{"id":664722,"date":"2026-05-12T15:58:08","date_gmt":"2026-05-12T15:58:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/664722\/"},"modified":"2026-05-12T15:58:08","modified_gmt":"2026-05-12T15:58:08","slug":"nascar-power-rankings-ty-gibbs-chase-briscoe-gain-spots","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/664722\/","title":{"rendered":"NASCAR Power Rankings: Ty Gibbs, Chase Briscoe Gain Spots"},"content":{"rendered":"

With only four road-course races this year \u2014 and one of those being a street course \u2014 performance from the Watkins Glen race Sunday isn\u2019t a great predictor of how a team is doing overall.<\/p>\n

But momentum, arguably, in racing is real. And so it should mean something.<\/p>\n

Here are my power rankings going into the All-Star race this weekend at Dover. I won\u2019t update the power rankings after the All-Star race since it\u2019s an exhibition. The next update will come after Charlotte.<\/p>\n

Dropped out:\u00a0William Byron (Last Week: 10)<\/p>\n

On the verge:\u00a0Christopher Bell, Alex Bowman, William Byron, Austin Dillon, Ryan Preece, Daniel Suarez<\/p>\n

10. Austin Cindric<\/a> (Last Week: Not Ranked)
Team Penske No. 2 Ford<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Cindric started third and finished ninth at Watkins Glen for his fourth top 10 in his last seven races. After starting the year with three finishes worse than 25th, he has had eight consecutive top-20 finishes and sits 15th in the standings.<\/p>\n

9. Carson Hocevar<\/a> (Last Week: 6)
Spire Motorsports No. 77 Chevrolet<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Not much was expected from Hocevar at Watkins Glen, so it was a bit of a surprise he qualified 11th. He tangled with Josh Berry on the final lap at Watkins Glen and finished 28th.<\/p>\n

8. Kyle Larson<\/a>\u00a0(Last Week: 5)
Hendrick Motorsports No. 5 Chevrolet<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Larson was the best Hendrick driver at Watkins Glen. But that didn\u2019t mean he had a good day. He finished 23rd.<\/p>\n

7. Chris Buescher<\/a> (Last Week: 4)
RFK Racing No. 17 Ford<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Buescher had a mildly disappointing 12th-place finish at Watkins Glen, a place where he out-dueled Shane van Gisbergen<\/a> just two years ago. But he still has five consecutive finishes of 13th or better.<\/p>\n

6. Ryan Blaney<\/a> (Last Week: 7)
Team Penske No. 12 Ford<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Blaney started seventh and finished 11th at Watkins Glen. Not a great day but a good enough day to salvage some points and move on to next week.<\/p>\n

5. Chase Briscoe<\/a> (Last Week: 9)
Joe Gibbs Racing No. 18 Toyota<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Briscoe said he felt like he was second in class, as he finished fourth at Watkins Glen. He didn\u2019t necessarily have the speed of the leaders but made the most out of his day and his strategy.<\/p>\n

4. Ty Gibbs<\/a> (Last Week: 8)
Joe Gibbs Racing No. 54 Toyota<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Gibbs had hoped he had the winning strategy by pitting with 39 laps to go and trying to save a little bit of fuel on the way to the finish. But there was no holding off Shane van Gisbergen and Michael McDowell<\/a>, who were coming on fresh tires with no need to save fuel. Gibbs settled for third with 17 laps led.<\/p>\n

3. Chase Elliott<\/a>\u00a0(Last Week: 3)
Hendrick Motorsports No. 9 Chevrolet<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Elliott, coming off the win at Texas, was not strong and then tried some strategy to earn stage points and couldn\u2019t even do that, as some of those who flipped the first stage still were able to beat him to the line. That strategy meant poor track position the rest of the day (where he already was running) and he placed 24th.\u00a0<\/p>\n

2. Denny Hamlin<\/a>\u00a0(Last Week: 2)
Joe Gibbs Racing No. 11 Toyota<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Hamlin started 16th and finished 20th on a day when he seemed a little off on a road course where he typically also is a little bit off the pace of the leaders. He\u2019s probably glad there\u2019s no road course in the Chase this year.<\/p>\n

1. Tyler Reddick<\/a> (Last Week: 1)
23XI Racing No. 45 Toyota<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Reddick is having a championship-type season as he started 15th but ran strong enough to finish fifth. It was his eighth top five in the 12 races so far this year. No wonder he leads the standings by 129 points over Hamlin.<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"With only four road-course races this year \u2014 and one of those being a street course \u2014 performance…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":664723,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[446],"tags":[10226,49,48,26749,10662,4387,24888,10328,37447,3932,4386,22870,634,8354,15224,9537,9706,82,47148,9272,4382],"class_list":["post-664722","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nascar","tag-austin-dillon","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-carson-hocevar","tag-chase-briscoe","tag-chase-elliott","tag-chris-buescher","tag-christopher-bell","tag-daniel-suarez","tag-denny-hamlin","tag-kyle-larson","tag-michael-mcdowell","tag-nascar","tag-nascar-cup-series","tag-ryan-blaney","tag-ryan-preece","tag-shane-van-gisbergen","tag-sports","tag-ty-gibbs","tag-tyler-reddick","tag-william-byron"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/664722","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=664722"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/664722\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/664723"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=664722"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=664722"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=664722"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}