Hendrick Motorsports' William Byron opened up the NASCAR Cup Series season with a Daytona 500 victory for the second consecutive year, presumably securing his spot in the 16-driver postseason for the seventh year in a row.
With 25 of 26 races remaining on the regular season schedule and the season opener at Daytona International Speedway largely being somewhat of a "wild card", due to the close nature of superspeedway racing, it's hard to start drawing conclusions about the rest of the playoff field this early in the year.
But one thing that is worth pointing out is the fact that one of the 16 drivers currently above the cut line, which sits between 16th place Joey Logano of Team Penske (+1) and 17th place Riley Herbst of 23XI Racing (-1), is not playoff eligible.
Jimmie Johnson in a NASCAR playoff spot, but not playoff eligible
Legacy Motor Club's Jimmie Johnson finished the Daytona 500 in third place and scored 34 points, enough to put him in an eighth place tie in the standings. But Johnson is not a full-time driver and is officially ineligible for the playoffs.
It is worth mentioning that Johnson is indeed currently in a legitimate eighth place tie in the standings, even though he is not a full-time driver; his points still count.
This is not the case for JR Motorsports' Justin Allgaier, who would have scored 30 points with his ninth place finish. Allgaier is also not a full-time driver, but unlike Johnson, he is not eligible for Cup Series points since he competes full-time in the Xfinity Series. Johnson does not. So Allgaier officially scored zero points.
Even if Johnson weren't ineligible for the playoffs, however, he has just one more race remaining on his schedule for the 2025 season, that being May's Coca-Cola 600 at Charlotte Motor Speedway. So he is going to drop out of the top 16 before long anyway, possibly as early as this weekend at Atlanta Motor Speedway, where he is not on the entry list.
So it is Herbst who is essentially in the 16th and final provisional playoff spot after one race. Four other drivers are actually tied with him at 20 points, but Herbst owns the tiebreaker due to having posted the top finish of the five (17th) in the Daytona 500.
Herbst is tied with Rick Ware Racing's Corey LaJoie, who is not a full-time driver himself, as well as Joe Gibbs Racing's Denny Hamlin, RFK Racing's Brad Keselowski, and 23XI Racing's Bubba Wallace.
Race number two on the 2025 NASCAR Cup Series schedule is the Ambetter Health 400, which is set to be shown live on Fox from Atlanta Motor Speedway beginning at 3:00 p.m. ET this Sunday, February 23. If you have not yet had the chance to begin a free trial of FuboTV, do so now and catch all of the action!