Darlington provided no lack of uncertainty regarding the NASCAR playoff field. Wrecks, restarts, and a new winner shook up the pack late in the race and kept fans on the edge of their seats. Finally, after the first 26 races of 2024, the field of sixteen drivers has been set. Now, the quest towards the NASCAR Cup Series Championship begins. Here are the drivers who have a shot at glory.

The Round of Sixteen - Atlanta | Watkins Glen | Bristol

Kyle Larson: The Elk Grove, California native has collected wins at Las Vegas, Kansas, Sonoma, and Indianapolis. He led a race-high 263 laps at Darlington, collected two stage wins, and became the first driver to eclipse 1000 laps led this season. However, while he and his HendrickCars.com team have showcased speed, it has been challenging. Larson has four victories, yet he also has four DNF finishes, most of which have come while having a car capable of winning the race. He has the raw speed to win a title but must find consistency.

Christopher Bell: Like Larson, fellow dirt racer Christoper Bell of Norman, Oklahoma, has had a season of highs and lows. Despite finding victory in race four at Phoenix, Bell went the next ten weeks without scoring another win. He struggled to find consistency during that span, finishing five of those races outside of the top ten. A dominant victory at the Coca-Cola 600 in May rejuvenated the team and led to a streak of top fives and a third win at Loudon. Though Bell has shown the ability to assemble a complete race, he has also wrecked out of six events, which is the second most of the series.

Tyler Reddick: Unlike Larson and Bell, Tyler Reddick has been the model of consistency. The 28-year-old from Corning, California, has earned the most top fives and top ten finishes. Before getting collected in a late race incident at Daytona, Reddick had finished in the top ten in 10 of the previous 11 races. He only has two wins to his credit, but Reddick has been in contention in plenty of late-race battles. His performance has put 23XI Racing, the team owned by owner-driver Denny Hamlin and sporting legend Micheal Jordan, one year ahead of schedule in their five-year plan to win a championship

William Byron: After a standout season in 2023 that saw Charlotte, North Carolina's William Byron lead the series in wins and make his first Championship 4 appearance. The number 24 team has taken a slight step backward. They started the 2024 season red hot, winning three of the first eight races. But the team cooled off in the Summer months and failed to lead a lap in nine straight races. A runner-up finish at Michigan showed the field that Byron and crew chief Rudy Fugle still have what it takes to run up front, but they will need to showcase more raw speed to make a deep playoff run.

Ryan Blaney: As for defending Cup Series champion Ryan Blaney, he’s trending to be on the same route toward the title as last season. His average finish of 15.8 is slightly worse than his 14.1 average in 2024, but Blaney is one of the top five performers, away from tying his total from last year. Team Penske has put together strong cars at each flat oval track over the past few seasons, and that speed showed again when Blaney ran well at Gateway before running out of fuel and coming to the final lap. Many consider that track to have the most semblance of the championship venue of Phoenix. The pride of Hartford, Ohio, looks to win team owner Roger Penske his third consecutive title and become the first repeat winner since Jimmie Johnson in 2010.

Denny Hamlin: One name further down this list than one would expect is Chesterfield, Virginia's Denny Hamlin. The number 11 FedEx entry driver for Joe Gibbs Racing has crossed the finish line first in three of the 26 races this season. However, on Thursday, August 22nd, NASCAR issued the team an L-2 Penalty for violating mandatory engine inspection requirements. It was a self-reported oversight from the Toyota Racing Development program, but it cost Hamlin 75 points towards the regular season and ten playoff points. This dropped him from third to seventh, entering Daytona, where a crash cost him another spot on the Playoff grid. The winningest driver without a Cup Series Championship to his name will have an uphill battle to the Final Four in Phoenix.

Chase Elliott: A disappointing season one year ago saw Chase Elliott miss races for injury, serve a one-race suspension, and miss the Playoffs for the first time in his career. Now, 2024 has been quite the turnaround for the Hendrick Motorsports driver. During the off-season, many called Elliott and crew chief Alan Gustafson into question. In the face of all the adversity, the Dawsonville, Georgia native has seemingly put 2023 in the rearview mirror and got himself in prime position to compete for a second NASCAR Cup Series Championship. In 2024, Elliott improved on every statistical metric, sat within the top five in points since Martinsville, and locked his team into the Playoffs with a win at Texas Motor Speedway.

Brad Keselowski: Thirteen races ago, the Cup Series visited Darington for the first of two races. That weekend, Brad Keselowski broke through a 110-race winless streak dating back to Talladega in 2021. It took the driver-owner of Rochester Hills, Michigan, three seasons to return to victory lane. Since the win, the Roush Fenway Keselowski number 6 car has climbed as high as seventh in points. The 2012 Cup Champion made it to the Round of 12 last year and is searching for his first Final Four appearance since 2020.

Joey Logano: The second driver out of the Penske stable is Middletown, Connecticut's Joey Logano. He locked up a spot in the Playoffs with a win at the caution-riddled event at Nashville Superspeedway. After the fifth Overtime attempt, Logano nosed ahead of Reddick for his first victory over one season. Logano is not safe, but he has a spot secured for the postseason. In 2023, he became the first defending Champion to get bounced in the round of sixteen. This season, he is only fifteenth in points and has yet to finish five races.

Austin Cindric: As Ryan Blaney ran out of gas approaching the white flag at Gateway, his teammate Austin Cindric thundered by to pick up his second career win. The driver out of Columbus, Ohio, is set to make his second-ever Playoff appearance. After a difficult sophomore season that saw him miss the Playoffs, his win ensured a spot in the round of sixteen. That said, the following three tracks line up nicely for the 25-year-old. He led laps, won a stage at Atlanta earlier this season, and has shown the ability to race up front at road courses like Watkins Glen.

Daniel Suárez: 2024 has been filled with great moments for Trackhouse driver Daniel Suárez. He won in his return to the NASCAR Mexico Series at the L.A. Coliseum. About a month later, he scored a historic photo-finish win at Atlanta in race two that punched his ticket to the Playoffs. Then, over the two-week Olympic break, Suárez stayed busy. He announced a contract extension with Trackhouse, married his fiance in Brazil, where he also competed, and won in the NASCAR Brazil Series event. On top of that, the Monterrey, Mexico native took part in a recent announcement that NASCAR would be heading South to the Autódromo Hermanos Rodríguez in Mexico City for their first international race in 77 years. Suárez is poised for his second postseason run and enters Atlanta as the defending race winner.

Alex Bowman: Similar to his Hendrick teammate Chase Elliott, Alex Bowman suffered the repercussions of injuries throughout the past few seasons. Back at Texas in 2022, he sustained a concussion after a crash in turn four that ended his season prematurely. He recovered well over the Winter and led the points early in 2023 before breaking his back in a Sprint Car accident. He never was able to return to pre-injury form for the remainder of 2023 but has had a pleasant rebound in the first 26 races of 2024. He claimed the win at the Chicago Street Race in July, his first since 2022 in Las Vegas. The Ally Chevrolet holds the twelfth spot in regular season points and will start the Playoffs with the twelfth seed.

Chase Briscoe: Once again, the aforementioned Chase Briscoe locked himself into the 2024 Playoffs with his win at Darlington. It was his first trip to victory lane since the Spring race at Phoenix in 2022. This win makes him the eighth driver to break over a 40-race winless streak, the most in Cup Series history. Now, the 29-year-old will make his second-ever attempt at a championship for SHR before transitioning to Joe Gibbs Racing next year.

Harrison Burton: A surprise addition to the Playoff grid came a weekend ago on the high banks of Daytona Beach. A late caution set up an Overtime finish that featured a battle between Kyle Busch and Huntersville, North Carolina’s Harrison Burton. Busch led the pack as they thundered through the tri-oval to take the white flag. As the pack headed down the backstretch, Burton received a push from rookie Parker Retzlaff that got him ahead of Busch. As they weaved back and forth coming to the finish, Burton was able to hold off the field and celebrate his first-ever Cup Series victory and the 100th for the Wood Brothers Team. However, Burton is out of his ride at season's end and sits outside the top 30 in the series points.

Ty Gibbs: A late wreck at Darlington nearly took Ty Gibbs out of contention for the playoffs. Thankfully for the Charlotte, North Carolina native, his Joe Gibbs Racing team made the necessary repairs to maintain a 12-point gap back to Chris Buescher. Gibbs has shown steady improvement throughout the season and enters Bristol with a chance to win. The 21-year-old driver led over 200 laps in the track's last two races. If Gibbs continues to show the speed that his JGR teammates have had in recent weeks, he has an excellent chance to make a deep Playoff run.

Martin Truex Jr: When the checkered flag flies at Phoenix, Martin Truex Jr. will step away from full-time competition. The man from Mayetta, New Jersey, has ascended the NASCAR ranks since 2016 when he joined Furniture Row Racing. A year later, he gave team owner Barney Visser a trip to victory lane in the championship finale at Homestead Miami Speedway. The 34-time Cup winner is still hunting for his first win, but he finished the regular season tenth in points. He has a difficult road through the round of sixteen since Truex has yet to score a top ten on a super speedway-style track like Atlanta in over 20 races. As for the cutoff race at Bristol, he has been hit or miss. He was runner-up in the Spring race but had only two other top-fives in 34 starts.

Drivers that Missed the Cut

Kyle Busch: After the past two weeks, the driver out of Las Vegas, Nevada, has to ask himself what could have been. Two devastating runner-up finishes have left the two-time series champion out of the playoffs for only the second time in his career. As the season comes to a close, Busch continues to search for his 64th career victory. He also seeks to extend his streak of consecutive seasons with at least one win to 20 years.

Bubba Wallace: Another driver who appeared to have a shot at making the Playoffs was Mobile, Alalabama’s Bubba Wallace. He put his 23XI car on the pole position at Darlington and led early in the event, scoring nine points in stage one. However, the handling fell away, and Wallace slipped back into the mid-pack, where trouble befell him. On lap 345, a multi-car wreck triggered by Josh Berry and Ty Gibbs resulted in heavy damage to the car and took him out of contention.

Chris Buescher: 2024 has been full of heartbreaks for Chris Buescher. The Prosper, Texas native was shy of winning races at Darlington and Kansas in the Spring. Those losses ultimately cost him last night, as Briscoes win effectively bounced him from the top sixteen in points. It is a harsh blow to the team that won three races one year prior and had advanced to the round of eight.

Ross Chastain: A top-five finish at Darlington could not put Chastain into the round of sixteen. They entered the race in a must-win situation and started behind the eight ball. They lacked speed in both qualifying and the start of the race. They played strategy well late but never could find the front of the field. The Team Trackhouse driver from Alva, Florida, misses the chase for the title for the first time since he joined forces with team owners Justin Marks and Pitbull in the 2022 season.