The NASCAR Cup Series race to the Chase was blown wide open this past Sunday at Naval Base Coronado when odds-on favorite Shane van Gisbergen was taken out in an early accident. Not only did the New Zealand native fail to win for the sixth time in the past seven road or street course events, but he fell outside the top 16 in points with nine races remaining before the points reset.
Replacing him? Ryan Preece, who finished first and second in the first two stages on Sunday before falling to an 11th place finish. The RFK Racing driver is now back in the provisional field, despite losing 25 points earlier in the season due to a penalty for intentionally crashing Ty Gibbs at Texas Motor Speedway.
Preece has two top 10 finishes and zero top fives in 2026.
Ryan Preece is on pace for the funniest, dumbest, saddest Chase appearance of all-time
When NASCAR took away the "win and in" aspect of its postseason format but kept the field at 16 drivers, we all should have known exactly what was going to happen. Some uninspiring mediocrity was just going to 15th-place the field to death every week and backdoor his way in without doing anything that requires playoff-level performance.
That has been Preece's 2026 season in a nutshell. In 12 of 17 points-paying races, he has finished between eighth and 18th. Sure, he's been consistent (if you remove his four-race stretch of finishing 28th or worse prior to Sunday), but when that "consistency" involves barely running in the top half of the field, who cares?
Tyler Reddick and Denny Hamlin have been consistent this year. Yet no one is talking about how consistent they are. Why? Because they've combined to win nine races too, which is substantially more impressive than simply avoiding DNFs.
Thus is the fatal flaw with the gross overemphasis on consistency in NASCAR. Anytime it is praised as a driver's strongest attribute, and that driver is driving for a capable enough race team, it probably means he's not very good. Because better drivers give you better reasons to talk about them.
At any level below excellence, the correct word for what most NASCAR fans consider "consistency" is in fact mediocrity. Otherwise, anybody can be consistent. Just look at Cody Ware. Unless there's mass attrition, he finishes in the 30s or high 20s every week!
If there's any silver lining to the season Preece is having, it's that he is exposing everything wrong with the system. There shouldn't be 16 drivers in the Chase, and NASCAR needs to aggressively overhaul its points structure to reward maximizing top finishes (not just wins) more than minimizing poor ones.
In the meantime? Move over, 2015 Paul Menard. We might just be on track for the most uninspiring points-driven Chase berth in NASCAR history.
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