The Round of 8 offers no road courses, no superspeedways and no large ovals — just two 1.5-mile tracks and Martinsville. It also offers a much higher level of competition. With three races determining the four drivers for the title event at Phoenix, there could be only one spot available on points.
Denny Hamlin finished fifth, seventh, and fifth in last year’s Round of 8. He earned an average of 38 points per race and finished the round in fourth place — and still didn’t make the Championship 4. Christopher Bell won Martinsville and leap-frogged Hamlin, eliminating him from the playoffs.
In this round, drivers need consistent top-five finishes to avoid elimination. If they want to be able to sleep during the next three weeks, they need to win.
The Next Gen car at classic intermediate tracks
Las Vegas (2 p.m. ET, NBC) is a high-speed, non-drafting intermediate track with progressive banking and minimal tire wear. It’s more like Kansas, Charlotte and Texas than it is Homestead, the other intermediate track in the Round of 8. Next Gen pole speeds at Las Vegas and its sister tracks are in the 180- to 189-mph range. In contrast, the 2022 pole speed for Homestead was 166.389 mph.
Las Vegas and its comparison tracks give us 11 races worth of data in the Next Gen car.
Of the drivers in the Round of 8, Hamlin, Tyler Reddick and William Byron have each won twice at this collection of intermediate tracks. Reddick took checkered flags at Texas in 2022 and the Kansas playoff race this year. Hamlin won Kansas this spring and Charlotte last year, while Byron won this year’s spring race at Las Vegas and Texas.
Ryan Blaney won Charlotte this year for his only win on these four tracks in the Next Gen car. Alex Bowman, Bubba Wallace, Joey Logano and Kurt Busch have the other four checkered flags.
Hamlin has the best top-five finish rate at 63.6% having earned seven top-five finishes in 11 Next Gen races. Byron, Bell and Kyle Larson each have 45.4% top-five finish rates. Reddick has only three top-five finishes out of 11 races, but remember that he’s with a different team this year.
The remaining playoff drivers have struggled on intermediate tracks. Martin Truex, Jr. and Blaney each have only two top-five finishes in 11 races. The final Round of 8 driver, Chris Buescher, has no top-five finishes and just one top-10 finish at this set of tracks.
Average finishes show Byron’s advantage
The graph below shows all drivers with average finishes of 14.0 or lower at the four tracks under consideration.
Only eight drivers make it onto this graph. Five of those eight are playoff drivers. Ross Chastain ties with Byron for the best average finish at 9.2. Hamlin and Bowman are next at 9.8 and 10.0 respectively. There’s then a large jump to a group of four drivers between 12.2 and 13.2.
Given that 2022 was a learning year with a new car, I thought it worthwhile to pull out how drivers have performed this year. I show those average finishes in the next graph, which represents five races: two at Kansas, spring Las Vegas, Charlotte and Texas.
This graph underscores how good Byron is at these tracks. He has a remarkable 4.4 average finish this year. Excepting a 15th-place finish at Kansas in the fall, he hasn’t finished worse than third — and he’s won twice.
We have to skip over four drivers before coming to the next-best playoff driver this year on classical 1.5-mile tracks. Hamlin has a 10.8 average finish this year. That’s one position worse than his overall Next Gen numbers, and more than twice Byron’s average finish.
Poles and Stage Wins
Bell has earned the most poles at intermediate tracks in the Next Gen era with four. Reddick and Byron each have two while Hamlin, Logano, Wallace and Brad Keselowski have each earned one pole.
Unfortunately, poles rarely translate to wins at these tracks. In the Next Gen era, only one pole-sitter went on to win the race: Hamlin in 2022 at Charlotte for a 9.1% win-from-pole rate. Two drivers have won from the front row in 11 races.
That isn’t to say qualifying isn’t important. Of the 11 races, six were won by drivers starting fifth or better, Nine were won by drivers qualifying in the top 10. Only one race was won by a driver qualifying outside the top 15.
Leading the most laps also doesn’t correlate with winning. None of the drivers who led the most laps went on to win the race.
Las Vegas is also a great track to rack up points if you have a good car. In the three Next Gen races, the winner has earned between 10 and 20 stage points. In spring of this year, Byron won both stages on his way to winning the race.
In last year’s fall race, winner Logano finished second in both stages. Although Bowman earned no points in the second stage in the spring of 2022, he won the first stage and the race. If you’re running a fantasy league, keep an eye on who takes that first stage.
Possible non-playoff-driver spoilers
Although I think one of the playoff drivers will win this race, Bubba Wallace has five top-five finishes, the same as Byron, Bell and Larson. Unlike Bell and Larson, one of Wallace’s top-five finishes is a win. Kyle Busch and Ross Chastain each have four top-five finishes. All three have something to prove after being knocked out of the playoffs in the last round.
Alex Bowman seems to be rebounding from the slump he had after returning from his back injury. He finished 10th at Kansas and 12th at Texas in recent weeks. While perhaps not a likely winner, Las Vegas could be one more step to Bowman finishing out a disappointing season on an upswing.