NASCAR is officially in a holding pattern as the world deals with the COVID-19 outbreak.
Because engines will be silent until at least May 9 at Martinsvile, and likely even longer, I decided to take a stab at picking the winners for each of the remaining Cup Series races on the schedule.
To determine my winners I used historical data, as well as what we've seen already this year, plus some good old-fashioned gut feel.
In betting it's important to take our guts out of the equation, but since odds value isn't a factor here, I'm factoring in my bias as well. Besides, it would be easy to just pencil in some combination of Kevin Harvick, Kyle Busch, Martin Truex Jr. and Joey Logano to win every race, but that's not how it works.
Upsets happen, so I'll throw some surprise winners in along the way as well.
Please note that my winners listed below differ from those in my 3 bold predictions article because, as "bold" implies, those are specifically meant to be extremely unlikely scenarios, while this piece is attempting to project the most probable results.
Without further ado, here are my projected winners for each of the remaining races this season.
2020 NASCAR Cup Series Predicted Winners
Here's the final tally of my 2020 NASCAR Cup Series winners:
- Kevin Harvick: 7 wins
- Joey Logano: 5 wins (already won at Phoenix and Auto Club, includes All-Star Race)
- Chase Elliott: 4 wins
- Kyle Busch: 4 wins
- Kyle Larson: 3 wins
- Martin Truex Jr.: 3 wins
- Ryan Blaney: 2 wins
- Denny Hamlin: 2 wins (already won Daytona 500)
- Alex Bowman: 2 wins (already won at Auto Club)
- Brad Keselowski: 2 wins
- Chris Buescher: 1 win
- Ricky Stenhouse Jr.: 1 win
- Kurt Busch: 1 win
With seven wins on the year, including two in the final three races and the season-ending event at Phoenix, my projections imply that Kevin Harvick will win the 2020 NASCAR Cup Series Championship assuming he points his way through the playoffs before winning at Texas.
