There‘s no way to spin it: Hendrick Motorsports‘ odds of winning the championship took a hit when Alex Bowman summarily was removed from the playoffs by his Roval disqualification.

It‘s simple math. If Hendrick had claimed half the Round of 8, the team potentially could own all of the Championship 4 — putting its 2024 title chances at 100 percent. The elimination of Bowman nullifies that scenario.

So there is no addition by subtraction — but there might be a silver lining.

Losing Bowman won‘t enhance the likelihood of winning the championship, but it might increase the probability of having an unprecedented three title-eligible cars in the Nov. 10 season finale at Phoenix Raceway.

RELATED: Playoff standings | Explaining the No. 48 team’s DQ

In eight editions of the four-round elimination playoff structure introduced in 2017, only twice have Cup teams advanced four cars to the Round of 8.

Neither of those teams won the championship — and what is perhaps more revelatory is how many of their cars made the championship round.

In 2016, Joe Gibbs Racing advanced Kyle Busch and Carl Edwards to the title race as Denny Hamlin and Matt Kenseth were ousted. In 2018, Stewart-Haas Racing managed only to qualify Kevin Harvick for the championship as Aric Almirola, Kurt Busch and Clint Bowyer were eliminated.

It underscores what Joey Logano alluded to before the playoffs began when asked about the advantages of having perfect playoff attendance.

“Just odds, the odds of your team making it are better,” said Logano, the beneficiary of Bowman‘s exclusion from the third round. “It also presents some hard questions that you have to answer, too.”

Those questions also come down to basic math — there aren‘t enough hours in the day to guarantee the attention to detail for four championship entries vs. one. It‘s the argument that Chase Briscoe has been making since winning the Southern 500 to capture the 16th and final playoff berth as the lone championship hope for Stewart-Haas Racing.

“I do think there‘s a big advantage to being a four-car team and having only one car in,” Briscoe, who pulled off a mild surprise in reaching the second round, said before the playoffs began. “Those other four-car teams are trying to focus on all four of their cars bringing the best to the race track every single week. Preparing the race cars, we can take the personnel and best of the best from each car and just apply it to our car.”

The disparity between cars makes for some tough choices even for the best teams in NASCAR.

“When you put cars together, sometimes there are just better cars than others,” Logano said. “Yeah, we all have the same parts, and everything is really close, but some are better than others.

“When you make the decisions on who gets what, it‘s a little harder with more cars in the playoffs than when you have one bullet. It‘s easy to say all the effort goes in this car. This is our one chance to win the championship.

“So not that it‘s better or worse, it‘s just different. You‘ve got to have it that way to have more opportunities to win the championship.”

At the outset of the playoffs, those opportunities seem much wider with the margins for error much larger. Yet as the races unfold, and the field shrinks, the degree of difficulty skyrockets for maintaining four championship-caliber cars.

The elimination of Bowman makes Hendrick‘s path to a record 15th Cup championship more uncertain.

But it also is less complicated.

Nate Ryan has written about NASCAR since 1996 while working at the San Bernardino Sun, Richmond Times-Dispatch, USA TODAY and for the past 10 years at NBC Sports Digital. He is the host of the NASCAR on NBC Podcast and also has covered various other motorsports, including the IndyCar and IMSA series.