After a chaotic Saturday night elimination race at Bristol Motor Speedway, the 12 drivers who survived and advanced in the Cup Series playoffs could breathe a sigh of relief … for about a nanosecond. Now comes the Round of 12, which promises to be just as nerve-wracking — more so, in fact, as drivers claw their way ever closer to the championship.

But some may have more to worry about than others. Five drivers (Denny Hamlin, Kyle Larson, William Byron, Christopher Bell and Ryan Blaney) enter the second round at least 19 points clear of the cutoff for the Round of 8, and a sixth (Chase Briscoe) is 10 points above the line. The rest — Chase Elliott, Bubba Wallace, Austin Cindric, Ross Chastain, Joey Logano and Tyler Reddick — are all within single-digits of the cut-line, either positively or negatively.

As we see in the chart above, the six drivers with double-digit buffers versus the cut are also sandwiched between 83 and 91 percent odds to move on, currently taking up 5.2 total expected spots in the Round of 8. (This means there are effectively six other drivers fighting over the remaining 2.8 spots to advance!) Hamlin is your favorite, checking in a bit over 90 percent, with Byron, Bell and Blaney not far behind.

At the edge of the top favorites, there are some interesting wrinkles. Briscoe, for instance, has a higher chance to advance than Larson in the model, despite Larson owning 14 more playoff points going into the round, while Wallace and Elliott sit well below them both. A lot of that has to do with Briscoe’s ongoing hot streak 

Even in terms of more recent form, Briscoe has also been better over the past 10 races by all three metrics. So it makes sense he would be expected to drive the wheels off his No. 19 JGR ride — metaphorically, that is, not literally — going forward as well. 

Larson hasn’t been doing his best racing recently, but his odds in the model are salvaged by the 32 playoff points he’s banked away — second-most behind Denny Hamlin’s 34 — as well as the fact that we’re headed to a trio of strong tracks for him in Loudon, Kansas and the Charlotte Roval.

Wallace and Elliott, meanwhile, are locked in a duel around 50-50 odds to make the next round, along with Reddick and Logano. That foursome of drivers is, unsurprisingly, under the most pressure immediately as we head to New Hampshire this weekend, followed by Cindric and Chastain (whose advancement odds are each a shade under 40 percent).

What makes their collective battle especially fascinating are all the factors pointing in opposite directions. In terms of recent performance, it’s hard to bet against Wallace — behind the wheel in one of those mighty Toyotas — given that he ranks No. 6 in Adjusted Points+ index and No. 4 in Driver Rating over the past 10 weeks, easily better than any of the other five names he’s tangling with below 80 percent in the model’s advancement odds. If we believe in peaking at the right time (and there’s evidence it matters a lot), Bubba ought to have the Round of 8 in his sights.

(Note that the forecast model bases its predictions on broad track types — ovals, short tracks, superspeedways and road courses — but doesn’t know about track affinities beyond that, meaning drivers who are disproportionately good at a particular site relative to others of that type will be better than projected.)

For their parts, Bubba and Ross are both former Kansas winners, with the former claiming the trophy in 2022 and the latter doing it a year ago. But neither has been as good there overall as the trio of Elliott/Reddick/Logano — in fact, Wallace has only been around average there in his career, and that’s his best track of the round. If the trade-off between form and fit favors consistent track success, Bubba is facing a real fight to be one of the eight drivers left standing next round.

That’s why we run the races, though. In the model’s simulations, the flashpoint battles that will swing the advancement odds most throughout the round center on just a handful of drivers, in order: Logano versus Elliott and Reddick; Elliott versus Chastain, Reddick, Wallace and Cindric; Wallace versus Chastain and Reddick. If things go according to projections, those are the matchups that will define the pressure-cooker of the Round of 12.

But we also have to leave room for our sport’s favorite plot twist: Chaos. So give the favorites their due, but recognize that no one is truly secure — and plenty of those names currently sitting above 80 percent could find themselves squarely in the middle of the storm a week from now. And honestly? That’s when the real race to survive begins.