While past performance is never a perfect predictor of future behavior, it can tell us which drivers are meeting expectations and which are rising above them.
l’ll use what we learned in the first playoff round to look forward to the Round of 12 and determine which drivers should do well in the next three races and which will need the drives of their lives to continue.
What the Round of 16 predicts about the Round of 12
The most important number in the playoffs is driver rank. A driver just has to be better than four other drivers to make it in. That gets harder the further the playoffs go. I’ll focus here only on drivers moving on to the Round of 12 with an eye to how each performance augers for their future.
Most spots gained: Alex Bowman starts the Round of 12 ranked 11th, but that doesn’t reflect how good his performance was in the first three playoff races. Bowman started the Round of 16 ranked 12th and finished the three-race run ranked third.
His nine-position climb is the best of any first-round playoff driver. Bowman finished fifth at Atlanta, 18th at Watkins Glen and ninth at Bristol to post the fourth-best average finish of any driver in this round. That’s impressive given that he has only a 20% average top-10 rate at those three tracks in the Next Gen car.
Second-most spots gained: Austin Cindric boasted the second-biggest improvement in rank, moving from 10th to fifth with two 10th-place finishes and a 13th at Bristol. Cindric had the fifth-best average finish of any driver in the Round of 16 at 11.0. But Cindric actually underperformed slightly against his Next Gen history at these tracks.
Biggest overperformer. Chase Briscoe wasn’t expected to move on from the Round of 16, but he set personal best finishes at Watkins Glen (sixth) and Bristol (eighth). He only moved from 13th to 12th due in part to an accident in Atlanta and finishing 38th. But he’s still in the playoffs.
Biggest drop in rankings: William Byron, Denny Hamlin and Tyler Reddick each dropped four spots in the last three races. My biggest concern is for Byron.
In addition to a four-rank drop, Byron was the most underperforming driver among those who moved on. These should have been really strong tracks for the No. 24 team, but they weren’t. Thanks to 22 playoff points, Byron will start the Round of 12 in fourth place. He might make it to the Round of 8 with a similar performance but not the Round of 4.
Worst ranking by a race winner. Despite winning at Atlanta, Joey Logano ended the first round ranked ninth after finishing 15th and 28th at the last two races.
Round of 12 Expectations
Before reseeding, Logano, Hamlin, Daniel Suárez and Briscoe were the last four drivers in the top 12. After reseeding, Cindric, Suárez, Bowman and Briscoe find themselves in the basement.
Round 2 features Kansas, Talladega and the Charlotte Roval. That’s good news for Bristol winner Larson and Hamlin — at least, in principle.
At least five drivers will advance on points, so while winning is important (bonus points!), it isn’t absolutely necessary in this round. I thus weigh average points per race, wins and top-five finishes.
Best chances to do well. My calculations award Hamlin and Larson the two highest average rankings for the three tracks in the second round. Both drivers have won at Kansas in the Next Gen car.
Larson has a 50% top-10 finish rate in the Next Gen car at the three tracks in the Round of 12. Even without his series-leading 47 playoff points, Larson’s record at these tracks should be good enough to advance. The only thing that could slow Larson’s drive for a second championship is multiple execution mistakes.
Hamlin is proving to be the enigma of the 2024 championship race. He has a 58.3% top-10 finish rate at Round of 12 tracks. Each top-10 finish was also a top-5 finish. Hamlin underperformed relative to his history in the Round of 16 and his ‘strategy’ at Atlanta raised a lot of eyebrows.
Hamlin should advance. But he also should have been well above the cut line going into Bristol and wasn’t.
Drivers likely to struggle. This group of tracks isn’t encouraging for Cindric, Suárez or Briscoe — three drivers that surprised many by making it past the first elimination.
Suárez has a 33.3% top-10 finish rate, but no top-five finishes in the Next Gen car at any of the three tracks. Cindric and Briscoe each have only one top-five finish in the 12 races across these tracks.
Of the three, Briscoe seems the best chance for an underdog advance to the Round of 8. The No. 14 team seems newly re-energized since their Darlington win. The question is whether they can keep the momentum going.
First-round winner Logano surprisingly finds himself on the lower end of expectations. He has a 25% top-10 rate and a 16.7% top-five rate at these three tracks since the Next Gen car was introduced. Of the three tracks, his strongest is the Roval, with a 50% top-five finish rate.
The Middle. Subtracting the top and bottom leaves a tightly-bunched middle group in terms of average performance at Round-of-12 tracks. Blaney, Chase Elliott, Christopher Bell, Byron, Reddick and Bowman all rank similarly in terms of prior performance at this set of tracks.
Blaney, Elliott, and Bell have one win each while Reddick has won at Kansas (last year) and Talladega (this year).
I push Bell to the top of this list because of his consistency in the first round He had the highest average finish (7.67) over the three races, and was in first place before the re-seeding.
I worry most about Byron and a possible late-season fade given his performance in the Round of 16. But if the Round of 16 proved anything, it’s that racecar drivers will always surprise you.