With a return to the NASCAR Cup Series Chase format in 2026 and the removal of the “win, and you’re in” automatic Playoff berth, everything has been turned on its head as far as the championship battle goes this season.
Related: 2026 NASCAR Cup Series Driver Standings
Mediocrity will no longer be erased by one singular win. A few bad races can take a lot longer to recover from. And honestly, it’ll take a few races into the season to see who is truly in a good position and who needs to put on their rally caps.
16 drivers were able to make it through the carnage of the final lap of Sunday’s Daytona 500 with a solid foundation to their championship hopes.
Tyler Reddick, who scored the win in the event, finds himself as the point leader and is 32 points above the cutline, while Joey Logano (+20), Chase Elliott (+17), Zane Smith (+15), Ricky Stenhouse Jr. (+13), Brad Keselowski (+13), Chris Buescher (+13), Bubba Wallace (+11), Carson Hocevar (+10), Ryan Blaney (+10), Riley Herbst (+9), Daniel Suarez (+9), Josh Berry (+7), Kyle Busch (+3), Kyle Larson (+3), Noah Gragson (+1) all find themselves above the cutline after the season’s opening race.
However, while the Daytona 500 has always been a race that can lead to topsy-turvy point standings going into the second race of the season, in the last iteration of the Chase format (2013), the series didn’t immediately head into another superspeedway-style race the next week.
That being said, if you had a rough Daytona 500, you really have to be hyper-aware of your surroundings this weekend at EchoPark Speedway.
Just like last weekend, disaster is waiting for you literally at any point in the race, and if they’re unable to avoid carnage, some surprising names could be heading into Circuit of the Americas looking to turn their fortunes around, and fast.
Over half of the Playoff field from a season ago, including three of the four Championship 4 contenders, find themselves below the cutline in the Chase standings, one race into the season. The nine Playoff drivers from a season ago, who find themselves behind the cutline after the Daytona 500, include William Byron, Ross Chastain, Shane van Gisbergen, Austin Cindric, Christopher Bell, Austin Dillon, Denny Hamlin, Alex Bowman, and Chase Briscoe.
Byron, who went into Speedweek vying for what would have been a record third consecutive Daytona 500 win, had a rough day all around, which prevented him from nabbing any valuable Stage Points, but coming to the white flag, Byron found himself in the thick of the battle for the race win.
That is, until all hell broke loose going into Turn 1. As Carson Hocevar, Erik Jones, and Michael McDowell all spun across his nose, Byron missed Turn 1, slipped up the track, and by the end of the lap, the guy who looked like he had an outside shot at winning another Daytona 500 would be credited with a disappointing 12th-place result.
Fortunately for Byron, he was able to minimize the damage of the weekend, and last year’s regular-season champion leaves Daytona 18th in the standings, just two points below the cutline.
The other 2025 Playoff contenders outside of the Chase cutline after Daytona weren’t as fortunate. Chastain finds himself 10 points below the cutline, SVG and Cindric are 14 points back, Bell and Dillon are 18 points behind the cutline, Hamlin is 19 points below, Bowman is 23 back, and Briscoe is 25 points out of Chase contention.
Again, these aren’t massive deficits to the cutline — yet. But another bad day at Atlanta could really compound the issues for these drivers and put them behind the eight-ball for some time early in the season.
Since EchoPark Speedway was converted into a hybrid superspeedway 1.5-mile facility in 2022, eight drivers currently outside the cutline rank inside the top-16 of points scored at the facility.
Of the drivers outside the cutline heading into Sunday’s Autotrader 400, Cindric has the most points scored over the eight races at EchoPark Speedway with 240 points accumulated on the back of two top-five finishes and three top-10s. Cindric has also led 205 laps at Atlanta since the reconfiguration, but has yet to break through with a win at the 1.54-mile track.
Byron, who ranks sixth in points scored at Atlanta in the eight races since the reconfiguration, has captured two victories on the superspeedway-style version of the track. But with an average finish of 19.3, it seems to be either checkers or wreckers for Byron at Atlanta.
The other drivers, below the cutline, who are among the top-16 point earners at Atlanta over the last eight races at the track are Ross Chastain, Alex Bowman, Michael McDowell, Erik Jones, Christopher Bell, and Denny Hamlin.
So, based on the eight-race sample size, you would expect these drivers to have a fighting chance at improving their Chase bids this weekend at Atlanta. However, Austin Dillon and Chase Briscoe have scored the 26th and 27th most points at Atlanta over the eight-race span, and neither driver has recorded a single top-10 at the track in that time.
While Dillon has finished all but two of the eight races at Atlanta, Briscoe has only seen the checkered flag in half of the races, which makes him possibly the top contender among last year’s championship contenders to continue their skid to start the 2026 season.
The NASCAR Cup Series Autotrader 400 at EchoPark Speedway is scheduled for Sunday, February 22, and will be televised on FOX with coverage set to kick off at 3:00 PM ET. The Performance Racing Network (PRN) and SiriusXM NASCAR Radio will provide the radio broadcast of the event.
