Now that the Charlotte Roval is behind us, the time has come to set the Championship 4. These are the Cup Series playoff standings entering the semifinal round of the playoffs.
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Once again, Denny Hamlin leads the standings heading into a playoff round. However, he does not have a large cushion to the cutline. He only has an eight-point advantage. This could quickly disappear in the Round of 8 opener at Las Vegas Motor Speedway.
The other three drivers above the initial cutline are Ryan Blaney (+6), Kyle Larson (+4), and William Byron (+4). The four drivers below the cutline are Christopher Bell (-4), Chase Elliott (-14), Chase Briscoe (-14), and Joey Logano (-24).
The Round of 8 features three significantly different tracks. It begins with the 1.5-mile Las Vegas Motor Speedway. It continues with the 2.66-mile Talladega Superspeedway. The elimination race takes place at the .526-mile Martinsville Speedway.
This deficit does not concern Logano and crew chief Paul Wolfe. After all, Logano has four wins at Las Vegas Motor Speedway. He and Wolfe also won this race last season and in 2022 to punch their tickets to the Championship 4. Both times, they celebrated the championship at Phoenix Raceway.
"Obviously, we've won a lot at Vegas," Wolfe told FanBuzz after last weekend's race at the Roval. "I wouldn't say it's our strongest track right now. Short tracks, obviously, are our strongest program, but out of all the mile-and-a-halfs, that's a good one for us.
"And then you look at Talladega with the speed we've had. And then, obviously, Martinsville being a short track. So, this round sets up well for us again."
Photo credit: Nigel Kinrade Photography
Elliott enters the playoff round in a different situation. He has three previous trips to the Championship 4, but only one in the Gen 7 era. One reason has been the introduction of the Gen 7 car. The other reason has been inconsistency at Las Vegas Motor Speedway.
Elliott has performed well overall at intermediate tracks in his Cup Series career, but he only has two top-10 finishes at the Nevada track in the Gen 7 era. Now, he has to return to the track and try to punch his ticket to the Championship 4.
"We've crashed a lot, you know? So that's hurt for sure," Elliott said. "Lots of crashes out of Vegas for us, really throughout the whole entirety of my career. You know, I'm trying to think through all of the scenarios and its hard to remember. And then we've just had some bad runs there.
"I thought we had some pretty good runs prior to Next Gen and then kind of the inception of the Next Gen car, I feel like it was a pretty big step backwards. And then I thought we had a really good run there going last fall. I thought we made some nice gains last year as a whole there. Had a really, really nice run going. I was excited about just having a solid day there in the fall, and crashed."
