The NASCAR Cup Series 10-race playoffs for the championship start at Darlington Raceway on Sunday with William Byron in the top-seeded position with five wins in the regular season.
Despite Byron being ranked first, FanDuel Sportsbook has Martin Truex Jr. as the favorite to win his second championship at +400, followed by Byron and Kyle Larson at +500 a piece.
Truex enters the playoffs tied with Byron for points (2,036) but has fewer wins with three to go along with his nine Top 5s and 15 Top 10s. Byron completed the regular season with the same amount of Top 5s but two fewer Top 10s than Truex. Larson is the sixth seed with two wins, 10 Top 5s and 12 Top 10s.
Truex won his first Cup Series championship in 2017, the same year Byron won the Xfinity Series. Larson is also competing for his second championship with his first in 2021.
How the rest of the field shakes out behind the three leaders:
Denny Hamlin +600
Kyle Busch +600
Christopher Bell +1200
Joey Logano +1400
Ross Chastain +1400
Ryan Blaney +1500
Brad Keselowski +1800
Tyler Reddick +1800
Chris Buescher +1800
Kevin Harvick +2200
Bubba Wallace +3500
Michael McDowell +6500
Ricky Stenhouse +10000
Out of the 16 drivers that qualified for the postseason only Keselowski, Harvick and Wallace did not win a race in the regular season and qualified with points.
Logano and Busch are both two-time Cup champions and Keselowski and Harvick join Truex and Larson, each having won one title while the rest of the field is racing for their first.
The playoffs are broken down into four rounds of three races in which four drivers are eliminated at the end of each round. In the final round, four drivers will battle for the championship over the course of the final three races in Las Vegas, Homestead-Miami and Martinsville.
