular-season run like Truex’s, (or Chase Elliott’s last year) to capture the championship without excellence in the Round of 8. While he’s struggled in the playoffs, Truex still has the fifth-best season average. His 13.2 average finish is just one-tenth of a position worse than Bell’s average.
I compared the positions of drivers entering the Round of 8 with their positions before and after the championship-determining race. I limited the data to the stage-racing era (from 2017 on) because that’s when playoff points entered the scene and changed playoff dynamics.
If this were a normal year, I would write off Reddick and Blaney now. In the last six years, no driver coming into the Round of 8 ranked seventh or eighth made it to the final four.
But this isn’t a normal year.
The 2023 season has the smallest points margin between first and eighth in the stage-racing era. Byron and Blaney are just 27 points apart. The previous record, 37 points, was set in 2019 and matched in 2022.
Reddick, in seventh, has the same number of points coming into the Round of 8 as sixth-place Bell, so I expanded the above analysis.
Only twice in the last six years did a driver who came into the round of 8 ranked sixth make it into the Championship 4. In 2018, Joey Logano won in the third round. In 2021, Chase Elliott earned enough points to put himself in the top four and contend for the championship.
That doesn’t leave me much more optimistic for Bell, Blaney and Reddick’s chances. Out of 18 drivers who came into the Round of 8 seeded sixth, seventh or eighth in the stage-racing era, only two (11.1%) moved on to the Championship 4.
No one is ‘safe’ in this final round
In two of the playoffs between 2017 and 2022 (33.3%), all four drivers who entered the Round of 8 ranked first through fourth proceeded to the Championship 4. That happened in 2017 and 2022.
That number is lower than one might expect because of the enhanced importance of wins as the number of drivers approaches the number of races in the round.
Playoff drivers typically win most of the races in the Round of 8. In 2017, 2020, and and 2022, two different playoff drivers won races in the third round. Larson won two playoff races (and the championship) in 2021.
In the other two years, three different playoff drivers won all three races. That leaves room for only one driver to point his way into the Championship 4.
In 2020, Kevin Harvick ranked first at the start of the Round of 8. He ranked third at the end of the round based on points. Unfortunately for him, the fourth- and fifth-ranked drivers each won a race in that round. Harvick was eliminated.
Hamlin came into the Round of 8 last year ranked seventh but earned enough points to finish the round in fourth position. That should have been enough to move him into the Championship 4 — except Bell, who was next to last in points earned in that round, won Martinsville.
Although William Byron can’t consider himself safe, he can comfort himself with one last statistic. In three of the last six years, the driver ranked first entering the Round of 8 won the championship.