NASCAR: Which winner could miss the playoffs?

If two more new winners emerge in the 2022 NASCAR Cup Series regular season, there will have been 17 drivers to find victory lane before the playoffs.

Stewart-Haas Racing’s Kevin Harvick won Sunday afternoon’s NASCAR Cup Series race at Richmond Raceway to become the seventh driver to win more than one race in the 2022 regular season.

Harvick’s second win of the season came just a week after he became the 15th driver to find victory lane this year, having just won at Michigan International Speedway to end a 65-race win drought which had dated back to September 2020.

With 15 winners so far and two races remaining on the regular season schedule, there is still a chance that there will be more winners (17) than playoff spots (16).

Watkins Glen International, a road course, and Daytona International Speedway, a superspeedway, are set to play host to these two races, and there are plenty of drivers who have had success at one or both of these venues before but have not yet found victory lane in 2022.

In the event of more than 16 winners, the regular season champion and all the multi-race winners are locked in, as the 16 playoff spots technically go to the regular season champion and then the 15 drivers who rank highest in wins.

The tiebreaker among the single-race winners then becomes points.

Following Sunday’s race, three single-race winners are officially locked into the playoffs, as there is no way for them to finish as the lowest placed single-race winner in the point standings if there are two more new winners — no matter who those two new winners might be.

Those three drivers are Hendrick Motorsports’ Kyle Larson and Joe Gibbs Racing teammates Christopher Bell and Kyle Busch.

The other five single-race winners are Hendrick Motorsports’ Alex Bowman, Trackhouse Racing Team’s Daniel Suarez, Team Penske rookie Austin Cindric, Stewart-Haas Racing’s Chase Briscoe, and 23XI Racing’s Kurt Busch.

After missing the last four races, Busch sits lowest in the standings among the single-race winners, and he sits 64 points — more than a full race — behind Briscoe for the next lowest spot.

There is no guarantee that the driver of the #45 Toyota will even be back before the regular season ends as he continues to recover from the concussion-like symptoms he suffered following his qualifying crash at Pocono Raceway last month.

There are still six drivers ahead of Busch in the standings who haven’t yet won this year, so if two of them manage to win before the regular season ends, he will likely miss the playoffs for the first time since 2012.

However, there are also nine drivers (among those in the top 30, as drivers outside of the top 30 are not playoff eligible) below him in points seeking their first win.

If any new winners finish the regular season below him in the standings, he is safe and will secure his 10th consecutive playoff appearance.

A lot needs to happen for Busch to miss the postseason, but his four — or perhaps five or six — missed regular season starts could come back to bite him, as he was not the lowest placed single-race winner prior to his absence. However, as has always been the case, the primary focus for him, as it should be, is on making a full recovery and not rushing back before then.