Tyler Reddick enters the cut-off race at Darlington with a 17-point advantage over Kyle Larson in the battle to win the regular season title. Chase Elliott also lurks in the background, only 18 points behind. Whoever prevails will play a key role in how the standings will look when the points reset. After tonight, the 16 playoff drivers will have 2,000 points, plus any playoff bonus points they have accumulated throughout the year.
These points can be gathered via stage wins (one point), race wins (five points), or the often-overlooked third method, which was added in 2017. In that method, the top-ten drivers in the regular season standings after Race #26 will each get a handful of points: 10th gets one point, ninth gets two, eighth gets three, and so on. Although second gets ten playoff bonus points, there is then a notable jump up for the regular season champ. 15 points are offered to the driver who sits atop the standings before the reset. That is the equivalent of three race wins on everyone else, or one extra race win on the runner-up.
Martin Truex Jr, Joe Gibbs Racing, Toyota Camry wins the Regular Season Championship
Photo by: Lesley Ann Miller / Motorsport Images
While the regular season champion has only gone on to win it all in three of the last seven seasons, those points have helped them to advance through the volatile playoff system and into the Championship 4 in five of the past seven seasons. 2020 regular season champion Kevin Harvick infamously missed the final four in 2020 while trying to spin Kyle Busch out for the one point he needed in the penultimate race. In 2023, Martin Truex Jr. was also eliminated in the Round of 8, but after one of the worst playoff showings by a regular season champion ever, the bonus points were a massive help in carrying him as far as they did.
Reddick or Larson?
Reddick finished second in last year’s Southern 500, but the driver who beat him to the finish line is the one currently chasing him for the top spot in the standings — Larson.
“I feel like at a place like Darlington it’s hard to because I mean it’s just, you’re kind of racing the track, right?” said Reddick on Saturday. “There might be an option to mix up the strategy in the stages, but I think we all have a pretty good idea of what the best strategy is going to be. It’s tough here. I feel like you go to some of these other tracks — Michigan is a perfect example — where you’re more worried…
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