Chase Elliott is outdoing his NASCAR championship season; Josh Berry is racing for a job; Iowa shines

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For the third straight week, there's a new NASCAR Cup Series points leader.

There won't be a more popular one all year.

Chase Elliott came home third at Iowa on Sunday, continuing on a remarkably consistent 2024 campaign. In 17 points-paying events, Elliott has finished no worse than 19th. He's the only driver yet to finish outside the top 20.

“Just continuing to put together solid days,” a happy Elliott reflected. “Just need a little bit more to kind of set the pace and be up there leading laps like I think we can.”

Nearly by any metric, he's been good. But as good as his championship-winning season in 2020?

Impossible, right?

Hardly. He may be even better.

Sure, Elliott has just one win this year, a victory at Texas. But at this point in 2020, Elliott also had just one win. He'd go on to claim four more over the final 14 events and those late surges are a trend. Of his 19 career victories, 13 have come after the season's halfway point, in which NASCAR arrives this Sunday at New Hampshire.

Elliott has the same number of top-five finishes (seven) and top 10s (nine) right now as he did at this point in 2020 and his average finish of 9.1 is far ahead of the 13.9 he posted through 17 races four years ago. That 9.1 would be the best average finish for a season since Denny Hamlin posted an 8.4 in 2021, the year before the Gen-7 car's arrival.

And yeah, maybe more often than not, Elliott might not quite have race-winning pace, yet.

But he still may very will be on pace for his second title.

Let's go through the gears:

First gear

Ryan Blaney clinched a playoff berth with a win on Sunday. Yet the most important result may have been a seventh-place run for Josh Berry.

There were also 15 stage points to go with it, but it was a third top-10 in the last five races for Berry who, maybe more than any of his lame-duck, Stewart-Haas brethren, is auditioning for a job with every lap.

Chase Briscoe has been heavily rumored to be the favorite for the Joe Gibbs Racing No. 19 car and has also been connected to the No. 21. Noah Gragson figures to land on his feet and Ryan Preece may be headed back to the Xfinity Series.

What becomes of Berry? The jury is still out. But runs like Sunday's can only help.

Second gear

While the racing was fantastic, it was hard not to notice that Iowa Speedway looked a little wonky.

That's because a repave wasn't completed, leaving the bottom 2-3 lanes with a fresh coat of blacktop and the top groove an old, faded shade of gray.

And while there were a few stragglers, most drivers claimed finishing the repave could only help an already racy surface. After all, why go three-wide when you can go four-wide?

Third gear

Blaney's victory on Sunday more or less finished off what seemed inevitable by locking him into the playoffs.

With Blaney having already been in good shape on points, it was no harm, no foul, to those hovering near the bubble, including Chris Buescher (15th), Bubba Wallace (16th), Joey Logano (17th) and Kyle Busch (18th). Just 52 points separate those four with Logano just six off of the cutline with nine regular season races to go.

Fourth gear

Denny Hamlin (9.4) and Brad Keselowski (9.8) have the best career average finishes at New Hampshire with Hamlin and Kyle Busch having each won three times, tops among active drivers. Martin Truex Jr. has led 426 laps over the last three events there, 350 more than anyone else.