For the seventh time in the last nine races, a driver who had not yet won during the 2025 NASCAR Cup Series season found victory lane in Saturday night's Quaker State 400 at Atlanta Motor Speedway.
Hendrick Motorsports' Chase Elliott entered the weekend as the highest non-winner in the point standings, but he became the 12th different winner through the first 18 race of the season with his last lap pass for the win. He is effectively locked into the playoffs, given the fact that he is second in points.
The top non-winner in the standings is now 23XI Racing's Tyler Reddick. But despite sitting sixth in points, he is only 13th in the provisional 16-driver playoff picture, simply because of how many drivers below him have won to vault themselves to the top.
Reddick qualified for his first Championship 4 last year after winning the regular season championship and securing a total of three race victories, tying his career-high. But this year, the Denny Hamlin and Michael Jordan-owned team are still seeking their first win, and even Reddick is in danger of missing the playoffs.
23XI Racing's Bubba Wallace and Riley Herbst are also in danger. Wallace is currently the 16th and final driver above the playoff cut line, and he is only still ahead of it thanks to a move from an unlikely rival on Saturday night, while Herbst is second-to-last among the 36 full-time drivers and needs to win to get in.
To be fair, nobody expected Herbst to be competing for a playoff spot, though we won't discount the possibility of him stealing a superspeedway win at Daytona Internatioanl Speedway to conclude the 2025 regular season. He is there because of sponsorship, period.
But 23XI Racing having their other two drivers occupying two of the only four non-winner spots remaining above the cutoff with eight races remaining in the regular season is not what they would have wanted entering the season.
23XI Racing could miss the NASCAR playoffs entirely
The overall performance of the team has unquestionably taken a hit in 2025. Reddick is only 12th in laps led (second among non-winners), and though his average finish is eighth, that too is only second among non-winners.
With eight regular season races remaining, there is a very real chance that both Reddick and Wallace will need to win to qualify for the playoffs. Two of those races are road course races, one is a street course race, and one is the aforementioned Daytona superspeedway race, which should all open up the door for unexpected winners.
Just look at what happened in 2023, when 16 different drivers won regular season races. Ryan Blaney's third place finish in points wasn't good enough to get him into the playoffs until Kurt Busch withdrew due to injury. Even after that, Martin Truex Jr.'s fourth place effort still wasn't enough, simply because he didn't win.
So Reddick in sixth? Far from safe, given the fact that the calendar only just changed to early July.
Of course, Reddick winning would surprise nobody, but the fact that he has led just 27 laps in the last 10 races (with only nine coming in non-superspeedway events) is an alarming indicator that we are simply not looking at the same No. 45 team we saw establish itself as a title contender only a year ago.
As for Wallace, he faces a significant uphill battle, even though he is in the provisional playoff picture as things currently stand.
He is a two-time race winner, but both of his wins have come in the playoffs after he had already failed to qualify for the postseason. He hasn't won since 2022, and his only actual playoff berth came in 2023, yet based on his average finish vs. the average finish of the No. 9 team, he actually would not have qualified that year had Elliott not missed six races due to injury.
Reddick is comfortably (76 points) ahead of the next highest non-winner (RFK Racing's Chris Buescher) in the point standings, so it's hard to imagine him falling behind any of the other drivers who haven't yet won this year, at least on points.
But if a handful of those other drivers manage to find victory lane before the regular season ends, the entire 23XI Racing team could end up failing to qualify for the playoffs for the first time since 2021, when the only ran one car for Wallace.
Race number 19 on the 2025 NASCAR Cup Series regular season schedule is the Grant Park 165, which is set to be shown live on TNT Sports from the Chicago Street Course beginning at 2:00 p.m. ET this Sunday, July 6.