The playoff track-type distribution confers an advantage on William Byron and Martin Truex Jr. because it includes track types they excelled at in the regular season. The same schedule puts Denny Hamlin at a slight disadvantage. Byron and Hamlin are frontrunners because they have consistently outperformed their regular-season stats.
Drivers who make the playoffs by virtue of one win at a road course or a superspeedway often don’t go far in the playoffs. The first round offers neither type of track. Finishing well without winning can only move a driver so far in an elimination tournament.
I used regular-season average finishing positions by track type to predict how drivers would perform in the playoffs and if they had an advantage because of the tracks included. With the final stretch of the season half over, some drivers have excelled while others have fallen short.
A tale of two schedules
One challenge as NASCAR diversifies its schedule is maintaining a balanced distribution of different types of tracks. This year, ovals between 1- and 1.49-miles are most represented with 22.2% of the total points-awarding races. Intermediate tracks (1.5-mile ovals) come in second with 19.4% of the races.
Atlanta’s conversion makes pack-racing tracks 16.7% of the overall schedule. Road courses are also up in recent year, constituting 13.9% of the schedule. They were only 5.5% in 2016.
But track-type distribution across the regular season and the playoffs is quite different, as the graphs below show.
For example: Intermediate tracks comprise 40.0% of playoff races but just 11.5% of regular-season races.
Because most drivers race better at some kinds of tracks than others, the playoff schedule composition should give some drivers an advantage. I say ‘should’ because that only holds if drivers drive at least as well as they did during the regular season.
Bubba Wallace benefits most from the 2023 playoff schedule
After determining each playoff driver’s averages by track type over the regular season, I used those averages to predict playoff expectations based on the track types involved. This kind of weighted average is more accurate because the playoff composition is so different from the regular season.
The graph below shows the projected average playoff finish in blue bars and the regular-season average finish in green-hatched bars. I show only drivers projected to finish at least one position better in the playoffs than their regular-season average.
Bubba Wallace’s regular-season unweighted average is 16.8. His predicted (weighted) average over the playoffs is 11.6, giving him a 5.2-position advantage. That makes sense: The playoffs minimize road courses and 2+ mile non-superspeedway ovals, both of which challenged Wallace this year.
Byron’s regular-season average finish is 12.8, while his projected playoff average finish is 9.3. That should give him a 3.5-position advantage, the second-largest benefit.
Kyle Larson also sees a 3.5-position advantage, but he’s starting from a worse regular-season average finish. Ryan Blaney gains an advantage of 3.0 positions while Tyler Reddick and Truex each have a 2.6-position advantage.
On the other end of the list, Christopher Bell is the theoretically most-disadvantaged driver by the playoff schedule. Bell has a 13.6 regular-season average but a projected playoff average of 16.1. The tracks he was best at this year are least represented in the playoffs.
RFK teammates Brad Keselowski and Chris Buescher have 1.5- and 1.4-position disadvantages respectively. Ross Chastain, Kyle Busch and Hamlin’s projected averages fall within a position of their regular-season averages
The drivers most outperforming expectations
The graph below shows the five drivers with the largest positive difference between their projected average over the first five playoff races and their actual performance.
Hamlin’s 7.2 average finish in the first five playoff races is 6.2 positions better than projected by his regular-season numbers. Bell is right behind his teammate, with an overperformance of 6.0 positions.
Although Byron finished just 2.3 positions over his projections, he was projected to have the best average finish at 8.5. His 6.2 actual average finish is the best of any playoff driver in the first five playoff races.
And then there are the underperformers.
Ross Chastain’s actual average finish is 2.3 positions worse than predicted. Kyle Busch has a 4.1-position lag and Wallace — who should benefit most from the playoff schedule — has a 4.3-position drop.
I originally undertook this analysis to determine whether the specific tracks in the playoffs could shoulder some of the blame for Truex’s bleak showing thus far. Truex has the best projected average of any playoff driver for the first five races at 7.2. Truex is underperforming to the tune of 14.4 positions.
To check that this number wasn’t due to good runs with bad finishes, I looked at average running position. The No. 19 driver hasn’t had an average running position better than 16.2 during the playoffs.
Chase Elliott had a similar falloff dip last year, but he underperformed by only 3.4 positions in the first five playoff races. Like Elliott, Truex’s playoff points have saved him from elimination.
Meanwhile, Byron is quietly outperforming his already outstanding regular season. Hamlin is doing the same — perhaps a little less quietly. This weekend’s race at the Charlotte Roval (2 p.m. ET, NBC) will eliminate four drivers from contending for the other two spots in the Championship 4.