A four-way battle is raging for the NASCAR Cup Series regular season championship with four races left in the regular season. Points leader Chase Elliott is hanging on by a thread — at least for now.
How close behind are Elliott’s nearest pursuers, and who are they?
Better yet, does winning the regular season title even really matter?
Ahead of Sunday’s NASCAR Cup Series race at Iowa Speedway, unpack the answers to these questions and more.
Chase Elliott Has Virtually No Breathing Room Atop NASCAR Cup Series Standings
Ahead of this past weekend’s Brickyard 400 at Indianapolis Motor Speedway, Chase Elliott had a little bit of daylight between himself and William Byron — who sat second in the standings.
Not anymore.
Heading to Iowa, Elliott leads his Hendrick Motorsports teammate by a mere four points for the top spot. That’s a 12-point reduction from the 16-point buffer that NASCAR’s most popular driver carried into Indy.
Behind Byron, the gap to third- and fourth-place has also narrowed considerably. After his runner-up finish at The Brickyard, Hendrick driver Kyle Larson has pulled within 15 points of teammate Elliott. He is only 11 in arrears of Byron, another Hendrick driver.
Meanwhile, third-place Brickyard 400 finisher Denny Hamlin — who seemed to all but concede the regular season title when he opted to skip the June race in Mexico City — is just 20 points out of first. The Joe Gibbs Racing driver’s deficit to third-place Larson is only five points.
The next driver in line, fifth-place Christopher Bell, is all but completely out of the running for the regular season championship. The JGR wheelman trails Elliott by 62 points. That’s just over the maximum 60 race points a driver can earn in a typical event.
How Are NASCAR Cup Series Playoff Points Awarded?
The winner of the NASCAR Cup Series regular season championship is, by definition, the points leader at the conclusion of the 26-race regular season. While this driver gets a trophy, the playoff points he earns for winning the regular season title actually mean much more.
Since every championship-eligible driver has his baseline point total reset to the same number ahead of the playoffs and three subsequent playoff rounds, playoff points — which drivers earn by virtue of race wins and stage wins — determine where drivers rank going into every round except the championship round, which the four finalists enter on equal ground.
Drivers get five playoff points for every race win, and one for every stage win.
So that means if 15 of the original 16 playoff drivers had no race wins or stage wins in the regular season but one driver had 10 race wins and 15 stage wins, that driver would start the playoffs with a 65-point lead over the other 15 championship-eligible drivers, who would all be tied with zero playoff points.
Why Is Winning The Regular Season Title Important, Especially For Chase Elliott?
Although Chase Elliott is the points leader, if the playoffs began today, he wouldn’t start out on top. That’s because he has just one race win and one stage victory in the regular season, for a total of six playoff points.
Denny Hamlin, who leads the Cup Series in playoff points with 24, would begin the playoffs as the leader. Kyle Larson, who has the next-highest number of playoff points (23), would be seeded second, just a single point behind behind Hamlin.
If Elliott can hang on and capture the regular season championship, though, he’ll automatically receive 15 bonus playoff points for that accomplishment. Second-place in the final regular season standings would collect 10 bonus playoff points, with third-place getting eight, etc., all the way down to one playoff point for the 10th-place finisher.
So, clearly, taking home the regular season title has some real value. And that makes the close fight for the regular season championship certainly one worth watching over the next four weekends.
