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NASCAR power rankings: Tricky Triangle produces a new No. 1
Chase Briscoe held off Denny Hamlin at Pocono Raceway on Sunday, scoring the third win of his Cup Series career and his first with Joe Gibbs Racing.
Here’s where the Cup Series field stacks up after 17 races.
1. Denny Hamlin
Hamlin barely missed a beat in his return to action at Pocono. After putting his No. 11 on the pole in qualifying, he came up one spot shy of his eighth Pocono win. He has plenty of momentum on his side as the circuit heads to Atlanta.
2. William Byron
It’s hard to drop the points leader more than one spot, but Byron and the No. 24 team laid an egg at Pocono. While Byron was fastest in practice, a crash in qualifying put him behind the eight-ball. He was never able to fully recover, finishing 27th. Atlanta is an excellent opportunity for the Daytona 500 winner to bounce back - he has two wins at the reconfigured version of the track.
3. Chase Elliott
Elliott still hasn’t won since April of last year, but the No. 9 team is beginning to put together better races. A fifth-place effort at Pocono gives Elliott consecutive top-five finishes for the first time all season.
4. Kyle Larson
A seventh-place finish at Pocono is a solid result, but Larson and the No. 5 team aren’t going to the racetrack to get solid results. Since Larson’s disastrous Indy-Charlotte ‘Double’ on May 25, the No. 5 hasn’t shown the winning speed it had throughout the first third of the season.
5. Christopher Bell
Bell was quiet on Sunday, finishing 17th on a day when the No. 20 didn’t have much speed to speak of. He’ll go for the sweep at Atlanta on Saturday evening in search of his fourth victory of 2025.
6. Chase Briscoe
Say what you will regarding the effects of dirty air, but Briscoe’s effort to save gas and hold off Denny Hamlin over the final 30 laps at Pocono was nothing short of incredible. The fifth-year driver certainly validated Joe Gibbs’ decision to put him in the No. 19 car, and the win ensures that Briscoe will chase a title in his first year with Joe Gibbs Racing.
7. Ryan Blaney
Blaney put together an impressive third-place drive at Pocono, which is made more impressive by the fact that he did without a functioning cool suit for much of the race on a day where temperatures crept up into the high 80s. Blaney was clearly exhausted after the race, after putting together one of the grittiest days of his career.
8. Chris Buescher
Buescher was fast throughout the weekend at Pocono, qualifying second and finishing fourth. While he and the No. 17 team are focused on winning, he did gain 19 points on the cut line, keeping him relatively safe regarding the playoff bubble for now.
9. Ryan Preece
Preece finished ninth at Pocono, scoring his seventh top-10 finish of 2025. He remains below the playoff cut line with nine races remaining in the regular season, but with the speed he’s shown, he may not remain below that cut line for very long.
10. Ross Chastain
After a month of solid races, Chastain and the No. 1 team were radio silent at Pocono. A 26th-place finish and no stage points were all Chastain could muster. Still, he’s locked into the playoffs by virtue of his Coke 600 win, so there’s no reason to panic.
11. Tyler Reddick
After Riley Herbst and Bubba Wallace both experienced brake issues, Reddick’s team took the time to make sure a similar issue wouldn’t end his day. While he finished the race, he did so in 32nd place, one lap down.
12. Bubba Wallace
A brake failure and subsequent 36th-place finish resulted in Wallace losing 28 points to the cut line at Pocono. There’s little margin for error for Wallace over these next nine weeks, and a win at Atlanta - a track Wallace has run well at since its reconfiguration - would be a very welcome sight for the No. 23 team.
13. Alex Bowman
Bowman now holds the final spot in the provisional playoff picture by 20 points over Ryan Preece. That’s not a gap he can be comfortable with, but the speed he showed at Pocono - leading 15 laps and finishing 11th - is a good sign.
14. Erik Jones
Jones hasn’t finished worse than 17th since Kansas on May 11, including a 13th-place finish at Pocono. That’s a very commendable stretch of races for LEGACY Motor Club and the No. 43 team, given how poorly the 2024 season went. Jones has snuck his way to the outskirts of the playoff bubble, as he sits 19th, 62 points out of the postseason after Pocono.
15. John Hunter Nemechek
Speaking of LEGACY Motor Club, Nemechek has consecutive sixth-place finishes and now has six top-10 finishes this year. That’s more than both defending champion Joey Logano and 2024 Championship 4 driver Tyler Reddick. Nemechek’s surge may come too late for him to make a run at the playoffs on points, but the No. 42 team is in a much different spot than they were a year ago.
16. Joey Logano
Speaking of our defending champ, Logano finished 16th at Pocono after leading five laps and scoring four stage points. The No. 22 team is still struggling to put together races, but Atlanta on Saturday is an excellent opportunity for Logano to notch win No. 2 in 2025.
More must-reads:
- Chase Briscoe holds off Denny Hamlin to win Great American Getaway 400 at Pocono
- Denny Hamlin 'didn't have a chance' to get around Chase Briscoe in closing laps at Pocono
- The '2023 MLB home run leaders' quiz
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