One race remains in the Cup Series regular season and only two spots are available for championship-hopeful drivers. Now, it's time for the battle for playoff spots to end at Daytona International Speedway.
Fourteen drivers have punched their tickets to the playoffs with wins. This leaves only two spots, one of which will go to a driver based on points. It's the other spot that remains the wild card heading to the Florida superspeedway.
Tyler Reddick and Alex Bowman are currently the two drivers in the playoffs on points after Austin Dillon won at Richmond Raceway from below the cutline. Reddick has an 89-point cushion to the cutline. Bowman has a 60-point cushion.
Two playoff berths up for grabs.
One race where anything can happen. pic.twitter.com/YCJbsGaHwZ
— NASCAR (@NASCAR) August 17, 2025
Chris Buescher is 60 points back of a playoff spot, so he must win. The same goes for Ryan Preece, who sits 94 points below the cutline, and every other driver without a win this season.
While all of the drivers below the cutline are in must-win positions, that does not mean that Reddick and Bowman feel any comfort heading to Daytona. After all, this wild card track continues to produce new winners, which frequently shakes up the playoff picture.
If this trend continues another driver from below the cutline wins at Daytona, either Bowman or Reddick will miss the playoffs. So they will both have to points race each other while trying to avoid one of the inevitable multi-car crashes.
"Yeah, certainly really stressful on a lot of fronts," Bowman said after finishing second at Richmond.
"I mean, I think with the way that race normally goes, it's about a must-win at that point because I think you're most likely going to have a new winner. We just need to go execute and try to win the race. That's all we can really do."
This is far from the only example of a high-profile battle occurring at Daytona involving the drivers on the playoff cutline. Another example took place last season at the superspeedway, which hosted the penultimate race of the regular season.
Harrison Burton won the race in stunning fashion as Martin Truex Jr., Ty Gibbs, Buescher, Bubba Wallace, and Ross Chastain all battled for points. Burton took one of the remaining spots and increased the pressure on these drivers heading to the regular-season finale at Darlington.
The 2022 trip to Daytona played out in a similar fashion. Dillon won his way into the playoffs from below the cutline, which increased the importance of the points battle between Ryan Blaney and Truex Jr. Only one of these drivers could make the playoffs due to Dillon winning.
Blaney barely came out three points ahead of Truex Jr. despite spending nearly the entire race six laps behind the leaders due to a crash. He advanced to the playoffs while the 2017 Cup Series champion failed to make the 16-driver field.