1) Which four drivers will be eliminated in the Cup Series Round of 16?
Luken Glover: It’s hard to see Josh Berry and Austin Dillon getting out of the first round. Don’t completely dismiss their chances to advance, but the results and consistent speed don’t make a strong enough argument to like their odds, though both have found more speed in recent weeks. Despite a solid points cushion, Shane van Gisbergen is going to have a tall order to advance out of the first round. He’s never been to World Wide Technology Raceway at Gateway, and though Darlington Raceway and Bristol Motor Speedway possess characteristics that favor his style, he’s still at a sizable disadvantage compared to the competition. Tyler Reddick is in a position to be the first upset elimination, though it may not be much of one. Reddick’s playoff scenario has been completely inverted from a year ago when he won the regular-season championship. This year, he will commence the postseason below the cut line, and the speed/execution of the No. 45 team doesn’t ooze confidence.
Christopher Hansen: Dillon, Berry, Austin Cindric and van Gisbergen. Dillon and Berry haven’t shown race-winning speed aside from when they won at Richmond Raceway and Las Vegas Motor Speedway, respectively. Since his victory at Talladega Superspeedway, Cindric has only finished in the top five one other race: fifth at Richmond two races ago. Despite his incredible performance on road courses, van Gisbergen’s Cup playoff debut will come to an end in the opening round. Despite overall improvement on the ovals from the beginning of the season to now, he needs to boost his performance by earning stage points if he hopes to avoid a round one exit.
Andrew Stoddard: Berry has only three top 10s since his lone, playoff-clinching victory at Vegas in March. Though two of those three top 10s came in the last two races, there is not enough momentum and performance behind the Wood Brothers Racing No. 21 to move past the Round of 16. Unfortunately for Dillon, Richmond is not in the Round of 16, so he will be dispatched quickly too. The inconsistency of the regular season and the drama at 23XI Racing will get to Reddick and the No. 45. He will go from the Championship 4 in 2024 to one of the first four gone in 2025. Van Gisbergen’s 16-point margin above the cut line will not be enough to survive the oval gauntlet of Darlington, Gateway and Bristol. He’ll take solace in four wins and Rookie of the Year honors.
Landon Quesinberry: Berry, Dillon, Ross Chastain and Reddick. Berry and Dillon are self-explanatory; the two are long shots to figure something out that would make them championship caliber. Chastain, apart from Charlotte Motor Speedway, has been concerning this season. His performances have been very up and down, and then you look at how the team has struggled in qualifying and that all the tracks in the first round favor track position. Reddick is a bold choice, but typically there is one surprise exit every year, and unfortunately for Reddick, he hasn’t looked anywhere close to his Championship 4 form last year.
2) Which Cup driver missing the playoffs is the biggest disappointment?
Quesinberry: You could make a case for all of the RFK Racing drivers here, but Brad Keselowski is the clear answer. It really looked like Keselowski and the No. 6 team took a major step forward last year after finally finding victory lane again. The team was also solidly consistent. Fast forward to this year and it was a complete and utter disaster. The team looked nowhere near as fast it was last season, and when it did show speed it would get thrown away either by poor luck or self-inflicted mistakes by the team. It’s turned the corner since the beginning of the year, but it was still an inexcusable year.
Hansen: Kyle Busch. Busch is a two-time Cup champion and a future Hall of Fame inductee with 63 Cup wins to his credit. But his three-win season in 2023 seems like ages ago because of how miserable Busch’s luck has been the last two seasons. While he showed race-winning speed at Circuit of the Americas early in the season, 2025 has been a downright disappointing year for Busch and his No. 8 team, and even more so with teammate Dillon winning his way into the playoffs.
Stoddard: It’s been nearly three years since Ty Gibbs went full time in the Cup Series with Joe Gibbs Racing, a perennial championship contender. Gibbs and the No. 54 team have no wins and just one short playoff appearance in 2024 to show for it. Even putting Chris Gabehart atop the pit box to help with race strategy could not push Gibbs to the playoffs, though it did get him $1 million through the In-Season Challenge. Gibbs has unlimited job security because his last name is on the building, but right now, he is wasting a high-quality ride.
Glover: RFK as a whole has to feel punched in the gut for missing the playoffs, especially when all three of its drivers have races they can point to where they should have won. One of the team’s employees tweeted that missing the playoffs shouldn’t classify your season as a failure, and he’s absolutely right. Unfortunately, that’s the mentality that has been marketed to fans by the networks since the playoffs’ inception, which changes the perspective of how many will view RFK’s season. Just a few weeks before the conclusion of the regular season, there was reason to believe the organization could get two cars into the playoffs. Instead, it’ll have to focus on reaching victory lane while aiming to put itself in a better position next season.
3) Chris Buescher missed the playoffs despite being 10th in regular-season points. Is this a problem?
Stoddard: It’s a big problem. Whenever NASCAR gets around to revising the playoff format, it needs to make strides toward better rewarding consistency throughout the regular season. The full-season points system from pre-2004 will likely never return, but a good solution would be a return to the 2011- to 2013-era Chase in which the top 10 in regular-season points received automatic berths to the playoffs. Then, the remaining six spots can go to race winners outside the top 10, with the highest non-winning drivers outside the top 10 filling in the grid from there.
Quesinberry: Absolutely. It’s inexcusable, because this is a team that can absolutely perform at a level that could score it a championship. That’s the biggest problem with this format. While in theory this format should give playoff upsets that rival the NFL, the problem is this doesn’t translate to NASCAR at all. Chris Buescher is comparable to a 11-6 team in the NFL but is missing the playoffs, while Dillon makes the title fight because he won despite having a season comparable to last year’s 4-13 New England Patriots. Underdogs fighting for a title are great, but they actually need to have a fighting shot to win. You would have to suspend disbelief to believe a team that put together five top 10s across the entire season is going to figure it out and spank the field in the final 10 races. While everyone in the playoffs deserves to be there in terms of the rules that they currently follow, it is also OK to say that there are flaws in how something is done.
Glover: It’s really a fundamental problem with these playoffs. Yes, winning races should matter. But what we gained by rewarding wins with this format, we sacrificed by demeaning the value of points and consistency. Had we seen two additional winners during the regular season, three drivers in the top 10 in points would be out while at least three drivers outside the top 20 would have been in. That should not happen, period. Excitement, entertainment and performing when the lights are brightest are important, but that should be felt during the entire season. There’s a happy medium to be found between the playoffs and full-season points, but a driver who’s 10th in points should not lose their opportunity at a title before someone who did not crack the top 20, regardless of wins.
Hansen: It’s a problem because this shows that being in the top 10 in points doesn’t hold the same weight it did in previous versions of the playoffs prior to the current elimination format. Buescher didn’t have the most flashy regular season, but he did score four top fives and 13 top 10s. Those stats are greatly overshadowed by the fact that Buescher failed to win a race during the regular season, leaving him on the outside of the playoffs for a second straight year.
4) Where does Connor Zilisch’s 2025 season rank among all-time NASCAR Xfinity Series seasons?
Glover: Among rookie campaigns, it has to be in that top echelon. What has been so impressive about Connor Zilisch‘s season is the fact that he has won on nearly every track type. That shows versatility and quick learning, integral factors in his promotion to the Cup Series next year. The other mind-boggling statistic is that he hasn’t finished outside of the top five since returning from injury at Charlotte in May. Throw in the adversity caused by a pair of injuries this season, and the result is a season that is on track to be one for the history books.
Stoddard: We can’t be entirely certain until after the championship race at Phoenix Raceway. That said, Zilisch’s season is the most impressive since Busch’s absolute domination of the series in 2009, posting nine wins and claiming the championship by a comfortable 210 points over Carl Edwards. Zilisch has nothing more to prove in the series, and his promotion to the Cup Series with Trackhouse Racing in 2026 is absolutely deserved, despite only being 19 years old.
Hansen: In terms of rookies, Zilisch is on a completely different level with his seven victories this year. Christopher Bell’s seven-victory 2018 season was the last time a rookie driver scored that high a win total in their debut season, which Zilisch matched at Daytona International Speedway despite Parker Kligerman driving the No. 88 to the race win in a relief role. The phenom has won on several different track configurations, including road courses, ovals and even Pocono Raceway, a nontraditional oval layout, in his first full Xfinity season. If Zilisch reaches double digits in wins this season, it will rank as one of the best single seasons in Xfinity history, rivaling Busch’s 13 wins in the 2010 season.
Quesinberry: It would rank in the top three all time, maybe even the greatest. Everything that he has done so far would already make it a season for the history books. If he scores a few more wins and ends up scoring the title, it’s hard to argue there was a better season. It has everything going for it. He’s a rookie, he’s dominated the summer, he’s come back from injury twice. What more could you want?
Entering his fifth year with Frontstretch, Luken Glover is the author of The Underdog House, shedding light on the motivation and performance of NASCAR's dark horse teams as they strive to fight to the top. Additionally, Glover reports for the site at various events, and he contributes in the video editing department.
A 2023 graduate of the University of the Cumberlands, Glover is a middle school math and PE teacher, as well as a basketball coach. He is passionate about serving in his church, playing/coaching a wide variety of sports, and researching motorsports history.
Andrew Stoddard joined Frontstretch in May of 2022 as an iRacing contributor. He is a graduate of Hampden-Sydney College, the University of Richmond, and VCU. He works as an athletic communications specialist at Eastern Mennonite University in Harrisonburg, Va.