{"id":241071,"date":"2025-10-21T13:15:12","date_gmt":"2025-10-21T13:15:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/241071\/"},"modified":"2025-10-21T13:15:12","modified_gmt":"2025-10-21T13:15:12","slug":"power-rankings-does-blaney-have-another-martinsville-miracle-in-him","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/241071\/","title":{"rendered":"Power Rankings: Does Blaney have another Martinsville miracle in him?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Joe Gibbs Racing driver Chase Briscoe wound up doing what we alluded to here last week<\/a>, punching his first career ticket to the Championship 4 in remarkable fashion Sunday at Talladega Superspeedway. Ryan Blaney, who has shown up to the Phoenix party fashionably late in each of the past two seasons with a last-minute win at Martinsville, is hoping to make it three in a row and punch his title ticket this weekend in Virginia.<\/p>\n

NASCAR.com\u2019s Pat DeCola ranks the 2025 Cup Series Playoffs contenders after the\u00a0YellaWood 500 at Talladega Superspeedway<\/a> and before Sunday\u2019s Xfinity 500 at Martinsville Speedway <\/a>(2 p.m. ET, NBC, Peacock, HBO Max, MRN Radio, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio, NBC Sports App).<\/p>\n

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Analysis: Hamlin was plagued by a debris-induced throttle issue at Talladega, relegating him to P24 when all was said and done after clawing his way back to the lead lap. He could\u2019ve finished 40th, and it wouldn\u2019t have made a difference in his title quest; No. 11 is already locked in on Phoenix. He\u2019ll probably be in the mix this weekend at arguably his best track, however, as the six-time Martinsville winner would love to add a seventh not only for an additional grandfather clock, but also to potentially keep some of his stronger competition (i.e., Team Penske\u2019s Joey Logano and Ryan Blaney) far away from title contention at Phoenix.<\/p>\n

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Analysis: If there were such awards in NASCAR as \u201cMost Improved Driver\u201d and \u201cMost Valuable Driver,\u201d one could\u00a0strongly argue that Briscoe delivering three wins, the No. 19 car\u2019s first Championship 4 bid since 2021, first ever superspeedway win and series highs in top fives and poles in his first year at Joe Gibbs Racing would have him capturing both. While the pressure is off and the focus turns to Phoenix, Briscoe is strong at Martinsville as well and \u2014 similarly to Hamlin \u2014 has incentive to win this one outright and play a bit of keep-away.<\/p>\n

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Analysis: All the pressure that Hamlin and Briscoe\u00a0don\u2019t feel? All of that now gets put squarely on the shoulders of Bell, who won three of the season\u2019s first four races but is now at risk of watching his teammates compete for a title in Phoenix while he hopes for better luck next year. That said, he\u2019s in a better position than any other non-locked-in driver, and he\u2019s got the chops to take matters into his own hands (he is a former do-or-die Martinsville winner, after all) and ensure he joins his compadres in the desert for a championship chance.<\/p>\n

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Analysis:\u00a0Instead of Briscoe, the driver with a dirt background who won his first superspeedway race was nearly Larson \u2026 before No. 5 ran dry at the end<\/a> and walked away with a finish outside the top 20 and a stressful weekend ahead. Larson and Co. were cooking in the weeks before this letdown, however, and there\u2019s an exceptional chance they find their way to Phoenix one way or the other this weekend at Martinsville, where he has six straight top-six results.<\/p>\n

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Analysis: A bit of a curveball here as one could reasonably argue that two-time defending Martinsville fall race winner Ryan Blaney is the most likely below the cutline to advance because, well, this is his race to lose. But take a look at that season low for Byron \u2014 never falling lower than sixth is nuts. The No. 24 team has put together one of the series\u2019 most complete seasons, with what felt like consistently more above-average to excellent weekends than anybody else. A sneaking suspicion indicates the two-time Martinsville winner and his determined No. 24 group have at least one more \u201cexcellent\u201d weekend in store for 2025.<\/p>\n

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Analysis:\u00a0Blaney and Team Penske went from being in command late at Talladega<\/a> to essentially being one with the wall this weekend at Martinsville, their backs completely up against it, and likely only one of either him or Joey Logano (or neither) being able to make it to Phoenix. Of course, going into the weekend, everything on paper indicates that Blaney should be the top contender this weekend; he hasn\u2019t finished worse than 11th at Martinsville since 2018, and his two wins there have come in this race each of the past two years. Still gotta do it, though, and that\u2019s a heck of a lot of pressure. But we know he can<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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Analysis: Elliott\u2019s dismal day at \u2018Dega, finishing dead last after being an innocent victim in a Stage 1 wreck<\/a>, lands him in must-win mode this weekend at Martinsville, which would be of utmost concern for plenty of drivers. Elliott, however, is generally a not-too-high, not-too-low kind of competitor, and will take his calm and cool demeanor into this weekend\u2019s cutoff race in Virginia, and you can all but guarantee he\u2019ll see the front of the field at some point. Elliott has led a whopping 1,275 laps at Martinsville, with 1,083 of those coming in this decade alone, and still has an excellent shot to advance with a win.<\/p>\n

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Analysis: I mean, it wouldn\u2019t be a Joey Logano championship run if he didn\u2019t do something exceptional, and that\u2019s certainly on the table this weekend, should the No. 22 driver and three-time champion win at Martinsville to keep his hopes alive for a fourth title in 2025. All of the guys that need to win this weekend are great at the half-mile short track, Logano included, and No. 22 is riding a 12-race top-10 streak there. Never say never, especially with this No. 22 team.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Joe Gibbs Racing driver Chase Briscoe wound up doing what we alluded to here last week, punching his…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":241072,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[70],"tags":[4687,9992,9034,655,13917,425,132842,18740,8656,99,105408,9991],"class_list":["post-241071","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nascar","tag-analysis","tag-chase-briscoe","tag-joe-gibbs-racing","tag-joey-logano","tag-martinsville","tag-nascar","tag-nbc-sports-app","tag-phoenix","tag-ryan-blaney","tag-sports","tag-talladega-superspeedway","tag-team-penske"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/241071","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=241071"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/241071\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/241072"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=241071"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=241071"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=241071"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}