The NASCAR Cup Series postseason is a dangerously darker shade of the regular season. Sixteen drivers compete over ten high-pressure races to be the champion and etch their names in stock car racing history.
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The difficulty of this stretch was further amplified when the Next-Gen Cup Series car was introduced in 2022. Thanks to the new concept, drivers have no longer been able to dominate the playoffs as they once did.
Tony Stewart won half of the playoff races in 2011. Kyle Larson pulled off the same in 2021. With the first playoff race of 2024 on the horizon, is it possible that a single driver can hold the stretch under his thumb as they used to do before? Team Penske superstar Joey Logano expressed his opinion on the matter during the Playoff Media Day in Charlotte earlier this week.
“You look at the playoff schedule and you’ve got two superspeedways and you’ve got two road courses in there. There are some tracks that are pretty unique to say the least and it’s hard to say what can happen in those races,” he said. “The track schedule is one piece of it, but the field being so tight now with this Next Gen car, it’s gonna be really hard to do.”
It is rare to see a driver be an expert in every type of race track there is. Even Kyle Larson, who is deemed to be the best race car driver of the current generation, struggles to find the victory lane in superspeedways. And NASCAR does its job only too well by mixing up track types in the postseason. Put this together with the Next-Gen car’s parity and dominance goes out of the equation, as iterated by Logano.
Chase Elliott echoes Logano’s opinion about playoff dominance
Hendrick Motorsports star Elliott was asked the same question during the media day. His verdict? “It’s possible. Hard to do, but possible.” He views the NextGen car as the biggest hurdle to seeing a driver rack up five or six wins in the postseason alone. Interestingly, he has won just a single playoff race since 2022.
Most drivers have barely pulled off two or three wins in the playoffs since the NextGen car was introduced. But there is a first for everything and this could very well be the year when NASCAR’s plans to level up the field are foiled once again. The first race of the playoffs will be in Atlanta, Elliott’s home track.
Transferring momentum from the regular season to the postseason is a task easier said than done. Just last year, Martin Truex Jr. fell on his face after being crowned as the regular season champion. So, it is quite impossible to guess which driver might end up dominating the playoffs if any at all.
