The Chase: Predicting 4 Top NASCAR Drivers Who Won’t Make The Cut

NASCAR’s return to The Chase this season and its changes with points scoring have proven to be a big hit among drivers and fans. Now that we’re through 16 points races this season in the Cup Series, it’s worth projecting what could happen later this year.

Let’s immediately dive right into our predictions for a few marquee NASCAR drivers who won’t make it into The Chast this season.

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Michael McDowell

It’s been a very good year for the majority of Spire Motorsports. Through 16 races, Daniel Suarez and Carson Hocevar have each won a points race and they are both firmly in the top-10 points leaders. Michael McDowell is on the other end of the spectrum. The No. 71 car has recorded just three top-10 finishes this season, his average finishing position has dropped (15.69 to 16.38) and he’s really not performing that well on ovals. While we do think he’ll get back into The Chase mix in the next two weeks at road courses, he’ll slide back down after that and finish the regular season in 18th.

Related: Michael McDowell Reveals Who His Successor Could Be

Bubba Wallace

Bubba Wallace started out the season on a hot streak. Through the first five races, he boasted an 8.8 average finishing position and averaged 38.8 points per race. In the last 11 races, he has an average finishing position of 21.6 while averaging 18.2 points per race. That is how you fall from a potential lock to make The Chase into being near the bubble. It is only going to get worse with San Diego and Sonoma coming up. Poor finishes there will hurt his metric score, resulting in a bad qualifying position at EchoPark and potentially North Wilkesboro. That will be costly, as will the 3 DNFs and multiple wrecks that delivered performance-altering damage to the No. 23 car in May. However, when Wallace finishes the regular season in 17th place, what will keep him out of the playoffs is the intentional contact into Carson Hocevar that easily cost Wallace double-digit points at Martinsville.

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Ross Chastain

Ross Chastain is arguably one of the 10 best drivers in NASCAR. Unfortunately, Trackhouse Racing and the No. 1 team have seemed to be ill-prepared for this season. After 16 races, Chastain sits 23rd in points behind the likes of AJ Allmendinger and Ricky Stenhouse Jr. After recording 12 top-10 finishes last year, he has just three on the season in 2026. Unfortunately for Chastain, Trackhouse has really shown no signs of an imminent turnaround. We think the team, along with some bad luck on the track, has put Chastain in deep enough of a hole that he will finish 19th in the standings.

Ryan Preece

Earlier in the season, it seemed like RFK Racing would get all three of its drivers into The Chase. Fast forward to the middle of June and both Ryan Preece and Brad Keselowski are below the cutline. Keselowski, even if his woes continue in the next two weeks, is too good of a driver and far too experienced to let this thing get away from him completely. Preece, on the other hand, is in a freefall with his last top-10 finish coming at Bristol and he has scored 30-plus points in a race just twice since COTA. With RFK’s priority being on Keselowski and Chris Buescher, Preece will slip further down the points leaderboard and end the regular season well below The Chase cutline.

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Related: Ryan Preece Faces Unclear Future with RFK Racing

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