NASCAR Power Rankings -Daytona + Atlanta

I wanted to let Atlanta pass before dropping my first power rankings of the season, given Daytona can be a lottery. But seems like Tyler Reddick doesn't view it that way with back to back wins. Here are my NASCAR Power Rankings.

HM: Shane van Gisbergen is off his best oval finish ever, a P6 at Echo Park Speedway. Only his 2nd ever top 10 at an oval, SVG overcame 2 spins, which puts him at 15th in the point standings. He normally wouldn’t make it to this high, but with COTA on the horizon, all eyes are on him to win. If he can win at COTA, he’d be the fastest person to ever get 7 wins in the Cup Series at 53 starts, surpassing Tony Stewart’s record of 61 races. Quick shoutouts also to Zane Smith, Carson Hocevar, and the RFK boys of Buescher and Keselowski.

10: Denny Hamlin drops a good bit. It’s hard to imagine what all he’s going through right now, but the season is underway and Hamlin said he should be more comfortable as he gets back into the swing of things. 2 poor finishes of 31st and 13th, including 0 stage points, leave Hamlin buried in 27th in points. More bad news? We’re heading to a road course this weekend. I almost left Hamlin off this list, but knowing what this team is capable of in a few weeks, I’ll keep him on here for the time being. The good news for Hamlin fans is that, of his 6 worst racetracks statistically wise, after Sunday, 3 of them will have passed, with Daytona being 3rd worst, Atlanta being 4th worst, and COTA being 6th worst. He won’t run into another track on this list until Talladega in April. Before that, we head to Hamlin’s 8th, 11th, 1st, 7th, 14th, and 13th best track, so Hamlin fans have a lot to look forward to once we leave Austin.

9: Christopher Bell had a bad start to the season, with a 35th at Daytona and a 21st at Echo Park. It’s not like he didn’t have speed. Bell led 9 laps in both races, before being wrecked at the very end of both races, most notably Atlanta, where he was wrecked by Carson Hocevar for 2nd. The next 2 tracks favor Bell. He won at both COTA and Phoenix last year, including another win at Phoenix in 2024, along with a career average finish of 15.0 and 12.9 at them respectively. A cold start should be no issue for this 20 team.

8: I did not have Bubba Wallace ranked at the beginning of the year, and that was a mistake on my part. He led the most laps at Daytona and the 3rd most laps at Atlanta. He also scored the 4th most points in the 500 and the 2nd most points at Atlanta. Wallace sits 2nd in the points, however he heads to his worst track on the schedule. Wallace’s best finish in 5 starts at COTA is only 15th in 2024, with 3 sub 30th place finishes. He did win a stage last year, not to mention that Wallace’s finishes at road courses as a whole have gotten better. He doesn’t have a shot at the win, but Bubba will be fighting for a top 15, maybe a top 10 if the cards fall correctly.

7: Joey Logano’s had a decent start to the year, with a 3rd at the 500 and an 18th at Atlanta. He had decent speed on Sunday, leading 26 laps, but a few accidents took him out of contention. Logano sits 6th in points right now, but much like the rest of his competitors, heads to his worst track on the schedule. With an average finish of 19.4, no track is worse for Logano. A lone 3rd in the first running in 2021 is his only bright spot, as other than an 11th in 2024, his next best finish is a 24th in last year’s race.

6: For a minute there, William Byron looked to become the first person ever to 3-peat the Daytona 500. Instead, a bobble relegated him to 12th. After running top 10 all day in Atlanta, once again he was wrecked late, after a broken toe link seemed to veer Byron’s car across the racetrack and wrecked himself and a good chunk of the field. Byron is now sitting 13th in points, which, barring a bad race at COTA, is the lowest he’ll drop this year. COTA is Byron’s 2nd best track on the schedule with a 6.2 average finish. It’s his best overall with a minimum of 5 starts at (only Iowa is better with 2 starts to Byron’s name). He has a win in 2023, and his last 3 finishes have all been top 5. His 2 outliers? A 12th in 2021 and an 11th in 2022. He’s also led 71 of the 238 laps run in the last 3 years (29.8% of the laps run), the most of anyone in this timeframe. The next closest is Tyler Reddick with only 51 (21.4%).

5: Chase Briscoe has had a fast car the first two weeks, but his finish only reflects that in 1 race. After leading 23 laps in the Great American Race, 2nd to only Bubba Wallace, Briscoe was swept up in the big one and relegated to 36th, 12 laps down. A much different story played out at Atlanta, however. Briscoe led the 4th most laps with 27, but lived to see the finish, a solid 2nd. Also collecting stage points in the 2nd stage, Briscoe sits 16th on the cutline. He heads to COTA, which is statistically his best road course. Other than a 30th in 2022, Briscoe doesn’t have a finish worse than 15th, including a P6 in 2021. His qualifying leaves much to be desired, however, as his best start is only 14th, and he has 2 starts outside the top 25. If he wants to have a shot at the win, Briscoe needs a top 10 starting spot.

4: The defending champ drops 2 spots to #4. Kyle Larson had a decent 500, leading 7 laps and finishing 16th. He turned heads at Atlanta, for both the right and wrong reasons. Larson’s Hendrick ride had speed, as he started off the day with points in stage 1, and he was headed for more in stage 2, until a bad block on SVG ended his day early. Larson’s due for a head loss every now and then, but this one was alarming, no doubt. It’s now been 26 races since the 5 has seen victory lane, and I don’t see that changing this weekend. Other than a silver in the inaugural race at COTA, Larson has not finished better than 14th in 2023, including 2 sub 25th place finishes. It’s his 6th worst track on the schedule, and by far his worst road course with an 18.8 average finish at COTA, compared to a 15.0 at Sonoma and a 14.6 at the Glen. Larson’s a decent road racer, but I don’t see it happening this week.

3: Ryan Blaney drops to 3 after a surprisingly quiet superspeedway swing. He finished 27th at Daytona and 10th at Atlanta, leading only a combined 8 laps in the 2 races. It’s definitely not bad, considering he’s 8th in points right now, but Blaney, and honestly Team Penske as a whole, seemed to lack the superspeedway prowess they normally have. COTA’s a decent track for Blaney, with every finish being relegated between 21st and 6th for him. Not too good, not too bad. This week should lead perfectly into one of Blaney’s best tracks of Phoenix.

2: Chase Elliott has speed right now. I don’t think many people saw that coming into 2026. He won his duel race, finished 4th in the Daytona 500, and 11th at Atlanta. Elliott has been arguably the most consistent driver over the past 3 years, he just hasn’t had the wins to back it up. Now, he looks like he could win any week, and there’s not much better a place we could head to. Other than an outlier in 2024, with a 16th, Elliott has never finished worse at COTA than 4th. What is concerning, however, is that he’s only led 5 laps, all of which came during his win in 2021. Elliott looks to be picking up right where he left off in 2025 though, and that first win of the year might come sooner rather than later.

1: I said that Tyler Reddick had no chance to win at Daytona…good pick me. Not only did he win the Great American Race, he backed it up with 2 in a row at Atlanta, being the first person since Matt Kenseth in 2009 to win the first 2 races of the season. Hopefully this year turns out better for him than Kenseth, as not only did Kenseth go winless the rest of the year, he missed the Chase at the end of the year and wouldn’t see victory lane for over 2 years. I don’t think either of these will happen. Reddick looks poised to continue his momentum right into his best track on the schedule. With a 4.6 average finish, it’s his best by over 4 positions. His worst finish was only 9th in the inaugural race, a race he sat on the pole for. Since then, he's finished 5th, won 5th again, and 3rd last year. He’s never qualified worse than 4th, and has led at least one lap every year since 2022. All things considered, it’s very possible he could 3-peat the beginning of the year, which has never been done before.