Is SvG Making the 2nd Round?

There’s a chance. Let me explain why.

I ran 50,000 simulations of the first round of the NASCAR Cup Series Playoffs using Shane van Gisbergen’s points finishes this year on similar tracks. The result? a 28% chance he makes it through to the Round of 12.

First, let’s look at how SvG has actually performed at each kind of track. This year’s Round of 16 is Darlington (intermediate), Gateway (intermediate), and Bristol (short track) — so these two track types are where it really matters. We look at his finishes on tracks of each type this season, weighting them by how recent they are and discounting DNFs. A summer race at a similar track carries more predictive weight than one from early spring. This approach is better than using season-long averages because it focuses on comparable track types and accounts for recent form

On intermediates, SVG’s average points haul has been 13.4 with four DNFs. On short tracks, he’s been averaging 5.8 points, with two DNFs. These are the key inputs into the simulation.

The sim works like this: for each race, it pulls a random outcome from his past performances on that track type (with some noise for unpredictability), adds them up for the round, and then drops in his 22 playoff points. Run that process 50,000 times, and you get a distribution of possible totals. On average, he lands at 47 race points — 69 total after playoff points — with a 90% chance of clearing 60 points and a 10% chance of topping 81.

Now let’s bring in historical cutlines. The first-round cutline in the past three seasons was: 69 (’22 Cindric), 75 (’23 Wallace), and 85 (’24 Suarez). When we randomly sample those past cutlines and compare them to SVG’s simulated totals, he beats the cutline about 7 out of 25 times.

The median cutline over the past three years is 76 points — 7 more than SVG’s simulated average — meaning he’d need to outperform his baseline by roughly a top-10 finish’s worth of points.

The math says he’s an underdog — but with a top 10 at Darlington or Gateway, or a top 20 at Bristol we could be talking about SVG as one of the surprise Round of 12 drivers.

You can keep up with SvG, and every other drivers live position in the standings as the race unfolds with the Points Table on galaxie.app.