Tyler Redick’s pit stops at Darlington last weekend were for tires, fuel, and medicine to mitigate the symptoms of a nasty stomach bug. Reddick entered the media center flushed and visibly exhausted.
But when asked if he had considered getting out of the car, Reddick grinned.
“No,” he said. “I probably would’ve wrecked it before I got out.”
That’s how important winning the regular season championship is.
Playoff points define the playoff seeds
Reddick won the regular season championship by a single point over Kyle Larson. That win doesn’t mean Reddick enters the playoffs as first seed, but it did prevent Larson from claiming the 15-playoff point bonus and lessened the gap between Larson and Reddick heading into the playoffs.
The graph below shows just how important the regular season point bonuses are. I show playoff points earned during the season in black and the bonus points from the regular-season finish in green.
Thanks to his regular season championship, Reddick starts the playoffs as the third seed, four points behind second-seeded Christopher Bell.
If Reddick had come in second to Larson in the regular-season points race, Reddick would have entered the playoffs with 23 playoff points while Larson would have 45.
Reddick’s perseverance puts him at a 12-point deficit to Larson rather than a 22-point deficit.
Prior playoff stats
The biggest lead a first-seeded driver enjoyed at the start of the playoffs in the stage-racing format was 27 points in 2021. Larson earned 52 playoff points while second-seed Joey Logano had only 25 playoff points.
Larson earned the most playoff points again this year, but his eight-point gap to Bell is the second-smallest gap under the current playoff format
The smallest difference between the top two drivers going into the playoff is zero. It happened in 2018 when Kyle Busch and Kevin Harvick each earned 50 playoff points.
There also was a tie in 2023, when William Byron and Martin Truex Jr. each had 36 points.
None of those drivers won the championship in those years.
Harvick has the record for most playoff points earned during the regular season with 57 in 2020. Second place belongs to Truex who, in 2017, started the first year of this playoff format with 53 playoff points. Larson entered the playoffs with 52 playoff points in 2021.
Truex and Larson both went on to win their respective championships, as did Busch, who entered 2019 with 45 playoff points. In the other four playoffs run in the current format, the top-seeded driver did not win the championship.
Low-seeded drivers will especially struggle
Let’s visualize the point standings going into Atlanta a slightly different way.
As you can tell from my struggles to fit all the data in at the bottom of the graph, the playoff race is particularly tight in the back of the field.
The Next Gen car can take some credit for that. From 2017-21, the points range from first to 16th was between 45 and 57 points, with an average point spread of 50.4.
In the three years of Next Gen racing, the average points difference from first to 16th is 35.7 points.
In fact, this year represents:
- The smallest point spread from ninth to 16th (3 points)
- The smallest point spread from 12th to 16th (1 point)
The points gap between the seventh and eighth seeds (six points) is larger than the gap from eighth seed to 16th,
Top drivers historically view the first playoff round as less challenging. At least nine drivers will advance to round 2 on points. A driver with solid-but-not-exceptional numbers could usually count on making the leap from 16 to 12.
That’s a much taller order this year with the first playoff round consisting of a superspeedway (Atlanta), a road course (Watkins Glen) and Bristol.
Atlanta and Bristol tend to have more collisions and more DNFs than the average track. Watkins Glen offers an opportunity for road course aces like Michael McDowell to steel a win from playoff contenders.
It will be much harder for even the top-seeded drivers to skate through round one. Ask Truex how fast luck can change at racetracks.
In the last three races of the regular season, Truex went from having a 38-point lead over Ty Gibbs to ending the regular season six points behind Gibbs.
The first round will especially challenge the bottom half of the playoff field. Among those nine drivers, seven have won one race and two are winless. Chase Briscoe, Daniel Suárez and Austin Cindric finished the regular season ranked 17th, 18th and 19th while Harrison Burton was ranked 34th.
However, Suárez won Atlanta in the spring and Cindric is a Daytona 500 winner. Briscoe is coming off a hard-fought win at Darlington and has momentum on his side.
These drivers will have to fight for every point from the green flag at Atlanta to the checkered flag at Bristol. Expect some contentious racing throughout the first round of the playoffs, especially among the last nine drivers competing for the 2024 championship.