NASCAR: There are still 15 open Cup Series playoff spots

Despite the fact that nine drivers have already won at least one race in the 2021 NASCAR Cup Series season thus far, there are still 15 open playoff spots.

Talladega Superspeedway hosted the 10th race of the 2021 NASCAR Cup Series season this past Sunday, and it was Team Penske’s Brad Keselowski who took the checkered flag to win the GEICO 500.

In winning this 191-lap race around the four-turn, 2.66-mile (4.281-kilometer) high-banked oval in Lincoln, Alabama, Keselowski became the ninth driver to win a race so far this year.

As a result, while we are 10 races into the season and have seen nine different drivers find victory lane, there is still only one playoff spot which has actually been clinched, leaving a whopping 15 still technically open.

Why? Because it’s not actually a “win and in” playoff system that NASCAR uses, despite the common use of that terminology.

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It may seem that way, since winning of the 26 regular season races has locked drivers into the four-round, 10-race postseason ever since the current format was introduced ahead of the 2014 season.

But never before have we seen more than 16 drivers become victorious throughout a regular season, even though it is mathematically possible. This season, however, it appears to be more than possible.

Only Joe Gibbs Racing’s Martin Truex Jr. has won more than one race so far this season, and therefore through 10 races, he is the only driver who has managed to officially secure a playoff berth.

The 16 playoff berths go to the regular season points champion plus the 15 drivers with the most wins, provided they rank in the top 30 in the point standings.

So the only way to truly lock in on wins, unless a point is reached during the regular season when there are no longer enough regular season races left to produce more than 16 different winners, is by winning twice, since the maximum possible two-race winner total is 13.

If there are more than 16 race winners, it comes down to a points battle between the one-race winners — kind of like the points battle that has happened every year thus far among the zero-race winners to determine who gets the final few spots.

Of course, it’s more than likely that most of the drivers who have won a race so far this season will be in the playoffs. I’m not sitting here trying to convince you that drivers such as Keselowski, Joey Logano and Kyle Larson, among others, are going to end up on the outside looking in.

But mathematically speaking, they all still have work left to do to secure their spots.

Winning helps, but it isn’t everything, as evidenced by the fact that there are already nine different winners with 16 of the 26 regular season races, including five road course races and a superspeedway race, remaining on the calendar before the playoffs are scheduled to begin in September.

Tune in to Fox Sports 1 at 3:00 p.m. ET on Sunday, May 2 for the live broadcast of the 11th race on the 2021 schedule, the Buschy McBusch Race 400 at Kansas Speedway. Will this race produce a 10th different winner this year?