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The 4 NASCAR Playoff Drivers Most Likely To Get Bounced In Round Of 8

Jared Turner Written by Sports EditorJared Turner
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Chase Elliott

The Round of 8 begins Sunday at Las Vegas Motor Speedway for the NASCAR Cup Series.

Just like in the two previous playoff rounds, four drivers will be eliminated in this round.

The end result will be four drivers left to compete straight up for the championship in the season finale at Phoenix Raceway.

So, which quartet of competitors will see their championship hopes dashed over the next three races, leaving them out of the title fight at Phoenix?

Chase Elliott

Apologies to all the faithful customers of the world-famous Dawsonville Pool Room. But Chase Elliott isn’t going to make it out of the Round of 8.

While consistency has been Elliott’s strength this season, consistency can only take a driver so far. Getting right to the point: It’s highly likely that only one of the four drivers who moves on from the Round of 8 and into the Championship 4 will do so on the basis of points.

If that happens, it means the other three drivers who reach the Championship 4 will do so on the merits of winning a race in the Round of 8. This probability, though far from certain, is problematic for Elliott.

After all, he’s triumphed just three times since the start of the 2023 Cup Series season. In two of those races — the two he won earlier this year — the Hendrick Motorsports driver wasn’t even leading at the white flag. In fact, he was far from dominant in both instances but basically happened to be in the right place at the right time.

This type of luck won’t be good enough for Elliott to escape the Round of 8. To carve out a spot for himself in the Championship 4, he’ll almost certainly need to win one of the next three races. That’s a tall order for NASCAR’s perennial Most Popular Driver based on his performance over the last three years.

Joey Logano

Starting the Round of 8 seeded last among the eight remaining title contenders, Joey Logano has his work cut out for him.

Sure, the reigning and three-time Cup Series champ is only 24 points back of the cutline to advance. But he’ll need to leapfrog four others to point his way into the Championship 4 based on points.

The simpler way to reach the Championship 4, of course, would be to win one of the three races in this round. But Logano has been to Victory Lane only once all season. And he transferred into the Round of 8 by the proverbial skin of his teeth.

How close did Logano come to missing? If Denny Hamlin hadn’t passed Ross Chastain on the final lap of last weekend’s elimination race at the Charlotte ROVAL, Logano would already be out of the title hunt.

Keep in mind, too, that Logano is the only Round of 8 driver who owns just a single victory this season. And that victory came all the back in early May. So while it’s never wise to count Logano out, the odds are overwhelmingly stacked against him punching a ticket to the Championship 4 this time.

William Byron

Despite winning just twice in the regular season, William Byron took the regular season championship in runaway fashion. The Hendrick Motorsports driver had such a big lead that he clinched with a whole race left in the regular season.

Byron has done nothing of significance over the six playoff races, however. Good thing he entered the playoffs with a lot of playoff points built up. Without them, he would have probably been eliminated.

But by virtue of starting both the Round of 16 and the Round of 12 with a significant points cushion, Byron remains a title contender. Heading into the Round of 8 opener at Las Vegas, the Hendrick Motorsports driver holds the final Championship 4 transfer spot. He trails championship leader Denny Hamlin by just four points.

But Byron has posted just one top-five finish in the six playoff races contested so far. He’ll undoubtedly need to take it up a notch in this round to reach the Championship 4.

It’s also worth noting that both of Byron’s wins this year have been rather fluky. His Daytona 500 victory happened only because of a last-lap multi-car crash in front of him that he managed to avoid. To get his second win, which came at Iowa, Byron successfully played the fuel-mileage game. So at both Daytona and Iowa, all the stars aligned perfectly.

It’s likely going to take a lot more than good fortune for Byron to punch a ticket into the Championship 4 for the third year in a row. He’s also going to need to be faster than he’s been in recent weeks and, really, all season.

Christopher Bell

Christopher Bell started out 2025 on fire, figuratively-speaking. The only issue? By all appearances, he peaked too soon.

Since ripping off three consecutive wins following William Byron’s Daytona 500 victory, Bell has returned to Victory Lane just once.

And in getting that one win, which he scored at Bristol in the Round of 16, the Joe Gibbs Racing driver led just 12 of 500 laps.

That said, if Bell can somehow regain his mojo from the first month of the season, he’s a lock for the Championship 4. But he hasn’t done much of anything in recent times to suggest he’s ready to return to top form.

Jared Turner Written by Sports EditorJared Turner
Jared Turner is a motorsports writer who has covered NASCAR for 20 years. He has interviewed over 20 NASCAR Hall of Famers and around 100 drivers, crew chiefs, and team owners, both past and present. He has also covered the sport for FOX Sports (where he was a two-time recipient of the FOX “X” Award for “Xtraordinary” job performance), NASCAR.com, Sporting News, NASCAR Pole Position Magazine, the SPEED network, and plenty of other online and print-only publications throughout his career. Notably, Jared has penned dozens of articles for NASCAR souvenir programs, including several featured prominently in Daytona 500 keepsakes. A Virginia Press Association award winner and former member of the National Motorsports Press Association (NMPA), Jared has racked up accolades both for his writing and his academic work. He studied both Communication and Psychology at Virginia Tech, where he was permanently enshrined in Phi Beta Kappa — the nation’s oldest and most prestigious academic honor society. Jared excels at feature writing and opinion writing, much of which stems from his dedication to all levels of racing.
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