Dr. Diandra: The path to 16 regular season winners

With six races left in the regular season, 14 drivers have earned wins and, most likely, playoff berths. Ryan Blaney and Martin Truex, Jr. are third and fourth in points, but their lack of wins makes them 15th and 16th seeds. Two new winners in the six remaining races — bringing us to 16 regular season winners — would shut both drivers out of the playoffs.

Unless, of course, they’re the drivers who win.

There has never been more than 16 winners by race 26.

Only twice in NASCAR Cup Series history have 16 different drivers won during the first 26 races of the year: in 1961 (when five new winners took the checkered flag in races 22 through 26) and again in 2003.

Fifteen different drivers winning in the first 26 races is pretty rare, too: It happened in 2001, 2002 and 2011.

Turning to today, 2022 is only the fifth time in Cup Series history that 14 different drivers won races by the 20th race of the season. The last three seasons with 14 winners in 20 races were 2011, 2003, and 2002. The first occurrence was in 1950, when there were only 19 races in the entire season.

Having so many different winners is a recent phenomenon. The 1970s never saw more than 10 winners by race number 20. In 1974, four drivers won 29 of the 30 races. Those days are long gone.

I’ll therefore focus my analysis on recent seasons. The graph below shows the number of winners after 20 races in green and the number of winners after 26 races in grey. The posted values are the number of winners as of race 20.

The likelihood of having 16 different drivers win a regular season race in 2022 depends on having two (or more) new winners in the next six races. Since 2000, new winners in races 21-26 ranged from zero to three.

These numbers suggest a high