Considering that he is teammates with two future Hall of Fame drivers and a Cup Series champion, there are times where it feels like Christopher Bell gets overlooked as a championship-caliber Cup driver. You, in fact, may still be overlooking him even now. But do so at your own peril.
Two years in a row, Bell has made it to the Championship 4 and been among the drivers who have entered the season finale at Phoenix Raceway with a shot to win the Cup Series championship. Bell has yet to stand on top so far, but he is yet again performing at the right time in the playoffs and angling for a third-straight Championship 4 appearance. After winning the pole, leading the most laps and finishing seventh at Kansas, Bell now stands 28 points above the cut line for the Round of 8, giving himself a nice cushion as the Cup Series enters two wild card races at Talladega and the Charlotte Motor Speedway Roval to cap off the Round of 12.
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After an accident relegated Kyle Larson to a midpack finish at Kansas, Bell has now assumed the lead in the CBS Sports NASCAR Power Rankings entering this weekend at Talladega.
| Rank | Driver | Change | Comment | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Christopher Bell | Bell's recent record of becoming a good speedway racer does not include Talladega. He has just one top 10 in his last five starts there and crashed out of Dega's most recent race in April. | ||
| 2 | Alex Bowman | Bowman is starting to feel like a driver who can do far more in this year's playoffs than anyone outside of the No. 48 team imagined. For what it's worth, Bowman's deepest playoff run so far was a trip to the Round of 8 in 2020. | ||
| 3 | Kyle Larson | Salvaging a 26th place finish with a damaged racecar helped Larson lessen the blow of a cut tire, as he remains 18 points above the cut line. But that advantage can quickly disappear at Talladega, where he has just three top 10s his entire career and none since he ran fourth in the spring of 2022. | ||
| 4 | Ryan Blaney | With three Talladega wins to his name, Blaney is starting to make his way into the ranks of the track's all-time winningest drivers. A fourth Talladega win this weekend will tie him with NASCAR Hall of Famers Bobby Allison, Buddy Baker and Darrell Waltrip. | ||
| 5 | Ross Chastain | I like to think that somewhere, someone in the agricultural community is using Chastain's Kansas win to troll their friends over their preference in farm equipment. For what it's worth, Kubota now has one win as a Cup primary sponsor while John Deere has none despite all those years on Chad Little's car. | ||
| 6 | Chase Elliott | You have to wonder what it does for the morale of Elliott's team that they were able to turn a motor issue in practice and running dead last in qualifying into a top 10 outing at Kansas. If Elliott can make it through the Round of 8, he could give the rest of the remaining playoff drivers all they can handle. | ||
| 7 | Joey Logano | Logano has three Talladega wins in his career, and you can expect him to run up front again this weekend. Logano led 22 laps, second most of any driver in the field, back in April. | ||
| 8 | Denny Hamlin | Hamlin was surprisingly candid in his frustration after Kansas, telling Bob Pockrass' Fox Sports that he isn't "in it" mentally right now. If you're rooting for Hamlin to win his first Cup title, that's hardly a reassuring thing to hear. | ||
| 9 | Daniel Suarez | It's hard to be consistent at Talladega, but Suarez has found a way to do so. Prior to getting swept up in The Big One coming to the checkered flag in April, Suarez had been on a streak of three Talladega top 10 finishes in a row. | ||
| 10 | Ty Gibbs | A fifth place finish at Kansas gave Gibbs eight top-five finishes on the 2024 season. That's double the total he had in his rookie year of 2023 with still six races left to run. | ||
| 11 | William Byron | With Byron coming off a runner-up finish at Kansas, file this away just in case: The last time a driver won both the Daytona 500 and at least one race at Talladega in the same season was 2020 when Denny Hamlin did it. | ||
| 12 | Chris Buescher | -- | Great news for Buescher: With Kansas Week over he doesn't have to be subject to the highlight of him losing in that photo finish over and over again anymore. They even put the photo of it in the airport for crying out loud! | |
| 13 | Chase Briscoe | You can understand why Briscoe didn't cut Kyle Busch any slack despite Busch being the leader and Briscoe being on the verge of going a lap down, but it doesn't help Briscoe's case that he angered Carson Hocevar a couple laps later in a somewhat similar situation. I suppose you don't make the Round of 8 without making a few enemies along the way. | ||
| 14 | Austin Cindric | Cindric likely would have been in a great position playoff-wise had he been able to get through Kansas with a decent finish, and he had the pace to do so before problems on pit road and his accident on the backstretch. Now, there's going to be an extra burden on him to not just run well at Talladega and the Roval, but also to pick up a bunch of stage points to mitigate the damage Kansas did. | ||
| 15 | Tyler Reddick | Despite some hope he could end up with a top 10 finish late, a 25th place for Reddick was a disastrous outcome considering how unpredictable the next two races could be. If he isn't careful -- and even if he is -- the regular season champion could be a surprise exit from the playoffs if things go awry these next two races. | ||
| 16 | Ryan Preece | -- | The present moment feels like a good time for Preece to be hitting on all cylinders. With five-straight finishes of 18th or better, Preece now goes to Talladega where he finished a career-best third in 2019. | |
| 17 | Martin Truex Jr. | Truex Jr. will have one more shot to win Talladega in a Cup car this weekend despite winning three races in a row there in the Xfinity Series from 2004 to 2006. Truex's best Cup finish at Dega is a fifth on three different occasions. | ||
| 18 | Kyle Busch | To add some historical context to Busch's consecutive winning seasons record being in jeopardy: The previous record of 18 was snapped in 1978, when Richard Petty failed to win a race for the first time since 1960. The next season, he won five times en route to winning his seventh Winston Cup championship. | ||
| 19 | Zane Smith | With just one more top 10 finish, Smith has the chance to tie teammate and Rookie of the Year frontrunner Carson Hocevar for the most top 10s by a Cup rookie this season. What a second-half turnaround Smith has had after a dismal start to his first full-time season. | ||
| 20 | Bubba Wallace | Wallace's 17th place finish was the best for any 23XI car at Kansas this season, matching his finish from back in May. Whatever 23XI Racing had figured out about Kansas, the rest of the field figured out and left them well behind on. | ||
| 21 | Noah Gragson | Gragson should be at the top of people's lists when it comes to potential dark horse Talladega winners. Gragson has been in position to win both of his last two Talladega starts, which includes a third place finish in April. | ||
| 22 | Carson Hocevar | Hocevar led five laps at Kansas after taking the lead on a restart, the most laps he's led in any Cup race this season. The Rookie of the Year frontrunner has now led at least one lap in eight races total in 2024. | ||
| 23 | Brad Keselowski | You can't necessarily blame him, but the best place for any driver to be entering the trioval at Talladega on the final lap is not in a position where Keselowski is second and they have to block him. Carl Edwards found that out the hard way in 2009, as did Michael McDowell this past spring. | ||
| 24 | Corey LaJoie | -- | LaJoie excels as a speedway racer, and he may have an even better chance at victory this weekend than when he was earning top-five finishes in speedway races for Spire Motorsports. LaJoie gets to reap the benefits of Ford's speedway program, which Justin Haley did when he led 21 laps at Daytona in August driving the car LaJoie is driving now. | |
| 25 | Michael McDowell | McDowell's chance to earn a measure of redemption at Talladega has come. He's had chances to win both of the last two superspeedway races, only to make spectacular exits from the race after getting spun from the lead. | ||
| 26 | Daniel Hemric | -- | You have to have a lot of sympathy for Hemric, who for the second-straight time will go one-and-done in a full-time Cup ride despite not running all too terrible. Despite the disappointment of not returning to Kaulig Racing next year, Hemric was able to turn in another top 20 finish at Kansas. | |
| 27 | Harrison Burton | -- | Wouldn't it be something if Burton could get not just Win 100 for the Wood Brothers, but also Win 101? The last time the Wood Brothers won more than once in a season was in 1981, when Neil Bonnett won three times late in the year at Darlington, Dover, and Atlanta. | |
| 28 | Justin Haley | Haley can and should be considered a legitimate threat to win at Talladega. His superspeedway skills are well-documented, and Spire Motorsports looks to have fully matured as an organization capable of contending the rest of this season and into 2025. | ||
| 29 | Austin Dillon | Lost in the disappointment of Kyle Busch missing out on his first win of 2024 was that Dillon had the best finish for a Richard Childress Racing car at Kansas in 12th. For Dillon, it marked his best finish since his controversial win at Richmond. | ||
| 30 | Todd Gilliland | Keep your eye on Gilliland this weekend, because he should have a car capable of winning just like his teammate Michael McDowell should. In the most recent superspeedway race, Gilliland led five laps from the outside pole before getting swept up in a late-race crash. |