NASCAR
Who’s Comfortably in and Who’s Treading Water for 2025’s Playoff Push?
15 races into the 2025 NASCAR Cup Series season, nine Playoff berths have been claimed by race winners. Entering the final 11-week run to the postseason, the cut line battle could not be closer. Seven drivers currently occupy the remaining provisional Playoff spots. Who may be sitting pretty, and who needs a miracle in the coming weeks? Here’s how the back half of the 2025 Playoff grid shapes up heading to Mexico City.
Chase Elliott +142
NASCAR’s Most Popular Driver has now matched his last broken winless streak. 42 races have passed since Chase Elliott last took the checkers in April 2024 at Texas. Despite being on this long of a drought, the Hendrick No. 9 is still a very respectable fifth in points. Elliott may not have shown dominant winning speed in a points-paying race this season. Alas, there have still been a few fleeting flashes of brilliance for the 9.
“I think, yeah, Kansas and honestly North Wilkesboro, too, I thought was a solid week for us,” Elliott said. “And then, yeah, I thought we had a really good car at Charlotte, as well. I think it’s a product of a lot of hard work. Just a collective effort of trying to make some improvement. That’s always the goal, just keep chipping away. I think the team’s in a really good spot. We had a really good week on pit road. Really, they kept me in the game [at Charlotte]. They gained me two or three spots on every pit stop, and I’d give away five or six. So it was a frustrating night on my end, but I thought the car performed really well. All the pieces of the puzzle were really in place. I just need to continuously work on my craft and make sure that I’m doing my part.”
“I mean, yeah, certainly better to be in that position than on the other side of the fence, no doubt. But I’d be lying if I said that was my top focus. It’s just not. I think that if you’re worried about barely getting into the Playoffs, I think you have some work to do. It really is kind of the best way I can think about that. And just to talk about my thought process, I want to be better than that. I want to be in the group of people of ‘how many Playoff points do you have?’ Not just barely getting in. Our expectations and goals are above that, and we hope that we can achieve all of our goals.”
“But again, nice to be on that side of the fence, no question. But there’s also a lot of racing left between now and the cutoff. You know, if you win, then your problems are likely solved. And if you don’t and you have a bunch of winners, you can find yourself in a tough spot. We’ve been in that spot before, too. So yeah, we want to not find ourselves in a tough position, you know, come the end of week 26.”
“I wouldn’t say I’m anxious about [winning]. I just want to go and achieve it. Those are our goals and those are the things that we want to go out there and achieve.”
Elliott’s Playoff future is likely safe by a very wide margin. What is far less of a guarantee, however, is if Elliott will be a true title threat. The 9 has seen five finishes of 15th or worse across the last seven races, only interspersed with two top-10s. Back-to-back 15th-place showings are not much to write home about either. With a wide variety of upcoming tracks though, Elliott’s experience and veteran versatility may just click for an elusive win.
Tyler Reddick +138
Last year’s regular season champion, Tyler Reddick’s 2025 has been a slight downgrade by comparison. The 23XI Racing No. 45 does have three top-fives, but none since Darlington in April. Intermediate pace has been there for this team, but luck has kept them from locking in for an entire weekend.
“It’s tough to just accept running third or fourth,” Reddick said. “But hindsight that would have been much better than finishing 26th or wherever we ended up [at Charlotte] with the penalty and then the damage with the basically spin off turn two, so yeah, it’s there. We just got to take advantage of the days where we have that speed and win and you know that’ll happen at some point.”
“We’ve been strong really strong on the intermediates. But honestly I don’t know if it’s necessarily a rules package that makes or breaks our performance. It’s just how well do we understand the track? How good are our notes at that track? I think if our history is good somewhere that we return to we’re more likely going to run good. But again, that doesn’t always guarantee the outcome. We’ve been able to find speed at places we haven’t been great at too. So I don’t know if a rules package really makes a difference of our performance.”
Known for his road course prowess, Reddick must be beaming at the upcoming slate of racetracks. Four of the next nine weeks will be on a road or street course, where Reddick hopes to be a contender again. Despite no wins yet, Reddick’s stats so far this season are eerily reminiscent of his numbers last year. Sixth in points is shaping up nice for a potential big summer break to come the 45’s way.
Bubba Wallace +61
The flip side of 23XI Racing, Bubba Wallace has shown marked improvements throughout much of 2025 so far. Three top-fives and six top-10s through 15 weeks are career-best numbers for driver 23, and could’ve been even better. If not for a month of May marred by three-straight DNFs, Wallace would likely be higher than tenth in points.
“The last three or four weeks I guess, if you want to count All-Star, have just been shit, you know?” Wallace said. “There’s no other way around it and that’s okay. I think I look at a year ago, you guys know how I would be. It would be the worst day of my life sitting here talking to you guys. To me it’s just another day. Like we’re seventh on the board right now for qualifying, way better than 32nd last week, so it’s just enjoying the small victories. Enjoying where you’re at in life. You know you’re going to have bad races. I’ve seen so many guys have bad races like Denny [Hamlin], right, have so many bad races. His stats the last three weeks aren’t that great either, bad luck struck at Charlotte. They show up the next week like what happened last week they don’t care. And so I’ve started to kind of look at that. As much as it sucks, as much as it weighs you down, you have to show up for your team and for your sponsors and enjoy it.”
Wallace’s most recent Cup triumph now lies over two-and-a-half seasons back in the rearview mirror. Currently being in the Playoffs is a positive for team 23 that should be celebrated. However, a surprise winner or two could see Wallace fall perilously close to the cut line. Back-to-back third-place runs in March showed that this team has all the puzzle pieces to be elite. It may take a perfect Sunday and a long-awaited victory lane trip though to secure their postseason fate.
Chase Briscoe +41
On paper Chase Briscoe is methodically trending up the scoring pylon. The winner of three-straight poles heading into Mexico City, the No. 19 has also seen five top-fives. Briscoe will be the first to admit their Saturday speed has yet to fully transfer into a flawless Sunday, though. The new man on the block at Joe Gibbs Racing did say it took awhile to fully get comfortable here. Do not be surprised if the 19 team slowly continues forward progress and becomes a winning threat in the next few weeks.
“I feel like the team has done the same thing all year, it’s just me not driving hard enough, truthfully,” Briscoe said. “I talked about it yesterday. This car just has so much potential that I’m just not used to being able to do the things that this car will do because in the past my car would. Look at last year [at Charlotte], I plugged the fence down coming off of turn four trying to do what I just did there. Just the capability of this car is so much more than I’ve ran my entire career, and it has just taken a few months to get to used to that, so hopefully this will kind of be the start of normal, qualifying and competing for poles. It is definitely a nice turnaround from what we’ve had.”
“I still don’t feel like we’re super super close to what we’re capable of. I mean, we’re definitely getting closer. It’s hard to say what we’re really capable of because we haven’t put a full weekend together yet from Saturday and even just the race on Sunday. So I don’t know, I feel like we’re definitely closer now than we’ve ever been, but you know I would say we’re still 30% away from like our full potential. We just we need to put a whole weekend together. [Charlotte] was great cuz we finally put a Saturday together but then we weren’t able to put a Sunday together. So we just need to put the whole weekend from start to finish together and then I feel like after we do that we’re finally kind of know where we actually do stack up.”
While Briscoe does have four years of past Cup experience, he is essentially a JGR rookie. Amidst this first year with the 19, it’s hard to put down his results so far. 11th in points is where Briscoe and the Bass Pro Shops crew currently find themselves. When expecting the Playoff cut line to shift up, however, a 41-point buffer can quickly evaporate. Briscoe is a renowned road course talent, so the upcoming string of tracks do line up nicely for him.
Chris Buescher +20
At the time of this writing, Chris Buescher is just coming off of a very impressive runner-up result at Michigan. He arguably had the fastest car late, but simply lacked track position. Tragically missing the 2024 Playoffs after repeated heartbreaks, RFK Racing’s No. 17 Ford has been taking names in 2025. Buescher put a higher emphasis this season on being strong out of the gate, leading to moments of brilliance. Kansas did see this team dealt a hefty penalty, though, but half of those points were given back. Buescher is resolute however in saying that he despises racing for points and is simply eyeing more checkered flags.
“We have the second half of the regular season to win some races,” Buescher said. “I believe that ultimately it’s going to take wins to get you over the Playoff bubble, so that’s where we’re at, is trying to figure out how to win right so it really doesn’t change anything that we have going on. [The penalty reduction] just puts us in just a little better spot from that side of things but crazy enough I just don’t think it’s going to matter come time to cut the field.”
“What we wanted so so badly this year was to improve our first eight-to-ten races. I’m proud of the fact that we have been better and there’s no doubt about that in my mind. We’ve been able to measure that in a lot of ways, maybe not show it in all of the results, but ultimately we’ve been a lot better. Haven’t been able to get the win in that first handful like we had certainly hoped, but we’ve been in the hunt across all three of our teams really. We’ve had some really good speed at RFK Racing, so all those things those couple things considered uh it’s been a fairly successful beginning. Call it a B+ with certainly a lot of room for improvement to get to the point where we feel like we can win every week.”
“You want to look at the tracks we have coming up, like another road course coming at us. [There is] a lot of lot of great opportunity as we look ahead.”
“I adamantly hate points racing. So much if it didn’t happen to roll up on the Twitter feeds as I’m scrolling I wouldn’t have a clue. I just don’t like points racing, I don’t like the fact that it consumes so much of the conversation. I want to go to the racetrack on a weekly basis and figure out how to win that one, knowing that everything else comes with winning races. It’s a pretty basic concept and just trying to say ‘oh if we’re 16th in points’ that means if you’re averaging 16th that’s really a great year we know when it comes down to measuring at the end.”
RFK Racing’s current flag bearer, Buescher’s proven in recent years to be a very versatile talent who can win just about anywhere. The 17’s most recent triumph was a Playoff-upsetting Watkins Glen victory in September, finally grabbing an elusive road course win. As mentioned above, four of the next nine races are on a wide variety of road courses, including The Glen. A breakthrough Buescher win appears to be on the horizon, as team 17 appears heading in the right direction.
Alex Bowman +13
While others around him are trending upwards, Alex Bowman’s been on a horrendous stretch. Dating back to a runner-up result at Homestead in March, the Ally No. 48’s only seen two top-fives since then. This same timespan has also seen Bowman plummet from third to 13th in points. Four finishes outside of the top-25 in the last five weeks only add insult to injury for this team. Michigan was a microcosm of this team’s recent luck. Bowman backsliding from the start led to a vicious crash before halfway. Taken out not by his own doing, Bowman is still pleased with performance his Hendrick team has shown this year.
“Honestly I would say we’ve had a lot of speed,” Bowman said. “I haven’t really capitalized on that speed in a lot of different ways unfortunately. We were okay at Charlotte and I got in the fence. There’s been weeks where there have been things completely out of our control and some that are are just us not executing. So it’s good to have speed, but bad to not be finishing. So hopefully we can get it turned around here soon.”
“I mean we were two top-fives going into Charlotte, so it’s not like it’s been that awful, but certainly like we’ve been way faster than than how we’ve been finishing. Some of it’s been pretty frustrating, I think you know Texas is one that stands out, we had a car capable of winning. Kansas, we probably had another one till we got the fence. So yeah just have a lot of work to do but nice to have fast racecars.”
Bowman’s 2025 results have quite literally been peaks and valleys, showing great inconsistency by unforced errors. This Blake Harris-led team has shown the capability of being a winning threat. To achieve this goal though, they will need all the right circumstances to fall in their favor. Bowman grabbing a checkered flag in the next 11 weeks is not out of the question. A few breaks will have to admittedly fall his way. Few did expect him to win on the Chicago Streets last year. A come-from-nowhere surprise victory is still possible for the 48.
Ryan Preece +0
The last man currently rounding out the top-16 in points is RFK Racing’s newest driver–Ryan Preece. Much like his teammate Buescher, Preece suffered a debilitating penalty with a Talladega runner-up thrown out. That race aside though, the No. 60 Ford has been a recent presence up front. Preece owns three top-10s over the last four weeks. Locked in a heated cut line battle, Preece likes his chances at a few upcoming tracks.
“We’ve been running really really good,” Preece said. “I mean realistically if you have Talladega we’re 11th so we’ve had speed, we’ve been consistent, and I think that’s what I said about when we first started. In order to win you need to run top-10 and top-five and be there and that’s what we’ve been doing. So ultimately, definitely proud of our group and continuing to just make me feel comfortable and we keep getting better and better every week.”
“Everywhere we’re going I’m looking forward to. I’ve been practicing Mexico since I want to say the beginning of March, I make it part of my schedule whenever I’m at the sim. That the last 30 minutes are are at Mexico, so I feel as good as I can without actually going there.”
“We have Pocono, we got a lot of great tracks for us. So yeah I look at us as as on the bubble but I don’t look at it like hey we’re just hanging on by a thread. I look at it as we’re running really well and we’re one step away from being that top five contending for leading laps and winning races. So I think we’re climbing the mountain and we’re heading in the right direction.”
RFK Racing’s expansion team has certainly turned heads in its first season with Preece. What’s working against the 60 crew however is the aspect of a surprise winner or two. After Mexico, this team could easily be in a points deficit. Should there be another surprise winner from outside the top 16, then Preece’s Playoff outlook may drastically shift. Preece is ultimately in the least-desirable spot, needing to carefully balance getting every point possible while also not throwing away a good finish. Owning a tiebreaker for now over Kyle Busch, it will be fun to see how this points battle evolves.
Fully expect the Playoff picture above to go through multiple different iterations over the summer months. Wildcard tracks and bad luck will likely play significant roles in shaping up the rest of the Playoff grid. This amount of chaos is what feels like a yearly tradition in the NASCAR Cup Series. Road courses, superspeedways, and the first-ever In-Season Challenge are just some of the factors that drivers will soon face. In 11 weeks, we will all look back on this and see just how many of these drivers survived to make the Playoff cut.
Written by Peter Stratta
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