CHARLOTTE, N.C. — Over the course of the last week, everybody has made their best guess at what will happen throughout the NASCAR Cup Series Playoffs.
But what do the drivers themselves think will happen across the next 10 weeks of postseason racing?
During NASCAR Playoffs Media Day at the Charlotte Convention Center on Wednesday, the 16 eligible playoff drivers were all granted anonymity to answer a series of eight questions, allowing their most candid responses. Listed alphabetically, the drivers polled were Christopher Bell, Josh Berry, Ryan Blaney, Alex Bowman, Chase Briscoe, William Byron, Ross Chastain, Austin Cindric, Austin Dillon, Chase Elliott, Shane van Gisbergen, Denny Hamlin, Kyle Larson, Joey Logano, Tyler Reddick and Bubba Wallace.
Drivers were encouraged to answer and given the option to elaborate on answers if they wished to do so. Some drivers even provided multiple answers to a particular question. Across a wide range of topics, some questions had clear answers. Others highlight the uncertainty that exists entering the playoffs. Without further ado, here is what drivers had to say:
1. Besides yourself, who do you consider the championship favorite?
The man who won the Regular Season Championship is also favored by his peers to go all the way and win the 2025 NASCAR Cup Series Championship.
Hendrick Motorsports’ William Byron earned eight votes from the playoff roster as the favorite to win the championship this year, a result that would end the reign of Team Penske’s three consecutive titles. However, six of the 16 drivers also pointed to Penske’s Ryan Blaney to earn his second Cup championship to follow his 2023 ascension.
Byron is a two-time winner this year and locked up the regular-season title with one week to spare. Blaney rocketed to second in the final regular-season standings and also ended with two wins, one at Nashville Superspeedway and another at Daytona International Speedway. But despite earning a collective 14 votes, the sentiment among drivers is still strong: There is no clear favorite.
“Honestly, I don’t know. No one’s had a breakout year,” one driver said.
Others agreed, unbeknownst to them:
“I don’t have a favorite.”
“I have to pick one?”
“That’s tough.”
Three drivers gave multiple options for their votes. One voted for Byron and Christopher Bell; another voted for those two and Kyle Larson. One more voted for Byron, Bell and Denny Hamlin.
“I would say Byron — well, I don’t know. A Penske car if they make it to Phoenix,” said the driver who voted for Byron, Bell and Hamlin. “I think Byron’s put together a really strong year. Hard to argue against Denny. And I think Bell’s always got a shot as well.”
Another driver cast a single vote for Byron, but added: “That’s tough. I mean, it’s pretty even at the top.”
Rounding out the vote-getters was Tyler Reddick, who earned a single ballot.
| Driver | Number of votes |
|---|---|
| William Byron | 8 |
| Ryan Blaney | 6 |
| Chirstopher Bell | 3 |
| Denny Hamlin | 2 |
| Kyle Larson | 1 |
| Tyler Reddick | 1 |
2. Besides your own, which crew chief do you think can most impact the race with a strategy call?
Unsurprisingly, this question produced one of the most definitive answers of the survey, with Paul Wolfe getting the nod with eight votes as crew chief of the No. 22 Team Penske Ford and driver Joey Logano.
“That’s probably the hot answer,” one driver said. He was right.
Wolfe’s bold strategy calls have perfectly placed Logano into race-winning contention in multiple scenarios when it seemed the No. 22 Ford was down and out. Last year, a last-ditch effort to leave Logano out in quintuple overtime at Nashville earned the group its only win of the 2024 regular season to earn a playoff spot. And at Las Vegas Motor Speedway in the Round of 8, another fuel-strategy play leaped Logano into Las Vegas Victory Lane and into the Championship 4, in which Logano earned his third NASCAR Cup Series title at Phoenix.
Wolfe wasn’t the only crew chief to receive votes here, though. Rudy Fugle, head of Byron’s No. 24 team at Hendrick, had the next highest tally with three votes.
“I feel like Rudy’s pretty good at that with William,” one driver said. “They do a great job.”
“I guess Rudy has done it recently with his fuel thing at Iowa,” another said.
Adam Stevens, crew chief of Bell’s No. 20 Toyota, received one vote, as did 23XI Racing’s Charles Denike with driver Bubba Wallace and Ross Chastain’s crew chief Phil Surgen.
Two drivers declined to answer — one because he wasn’t sure of everyone’s crew chiefs, and another simply because he couldn’t think of another crew chief to vouch for.
“Some people do different things, but they’re not right,” that driver said. “I don’t know if I have an answer. Is ‘no answer’ an answer?”
For our purposes, yes. No answer sufficed.
| Crew chief | Number of votes |
|---|---|
| Paul Wolfe | 8 |
| Rudy Fugle | 3 |
| No answer | 2 |
| Adam Stevens | 1 |
| Charles Denike | 1 |
| Phil Surgen | 1 |
3. Which playoff driver races you the hardest?
This question produced the only tie of the questionnaire, making Bubba Wallace and Joey Logano co-winners of this question with four votes apiece.
One driver particularly struggled with this question — which is a good thing for their sake — before ultimately casting a vote for Logano.
“I’m on pretty good terms with most of them right now,” he said. “I mean I think this is really good that I’m struggling to pick this.”
Ross Chastain was a close third with three votes, but three separate drivers received single votes: Denny Hamlin, Kyle Larson and Chase Briscoe.
“Briscoe will race you hard at all times in every situation,” said Briscoe’s lone voter. “Just a hard racer, for sure.”
There were two competitors, however, who opted for no answer on this question — one with no elaboration, and another citing the current intensity of modern Cup racing.
“We all race each other like [expletives] now,” that driver said.
| Driver | Number of votes |
|---|---|
| Bubba Wallace | 4 |
| Joey Logano | 4 |
| Ross Chastain | 3 |
| No answer | 2 |
| Denny Hamlin | 1 |
| Kyle Larson | 1 |
| Chase Briscoe | 1 |
4. Which playoff track are you most looking forward to?
An array of race tracks found themselves on the list, but none could beat the “Lady in Black.”
Darlington Raceway, host of Sunday night’s playoff opener (6 ET, USA Network, HBO Max, MRN Radio, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio, NBC Sports App), led the way with six votes in Wednesday’s survey. A fair assumption could be made that this answer was popular thanks to Darlington being the first up in the postseason, evidenced by one driver’s statement — “the next one” — tallying one vote for the track “Too Tough to Tame.”
Bristol Motor Speedway and Kansas Speedway were each tied at three votes apiece, in part due to drivers’ past successes at those tracks. Two drivers even commented: “All of them.”
“Honestly, all of them,” one driver said. “The only wild card for us is Talladega (Superspeedway), but that’s a wild card for everybody. But [I’m] looking forward to every track on the schedule.”
Phoenix Raceway, site of the championship race, received two votes as well, with Las Vegas — the Round of 8 opener — receiving just one vote.
| Track | Number of votes |
|---|---|
| Darlington Raceway | 6 |
| Bristol Motor Speedway | 3 |
| Kansas Speedway | 3 |
| Phoenix Raceway | 2 |
| All of them | 2 |
| Las Vegas Motor Speedway | 1 |
5. Which playoff round is the most challenging?
The Round of 8 was the runaway winner, earning the single-most votes of any category in this year’s survey with a whopping nine tallies.
That penultimate round of the postseason features the 1.5-mile Las Vegas Motor Speedway, 2.66-mile superspeedway Talladega and the 0.526-mile Martinsville Speedway.
That this particular section of the playoffs has most drivers’ attention should come as very little surprise. This year marks Talladega’s first so late in the postseason push to determine the Championship 4. The Alabama behemoth fosters pack racing via drafting, keeping the 36-plus-car field bunched tightly together and inherently heightening the odds of a driver getting collected in someone else’s mistakes.
Each of the four rounds of the postseason received votes, though, so not everyone was intimidated most by the Round of 8. The opening stanza — the Round of 16 featuring Darlington, World Wide Technology Raceway at Gateway and Bristol — was tied for second with three votes along with the Round of 12, which is made up by New Hampshire Motor Speedway, Kansas Speedway and the Charlotte Motor Speedway Roval.
One driver opted to hold the sheet of questions throughout this interview and saw a reminder of what tracks made up each round. Reminded that the Championship 4 at Phoenix does count as a playoff round of its own, that driver cast his vote for the finale as the most challenging of the playoffs.
| Playoff Round | Number of votes |
|---|---|
| Round of 8 | 9 |
| Round of 16 | 3 |
| Round of 12 | 3 |
| Championship 4 | 1 |
6. Which non-playoff driver do you think could play the biggest spoiler role in these races?
Surely, Chris Buescher isn’t one for consolation prizes, so this honor likely won’t mean much to him. But seven of the 16 playoff drivers pointed to the driver of the No. 17 RFK Racing Ford as the driver on the outside who could find a way to spoil the postseason all over again.
Buescher was the driver highest in points following last week’s race at Daytona who did not advance to the postseason thanks to this year’s 14 winners throughout the regular season. No one will be shocked if Buescher finds his way to Victory Lane over the closing 10 weeks of the season. He and his team did it just last year by winning at Watkins Glen International in the first round of the 2024 playoffs. This year, they have shown consistent speed, particularly in recent weeks, and Buescher nearly won the 2024 spring race at Darlington before late contact with Reddick.
Kyle Busch, the two-time Cup champion, still has the respect of his competition as well by earning five votes from his fellow racers. He’s won 63 times at this level but zero since the summer of 2023, extending his career-long winless streak to 83 races. One driver said it best, though: “You can never count Kyle Busch out.”
Some drivers wondered aloud exactly what a “spoiler” meant in this scenario — and we left that up to their interpretation.
“See, does a spoiler cause chaos? Or does the spoiler have to win?” one said. “Because there’s plenty of those guys that cause chaos.”
Enter our third-place vote-getter, Carson Hocevar, who received one vote by a driver seeing his name on a list of non-playoff competitors and exclaiming: “That guy. He’ll crash into someone.”
Hocevar is still seeking his first career Cup win but has found himself in the mix multiple times this season, catching both the eyes and ire of his fellow racers.
Two drivers cast multiple votes rather than narrowing their answers to one. One voted for an RFK duo of Buescher and Ryan Preece (another racer looking for his first Cup win), and another voted for a combo of them and Busch. Also receiving votes were RFK co-owner and driver Brad Keselowski and Trackhouse’s Daniel Suárez.
| Driver | Number of votes |
|---|---|
| Chris Buescher | 7 |
| Kyle Busch | 5 |
| Carson Hocevar | 3 |
| Ryan Preece | 2 |
| Brad Keselowski | 1 |
| Daniel Suárez | 1 |
7. Who will be the biggest surprise to advance out of the Round of 16?
With six votes in his favor and 22 playoff points to his credit, Shane van Gisbergen narrowly won this category, receiving six votes.
The Trackhouse Racing rookie has, in one sense, had a remarkable season by winning a rookie-record four races, all coming at road courses. The counter to that, however, is that the No. 88 Chevrolet driver ranked 25th in points before the playoff reset, largely due to his inexperience on ovals in the Next Gen car.
This opening round features a daunting trio of tracks in Darlington, Gateway and Bristol. The New Zealand native earned a top-20 finish at Darlington in April and has expressed his excitement for that particular weekend. However, he has never raced at Gateway before, and his Bristol debut in April was over before halfway due to an early crash. He enters the postseason 16 points above to provisional cutline.
“I don’t think he will [advance], but if he does, SVG,” one driver said in casting their vote.
Second in this category was Austin Dillon, the driver of the No. 3 Richard Childress Racing entry and recipient of four votes. Dillon won the regular season’s penultimate race at Richmond Raceway to clinch his playoff spot, but enters the playoffs 15th of the 16 drivers, two points beneath the cutline, with four drivers set to be eliminated from the postseason after Bristol. Contrary to the lack of confidence in the above SVG ballot, one driver was quite sure of Dillon’s advancement.
“It may be a surprise to some, but I see Austin Dillon advancing,” he said. “He’s good at Darlington.”
Three votes went the way of Josh Berry, the third-place sitter. Berry won at Las Vegas in the fifth race of the season to lock himself and the No. 21 Wood Brothers Racing Ford into the playoffs. The sophomore Cup driver finished third at Darlington in the spring of 2024 and has two 12th-place finishes at Bristol in three starts at the “Last Great Colosseum.”
“If we’re going off of performance, I look at the 21,” one driver said. “For whatever reason, they started out the year really hot and just have been OK at best as of late.”
Said another: “People are writing off Josh Berry a lot. I think he’s going to make it out.”
Austin Cindric also received two votes in this section, while Alex Bowman received one.
| Driver | Number of votes |
|---|---|
| Shane van Gisbergen | 6 |
| Austin Dillon | 4 |
| Josh Berry | 3 |
| Austin Cindric | 2 |
| Alex Bowman | 1 |
8. Who will be the biggest surprise to be eliminated early?
Five drivers said that Tyler Reddick will be an early out in this year’s postseason run.
Reddick was the Regular Season Champion in 2024 and stormed his way to the Championship 4. But the results haven’t been quite the same for the No. 45 team at 23XI Racing in 2025. The team has yet to win a race this season and was in jeopardy of missing the playoffs altogether if things had gone differently in the regular-season finale at Daytona. Reddick enters the playoffs in 14th place in the playoff standings, tied with Josh Berry at one point beneath the cutline.
Christopher Bell, interestingly, received three votes along with 2020 Cup champion Chase Elliott for a second-place tie in this category. What’s more eye-catching about this is that Elliott ranks first in average finish this season at 12.0, with Bell second at 12.5.
Bell won three races in a row at the beginning of the season but has not won since March. The No. 20 Toyota driver finished second three races ago at Watkins Glen International but hasn’t scored a top-five finish at an oval since Kansas in May. Elliott snapped a 44-race winless streak in late June with a victory at EchoPark Speedway near Atlanta, but has just one top five and three top 10s in the eight races since that breakthrough win.
Joey Logano, the defending Cup Series champion, received two votes as a possible early elimination, with William Byron and Chase Briscoe also receiving one vote each. One driver declined to answer.
And yes, you read that right — there is technically one vote for Byron, the Regular Season Champion and the guy who enters tied with teammate Kyle Larson for the series lead heading into the playoffs. How?
“Is it mathematically possible for the 24 [to go out early]?” one driver asked. “Yeah, if he DNFs… 24.”
A surprise to be sure, if it happens.
| Driver | Number of votes |
|---|---|
| Tyler Reddick | 5 |
| Christopher Bell | 3 |
| Chase Elliott | 3 |
| Joey Logano | 2 |
| William Byron | 1 |
| Chase Briscoe | 1 |
| No answer | 1 |
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