The 18th part of the NASCAR The Cup Series playoffs and the eighth installment under the current format concluded Sunday afternoon with Hendrick Motorsports’ Kyle Larson fending off teammate Chase Elliott and Joe Gibbs Racing teammates Martin Truex Jr. and Denny Hamlin. to win the 2021 title.
Larson’s victory in this race was his 10th of the season, the most since Jimmie Johnson won 10 races en route to his second career and back-to-back title in 2007, and it was his fifth of the playoffs.
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Interestingly, if you remove the first 28 races of just Larson’s 36-race season from the record books, he still would have led the Cup Series in wins for 2021.
So it’s no surprise that even without any point resets, Larson would have been crowned champion, which had only been the case seven times after the first 17 playoffs.
REMARKS: This assumes that Championship 4 drivers can actually score stage points in the season finale. Since the introduction of stage races in 2017, stage points are not counted for these four drivers in this particular race. The actual finish of the ranking is included on the right, after the two points. The first 16 in real ranking participated in the playoffs. This also assumes all else remains equal, an unlikely scenario given the type of racing the playoffs produce.
- Kyle Larson – 1,472 (-): 1st
- Denny Hamlin – 1,435 (-37): 3rd
- Chase Elliott – 1,228 (-244): 4th
- Ryan Blaney – 1,158 (-314): 7th
- Martin Truex Jr. – 1,150 (-322): 2nd
- Kyle Busch – 1,147 (-325): 9th
- Kevin Harvick – 1,137 (-335): 5th
- William Byron – 1,134 (-338): 10th
- Joey Logano – 1,122 (-350): 8th
- Brad Keselowski – 1,079 (-393): 6th
- Tyler Reddick – 963 (-509): 13th
- Kurt Busch – 957 (-515): 11th
- Austin Dillon – 935 (-537): 17th
- Alex Bowman – 929 (-543): 14th
- Christophe Bell – 886 (-586): 12th
- Matt DiBenedetto – 775 (-697): 18th
- Chris Buescher – 771 (-701): 19th
- Ross Chastain – 729 (-743): 20th
- Bubba Wallace – 699 (-773): 21st
- Aric Almirola – 669 (-803): 15th
- Ricky Stenhouse Jr. – 666 (-806): 22nd
- Chase Briscoe – 655 (-817): 23rd
- Michael McDowell – 645 (-827): 16th
- Erik Jones – 641 (-831): 24th
- Daniel Suarez – 634 (-838): 25th
- Cole Custer – 575 (-897): 26th
- Ryan Preece – 557 (-915): 27th
- Ryan Newman – 546 (-926): 28th
- Corey LaJoie – 448 (-1,024): 29th
- Anthony Alfredo – 352 (-1,120): 30th
- Quin Houff – 176 (-1,296): 31st
Notably, the championship battle still would have come down to the final race on points alone, even if it would have only been between Larson and Hamlin and Larson would have entered the season finale 30 points ahead of Hamlin would have had a hard time. even close to erasure.
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The 2022 season is scheduled to begin on Sunday, February 20 with the 64th running of the Daytona 500 at Daytona International Speedway.
