The 2024 stage points report summarizes who was the best at racking up stage points to insulate themselves from bad luck in the playoffs, and to keep moving on in the playoffs. But only one of the top-four stage-point scorers made it to the Championship 4.
2024 Stage Points by Driver
Let’s look first at total stage points scored. For clarity, I’ve plotted only the top 10 stage-point earners on the graph below.
I’ve also included stage points for the Championship 4 at Phoenix in this total. (NASCAR doesn’t award stage points to them, but I think doing that skews the comparison.) Because of this difference, my numbers may not exactly match numbers you might see elsewhere.
Despite only running 35 races in 2024, Larson managed to earn the most stage points of any driver in the Cup Series with 312. That’s 22 points more than Ryan Blaney, the only one of the top-four stage-points earners who made it to the Championship 4.
Larson and Blaney were followed by Denny Hamlin, Christopher Bell and William Byron. Series champ Joey Logano managed only 193 playoff points — 61.8% of the points Larson earned. Regular season champ Tyler Reddick earned 228 stage points.
2024 Stage Points Relative to Finish Points
Winning, of course, requires stage points and points a driver gets from good finishes. So let’s examine how drivers balanced — or didn’t balance — the two types of points.
I show points from finish position in blue and stage points in red in the graph above. The stage are at the top of the stack.
- Larson reigns supreme again, with a total of 1185 points earned in just 35 races. It’s worth noting that the Coca-Cola 600, which he missed, is the one race that offers 30 maximum stage points because it is three stages.
- Bell again takes second place, with a total of 1163 points. That puts him just 22 points behind Larson.
- Chase Elliott did a middling job earning stage points, but he has the highest finish point total (923) of any driver. That’s consistent with his having the best average finish.
- Byron, Reddick, Blaney and Hamlin follow.
- Logano doesn’t even show up on this graph because he’s not in the top 10.
2024 Stage Wins
Larson leads all drivers in stage wins with 12, which includes sweeping both stage wins at the first Las Vegas race, the second Darlington race and the second Bristol race. You’re tired of me staying this, I’m sure, but those numbers reflect only 70 opportunities for stage wins, not 73 like all other full-time drivers. His stage-win percentage is thus 17.1%.
Bell comes in second with 11 stage wins, including two of the three stages at the Coca-Cola 600, plus both stages at Gateway and at Nashville. That’s a stage win percentage of 15.0 %
The only other driver to win multiple stages in a race was Ty Gibbs, who did so at the first Bristol race. Those were his only stage wins of the year.
As far as other drivers and stage wins:
- Hamlin won seven stages
- Reddick won six stages – five stage 1 wins and one stage 2 win.
- Blaney won five stages
- Martin Truex Jr. and Austin Cindric each won four stages.
- Logano won three stages.
And that’s the 2024 stage points report. For the rest of the posts in my by-the-numbers series, see the 2024 summary page.
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