Six races remain on the 2025 NASCAR Cup Series regular season schedule, and there have already been 12 winners this season, meaning that there is still a mathematical possibility for the 26-race regular season to conclude with more than 16 different winners, in which case not all winners would qualify for the playoffs.
Though it's hard to imagine six new winners emerging in the regular season's final six races, it's not impossible, and not just because those six races consist of a road course race and a superspeedway race.
Seven full-time drivers who won last year haven't yet won this year, and a number of those drivers, such as 23XI Racing's Tyler Reddick and RFK Racing's Chris Buescher, are capable of winning pretty much anywhere.
Let's say the regular season does conclude with more than 16 different winners.
How would the 16-driver NASCAR playoff field be determined?
Playoff spots are awarded to the regular season champion, whether he is a winner or not, and all multi-race winners. While, yes, we could technically see a scenario with a winless regular season champion and 18 different winners, we are going to assume that this year's regular season champion is a race winner, since the top non-winner, Reddick, is 53 points behind.
The remaining spots go to the single-race winners. If there are more single-race winners than playoff spots, the tiebreaker to determine who gets in and who doesn't becomes points.
This scenario has never happened in the history of the modern format, which was introduced in 2014. There are generally not enough winners to fill the playoff field, and the standings among non-winners end up determining who takes the remaining spots.
However, in the event that the regular season does conclude with 18 different winners, the four multi-race winners, Joe Gibbs Racing teammates Denny Hamlin and Christopher Bell, Hendrick Motorsports' Kyle Larson, and Trackhouse Racing's Shane van Gisbergen, all of whom have won three races, would be locked in.
The tiebreaker would then involve the 14 single-race winners, and the top 12 (among those 14 drivers) in the point standings would make the playoffs, while the other two would not.
As of now, there are only two single-race winners at risk of missing the playoffs: Team Penske's Austin Cindric, who won at Talladega Superspeedway in April, and Wood Brothers Racing's Josh Berry, who won at Las Vegas Motor Speedway in March. They sit in 20th and 21st place in the point standings, respectively, while all other drivers with one win are inside the top 11.
Of course, if someone from below Cindric and Berry in the point standings wins, they would be at risk. For instance, if Hyak Motorsports' Ricky Stenhouse Jr. wins the regular season finale at Daytona to become the 18th (or even the 17th) different winner, the fact that he is 23rd in points could end up keeping him out of the playoffs.
It's all extremely unlikely, but it illustrates the fact that the playoff format is not mathematically a "win and in" format, especially in a Next Gen era which has been characterized by parity and produced as many as 19 different winners over a full season before.
Tune in to TNT Sports this Sunday, July 20 at 2:00 p.m. ET for the live broadcast of the Autotrader EchoPark Automotive 400 from Dover Motor Speedway.