NASCAR: The only two ways to secure a playoff berth

By Asher Fair | Aug 8, 2021

Christopher Bell, Joe Gibbs Racing, NASCAR (Photo by Chris Graythen/Getty Images) /

With the possibility of having more than 16 regular season winners, there are really only two ways to truly secure a NASCAR Cup Series playoff berth.

We hear all the time about the “win and in” nature of the current NASCAR Cup Series playoff format. And so far, that has held true, as 16 drivers qualify for the four-round, 10-race playoffs, and we have not had more than 16 winners in a 26-race regular season.

However, the start of the 2021 season indicated quite early on that perhaps this could change this year, and it still might.

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It’s not rare to see two different winners in the first two races of a season, or even three in the first three or four in the first four. Five in the first five also isn’t super uncommon, having just happened in 2013, 2014 and 2017.

This season, it was pretty much expected, given the fact that the 36-race campaign opened up with two of what you might call “wild card” races, the first being the annual Daytona 500 at the Daytona International Speedway oval and the second being the O’Reilly Auto Parts 253 at the track’s road course.

Indeed, it happened. But it happened in a way not many expected.

Two drivers who finished in the 20s in last year’s championship standings and who had never won a Cup Series race before became Cup Series winners in the season’s first two races. It marked the first time a season started with two first-time winners since 1950.

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Michael McDowell earned his first win in his 358th career start, a career which goes all the back to 2008, and Christopher Bell earned his first win in his 38th career start. McDowell won the Daytona 500 to become the first driver to become a first-time winner in the “Great American Race” since Trevor Bayne won it in 2011.

Bell followed up McDowell’s win with a road course win, making him the first driver to become a first-time winner in a road course race since Chase Elliott won at Watkins Glen International in 2018.

William Byron, who had won just one race entering the season, then won at Homestead-Miami Speedway, meaning that the season’s first three winners had a combined one career victory entering the year. That number had only ever been zero once — in the inaugural season back in 1949.

Kyle Larson, who had six career wins entering the year and just one since the end of the 2017 regular season, then won at Las Vegas Motor Speedway. So the first four winners of 2021 had just one combined win in 2020.

Then Martin Truex Jr., who won just one race all of last season, won at Phoenix Raceway for his first win there in 31 starts, his first win in 30 races and just his second race win in 44 races.

This year’s streak ran all the way to seven winners in seven races.

Ryan Blaney, who also won just one race all of last season, won at Atlanta Motor Speedway before Joey Logano, who did not have much dirt racing experience, won the dirt race at Bristol Motor Speedway, giving the series seven winners in the first seven races for the first time since 2014 and just the second time since 2003.

Through 14 races, there were 11 different winners. None of the next six races produced any new winners, but the most recent two have, giving the series 13 different winners in 22 races.

The six winners who have emerged since Logano’s win include Alex Bowman, Brad Keselowski, Kyle Busch, Chase Elliott, Kurt Busch and Aric Almirola.

Truex, Larson, Bowman, Busch and Elliott are the only repeat winners, and there are still four regular season races remaining on the schedule.

So does “win and in” no longer matter?

It still matters, but that’s not the whole story. Certainly, winning is the easiest way to lock into the playoffs. But there are really only two ways to actually secure your playoff berth.

The first is to win the regular season points title, and the second is to win multiple races.

Why?

Because NASCAR’s playoff eligibility is actually more complicated than “win and in”.

The regular season champion locks into the playoffs, whether he wins a race or not, and then the 15 other drivers with the most wins, provided that they rank inside the top 30 in the point standings, also secure playoff spots.

With 26 regular season races, two wins guarantees you a spot as one of the 15 other drivers with the most wins, since there can be, at most, 13 winners of multiple events.

In fact, right now, the points leader, Denny Hamlin, is still winless. So if the regular season ended today, he would be in the playoffs regardless of how many different winners there are.

If there are not as many winners as playoff spots, the remaining spots are determined based on points. If there are more winners than playoff spots, the tiebreaker among the one-race winners is points.

Even when you factor in the fact that some of the single-race winners cannot possibly drop out of the playoff picture with the points tiebreaker — we can only do that because we are late enough into the regular season — there are only nine drivers who have truly secured playoff berths so far this season.

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So while the four other one-race winners are deemed to be “locked in” to the playoffs, they still haven’t officially solidified their positions quite yet.

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