Did You Notice? … Harrison Burton’s recent NASCAR Cup Series win ensures the driver with the least amount of points among full-time drivers will make the playoffs?
That’s where we are in 2024 after Burton’s surprising run to the front during the white-flag lap at Daytona International Speedway.
Since then, critics have vilified Burton as an unfair beneficiary of the sport’s playoff system. With one win, he’s leapfrogged 18 drivers in front of him to make the postseason, becoming the equivalent of a 16 seed in the yearly NCAA Basketball Tournament.
But Burton did nothing wrong to earn a shot at the title. Instead, he played along with the same NASCAR rules that have been in place for years. The issue for me isn’t win-and-you’re-in, it’s that too many people make it into the postseason. Nearly 50% of NASCAR’s grid (16 drivers) qualify when not once have we made it to 16 winners during a 26-race regular season.
That means underdogs like Burton automatically get their shot, when a smaller field of, say, 12 drivers would leave him on the outside looking in. One less round is really all you need to remove those longshot Cinderellas; Cup typically averages 13-14 playoff eligible winners a year.
The bottom line is a group of five drivers: Martin Truex Jr., Ty Gibbs, Chris Buescher, Bubba Wallace and Ross Chastain are left to battle for the final three spots. Another Burton-level upset at Darlington Raceway this weekend would squeeze it to two.
But does it really matter if one of these men doesn’t get the chance Burton does? Like most sports teams living on the edge of the playoffs, all of them who miss have had plenty of chances to get over the hump. Back in June, I wrote a column about how each of them had wins slip through their fingers in a year defined by parity.
Let’s look again at how each of these bubble drivers could have punched their ticket into the playoffs months ago.
Martin Truex Jr.
Who can forget Truex had May’s Richmond Raceway event in the bag until a caution with two laps left? Silly contact between Kyle Larson and Bubba Wallace forced NASCAR overtime, then a pit stop in between where Truex lost the lead and control of the race.
Truex, retiring from full-time competition at the end of 2024, really hasn’t ever fully recovered. He’s earned just two top-five finishes since, none of them since May, and has…
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