At first glance, Chase Elliott’s playoff struggles are hard to see.
At this point in the season, Elliott has the highest driver rating. He ranks first in his average running position, lap lead and quality passing. He also has the most wins and top 10 finishes, lining up with Ross his Chastain for most of the top 5 finishes.
Only after separating the regular season and playoff numbers does the playoff struggle become clearer.
The graph below shows the race and stage points earned over the seven playoff races. We ordered the drivers from left to right, in descending order of their race points.
Elliott ranks eighth out of eight drivers in race points awarded during the playoffs. He has his 140 race points to leader Denny Hamlin’s 213.
Elliott also scored the fewest stage points (37) of the eight drivers shown, excluding Chase Briscoe.
However, Briscoe scored 37 more race points than Elliott.
finish
Let’s start with Chase Elliott’s final standings for 2022. I’ve included the numbers and percentages in the table below. This allows us to compare the 26-race regular season with his seven playoff races completed.
In the top four rows, higher numbers are better. Elliott’s win rate is fairly consistent. But his playoff numbers are well below his regular season numbers in his other three metrics.
The last two lines show better statistics with lower numbers. Again, Elliott’s playoff numbers are significantly worse than their regular season numbers.
Volume translates to an average finishing position of 10.5 in the regular season and 17.6 in the playoffs.
As the chart below shows, Elliot has the lowest average grade of all eight candidates.
Only Elliott and Ryan Blaney are performing significantly lower than their regular season levels. Blaney he’s only 2.3 positions down and Elliott he’s 7.1 positions down.
In addition to the average final standings stats:
- Elliott led an average of 27.6 laps in the regular season races, but only 12.0 laps per race in the playoffs.
- The average number of fastest laps posted by Elliott dropped from 13.8 in the regular season to 5.7 in the playoffs.
But these are symptoms. What we really want to know is their cause. Three areas stand out in the data analysis: qualifying, speed and track type.
qualifying round
Elliott’s average qualifying position in the playoffs is 7.2 places worse than in the regular season.
He started 20th or lower in four of his seven playoff races. During his regular season, he started as far back as that in 3 of his 26 races.
Qualifying behind makes it harder to score stage points, especially in the first stage. They also spend more time in traffic jams, which increases the chances of a collision and requires more energy from the driver.
Qualifying well is an important part of Elliott’s winning streak. His average qualifying position over the five races he has won this season is his 5.6. Removing the 16th-place qualifier at Talladega (playoffs) would give Elliott an average qualifying position of 3.0 with four regular season race wins.
The correlation between qualifying and winning near the front line boded well for Elliott at Homestead, where he qualified third.
speed
Elliott ranked 9.4 average for all drivers in green flag speed during the regular season. Compare that to the playoff average ranking of 11.1.
The ranking of blue flag speed drivers compared to other drivers provides a good way to compare races. By using rank instead of raw speed, uncontrollable factors such as temperature and road surface are no longer taken into account. Everyone experiences the same conditions.
We can expect Elliott to race better on the tracks he has already visited. Elliott’s average blue flag speed rankings were about the same for the two Kansas races. However, his ranking fell from 12th in Darlington where he was to 20th. Elliott also dropped from 10th at the spring Las Vegas races at Blue Flag Speed where he was 10th to 24th at the fall races.
Elliott’s teammates didn’t have the same change. For example, Kyle Larson increased his flag speed from his eighth to his third on the green in Las Vegas. William Byron dropped from his 6th place to 12th. This suggests that speed is not a company-wide issue. But I don’t know if Elliott was slower or other drivers were faster.
Track type
Elliott’s average finish on the 1.5-mile non-superspeedway track this year is 22.5. His best result was his ninth place at the spring Las Vegas race.
Only three tracks were included in the regular season schedule: Las Vegas, Kansas and Charlotte. Only 11.5% of all regular season races.
In contrast, three of the seven playoff races were on the intermediate track. The playoffs highlight Elliott’s weakness on this type of track.
Again, this seems to be specific to the No. 9 team rather than Hendrick Motorsport as a company. Byron averages 13.1 on the intermediate track and Larson averages 10.3.
At least one of those three factors doesn’t matter on Homestead (2:30 PM ET, NBC). Elliott finished third, just behind Byron and Christopher Bell.
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