NASCAR Power Rankings Post Martinsville

Here it is, one race away from crowning a champion! Let me preface by saying, just because you are in the final 4 doesn’t mean you are top 4 in the power rankings. Which that out of the way, let’s rank these drivers for the final time.

Honorable Mention: Since Michigan, Ryan Preece has only finished outside the top 15 just 5 times. That streak includes the last 4 races (3 of which are top 10s) and 5 of the last 6. A 6th place run backs up his 7th earlier in the year at Martinsville. Preece finished 15th at Phoenix in the spring, but has been improving steadily since then. Expect a solid top 10 run out of him and teammate Buescher to end the year.

10: Bubba Wallace falls to 10 after an 18th place Martinsville finish. It’s clear all eyes are on 2026 for 23XI (and probably more importantly, the lawsuit). Wallace was wrecked early in the first Phoenix race, and this doesn’t seem to be one of his best tracks. He only has 3 top 10s in his 15 stars here. With that being said, 2 of those have come in the last 4 races, and both were the season finale. 

9: Joey Logano captured his 12th top 10 of the year, but it was too little, too late for the 22 team. Logano failed to make the final 4, which was expected. After all, the year ends in an odd number; we’ll see how he shows up next year. Logano has 4 wins at Phoenix: his 2 most recent Cup titles, spring of 2020, and fall of 2016. I don’t think he wins, just judging by how the year has gone, but he, and all of Team Penske, for that matter, should be competitive.

8: Tyler Reddick maintains 8th after an 11th place, one spot shy of 5 top 10s in a row. Reddick only mustered P20 in the spring, which seems to be the trend. Every Phoenix finish for Reddick has been top 6 (minus one 10th) or 20th or worse (minus 2 P19s). Much like his teammate, though, I see too many distractions for this team to make a legitimate run at the win, however.

7: Chase Briscoe falls to 7, which is really funny considering I think he wins the title this year. But, when you have an engine failure the week before the championship, eyebrows start to raise. Briscoe has prior success at this track, winning his first ever Cup race here in 2022. Briscoe did finish 35th after a wreck in the spring, along with just a poor overall run, but that was before he and this 19 team bonded the way they have since the summer. Briscoe is eyeing his first title, but this team is going to need a Scot-free day to do so.

6: Chase Elliott moves to 6th after a P3 ended his playoffs just one race early. A really solid 2nd half of the season that saw this team start to be competitive finally also saw them get more and more inconsistent as well. Top 5s turned into race winning runs, but as a result, mid pack runs turned into DNFs, and those proved to be too much for Elliott to overcome. Elliott finished 10th in the spring at Phoenix, and he’s looking for one more solid run to close out a good season for the 9 team.

5: Much like his teammate, Denny Hamlin is going to drop because of an engine failure. It’s one thing to run mediocre at Talladega when locked into the Championship 4…it’s another to blow an engine at a flat, 750 horsepower racetrack the week before a champion is crowned. Hamlin has 2 wins at Phoenix, but the last time this happened, he still had Erik Jones as a teammate, so it’s been a while. Hamlin did finish 2nd by just a few feet in the spring, though.

4: Ryan Blaney came one spot and 30ish laps short of a 3rd straight Championship 4 berth. A 2nd for Blaney wasn’t enough to overcome his consecutive sub 20th place finishes before Martinsville. While Blaney doesn’t have a win at Phoenix, he does has 9 straight top 10s, (8 of which are inside the top 6, 4 of which are P2s) if you take away his most recent run, where his engine grenaded down the backstretch, resulting in a P28. Blaney would easily be the title favorite if ol’ Willy B didn’t give him the bumper.

3: Kyle Larson just snuck his way into the Championship 4 by only a few points over Christopher Bell. A P5 was just good enough to lock him in, which sets Larson up for his 2nd title in 5 seasons. Larson finished 3rd at Phoenix early in the year, his 5th top 10 in the last 6 starts and 11th in the last 14. In that mix was Larson’s only Phoenix win, his 2021 Championship. 

2: The playoffs are cruel. Christopher Bell has only finished outside the top 8 once in the playoffs, with that being the very first race, the Southern 500. Since then, (the last 8 races) Bell has an average finish of 4.75. In the Round of 8, Bell had an average finish of 6, (Larson had 11, Briscoe had 14, Hamlin had 20, and Byron had 20.67, for reference.) Christopher Bell should be fighting for a chance at his first NASCAR title, but instead, has to settle with a best possible result of 5th for a 2nd straight year in a row. Not to mention, he won this race in the spring. Oh well, you know the spiel by now. Bright lights, and all that…

1: Who else but William Byron to top the list? Even though his 2 finishes before Martinsville were terrible, he was running top 5 in both before wrecks took him out late. Byron finished 6th at Phoenix in the spring and won at Phoenix in early 2023. He’s led laps in 5 of the last 7, and finished top 6 in 5 of the last 6. In the Next Gen, only Ryan Blaney has a better average finish (6.4 to an 8.0). Hands down, Byron is the favorite to win both this weekend and, more importantly, the Championship.