NASCAR playoffs at Las Vegas: Where to watch, live stream, preview, expert picks for the South Point 400

After two full rounds of playoff racing, the decisive point in the 2024 NASCAR Cup Series season -- the one that will determine which four drivers stand above the rest -- has arrived. Eight drivers now remain in the playoffs. To have made it into the Round of 8 now means that the next frontier to be reached is the Championship 4. To advance to the championship round is to earn a chance to race for the Cup Series title, and perhaps fittingly, the first opportunity to become assured of that comes in Sin City.

The Round of 8 begins with the South Point 400 at Las Vegas Motor Speedway, where a win for the eight remaining playoff drivers will make them the first to earn the right to compete for the championship next month at Phoenix. Both Kyle Larson and Tyler Reddick, who raced for the win in the closing laps of Las Vegas' spring race, return here with championship aspirations. In Larson's case, he enters this weekend coming off a dominant win at the Charlotte Roval and looking for three Vegas wins in a row, which would earn him a Championship 4 spot in back-to-back years.

Where to watch the NASCAR playoffs at Las Vegas

• When: Sunday, Oct. 20
• Where: Las Vegas Motor Speedway -- Las Vegas
• Time: 2:30 p.m. ET
• TV: NBC
• Stream: fubo (try for free)

What to Watch

Taking the circumstances and past precedent into account, arguably no driver in the Round of 8 is more dangerous to the rest of the remaining playoff drivers than Joey Logano. Logano had been eliminated from the playoffs at the checkered flag a week ago, but then -- in a sudden stroke of fate past the eleventh hour -- he was bumped back into the Round of 8 on points after Alex Bowman was disqualified from the Charlotte Roval for his car being too light in post-race inspection, leaving him with last-place points and knocking him below the cut line.

The presence of Logano is foreboding because time and again, he and his team have proven to have an uncanny knack for turning it on when they need to in the playoffs, particularly in the Round of 8. Logano has advanced to the Championship 4 every other year since the inception of NASCAR's current playoff format in 2014, and the past three times he has made the Championship 4, he has done so by winning the opening race in the Round of 8 -- and two out of three times, he has gone on to win the Cup championship despite not necessarily having been the sport's most dominant driver throughout the season.

That includes two years ago at Las Vegas, when Logano prevailed in a late-race battle with Ross Chastain to take the checkered flag and become the first driver to advance to the Championship 4. Despite being a step behind his competition in certain areas throughout the season -- his 11 top fives and 17 top 10s were fewer than all other drivers who eventually made the Championship 4 -- Logano was able to capitalize on a dominant racecar to win the Championship Race at Phoenix and earn his second Cup title despite having gone relatively under the radar.

"In a way, I feel like we have nothing to lose," Logano said this week on SiriusXM NASCAR Radio . "As the underdog, that's a lot of times your feeling where you're just like 'well, what have we got to lose? Let's just go!' We don't have that. But at the same time, I don't know if it really changes my mindset any. My mindset's always 'how do we get to the next round? How do we get into the Championship 4?' We're just one step closer than we were before.

"I don't know if it really changes a whole bunch. In a way, I can kind of agree with 'Are you playing with house money?' Yeah, in a way, I guess we are. But in another way, I'd say we're equal to everybody else in the top eight."

In the spring race at Las Vegas, Logano won the pole and went on to finish ninth, his first of only three top 10 finishes he earned until all the way back in June. And in the playoffs, an eighth-place run at the Charlotte Roval last week marked the only top 10 Logano has had outside of his win at Atlanta in the opening round. But this format has shown that it only takes one win at the right time to create a championship season, and Logano and his race team have outright mastered the art of capitalizing on that.

News of the Week

• Hendrick Motorsports announced Monday that the team would not appeal NASCAR's disqualification of the No. 48 Chevrolet driven by Alex Bowman at the Charlotte Roval, saying that NASCAR allows a "clear margin" to account for the difference in pre and post-race weight and that the team did not give themselves enough margin to meet post-race requirements. While the team stressed in a statement that the infraction that knocked Bowman out of the playoffs was unintentional, they ultimately called it "avoidable."
  
• NASCAR has asked for an expedited discovery motion filed by 23XI Racing and Front Row Motorsports in the two teams' antitrust lawsuit against the sanctioning body to be denied, calling the lawsuit "meritless" and "baseless" in court documents and accusing the two organizations of attempting to obtain "commercial agreements they previously rejected, and to attempt to extort more favorable contract terms." As neither team signed the sport's 2025 charter agreement -- which NASCAR says is no longer available -- the sanctioning body said in court documents that they have taken steps to plan for a 2025 season with only 32 chartered teams.
• Kaulig Racing has made a change at crew chief, dismissing Travis Mack as crew chief for the No. 16 team effective immediately. 2011 Cup champion crew chief Darian Grubb will serve as the team's interim crew chief for the final four races of the season.
• Cup Series driver Ty Gibbs will step into an ownership role at Joe Gibbs Racing for the first time in 2025, as it was confirmed this week that he will be the listed owner for the No. 54 Toyota driven by Taylor Gray in the Xfinity Series. Gibbs, who had already been involved with the JGR ARCA team once run by his late father Coy, won the Xfinity Series championship driving the No. 54 in 2022.
• Bobby Gill, a prolific short track racer who earned four top 10 finishes in 16 career NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series starts, died Thursday of brain cancer at the age of 65. Gill won four championships in the USAR Hooters Pro Cup Series and had two victories in the prestigious Snowball Derby at Five Flags Speedway. He was recently honored by Truck Series star Grant Enfinger, who carried Gill's name on his winning truck at Talladega just weeks ago.
  

Pick to Win

Kyle Larson (+300) -- Larson is about as easy a pick as it gets, as he's not only coming off a win at the Charlotte Roval that put him firmly in the Round of 8, but has also been exceptional at Las Vegas. Larson has won the last two Vegas races in a row and has five finishes of either first or second in the last seven Vegas races dating back to 2021, a stretch where he has led 602 laps. That includes 133 laps led in this race a year ago and 181 laps back in the spring of this year.

Consider this, by the way: The last two times Larson has made the Round of 8, he's advanced to the Championship 4 by winning the opening race of the penultimate round of the playoffs. He did it at Texas in 2021, and then repeated the feat at Las Vegas a year ago.