NASCAR playoffs set to open with no clear Cup title favorite
CHARLOTTE, N.C. — Statistics and the oddsmakers make Chase Elliott this year’s favorite to win the NASCAR championship. He leads the Cup Series with four wins, won the regular-season title and enters the playoffs with a 15-point cushion in the standings.
Elliott doesn’t put too much faith into the numbers game. If there truly is a favorite in this 16-driver field, he can’t pick one, not even himself.
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“I don’t really see a favorite. I mean, it seems like some weeks you have some guys who are really strong up there contending for wins, and then other weeks it’s a bunch of different guys,” Elliott said. “To me, I think the narrative of how many winners we have, it’s not a fluke. Anything can happen to anyone in the last 10, so I personally don’t think there’s a favorite.”
NASCAR had 16 different winners during the regular season, including five drivers who made their first career Cup Series visits to victory lane. It made for a dicey regular-season finale at Daytona, where two spots in the field were open only because injured driver Kurt Busch withdrew his medical waiver because he won’t be ready to race when the playoffs open Sunday at Darlington Raceway.
Ryan Blaney and Martin Truex Jr., both winless this season but ranked inside the top five in the standings, were racing each other to make it into the playoffs on points. But then Austin Dillon won the race to claim one of the spots, and Blaney edged out Truex for the final spot.
Truex, who advanced to the championship finale in four of the last five years, now can’t finish higher than 17th in the final standings, a playoff stalwart shut out of title contention. Racing instead for the title are first-time playoff participants Ross Chastain and Daniel Suarez, who combined for three regular-season wins for Trackhouse Racing, Chase Briscoe of Stewart-Haas Racing and rookie Austin Cindric, the Daytona 500 winner from Team Penske.
The new crop of young drivers racing for a championship was aided by NASCAR’s introduction of the Next Gen car, an industry-wide project to design a spec vehicle that contained costs and leveled the playing field.
