Breaking Down CARS Tour Points Battles Ahead Of North Wilkesboro Finale

As a race fan, this final day for the CARS Tour has just about everything you can want and more. If you’re looking for a historic race track as the setting for the finale, you got it in North Wilkesboro Speedway. If you’re looking for two rivals to battle each other for the championship, you got it in Connor Hall and Brenden “Butterbean” Queen. And if you’re looking for close, dramatic points battles, you got it as both the Late Model Stock Car and Pro Late Model championship battles are separated by single-digits.

Yes, you read that right. Both divisions see their championship battles have single-digit point margins. Brenden Queen currently leads Connor Hall by nine points while Spencer Davis currently leads Kaden Honeycutt by just six markers. It’s hard to get much closer than that. 

So, with it that close, now would be a good time to make sure you race fans are up-to-date on all the championship scenarios across both divisions so you know exactly what’s going on while you follow along at home watching on FloRacing or in the grandstands at North Wilkesboro.

We’ll start with the Late Model Stock Car division, because even though we said it’s a nine-point margin, technically speaking, that’s not true. It’s actually 10 points. You see, the CARS Tour gives two year-end bonus points to the driver that scored the most wins on the season, and a year-end single bonus point to the driver that scored the most poles on the season. Queen locked up the extra bonus point for most poles on the season when Corey Heim won the pole at Tri-County Motor Speedway last week. Queen has four poles on the year, and now nobody can match that total. So, while that point technically gets tacked on at the “end” of the season, for all intents and purposes, Queen has a 10-point lead instead of nine.

With that in mind, let’s give a quick refresher on all of the bonus points that the CARS Tour awards before we move onto the actual clinching scenarios.

A driver receives two bonus points for winning the pole in qualifying. A single bonus point is awarded if a driver leads a lap, and another single bonus point is awarded to the driver that leads the most laps. 

Okay, now that we’ve got that out of the way, let’s get into some scenarios. 

Regardless of what Connor Hall and his Nelson Motorsports team do throughout the day and night on Saturday, Brenden Queen and Lee Pulliam Performance win the championship with a sixth-place finish. That’s the most simplistic scenario out there. Sixth or better and Queen is a CARS Tour champion for the first time. That is to say that if Hall wins the pole, leads a lap, leads the most laps, and wins the race, Queen can finish sixth to win the championship by virtue of a tiebreaker. If Hall scores all bonus points and Queen finishes fifth or better, he wins the championship outright.

But in the scenario that neither driver scores any bonus points, Queen needs to be within nine spots of Hall when the checkered flag flies to avoid a tie. Ten spots and it’s a tie but Queen wins tiebreaker. The first tiebreaker for the CARS Tour is most second-place finishes.

Due to his 15th-place finish last weekend at Tri-County, Mini Tyrrell has been mathematically eliminated from championship contention. 

Now we’ll move onto the Pro Late Model division where three drivers have a chance to win the title. Spencer Davis currently leads Kaden Honeycutt by six points as they search for their first CARS Tour title while defending champion Caden Kvapil is still mathematically alive, 29 points back of Davis.

In regard to the year-end bonus points, Tristan McKee has already clinched the bonus point for most poles, though Kvapil could tie him and also receive a bonus point should he win the pole on Friday. That would be a three-point gain for Kvapil as each pole position won is worth two points, plus the year-end bonus point. 

With most wins, the waters are a bit muddied. Currently there are five drivers who each have two victories. Davis, Honeycutt, and Kvapil are among those five, along with McKee and Kyle Campbell. With Campbell not racing this weekend, if McKee wins on Saturday then only he will receive the year-end bonus point. If none of those four drivers win on Saturday, all of them will receive a year-end bonus point for most wins. 

Now we’ll get into the scenarios, and we’ll start with current points leader Spencer Davis, who, again, leads Honeycutt by just six points. 

Should Honeycutt score max race points this weekend, but not win the pole, Davis has to finish second in order to force a tie and win the championship via tiebreaker. If Honeycutt does not score any bonus points, Davis must finish within six positions of Honeycutt to win the championship. If Kvapil scores max points on the weekend (wins the pole, leads a lap, leads the most laps, and wins the race), then Davis needs to finish no worse than 23rd while also having Honeycutt finish no better than 17th in order to win the championship.

We’ve already pretty much outlined what Honeycutt needs to do, but we’ll try and make it a little more specific and concise here. If Honeycutt scores max points on the weekend by winning the pole, leading a lap, leading the most laps and winning the race, then he wins the championship no matter what, even if Davis finishes right behind him in second-place. He would win the championship by two points in that scenario. If Honeycutt finishes second without either driver scoring any bonus points, Honeycutt needs to beat Davis by seven positions. If Honeycutt leads a lap and Davis does not, he can win the championship by finishing six positions better than Davis. 

For Caden Kvapil, his road to a second-straight CARS Tour Pro Late Model championship is much harder. But also, much simpler to understand as there’s really only one scenario that sees him lift the big trophy for a second time. Kvapil needs to win the pole on Friday. And he needs to win the race and lead the most laps. And, he needs Davis to finish 23rd or worse and Honeycutt to finish 17th or worse. And being that the expected field is 24 cars this weekend, he basically needs something catastrophic to happen to Davis. And considering Davis has an average finish of 3.92 this season, Kvapil’s championship hopes suddenly seem quite unrealistic.

So, there you have it. Two divisions, two championship battles, five total drivers vying for two spots of glory on one unforgettable night at one historic venue. How can it get any better?

FloRacing will be live on Friday night at 6:45 p.m. ET to carry both dramatic qualifying sessions for the CARS Tour at North Wilkesboro Speedway. Green flag for the 100-lap season finale for the Pro Late Models is expected to wave at 5:30 p.m. ET on Saturday with the season finales for the SMART Modified Tour and the CARS Tour Late Model Stock Cars to follow.

If you’re not already a FloRacing subscriber and want to be tuned into this massive night, you can become a FloRacing subscriber by clicking here.