NASCAR Power Rankings: Top 10 Drivers After New Hampshire

Honorable Mention: 18th is Chris Buescher’s worst finish since Richmond. The 17 lacked speed all day long, which is going to knock him out of the top 10. He heads to Kansas, a place where he has 3 straight top 11 finishes, including a race that me, a Chris Buescher fan, will not mention.

10. Carson Hocevar has had 4 straight top 15s to start his playoffs. He nearly won last week at Bristol, and today, he was consistently in the top 5-10 before winding up 11th. Some of the summer speed seems to be on its way back for the 77. Hocevar had a great run going at Kansas in the spring before he cut a tire late, relegating him to 26th.

9. Joey Logano was quietly consistent in round 1 of the playoffs, but on Sunday, he was loud and proud. Logano led nearly half the race, 149 of 301, before finishing 4th. Logano has won at Kansas 3 times, but hasn’t done so since the fall of 2020. 

8. Bubba Wallace looked bad on Sunday. No ifs ands or buts (same with his teammate, hence his lack of appearance on this list). This was the first time in a while where Wallace was a complete and utter afterthought. Even when he’s not competing, Wallace has been 10th to 15th in the running order, but not on Sunday. Good news, however, is that Wallace has won at Kansas in the past, in the fall of 2022. The bad news, other than a 4th in the next race, he hasn’t finished better than 17th since, including 2 sub-30th place finishes.

7. Kyle Larson looked the best he’s looked since his spin from the lead in the Coke 600. He led a few laps, but ran top 5 almost all day, finishing 7th. This is good mojo heading to Larson’s best track. In the last 8 races, other than a 26th in the fall race last year, he’s had an 8th, a 4th, and five podiums, three of which are wins. He’s also led laps in 6 of those races, 627 total. This is also the site of Larson’s last win. What I’m getting at is Kyle Larson should easily be the favorite this weekend.

6. Chase Elliott had a top 10 to 15 run going, with a great call by Alan Gustafson late, nabbing Elliott a top 5. From a 27th starting spot, this was exactly what Elliott needed. In the last 5 races at Kansas, he’s only finished worse than 10th once, and it was the most recent race. Pit issues set them back, and ruined an easy top 5 for him.

5. Christopher Bell had a solid run, with a 6th place finish at New Hampshire. Bell sits a reasonable +29 on the cutline, heading to Kansas. Bell has 4 straight top 10s here, including a 2nd in the spring. Not much to say about Bell, we’ll save the talking for his teammate. 

4. Denny Hamlin…wow. A quiet 12th place with some stage points would be the case, if he didn’t get into his teammate midway through stage 2. Looking past the predicament the 11 team is now in for the rest of the year, Hamlin heads to a track he’s won 4 times at, most recently May of 2023. Going back to October of 2019, the last 12 races at Kansas, Hamlin has 3 wins, 8 top 5s, and 11 top 15s. His only bad finish was earlier this spring, a drivetrain failure resulted in Hamlin’s 36th. Hamlin needs a solid points day (and to stay away from the 54) if he wants to continue his playoff hunt.

3. William Byron had 3s across the board, in both stages and finishing position, so we’ll give him #3 on the list. It’s been the story all year. Quiet, consistent, fast. Kansas has not been one of Byron’s particularly best tracks, with only a 53% top 10 rate, which drops to 20% for top 5. Since the Next Gen, he has 2 top 5s and 2 sub 20ths, with a 6th, 15th, and 16th sandwiched between them. 

2. Chase Briscoe drops to 2nd after a quiet top 10 at New Hampshire. On a day where JGR cars seemed to miss the setup, he looked to be the class of them, leading 19 laps on a strategy call. While Briscoe’s Kansas stats look, quite frankly, terrible, with 5 finishes being 20th or worse, he finished 4th in his only start there with JGR in the spring, and this team looks way more competitive now than they did earlier this year. I think another solid run is due for Briscoe this weekend.

1. Who else would it be? In the last 10 races, Blaney had 9 top 8s, 6 of which are 4th or better, 295 laps led, and is tied with Hamlin for the most amount of wins in that time period, 2. Blaney has back to back top 5s at Kansas, and fortunately for him, even if he sucked at Kansas, he doesn’t have to worry how he runs with the automatic bid. With his win at New Hampshire, Ryan Blaney looks poised to win NASCAR championship #2 in just 3 years.