NASCAR: Who would be 2020 champion without stages?

What would the final 2020 NASCAR Cup Series championship standing have looked like without stages, assuming everything else remained the same?

Stage racing was introduced to NASCAR ahead of the 2017 season and remains a controversial talking point following its fourth season in 2020.

Hendrick Motorsports’ Chase Elliott was crowed this year’s champion at Phoenix Raceway on Sunday, November 8 in what was the seventh annual Championship 4 and the 17th annual finale decided as a part of some kind of a playoff format.

The Championship 4 race is the only race throughout the 36-race season for which some drivers are not eligible for stage points, which are otherwise awarded to the top 10 finishers in each stage.

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The four drivers battling for the title do not score stage points in this race; to keep things simple, the highest finisher is the champion, and Elliott beat Team Penske teammates Brad Keselowski and Joey Logano and Joe Gibbs Racing’s Denny Hamlin to seal the title.

But what if all races were still like this for all drivers? Because stage points factor in to drivers advancing and being eliminated during the four-round, 10-race playoffs, you have to take the playoffs out of the mix as well when figuring out how things would have looked.

Of course, under different formats, there are other things you have to consider as well regarding how drivers go about the races, such as a driver’s willingness to take chances to win races instead of settling for solid points days. For the sake of this article, we are going to focus only on what we know, and that is the number of points scored in 2020.

So under the assumption that everything else remains equal, who would have led the field on points alone this season?

Here is what the 2020 NASCAR Cup Series championship standings would have looked like based on pure race results and nothing playoff-related or stage-related, using the current points format.

Rank – Driver: Points (Behind)
1st – Kevin Harvick: 1111 (0)
2nd – Denny Hamlin: 1015 (-96)
3rd – Brad Keselowski: 995 (-116)
4th – Chase Elliott: 938 (-173)
5th – Joey Logano: 926 (-185)
6th – Martin Truex Jr.: 901 (-210)
7th – Aric Almirola: 864 (-247)
8th – Kurt Busch: 861 (-250)
9th – Ryan Blaney: 835 (-276)
10th – Kyle Busch: 833 (-278)
11th – Alex Bowman: 807 (-304)
12th – Clint Bowyer: 806 (-305)
13th – Matt DiBenedetto: 805 (-306)
14th – William Byron: 770 (-341)
15th – Erik Jones: 765 (-346)
16th – Austin Dillon: 742 (-369)
17th – Jimmie Johnson: 705 (-406)
17th – Tyler Reddick: 705 (-406)
19th – Cole Custer: 654 (-457)
20th – Chris Buescher: 611 (-500)
21st – Christopher Bell: 603 (-508)
22nd – Michael McDowell: 583 (-528)
23rd – Bubba Wallace: 577 (-534)
24th – Ryan Newman: 549 (-562)
25th – Ty Dillon: 543 (-568)
26th – Ricky Stenhouse Jr.: 529 (-582)
27th – John Hunter Nemechek: 525 (-586)
28th – Matt Kenseth: 512 (-599)
29th – Ryan Preece: 461 (-650)
30th – Corey LaJoie: 407 (-704)
31st – Daniel Suarez: 365 (-746)
32nd – Brennan Poole: 269 (-842)
33rd – Quin Houff: 214 (-897)

Next. Top 10 NASCAR drivers of all-time. dark

Is stage racing here to stay? The 2021 season is scheduled to begin with the 63rd annual Daytona 500 at Daytona International Speedway on Sunday, February 14.

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