Following the second and final off weekend of the 2026 NASCAR Cup Series season, there are four races remaining on the 26-race regular season schedule before the 10-race "Chase" postseason is scheduled to get underway at Darlington Raceway in early September.
The battle for playoff seeding is perhaps as important as it has ever been, as there is no more "win and in", and pre-playoff bonus points, ranging from zero to 100, are set to be determined strictly by each playoff qualifier's finish in the regular season standings.
Yet several drivers who have looked like championship contenders simply might not have what it takes to go all the way once the Chase begins.
Of course, given the fact that the postseason field is set to consist of 16 drivers, rather than 10 or 12, there are inherently going to be probably at least a half-dozen or so drivers who qualify but have little to no chance to even make waves as far as the championship is concerned.
So this list is restricted to those whom many fans truly view as contenders. Which of the frontrunners are poised to fall behind come playoff time?
Carson Hocevar, Spire Motorsports
At some point, fans need to realize that just because a driver shows personality and doesn't regret consistently running into people doesn't actually make him Dale Earnhardt.
Make no mistake about it. Carson Hocevar is an extremely talented young driver. You don't get to fifth in points, far better than his career-best of 21st, because of fanbase hype and media hype, although we'll admit that that fifth place may be a bit misleading since he somehow doesn't have a single DNF, despite his aggressive driving style.
But Hocevar has one career win in 103 starts, and it's a superspeedway win. Any other driver with that resume would be written off as a pretender, and there would be zero questions asked.
While he's proven he doesn't regret his bold personality or any of his controversial actions, the driver of the No. 77 Spire Motorsports Chevrolet has yet to prove that he is indeed a serious contender. Flipping off Corey Heim en route to the most talked about P9 finish in Cup Series history doesn't quite move the needle.
Kyle Larson, Hendrick Motorsports
"He'll get out of it!" "He's Kyle Freakin' Larson!"
Boy, if we had a dime for each time we've heard either of those over the course of his 46-race win drought. Not to mention, of course, the fact that it is literally a 46-race win drought now.
Did the Indy 500 ruin him?? Okay, I digress.
We can point to Hendrick's struggles in 2026 all we want to, but 24 of those 46 races actually happened in 2025. Larson's unconventional path to his second championship masked those struggles for about two laps (literally), but the 2026 season has simply brought to the forefront that the No. 5 team is no longer a No. 5 team that's capable of dominating week in, week out.
He's eighth in the point standings, and while his 637 laps led rank second in the series, that tally is somewhat artificially boosted by the 284 laps he led at Bristol Motor Speedway, laps he probably wouldn't have led if Ryan Blaney didn't have a bottom-five pit crew.
Chase Elliott, Hendrick Motorsports
Chase Elliott was considered one of the drivers who would benefit most from NASCAR's new playoff format, since he has been incredibly consistent in recent years even when he hasn't won.
But the 2026 season has exposed that "consistency" is only valuable when it means consistently elite, and Elliott doesn't have a single top 10 finish to his name since May. Look no further than the past three months to see what happens when a driver who thrives on avoiding DNFs actually ends up with only a handful.
It's not pretty.
He's still sixth in the standings with two wins, but that's right around where he's been in other recent seasons which have also seen him go on "consistent" stretches without any actual top-tier results. He had been a threat for second after earning his second win of the year, but his point tally since then is only 18th-best in the series.
Being average doesn't win championships, no matter what the format is.
William Byron, Hendrick Motorsports
If we want to talk about Hendrick Motorsports' struggles, we don't need to be talking about Larson's win drought, which was 24 races old at the end of last year already, or Elliott, who actually does have two wins. We need to talk about William Byron, William Byron, and William Byron.
Byron won the 2025 regular season championship relatively comfortably. He led over 1,000 laps in both 2023 and 2025, and he ended the "win and in" playoff era as the only driver to qualify for the Championship 4 in each of its final three years.
This year, he's 15th in laps led, placing him lower than part-time driver Corey Heim, and 12th in the point standings, and with four races remaining on the regular season schedule, he's already mathematically eliminated from regular season title contention.
The No. 24 team, for as consistently elite as they indeed were over the past three years, has given us no reason believe that they will be anything other than one of the also-rans come playoff time. If you want to talk about mediocre, this team is the poster child in 2026.
Tyler Reddick, 23XI Racing
Yep, you read that right.
Tyler Reddick had one heck of a start to the 2026 season. He became the first driver in Cup Series history to win the first three races of a season, and with five wins in the season's first nine races, there were questions not about whether he'd break Byron's (and Denny Hamlin’s) single-season Next Gen record of six wins, but whether he'd actually top the post-Gen 4 record of 10, set by Jimmie Johnson in 2007 (Gen 5) and tied by Larson in 2021 (Gen 6).
But even during that hot start, he had simply been at the right place at the right time more often than anybody wanted to admit. He led more than 10 laps in just three of his five wins, and he didn't lead any laps in his four non-wins during that stretch.
As far as five wins in nine races go, the driver of the No. 45 Toyota was about as non-dominant as it gets.
As it stands, he's fifth in laps led this season, and since the first nine races of the year, he's only 10th in total points, underscored by the fact that a seemingly safe 129-point lead turned into an 84-point deficit to Hamlin in the blink of an eye. He hasn't finished a single race higher than eighth since mid-June.
The issues that have plagued 23XI Racing for so long, including in 2025 when Reddick didn't win a single race, have been on display over the past few months, and while Reddick has shown he can get hot, he needs to hope the first quarter of the year wasn't lightning in a bottle. If it was, he may not even better his previous top championship finish of fourth.
All remaining regular season races and all 10 playoff races are set to be shown live on either USA Network or NBC, so begin a free trial of FuboTV now and don't miss any of the action, starting this weekend at Iowa Speedway!
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