2024 NASCAR Cup Series playoff preview, predictions: Will there be another first-time champion?

The 2024 Cup Series playoffs are here.

Chase Briscoe became the 14th driver to qualify for the postseason with a win at Darlington on Sunday night. Thanks to Austin Dillon’s penalty after his demolition derby win at Richmond, two drivers — Ty Gibbs and Martin Truex Jr. — join the 14 winners in the playoffs.

In case you need a refresher, the postseason is four rounds across 10 races. The four drivers at the bottom of the points standings are eliminated at the end of the first three three-race rounds. The remaining four drivers will race straight up at Phoenix on Nov. 10 for the Cup Series title.

Joey Logano is the only driver in the playoff field with multiple Cup Series championships. Alongside him, only Kyle Larson, Ryan Blaney, Chase Elliott, Brad Keselowski and Martin Truex Jr. also have a Cup Series title. The odds of a new Cup Series champion are pretty decent.

Here’s how the playoff field stacks up heading into the first postseason race at Atlanta on Sunday. The title odds listed in parenthesis below are from BetMGM and our playoff predictions are at the bottom of the post.

1. Kyle Larson, 2,040 points (+375 to win the Cup Series title)

The winningest driver in the Cup Series enters the playoffs as the No. 1 seed. Larson lost out on the regular-season championship at Darlington on Sunday night or otherwise he would be starting the playoffs with even more points. He’s the deserved favorite for the Cup Series title and his key to racing for the title at Phoenix is to simply avoid disastrous finishes at Atlanta and Talladega. Plate racing is is the one NASCAR skill Larson hasn’t had sustained success at yet.

2. Christopher Bell, 2,032 (+500)

Bell enters the playoffs with four top-six finishes in his last five races. One of his three wins this season also came at Phoenix. This is a team and driver capable of winning a title as long as Bell can avoid the crash problems that have plagued him this season. Bell failed to finish six races because of crashes during the regular season.

3. Tyler Reddick, 2,028 (+600)

Reddick won the regular-season title with a 10th-place finish at Darlington to cap off an extremely hot summer. Before finishing 28h at Daytona, Reddick had seven consecutive top-six finishes. That run included a win at Michigan to add to his win from Talladega earlier this year. No driver has more top-10 finishes this season and Reddick should advance to Phoenix if he continues to lead everyone else in that category.

4. William Byron, 2,022 (+800)

Byron’s hot start to the 2024 season seems so long ago. He won his first Daytona 500 and then won at COTA in the sixth race of the season and won at Martinsville two races later. Overall, Byron had three wins and seven top-10 finishes across the first 10 races of the season. Since then, he has just six top 10s and has finished outside the top 20 seven times.

5. Ryan Blaney, 2,018 (+900)

The defending Cup Series champion went the first 16 races of the season without a win before leading 201 laps at Iowa to get the checkered flag. Four races later, Blaney was in victory lane at Pocono. Team Penske hasn’t shown the overall speed that others have throughout the regular season, but that hasn’t mattered in the playoffs. Blaney wasn’t dominant in the regular season a year ago when he won the title.

6. Denny Hamlin, 2,015 (+400)

Hamlin has yet another great shot to win his first Cup Series title. But, like Byron, it’s been a while since his last win. Hamlin’s third win of the season came at Dover. Since then, he’s failed to finish three races and got hit with a huge points penalty for a post-race engine rebuild infraction that had nothing to do with him or his performance on track. Hamlin should be in Phoenix racing for the title. One of these seasons, everything has to fall into place, right?

7. Chase Elliott, 2,014 (+1100)

Elliott hasn’t shown the speed that Larson and Byron have but he’s had some serious consistency. Elliott’s crash at Daytona two weeks ago was the first time all season that he failed to finish a race. Six drivers have more top-five finishes than Elliott does, but he has the second-best average finish (11.6) in the Cup Series thanks to his ability to consistently run in the top 20. Elliott has finished outside the top 20 just twice. And one of those was a 21st-place finish.

8. Brad Keselowski, 2,008 (+2000)

Keselowski got his first win as a Roush Fenway Keselowski Racing driver at Darlington this spring. That win wasn’t a fluke, either. Keselowski had three top-three finishes in the first 12 races of the season before that victory. Keselowski followed up the win with a second and a third, but he hasn’t finished higher than fifth over the last 11 races.

9. Joey Logano, 2,007 (+2000)

Logano’s lone win of the season came at Nashville after he had a master fuel-saving stint in the final stage and stayed out as everyone else either crashed or needed to pit. Speaking of crashes, Logano has crashed out in three of the last five races. He finished eighth at Darlington for just his second top-10 finish since that Nashville win.

10. Austin Cindric, 2,007 (+20000)

Cindric’s win came after Blaney ran out of fuel late at Gateway. That’s been the only race he’s shown serious speed at outside of stints up front at drafting tracks. Cindric has led 135 laps this season. All but six of them have come at Gateway, Atlanta, Daytona and Talladega.

11. Daniel Suarez, 2,006 (+20000)

Suarez won an incredibly close three-wide finish at Atlanta to get a win in the second race of the season. Without that win, he’s nowhere near the playoffs. It’s been a rough season for Suarez and Trackhouse Racing as a whole. He’s finished outside the top 20 in 12 different races, though he did score three consecutive top-10 finishes at Indy, Richmond and Michigan right before the playoffs.

12. Alex Bowman, 2,005 (+5000)

Bowman won at Chicago to punch his ticket to the playoffs and enters the postseason on a five-race streak of finishes outside the top 15. Nine of Bowman’s top-10 finishes came across the first 14 races of the season. If he can recapture the form he showed early in the season he’s got the chance to get to the semifinals.

13. Chase Briscoe, 2,005 (+15000)

Briscoe’s win on Sunday at Darlington got him into the playoffs. He’s the only Stewart-Haas Racing car in the playoffs and it’ll be fascinating to see what kind of playoff push the team can put together ahead of its shutdown at the end of the season. Briscoe had gone seven races without a top 10 before that victory.

14. Harrison Burton, 2,005 (+50000)

Yes, Burton’s Daytona win was a surprise. And, quite frankly, it’ll be a surprise if he’s not eliminated in the first round. Burton has the worst average finish of any full-time driver in the Cup Series even with the win. His average finish of 25.7 is 1.2 spots worse than the next-closest full-time drivers (Zane Smith and John Hunter Nemechek).

15. Ty Gibbs, 2,004 (+4000)

Gibbs is going to get his first win sometime in the near future. Will it come in this season’s playoffs or will it have to wait until next season? Our guess is it’ll be sometime next season. Gibbs got off to a hot start with five top 10s in the first six races. That means he has just six top 10s in the last 20 races.

16. Martin Truex Jr., 2,004 (+1600)

Will Truex’s disappointing final season turn around in the postseason? He’s led the fourth-most laps in the Cup Series yet is winless and has an average finish of 17th. Speed’s not the issue. What can go wrong over the first 26 races seemingly has gone wrong. It’s a trend that dates back to the start of last season’s playoffs too. Betting on Truex to go far in the playoffs is a fool’s errand. But at the same time, don’t rule it out.

Who gets eliminated in round one?

There are typically few surprises in the first round of this playoff format. Burton seems to be a given unless he posts the biggest turnaround in Cup Series history. We’ll also put Suarez, Bowman and Cindric in this group as well.

The drivers out in round two

We wouldn’t be stunned if Truex winds up racing for the title. But his season has been so bizarrely bad that we’re going to predict that he’s eliminated in round two along with Gibbs, Keselowski and Briscoe.

Out in the semifinals

Our predicted playoff field includes three Hendrick Motorsports drivers, two Joe Gibbs Racing drivers, two Team Penske drivers and 23XI Racing’s Reddick in the semis. Unfortunately for Penske and Hendrick, we think they could both have multiple drivers eliminated this round. Sorry Logano, Blaney, Elliott and Byron, we think your playoff run ends here.

Who wins the title?

Our final four includes Larson, Hamlin, Bell and Reddick. We’ve been predicting Hamlin to win the title for what seems like a decade at this point. We should probably continue the tradition for the heck of it, but Bell is our pick to become the fourth first-time Cup Series champion in the last five seasons.