Friday 5: Stacked Round of 8 playoff field 'earned their way' to this point

After two playoff rounds noted for their potential of chaos with a pair of road courses and speedway drafting races, NASCAR has one of its strongest fields entering the Round of 8.

"A very strong amount of respect for all the teams that are going to be in the Round of 8," said Cliff Daniels, crew chief for Kyle Larson. "Everybody has earned their way to get there."

The top seven drivers in the points after the regular season — before the points were reset — remain. The outlier is Joey Logano, who was 15th in the points but won the playoff opener at Atlanta.

"You look at the top eight right now and you can pick and choose any of them," Logano said. "They're all really strong. You can look at it and if you were to look at the playoffs when they started, those are probably going to be the majority of the cars that everyone would pick to be in this round.

"There is no one that is knocked out of the playoffs right now that you would say, 'Man, that is a big surprise.' There's no one that had a ton of playoff points that got knocked out is what I'm trying to say, so all the cars that are in it are tough. I don't think you can discount anybody going to Vegas."

The drivers remaining in title contention are regular-season champion Tyler Reddick, Christopher Bell, William Byron, Ryan Blaney, Denny Hamlin, Chase Elliott, Larson and Logano.

They have combined for 22 points victories in 32 races and victories in the Clash (Hamlin) and All-Star Race (Logano) this season.

"You got the best eight," Hamlin said on his podcast "Actions Detrimental" this week. "The best eight is in there. It is going to be tough. It is going to be tough because all these teams, they're all threats to win any one of these three races. They're all threats to run one through eight all three races."

Larson leads the series with six victories this season. Bell, Byron and Hamlin have three wins each. Reddick, Blaney and Logano have two wins each this year. Elliott has one victory this season. Of those eliminated, none had more than one win this year.

While the tracks in the first two rounds created uncertainty, the tracks in this round leave it more in the hands of drivers instead of luck.

The round opens Sunday at Las Vegas Motor Speedway (2:30 p.m. ET on NBC) and goes to Homestead-Miami Speedway on Oct. 27 before finishing at Martinsville Speedway on Nov. 3.

If any of the eight remaining playoff drivers win in this round, they transfer to the Nov. 10 championship race at Phoenix Raceway.

Three times in the last seven years, the winner of the opening race in the Round of 8 went on to win the championship. The advantage is having the next two weeks to focus on the title race instead of the next race. Logano won both of his titles after winning the opening race in the Round of 8. Larson also won his Cup championship after opening the Round of 8 with a win.

"I'm just excited to kind of get ourselves to the next three great tracks for us and hopefully we can make that final four," Larson said after last weekend's win at the Charlotte Roval.

2. View from NBC broadcasters

Members of the NBC broadcast team met with the media this week to discuss the playoffs entering the Round of 8. Here's what they had to say:

Analyst Jeff Burton on the eight remaining playoff drivers

"If I told you four weeks from now that Chase Elliott was champion or Joey Logano was champion or Hamlin or Blaney or Byron, would anybody be shocked? I think that's what makes this round so captivating is that this truly is the best of the best, and you have to bring everything you have.

"You can have a good round and it not be good enough. You might have to have a great round. … I have a favorite. I feel like Larson, it's hard for me to go against him. On the other hand, there's eight of them that wouldn't surprise me one bit if they won a championship."

Analyst Steve Letarte on how nervous crew chiefs are after Alex Bowman's disqualification for his car not meeting minimum weight requirement.

"I equated it to driving down the road maybe a little too fast and going by a cop sitting on the side of the road. That nervous energy you have in your stomach where you look in your mirror, and you're not sure if you're going to get pulled over.

"That's the required test of every engineer, every crew chief in the garage. If you live 1% safe on every rule, you are not in the playoffs. You do not contend for wins.

"You can't be 1% on the wrong side. I think NASCAR and their tools are as consistent as ever to inspect the cars, but as a team you have to be on the line. It would be like running the 100-meter dash and just waiting a split second off the gun to leave. You just can't give that advantage up.

"I think every team in the garage is taking every rule to its limit, including this weight rule and what's allowed post-race."

Analyst Dale Jarrett on what intrigues him with the Xfinity and Cup playoff field.

"When I look at the Round of 8 now, there are two drivers that stand out that we all know have had successful, outstanding careers, and that would be Denny Hamlin and Justin Allgaier. They're kind of in two different spots with this.

"We would have expected both of them to be champions by now, but you have Allgaier, who by, I'm sure, his admission and his team, they haven't performed well in the playoffs, but all of a sudden, they start the Round of 8 atop the standings once again. Can they get things right to where they can give Justin Allgaier that opportunity to make a run at another championship in Phoenix in just a few weeks?

"Of course, Denny Hamlin, with everything that they've had going on, they haven't performed well in the playoffs either. Actually, haven't performed well even before the playoffs started. And then only because of the engine penalty that they had do they sit below the cut line, but this is something that they're going to have to overcome.

"Very interested to see how he and his team react because he talks about the tracks line up perfectly in this Round of 8 for him to go grab a win or to perform at a high level that will have him racing for a championship in Phoenix."

3. On verge of a 3-peat?

With Ryan Blaney and Joey Logano remaining in the playoffs, Team Penske has the chance to win a third consecutive series crown.

Logano won the second of his two Cup championships in 2022. Blaney won the championship last season.

Only one organization has won at least three consecutive Cup titles since 1979. Hendrick Motorsports has done it twice. The organization won four Cup titles in a row from 1995-98 with Terry Labonte winning the title in '96 and Jeff Gordon winning the other three. Jimmie Johnson won five consecutive championships for Hendrick Motorsports from 2006-10.

One of the traits with Team Penske's championship the past two years is how the organization started the season slowly and became stronger in the playoffs.

In 2022, Logano won two times in the first 32 races and then won two of the last four races in winning the championship.

Last year, Blaney was 13th in the points before the reset at the start of the playoffs. He won once in the first 30 races of the season. In the last six playoff races of the season, he won twice and finished second twice in claiming his first career crown.

Logano said he sees a similar trend this season. He was 15th in the points before the reset at the start of the playoffs and won the playoff opener at Atlanta. He's in the Round of 8 after Alex Bowman's car was disqualified last weekend for being underweight after the Charlotte Roval race.

"Trends are trends for a reason, right?" Logano said. "I don't know why or what that is, but it does seem like Team Penske does a good job rising to the occasion when it matters during the playoffs. I feel like that happened a little sooner this year.

"We started to make that turnaround a little bit quicker than last year and still last year Blaney was able to win the championship. Yeah, I feel great about it because we've done this before. Like I said before, from the outside looking in you look at it and say, 'Well, they haven't had as many top fives. They haven't had as many top 10s. They haven't been as competitive.' Who cares?

"We've lived this story many times before. Yeah, would it be easier if you had more playoff points? Yeah, but you know what? You win this weekend and you're sitting as the favorite going into Phoenix, so it changes like that and that's with the playoff system that we have.

"Every point matters throughout the whole season. I'm not discounting that, but you have to be your absolute best at this point in the season or else those points don't even matter, so I feel confident in our team that we've got that. We're still alive. We're still going and that's the name of the game in these playoffs. You just have to stay alive long enough. I said it last year that we did not accomplish that. This year, we're gonna keep the pressure on all the way through."

4. Round of 8 Xfinity Series

The Round of 8 also begins this weekend for the Xfinity Series.

The eight drivers remaining are Justin Allgaier, Cole Custer, Austin Hill, Chandler Smith, Sam Mayer, rookie Jesse Love, AJ Allmendinger and Sammy Smith.

Mayer advanced after winning last weekend's elimination race at the Charlotte Roval.

This is Allgaier's series-record ninth appearance in the Round of 8. He has made it to the championship race six times, including the past two seasons, but has never won the Xfinity title.

Custer is the reigning series champion. He seeks to become the fourth driver since 2000 to win back-to-back Xfinity driver titles, joining Martin Truex Jr. (2004-05), Ricky Stenhouse Jr. (2011-12) and Tyler Reddick (2018-19).

5. Numbers to know

3 — Consecutive races at Las Vegas Motor Speedway won by Hendrick Motorsports drivers. Kyle Larson won in March 2024 and Oct. 2023 and William Byron won in March 2023. In all three races, the winner also swept the stages.

5.2 — Average finish in the Next Gen car at Las Vegas by Ross Chastain, the best average finish among all drivers.

6 — Of the remaining playoff drivers who finished in the top 10 at Las Vegas in March. The only playoff drivers in the Round of 8 who did not score a top 10 at Las Vegas in March were Chase Elliott (12th) and Christopher Bell (33rd).

7 — Different tracks that Tyler Reddick's seven career Cup victories have taken place. He's not won at Las Vegas but finished second there in March.

54 — Stage points scored in the playoffs by Ryan Blaney, the most among the remaining playoff drivers.