The end of NASCAR's regular season is near – but don't expect things to change

Kyle Busch is more than likely not going to be in the NASCAR postseason for the second consecutive season. Brad Keselowski won’t be there either. RFK Racing, actually, has a chance of missing the postseason with all three of its teams. There is a chance that Hendrick Motorsports and Joe Gibbs Racing will only have three drivers, out of their four, championship eligible.

There are two races left in the NASCAR Cup Series regular season and there are three spots still not clinched on the 16-driver playoff grid. On the one hand, it’s easy to say that there is a lot of racing still to do at the short track of Richmond Raceway and the superspeedway that is Daytona International Speedway.

Richmond did produce a surprise winner in Austin Dillon last year. But that surprise was overshadowed by how Dillon won the race and the controversy that followed in the days after as it was hotly debated whether spinning Joey Logano and hooking Denny Hamlin was fair or foul. NASCAR, of course, said it was foul and while Dillon kept the win, he was stripped of his postseason eligibility.

And then Daytona? Oh, how the industry loves that last minute wild card where the previews all week are filled with nothing but speculation, and expectation, that a driver is going to win their way into the postseason at the last minute. Harrison Burton and Chase Briscoe made sure that will continue this year after Burton won at Daytona in the penultimate race of the regular season in 2024 and Briscoe in the regular season finale a week later.

Burton and Briscoe were not in sniffing range of the Cup Series playoffs before those victories. Neither one was also seriously looked at as a championship contender but those moments were the one shining and defining moments of their seasons. There is nothing wrong with great stories and for those two weeks, the sport had that with Burton and the Wood Brothers, and Briscoe and Stewart-Haas Racing.

It’s not impossible for a repeat over the next two weeks. But it seems unlikely.

Could we see another outsider get in with a win at Daytona? Logan Riely/Getty Images

NASCAR Cup Series teams have run 24 races and the sample size is big enough to be able to differentiate between those who are right side up and those who are stuck upside down in the inflatable pool donut, legs flailing in the air as they fight to get their head back above the water. (You are lying if you’ve never been the person in that position or watched someone in that position.)

Joe Gibbs Racing has won eight races between three drivers, which leads the series. All three drivers should be legitimate championship contenders when the postseason begins. The fourth, Ty Gibbs, is still winless in the series, now in his third full season, and it’s going to take a win to qualify for the postseason. Chris Gabehart has been on the No. 54 pit box with crew chief Tyler Allen for nearly two months now as an added set of eyes and ears, and while there have been times where it seemed all was well, there still seems plenty more to do for that group.

If the Gibbs group is No. 1 in the series, it’s a close battle with Hendrick Motorsports. William Byron is headed toward the regular season championship and 15 additional playoff points, which would equate to three race wins. Those points might help ease the sting of a few wins that did get away from Byron and the No. 24 team this year.

On the other end of the spectrum, Kyle Larson has been up and down since the end of May. Chase Elliott has a lone win that is going to send him to the postseason but it seems you never know which No. 9 team is going to show up on a weekly basis. Then there is Alex Bowman again fighting around the bubble spot on the provisional playoff grid. Bowman has not won this year, and it was a win in Chicago during the summer 2024 that kept him from going down the wire of that regular season on the bubble.

Busch and Keselowski are winless. They are the two biggest names who are likely going to miss the postseason. It will not come as a surprise but if anything, just another reminder of how cyclical the sport is, and that it is possible to one day feel sorry for the best of the best.

Busch and Richard Childress Racing have preached for two seasons that it is not for a lack of effort of getting the company turned around, but the two-time series champion looks anything but with how things have gone. The same, perhaps, can be said for Keselowski. Now into his fourth season as driver and co-owner of RFK Racing, Keselowski, who has one win with his team, has been left behind by his teammates.

Chris Buescher and Ryan Preece can win on any given weekend. Unfortunately, they haven’t but there is far more hope watching those two drivers than Keselowski on some Sundays.

There is no telling what will happen over the next two weekends. The sport might get two more feel good stories or two last-minute entries into the postseason. But these next two races are not going to change that the good teams are the good teams, and others are just fighting for relevancy and any sort of bright spot to take into next year.