Every week during the NASCAR Cup Series season, The Athletic is going to assess how full-time drivers stack up against one another. The assessment won’t just take into account results from the just-completed race weekend but the season as a whole.
Drivers will be divided into categories and, depending on their respective performances, can move up or down on a given week. Although one good or bad week isn’t necessarily going to dramatically affect a driver’s ranking, there will be occasions where a driver may jump up considerably — for instance, someone unexpectedly winning a race, as we saw in the season-opening Daytona 500.
Here’s where things stand following Sunday’s race at Las Vegas Motor Speedway.
Tier 1: Championship favorites
1. Ross Chastain
2. Kyle Busch
3. Kyle Larson
4. Joey Logano
5. Denny Hamlin
6. Christopher Bell
Like at Daytona and Fontana, Chastain was a fixture up front at Las Vegas. The difference was he got shuffled back on the decisive restart, causing him to post his first finish outside the top 10 this season. Still, a 12th is respectable and kept Chastain atop the points standings.
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Busch and the No. 8 Richard Childress Racing team admittedly missed the setup. It also didn’t help that Busch bounced his car off the wall. Add it up and, for the first time in 2023, Busch wasn’t all that competitive. That he still fought to finish 14th is noteworthy, speaking to what this team is capable of on days when they’re not at their best.
Sunday was by far Larson’s best result on the season. And were it not for a caution with four laps left, he would’ve been the Hendrick Motorsports driver celebrating in victory lane. As it was, Larson and the No. 5 team showed a resemblance to their 2021 form, which should be worrisome to the competition.
When Logano captured the pole in qualifying on the track he won at last fall, it felt like he’d factor into the outcome on Sunday. Didn’t happen. Like the majority of Ford drivers, Logano struggled throughout the afternoon and plummeted down the running order. His day unceremoniously ended when contact with Brad Keselowski bounced him into the Turn 4 wall and spun him through the infield. A short while later, he pulled into the garage with a car too damaged to continue. An underwhelming day, sure, but not one that raises any concerns about his title hopes.
What do we make out of the disagreement between Toyota teammates Bell and Bubba Wallace? It’s much ado about nothing. The two spoke on pit road afterward about unnecessarily racing one another side-by-side for several laps at a time. While it was Wallace who raised the issue, his objection was valid considering that by Bell not conceding the spot to the faster Wallace, it allowed Daniel Suárez to close the gap and pass them both in a race where track position was everything.
GO DEEPERTop 5: NASCAR at Las Vegas reveals new trends, Chase Elliott injury, Phoenix rules packageTier 2: On the cusp
7. William Byron
8. Alex Bowman
9. Martin Truex Jr.
10. Kevin Harvick
11. Ryan Blaney
After a performance like the one Byron exhibited at Las Vegas, it would be easy to jump him up two tiers. That’s fair. For now, though, placing him in this grouping feels right, as we’ve seen this from him and the No. 24 Hendrick team previously — last year, he won two of the first eight races, including a dominating win at Martinsville — only to then backslide. What we haven’t seen is him sustain this level for a prolonged stretch. If he can do that, then he should be viewed as a serious title contender.
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With a third-place finish on Sunday, Bowman now has top-10s in all three races this season. That distinction is something only he and Suárez can claim.
The gamble by crew chief James Small to forgo pitting Truex when the race went into overtime wasn’t a bad decision, even though Truex ended up on a virtual island as the only driver to stay out on old tires. It’s easy to second-guess, but Small took a swing to put his driver in position to steal a win — something more crew chiefs should do.
It sounded ominous when Harvick came over the radio early on to say it “was a bad day to be a Ford.” But like he’s done so often, the 2014 champion found a way to grind out a ninth-place finish. That is the kind of mentality that Stewart-Haas Racing is going to miss when Harvick retires at the end of the season, a mindset that is not easily replaceable.
Tier 3: Playoff contenders
12. Chase Elliott
13. Daniel Suárez
14. Ricky Stenhouse Jr.
15. Bubba Wallace
16. Tyler Reddick
17. Brad Keselowski
It’s not that Elliott is no longer a championship-favorite driver, it’s that we don’t know when he’s going to return from injury and how many races he’s going to be sidelined. And that alters the expectations for him. If he misses a significant number of races, then his window to qualify for the playoffs by winning a regular-season race is going to be much smaller, with no assurances he’ll be able to do so and little margin for error. If he only misses a few races, then he obviously has a much better chance of earning a playoff berth. But for right now, everything is up in the air.
It’s been a frustrating beginning to the season for Reddick, who has had speed every week but little to show for it in the way of actual results. Las Vegas was indicative of that. The No. 45 23XI Racing car was among the fastest on the track but an engine change on Saturday meant Reddick had to skip qualifying and start the race in the back. He never was able to entirely regain that lost track position and finished 15th — which is encouraging to some degree but doesn’t help him much to climb out of the points hole. He’s currently 34th, third-worst among drivers who’ve started all three races.
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Similar to Reddick, Keselowski has performed better than his results indicate. For much of Sunday, he was one of the highest-running Fords only to lose track position when he stayed out during a late sequence of green-flag pit stops. He later got swept into the multi-car accident that occurred in overtime and finished 17th. The positive is that Keselowski sits 11th in points, with reasons to believe that RFK Racing is starting to turn the corner by finding the consistency it’s largely lacked in recent years.
Tier 4: On the outside
18. Chris Buescher
19. Austin Cindric
20. AJ Allmendinger
21. Austin Dillon
22. Ty Gibbs
23. Erik Jones
24. Corey LaJoie
25. Aric Almirola
26. Justin Haley
27. Chase Briscoe
Another week, another accident for Allmendinger through no fault of his own. While no doubt frustrating, his path to the playoffs remains unchanged: He’s likely going to need to win one of five races on a road course or one of five races on a superspeedway during the regular season. The confidence is there that he’ll accomplish this goal, with the caveat that should the number of accidents continue, it will put a strain on Kaulig Racing and eventually impact Allmendinger’s playoff hopes.
If you’re SHR, there has to be heightened concern with the collective performance of Almirola, Briscoe and Ryan Preece (who’s listed in the below tier). No one from this trio has posted a top-10 finish, and more alarming is just how far behind they continue to be compared to teammate Harvick’s performance. Especially Briscoe, who for the second consecutive week was mystifyingly slow in what was supposed to be a breakout 2023 season.
Similar to last week, LaJoie again deserves a nod. He’s now finished 20th or better in three consecutive races, giving him his best start to the season in his sixth year of running the full schedule.
Tier 5: The rest
28. Michael McDowell
29. Harrison Burton
30. Todd Gilliland
31. Noah Gragson
32. Ryan Preece
33. Ty Dillon
34. Cody Ware
(Photo: Meg Oliphant / Getty Images)
Jordan Bianchi is a motorsports reporter for The Athletic. He is a veteran sports reporter, having covered the NBA, NFL, Major League Baseball, college basketball, college football, NASCAR, IndyCar and sports business for several outlets. Follow Jordan on Twitter @jordan_bianchi
