You hear a lot about the upcoming Chase, which is NASCAR’s back-to-the-future name for its new championship postseason. 

“Playoffs” is gone and linguistically that’s probably good, since no one actually gets played off anymore through postseason eliminations. Nope, the 16 who make the Chase will also reach the season finale at Homestead as chasers, though some will be mathematically eliminated and therefore chasing at the "ghosts of what could’ve been."

You also hear some talk about points, as in the current points standings, and how that 16-driver Chase will fill out and proceed. Consider this your Chase primer, and it’ll come with a somewhat hypothetical example of how that Chase field will look.

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How NASCAR Chase points break down after Daytona race

Though Saturday night’s Coke Zero Sugar 400 will conclude the 26-race regular season, Denny Hamlin has clinched the No. 1 spot for when everything is teed up for the Chase. Like the former playoffs, the “regular-season championship” is also gone, so no trophy for Denny, but there’s a bonus of the second-best kind: points.

The first-place driver entering the Chase is handed 2,100 points and starts with a 25-point edge over second place. 

Second place starts with a 10-point edge over third. After that, from third through 16th, drivers are separated by five points at each position, which means by the time you get to No. 16, that driver starts the Chase 100 points behind Hamlin.

Those 100 points aren't insurmountable over 10 races, but it's quite a hole and, frankly, a deserving handicap given the comparison of accomplishments between first and 16th over the first 26 races.

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Here's how the Chase field would stack up now

With all that in mind, here’s where we turn a bit hypothetical and show you how the pre-Chase standings would look if the regular season was already done.

  1. Denny Hamlin, 2100
  2. Ryan Blaney, 2075
  3. Ty Gibbs, 2065
  4. Tyler Reddick, 2060
  5. Christopher Bell, 2055
  6. Chase Briscoe, 2050
  7. Kyle Larson, 2045
  8. Chase Elliott, 2040
  9. Joey Logano, 2035
  10. Chris Buescher, 2030
  11. Carson Hocevar, 2025
  12. William Byron, 2020
  13. Daniel Suarez, 2015
  14. Bubba Wallace, 2010
  15. Austin Cindric, 2005
  16. Shane van Gisbergen, 2000

2.5 miles where anything can and will happen.

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There’s a 31-point gap between SVG, in 16th, and 17th-place Ryan Preece, so this might not be the final 16 for the Chase. 

And there are plenty of tight margins between positions. Just 10 points separate ninth through 11th, for instance, so the running order will almost surely change.

But at least you now have an idea, a template, of how the Chase standings will look when the playoffs … oops … postseason Chase cranks to life next week at Darlington.

Email Ken Willis at ken.willis@news-jrnl.com

This article originally appeared on The Daytona Beach News-Journal: NASCAR Chase starts after Daytona. Here's how the new format works

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