Cup Series overflowing with five winners
We’re batting a thousand, baby!
Five races, five different winners as the first month of the 2021 NASCAR Cup Series season comes to a close, with Martin Truex Jr. breaking a 29race winless streak Sunday at Phoenix Raceway.
Truex becomes the second Joe Gibbs driver to visit victory lane this season, joining young Christopher Bell. Those two, along with Hendrick Motorsports’ William Byron and Kyle Larson, make up four of the five winners over the first month.
And then, of course, there’s our feel-good story from Week 1 – Michael McDowell. The 36year-old won the Daytona 500, and punched that elusive playoff ticket right off the bat. Or did he?
What are the chances we have 17 different winners qualify for the 16-driver playoff field?
“No chance, Zach!”
You sure?
Revisiting past NASCAR seasons
First, a quick look-back. In 2014, we got seven different winners to start the season – that’s the most since this current playoff format began. We’ve gone at least five races (our current mark!) three times (2014, 2017, 2019).
Jimmie Johnson became a repeat winner in the fifth race of the 2016 season. Kevin Harvick quickly ended any of hopes of chaos in 2018, winning three consecutive races after the Daytona 500, and Joey Logano won twice before the shutdown last season.
March Madness!
So how many different winners are we getting over the next 21 regular-season races?
Well, guys like Denny Hamlin, Chase Elliott, Kevin Harvick, Brad Keselowski and Joey Logano still haven’t won. Despite his nearly year-long struggles now, Kyle Busch is also a threat to win every week. There’s 11 right there.
So we need six more? How about Ryan Blaney, who has at least one win every season since 2017, and Alex Bowman, who has a win each of the past two seasons.
They give us 13, and Kurt Busch, Aric Almirola and Austin Dillon get us all the way to the Sweet 16.
Finally, throw in a win from a wild card – like Bubba Wallace or Ricky Stenhouse Jr. – and you’re there.
March Madness!
What happens next?
So what happens if we do get more than 16 winners? Well, then it becomes an old-fashioned points battle between the one-race winners (if you’ve won more than one race, you’re in).
Under the current format, the tiebreaker(s) would go to whichever one-race winners have scored the most points throughout the regular season. Simple as that.
So, for example, if we get 17
winners and McDowell is 23rd in the points after the regularseason finale at Daytona and Wallace (assuming here he gets a win) is 19th, Wallace gets in.