The final 30 laps at Vegas, shook up the playoff field, and has started to clarify the Championship 4.Hamlin’s win locks him into Phoenix, and boosts his chances of winning the championship to 42%.
Other drivers odds will improve as they lock in – but for now Hamlin is the odds-on favorite. Larson is now highly probabe to advance, but HMS’s recent lack of form at Phoenix blunts his championship probabilities. The model is relying on his recent turn in form on Super Speedways, boosting his chances of a strong finish at Talladega – if he gets caught up in a wreck, he’ll be much less likely to advance.
Let’s dive deeper into the driver performances at Vegas to see what tilted the odds. Blaney’s 1st stage exit was a significant underperformance, and have made his chances of advancement much slimmer; Byron was lucky to nearly max out stage points earning 18; somewhat dampening the blow of his late-race wreck, yet he still goes into Talladega with only a 14% chance of advancing. He shares the 14% odds with Logano who had nearly the opposite experience of Byron, on the fringes of playoff points in both stages, yet recovering to a strong points finish after a gamble on 2 tires. Elliott’s speeding penalty hurt him significantly, miring him in the middle of the pack for the remainder of the race, earning him points right at the bottom of his expected range.
Bell and Briscoe both had strong points days – each earning more than 40 points. Bell’s odds of advancing are the 3rd best, and besides Larson and Hamlin, the only above 50%.
Hamlin‘s got a free-spin at Talladega, he can take it as a chance to ride, or to try to unlock the performance he’s lost on super-speedways in the next gen era. Blaney will need to run up front all day, earning 5+ stage points and finishing in the top 10, to have a chance of advancing on points. Larson‘s recent improvement on super-speedways means the model expects him to perform well, with an expected points haul of 35, he’ll need to finish second, or earn a chunk of stage points to remain on track as likely to advance. While Byron’s seen repeated success at Daytona, that hasn’t translated to Talladega, he’ll need to outperform expectations by 10+ points to still be in the hunt at Martinsville, and will need an even stronger finish to have a realistic chance. Bell will need to earn slighly more than his expected outcome of points at Talladega (18 vs 22), the safest way for him to do so is to run up front in the first stage, bank a chunk of stage points, and then ride for the rest of the race, either hoping for a wreck to lock in 10-15 points, or to gain a handful of spots at the end and finish top 20. Elliott has had moderately more success than his HMS teammate at Talladega, and will need to leave Talladega with more than 39 points to have a chance of advancing in Martinsville. Briscoe only needs to perform moderately better than expected (+5) to continue to remain squarely in the hunt, while Logano, like his Penske teammate, will need to run up front all day to score the 39 points requried to advance.
Let’s take a look at how the points have progressed so far, and how they’re expected to play out across the rest of the round. The solid lines are median of the drivers cumulative points, and the bands of color represent the Inter-Quartile Range (IQR) of expected outcomes.
Larson and Hamlin are expected to separate themselves from the field over the remaining races, Hamlin is of course already locked in – and Larson is expected to be free and clear of the field through the rest of the round. Bell and Briscoe both sit comfortably above the cutline in most scenarios – but come the end of the martinsville race, all 6 of the drivers IQRs begin to overlap. Unless one or two of the drivers below the line wreck out early at Talladega, we’re likely to see an extremely close cutline at the end of the Martinsville race. As has historically been the case – it should be another exciting finish.
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