The Winston Cup era of NASCAR is long gone. The Cup Series championship has not been decided by a season-long points battle since 2003, when Matt Kenseth's ruthless consistency with just a single win contributed to NASCAR instituting a postseason format to decide the championship beginning in 2004. But there are echoes of the Winston Cup in the regular-season championship format of today's NASCAR, which is shaping up to be a battle as good as some of the best Winston Cup title fights.
After winning Michigan as Kyle Larson crashed out and Chase Elliott lost considerable positions on the final lap, Tyler Reddick took the points lead with just two races remaining in the regular season, putting him in prime position to win the regular-season title and earn all that comes with it -- Namely a bonus of 15 playoff points. Reddick currently holds a 10-point lead over Chase Elliott -- more on that in a moment -- with Denny Hamlin (-28) and Larson (-32) still very much in the picture entering a Daytona race this weekend that could yet again dramatically alter things.
What has been unaltered is Reddick's place atop the CBS Sports NASCAR Power Rankings, as he has held the lead here for some time and continues to in the latest rankings following his second win of the 2024 season:
| Rank | Driver | Change | Comment | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Tyler Reddick | -- | Tyler Reddick dedicating his win to the late Scott Bloomquist was well-received in the dirt late model community, where Reddick cut his teeth on his way up to NASCAR. Reddick credited Bloomquist, arguably the greatest dirt late model racer ever, as a mentor of his. | |
| 2 | Chase Elliott | The last lap at Michigan, where Chase Elliott lost 10 or so spots after getting into Ryan Blaney racing for a top five, could have massive consequences in two weeks and well beyond that point. The last lap proved to be nearly a 10-point swing for Elliott, who now trails Tyler Reddick by that amount for the regular-season championship. | ||
| 3 | Ryan Blaney | Ryan Blaney has a chance this weekend to become a repeat winner of the Coke Zero Sugar 400, something that hasn't happened in over a decade. After Tony Stewart won the race four different times from 2005 to 2012, 11 different drivers have won Daytona's summer classic since 2013. | ||
| 4 | Kyle Larson | -- | Part of what makes Kyle Larson a great race car driver -- his ability to put his car right on the edge of control -- can also be his undoing at times. Him losing it off Turn 4 at Michigan was an example of what can happen when Larson puts his car over the edge of control and can't get it back. | |
| 5 | Christopher Bell | Christopher Bell has back-to-back finishes of third in the Daytona 500, but so far, those two finishes mark his only top 10s at Daytona. Bell's best finish in the summer race is a 13th back in 2020. | ||
| 6 | Daniel Suarez | Daniel Suarez's recent surge after relative invisibility for much of the season illustrates the value of winning early in the season with NASCAR's playoff format. With his playoff spot having been secure from Atlanta onward, Suarez's is approaching the playoffs from a position of strength after three-straight top 10s. | ||
| 7 | Brad Keselowski | Brad Keselowski's checkup entering Turn 1 on the final restart ended up playing a major role in deciding Michigan, as it checked up the outside line behind William Byron allowing Tyler Reddick to clear him. On X after the race, Kyle Busch -- who has never seen eye-to-eye with Keselowski -- openly wondered exactly what the driver of the No. 6 was thinking. | ||
| 8 | Bubba Wallace | What could have been a great day in Michigan turned into a disaster for Bubba Wallace's efforts to make the playoffs after he went from having a top-five racecar to getting collected in a crash not of his making. That puts Wallace in a tough spot entering Daytona, where much will again be out of his control despite his strengths as a superspeedway racer. | ||
| 9 | William Byron | If William Byron's runner-up at Michigan is a sign that he's set to break out of his summertime funk, watch out. It wasn't long ago that we were penciling Byron into championship contender status after he won three of the first nine races, including the Daytona 500. | ||
| 10 | Denny Hamlin | Since Talladega in April, I've wondered if the Toyota teams are going to try the strategy they employed toward the end of that race again. The Toyotas tried all shortpitting together to gain enough time on the pack that they could decide the race amongst themselves, but they would wind up accordioning together and crashing in a wreck that took out Hamlin and several others. | ||
| 11 | Carson Hocevar | For the first time in his young career, Carson Hocevar is coming off of back-to-back top-10 finishes at Richmond and Michigan. He'll try to add a third at Daytona, where he only made five laps in February before getting wrecked out of his first Daytona 500. | ||
| 12 | Ross Chastain | What a difference a couple of inches could have made in Ross Chastain's season. Instead of returning to Daytona as the champion of the Daytona 500, Chastain now finds himself still winless and just trying to hang onto a playoff spot after the hole for his potential race-winning move in February closed as he was going through it. | ||
| 13 | Chris Buescher | On the subject of repeat winners of the Daytona summer race, there hasn't been one since Tony Stewart won back-to-back years in 2005 and 2006. With Chris Buescher fighting for a playoff spot, it's as good a time as ever for him to become the next to pull that off. | ||
| 14 | Joey Logano | The fact he was a corner away from winning Richmond should be taken into account here, but Joey Logano has now crashed in three-straight races, two of which have ended in DNFs. He also had a DNF in the Daytona 500, but that was a race where he had arguably the fastest car in the field after winning the pole and leading a race-high 45 laps. | ||
| 15 | Ty Gibbs | Coming off a third-place finish at Michigan, Ty Gibbs is a driver of intrigue at Daytona. In this race a year ago, Gibbs was racing Ryan Blaney for the lead and potentially on his way to racing his way into the playoffs before getting turned into Blaney to trigger The Big One. | ||
| 16 | Kyle Busch | Michigan marked not only just Busch's third top five of the entire season, but it seemed to be a clear sign that Busch's team and RCR as a whole has been infused with life following the Olympic break. Maybe, just maybe, it isn't too late for Busch to win a race and save his season. | ||
| 17 | Zane Smith | No team has changed their fortunes and performance since the second half of the year started more than Zane Smith's. After a miserable start to the year, the vast improvement continued for Smith with a seventh-place run at Michigan. | ||
| 18 | Michael McDowell | Here is the driver who can really upset the apple cart this weekend. Not only is Michael McDowell capable of winning his way into the playoffs, but he should be considered one of the favorites given the cars he had in the Daytona 500 before mechanical troubles and at Talladega where he led off the final corner. | ||
| 19 | Austin Dillon | Upsetting the apple cart is exactly what Austin Dillon did when he won Daytona's summer race two years ago to put himself in the playoffs and bump Martin Truex out. If he does it again this year, he can both make the fallout from Richmond a moot point and win multiple races in a season for the first time in his career. | ||
| 20 | Martin Truex Jr. | Depending on his racing plans moving forward, this weekend presents a now-or-never moment for Martin Truex Jr. at Daytona. In spite of all he's done in his career, Truex does not have a single victory in any race at Daytona. | ||
| 21 | Noah Gragson | -- | A good dark horse candidate for this weekend is Noah Gragson, who finished third in the last superspeedway race at Talladega and is headed into a race that has seen multiple first-time winners. Drivers to earn their first career victory in the Daytona summer race include A.J. Foyt (1964), Sam McQuagg (1966), Greg Sacks (1985), Jimmy Spencer (1994), John Andretti (1997), Greg Biffle (2003), David Ragan (2011), Aric Almirola (2014), Erik Jones (2018), Justin Haley (2019) and William Byron (2020). | |
| 22 | Josh Berry | -- | Carson Hocevar's streak of top-10 finishes is trouble for Josh Berry. He's fallen to 14 points back of Hocevar in the standings, and it's starting to look like Rookie of the Year may be a much closer battle than it looked like it would be when Berry was contending for wins earlier in the summer. | |
| 23 | Todd Gilliland | What I said about Michael McDowell could just as easily be said about Todd Gilliland. He's led 74 laps on superspeedways this year, including 16 in the Daytona 500. | ||
| 24 | Alex Bowman | Maybe the biggest what-if of the season is what may have happened on the final lap of the Daytona 500 had NASCAR not thrown the caution for Ross Chastain and Austin Cindric's crash. Even if they still had to, a couple seconds more would have made Bowman the Daytona 500 champion. | ||
| 25 | Justin Haley | Want another dark horse candidate for this weekend? Consider Justin Haley, who's an excellent speedway racer anyway and ran well up inside the lead pack in the Daytona 500. Rick Ware Racing is still looking for its first win as an organization, but they put both their cars in the top 10 in this race two years ago. | ||
| 26 | Ricky Stenhouse Jr. | Good news, bad news for Ricky Stenhouse Jr.: He's had multiple good finishes over the summer months, but since New Hampshire in June he's alternated between finishing in the top 10 or top 15 and crashing out of races. Stenhouse is coming off a 13th-place run at Michigan, which may be a bad sign for Daytona. | ||
| 27 | Austin Cindric | Austin Cindric was a central character in the Daytona 500 in February, as he was a serious contender to win his second 500 all the way up until he and Chastain crashed at the white flag. When he won the Daytona 500 in 2022, Cindric came back in August and nearly won the Coke Zero Sugar 400 before settling for third. | ||
| 28 | Daniel Hemric | It'll be interesting to see what the strategy of the Kaulig Racing cars is for Daytona. Their best interests as an organization would be for Shane van Gisbergen to try and push Daniel Hemric to the front, but SVG doesn't have near the amount of experience that No. 16 driver counterparts like AJ Allmendinger and Ty Dillon have on superspeedways. | ||
| 29 | Chase Briscoe | This weekend is probably Chase Briscoe's last chance at making the playoffs, but it could be a good one. Briscoe won the pole and led 67 laps in the Coke Zero Sugar 400 a year ago. | ||
| 30 | Ryan Preece | You can call it the Preece Patch: That section of Daytona's infield where Ryan Preece's car went airborne is no more, as the speedway has paved over the grass that launched the No. 41 Ford into orbit in a rollover that made Corey LaJoie and Kyle Sieg's tumbles at Michigan look like child's play. |
