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Power Rankings: Brad Keselowski, Team Penske back on the rise
By Pat DeCola | Published: June 14, 2021 21
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NASCAR.com's Pat DeCola ranks the top 20 NASCAR Cup Series drivers after the All-Star Race at Texas Motor Speedway and before NASCAR's return to Nashville Superspeedway (Sun., 3:30 p.m. ET, NBCSN, MRN).
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Jared C. Tilton | Getty Images
20. Ricky Stenhouse Jr. (--)
Season-high: 12th
Season-low: Out
Comment: A disappointing ninth-place Open run and an early night after missing the All-Star Race cut continue a rough midseason stretch for Stenhouse. He has five Nashville starts under his belt in the Xfinity Series and was runner-up the last time he raced there in 2011.
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Jared C. Tilton | Getty Images
19. Ross Chastain (--)
Season-high: 19th
Season-low: Out
Comment: Chastain impressively raced his way into the All-Star Race with a stage win in the Open, but was unable to do anything with it (finished 18th). Still, he's looked sporty in this mid-part of the season and could show signs of life over the summer.
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Jared C. Tilton | Getty Images
18. Matt DiBenedetto (-1)
Season-high: 14th
Season-low: Out
Comment: DiBenedetto came just short of racing into the All-Star Race, finishing runner-up — before making it in as the Fan Vote winner. Still, he finished just 17th in the big race but he has to be thrilled at the apparent Team Penske rejuvenation we saw at Texas, as it could make its way to the Penske-aligned Wood Brothers organization.
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Jared C. Tilton | Getty Images
17. Kurt Busch (+1)
Season-high: 6th
Season-low: Out
Comment: One of them is obviously an exhibition race, but Busch's P6 run at Sonoma combined with his 10th-place result at Texas give him back-to-back top-10 weekends for the first time since Daytona/Miami in the second and third races of the season. With car performance clearly back under him, don't be surprised to see the former champ add a win before the regular season ends.
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Jared C. Tilton | Getty Images
16. Christopher Bell (--)
Season-high: 8th
Season-low: 16th
Comment: Throwing in Bell's 11th-place All-Star Race result, the sophomore is now riding an eight-week streak outside the top 10. If he hadn't locked up that win in the second race of the season, there would be a lot of cause for concern for the No. 20 team at this point.
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Jared C. Tilton | Getty Images
15. Chris Buescher (-2)
Season-high: 13th
Season-low: Out
Comment: Buescher didn't race poorly on Sunday night, just not for very long — his third-place run in the Open was just shy of making the cut for the All-Star Race. He actually raced in the Xfinity Series in 2011 (the year of Nashville's last NASCAR race) but his two starts were elsewhere, so he's never raced at the Tennessee track.
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Jared C. Tilton | Getty Images
14. Michael McDowell (+1)
Season-high: 10th
Season-low: Out
Comment: Sunday was the Daytona 500 champ's first All-Star Race and considering he finished 12th and ahead of a pair of Cup champions, all things considered that's a pretty nice evening for him. He crashed out of his last two Nashville starts in 2010-11 but had an eighth-place run there in 2009 during JTG-Daugherty Racing's NXS tenure.
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Jared C. Tilton | Getty Images
13. Tyler Reddick (+1)
Season-high: 13th
Season-low: Out
Comment: Reddick keeps showing signs that he's ready to break out in a big way, including an Open stage win to move on to the big race (not to mention he's just one top 10 shy of his entire 2020 tally less than halfway into the 2021 season). He's yet to firmly make his mark on this year, but rest assured it's coming.
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Jared C. Tilton | Getty Images
12. Austin Dillon (--)
Season-high: 11th
Season-low: 16th
Comment: Dillon's All-Star Race result of 19th would be his worst such finish since all the way back at Bristol — but luckily for him, points weren't dished out for this event. He started both NXS races at Nashville in 2011 and found success in each, averaging a 5.0 finish between the two.
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Jared C. Tilton | Getty Images
11. Kevin Harvick (-2)
Season-high: 1st
Season-low: 11th
Comment: Everything seemed pretty well lined up for Harvick to roll into Texas — one of his best tracks — and reestablish himself as a front-field presence at the All-Star Race and it just didn't quite materialize (finished 15th). He has two wins in four NXS Nashville starts, but at this point Stewart-Haas Racing's performance issues seem to be something deeper than what could be fixed by a driver going to a favorable track.
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Jared C. Tilton | Getty Images
10. Alex Bowman (--)
Season-high: 8th
Season-low: 17th
Comment: Like all of Hendrick Motorsports right now, Bowman appears to be firmly entrenched in the top 10 at the moment with no end in sight. Nashville pre-dates his NASCAR resume, but there's little reason to think he and his cohorts won't be the fastest out there again on Sunday.
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Jared C. Tilton | Getty Images
9. Brad Keselowski (+2)
Season-high: 2nd
Season-low: 12th
Comment: Somehow the All-Star Race runner-up has just five top 10s in 2021 — yet they were all top fives and one of them was a win. He's had one of the most interesting seasons to follow thus far for a variety of reasons, and it would not be surprising to see the two-time NXS Nashville winner add another wrinkle to it with a Cup win on Sunday.
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Jared C. Tilton | Getty Images
8. Ryan Blaney (--)
Season-high: 5th
Season-low: 15th
Comment: Blaney always seems to run well at Texas, as backed up by his top-five finish on Sunday. He hasn't had back-to-back top 10s since his Atlanta win and eighth-place Bristol run (he was 10th at Sonoma last weekend) so it'll be interesting to see if he's able to keep rolling at Nashville.
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Jared C. Tilton | Getty Images
7. Kyle Busch (-1)
Season-high: 6th
Season-low: 14th
Comment: Busch isn't back to his fully dominant ways just yet, but he's clearly inching closer to that tier and should be a force the second half of the season. He was nothing short of sensational in his five most recent Nashville NXS starts, which could be a significant advantage for him over the plethora of drivers who haven't raced there before.
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Jared C. Tilton | Getty Images
6. William Byron (+1)
Season-high: 3rd
Season-low: 18th
Comment: Byron led a race-high 30 laps Sunday en route to a seventh-place finish — a much-more Byron-like result than his 35th-place Sonoma run. He's likely itching to put that race in the past with another strong run in a points-paying race, but he'll have to do it at a track he's never seen outside of iRacing.
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Jared C. Tilton | Getty Images
5. Denny Hamlin (--)
Season-high: 1st
Season-low: 5th
Comment: Texas was certainly not the kind of rebound weekend Hamlin and the No. 11 team were looking for, finishing at the back of the pack in 21st. He never finished outside the top 10 in his five Nashville NXS starts back in the day, so perhaps it all clicks again Sunday.
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Jared C. Tilton | Getty Images
4. Martin Truex Jr. (-1)
Season-high: 2nd
Season-low: 7th
Comment: Truex and Co. didn't quite hit it at the All-Star Race (finished 13th) and he's on pace for his worst average finish (12.8) since 2016 (13.9) — yet he has a series-best three wins and feels like a safe bet to make the Championship 4. He had a runner-up at Nashville in 2004 from the pole so perhaps Sunday could be one of his high spots that just seem to come every few weeks this season.
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Jared C. Tilton | Getty Images
3. Joey Logano (+1)
Season-high: 2nd
Season-low: 8th
Comment: Logano continues to show himself as a front-of-the-field contender and is certainly in the mix of drivers who could put an end to Hendrick's reign at the top. He got four starts at Nashville before moving up to Cup, earning three poles, three top 10s and a win.
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Jared C. Tilton | Getty Images
2. Chase Elliott (--)
Season-high: 1st
Season-low: 10th
Comment: For as non-dominant as Elliott's title defense seemed in the early going, he actually is on pace for his best average finish ever (10.1) and clearly he's still getting warmed up. The teammate battle at the top between he and Kyle Larson is looking likely to produce entertainment throughout the season, and both probably stand as the favorites for Sunday.
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Jared C. Tilton | Getty Images
1. Kyle Larson (--)
Season-high: 1st
Season-low: 14th
Comment: There's a reason we heard so much about the promise of Larson's talent during his NASCAR come up and the early Ganassi days — Jeff Gordon-like stretches like this were always on the table, it's just surreal to see it happening in front of our eyes. He's obviously never raced at Nashville before, but the hottest driver on the planet won't let a thing like that slow him down. He's the favorite every weekend right now until proven otherwise.