For all intents and purposes, we are going to assume that Bubba Wallace qualifies for the 2026 NASCAR Cup Series playoffs, since he's 75 points above the cut line, he is guaranteed to score at least one point by showing up to Saturday night's Coke Zero Sugar 400 at Daytona International Speedway, there are 76 points on the table in that race, and there are two drivers separating him from the cut line to begin with.
There's literally a better chance of the Colorado Rockies winning this year's World Series than there is of the driver of the No. 23 23XI Racing Toyota not getting in.
So there are effectively four drivers going for two remaining spots in this year's 16-driver, 10-race postseason, which is set mark a return to the "Chase" format that was used each year from 2004 to 2013, before the much-maligned "win and in" knockout format took over in 2014.
The major change in terms of the playoff format is the fact that points and points alone determine the 16 postseason spots. Having said that, things could still get a bit complicated.
NASCAR could technically have 17 playoff drivers
Why? Because of a 25-point penalty issued to RFK Racing's Ryan Preece in early May.
We've documented how Preece, who is 31 points below Trackhouse Racing's Shane van Gisbergen for the 16th and final postseason spot, could very well miss the playoffs because of this penalty.
But this penalty, which was issued after Preece was deemed to have intentionally wrecked Joe Gibbs Racing's Ty Gibbs out of retaliation at Texas Motor Speedway, was crucially not applied to Preece's No. 60 team in the owner standings.
So while SVG is 31 points ahead of Preece for the 16th spot, his No. 97 team is only six points ahead of the No. 60 team for 16th in the owner standings.
Likewise, Wallace may be 75 points ahead of Preece, but the No. 23 team is only 50 points ahead of the No. 60 team. Team Penske's Austin Cindric is 44 points ahead of Preece, but similarly, his No. 2 team is only 19 ahead of the No. 60 team.
In other words, we could end up in a scenario where there are 15 drivers who qualify for both the driver playoffs and the team playoffs, while the 16th playoff driver is a driver whose team is not in the owner playoffs, and the 16th team is a team whose driver is not in the driver playoffs.
This is guaranteed to be the case if Preece ends up failing to qualify for the playoffs by under 25 points, or if he fails to qualify by exactly 25 points but would have owned the tiebreaker over the driver he's 25 points behind.
For example, SVG could qualify for the playoffs instead of Preece, while Preece's No. 60 team still knocks out SVG's No. 97 team even before the playoffs begin.
NASCAR has seen cases where not all playoff drivers' teams have qualified for the owner playoffs before, so this would not be uncommon. It happened in 2022 after Kurt Busch's injury, when Ryan Blaney was a playoff driver, but it was Busch's No. 45 23XI Racing team, not Blaney's No. 12 Team Penske team, that got in due to "win and in".
It happened again in 2023 after Chase Elliott's injury, when his No. 9 team got in, but Wallace's No. 23 team did not, even though Wallace himself was a playoff driver on points while Elliott was not.
So this would not be uncharted territory for NASCAR to navigate, and it would effectively set up a scenario where 17 drivers are still battling for a championship over the course of the season's final 10 weeks, even if only 16 remain eligible to capture the trophy for themselves.
And yes, the champion could technically be the driver whose team is 17th in the owner standings.
Will that scenario unfold? Tune in to NBC at 7:30 p.m. ET on Saturday night for the live broadcast of the Coke Zero Sugar 400 from Daytona International Speedway. Begin a free trial of FuboTV today and catch all of the action from the "World Center of Racing" to officially solidify the first Cup Series postseason field under NASCAR's new "Chase" playoff format!
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