Power Rankings: Did Suárez find spark needed for Sonoma repeat?
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20. Michael McDowell (Not ranked last week)
Season-high: 14
Season-low: Out
Comment: McDowell greatly needed a day like St. Louis as he ended a five-race stretch outside the top 20 with his first top 10 since Richmond. He'll have an excellent shot to make it two in a row as the strong road racer picked up his first Sonoma top 10 in this race last year — a third-place finish.
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19. Ty Gibbs (-1)
Season-high: 17
Season-low: Out
Comment: Gibbs has shown flashes of his Cup potential over his first 30 races but has yet to have a big "moment" to announce his emergence. It's still early, of course, but it feels like it could come at some point over the summer, perhaps as soon as this weekend. The strong road racer surely has his eye on the four road courses left before the playoff field is locked in.
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18. Alex Bowman (-1)
Season-high: 2
Season-low: Out
Comment: Bowman turned in his second-worst finish of the season (26th) at St. Louis, and despite that, is still averaging a career-best — by a wide margin — finish of 11.8. He has a pair of top 10s at Sonoma (2018, '21) but overall, the track hasn't been a moneymaker for him (18.0 average finish).
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17 Bubba Wallace (-4)
Season-high: 13
Season-low: Out
Comment: Wallace had been running super strong of late (three straight top fives heading into WWTR), but a crash rendered him with his second-worst points day of the season and a 30th-place result. Road courses are not quite in his wheelhouse (two top 10s in 22 starts), so it could be two weeks of doldrums for No. 23.
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16. Chase Elliott (-4)
Season-high: 2
Season-low: Out
Comment: Turns out it's hard to score points when you aren't racing, and all of Elliott's competition had that edge over him this past weekend. That said, it may not matter as much after Sunday if the accomplished road racer goes out and wins Sonoma, which he is more than capable of doing.
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15. Daniel Suárez (+5)
Season-high: 9
Season-low: Out
Comment: Sunday is absolutely the kind of race — points in both stages and a top-10 finish — Suarez and the No. 99 team are capable of on most weekends when they're able to keep mistakes to a minimum. It marked the veteran driver's first non-superspeedway top 10 since Race 2 at Fontana, and it might be just the spark he needed to propel him to back-to-back wins at Sonoma this weekend.
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14. Ricky Stenhouse Jr. (+1)
Season-high: 12
Season-low: Out
Comment: Completely unfortunate result for Stenhouse at St. Louis as he had been running quite well before getting caught up in an incident between Austin Cindric and Austin Dillon, saddling him with a P32. His car has had speed this year, but it may not show up at Sonoma — Stenhouse has never finished better than 18th there in nine tries.
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Jared C. Tilton | Getty Images
13. Chris Buescher (+3)
Season-high: 13
Season-low: Out
Comment: Buescher continues to be on pace for career-highs in top 10s and average finish as RFK Racing meticulously puts the puzzle pieces together. An underrated road racer, he certainly could go out there and shock the world at Sonoma with a win this weekend — we saw that happen last year, to a degree, with Suárez.
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12. Brad Keselowski (-1)
Season-high: 9
Season-low: Out
Comment: After looking like he was about to burst through, Kes' finishing position has dipped the past two weeks (though he did score a solid 29 points at Charlotte). He's only finished in the top 10 three times at Sonoma but honestly hasn't been bad there — only one of his 12 starts there resulted in a finish worse than 22nd, and it was his first, in which he crashed.
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Jared C. Tilton | Getty Images
11. Tyler Reddick (-1)
Season-high: 3
Season-low: 15
Comment: Tough day at St. Louis for Reddick, who was one of a handful of drivers to lead before crashing out and finishing 35th ... then seeing the car he vacated go on to Victory Lane. He'll get it over it quickly, though, as the series' most recent road-course winner should be among the favorites this weekend.
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10. Christopher Bell (-1)
Season-high: 1
Season-low: 10
Comment: After a whopping eight top 10s in the season's first 11 races, Bell now has ... eight top 10s in the season's first 15 races, though he narrowly missed out at St. Louis. One of the more capable road racers in the series, Bell actually has yet to finish in the top 20 at Sonoma through two starts.
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9. Joey Logano (+5)
Season-high: 1
Season-low: 14
Comment: Just when it looked like things were starting to appear grim, Logano reminds us all why he's the defending champ and turns in his best points day since his Atlanta win. His Sonoma starts aren't amazing, but St. Louis was likely the shot in the arm No. 22 needed to bolster a summer stretch where he and his team need to be, in his words, "perfect."
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Jared C. Tilton | Getty Images
8. Kevin Harvick (-3)
Season-high: 3
Season-low: 11
Comment: Harvick is basically a top-10 car every weekend. It just depends on circumstances in the race that determine where he finishes. That's a pretty decent recipe for wins — they'll come to him eventually — and landing in Victory Lane this weekend in his last race in his home state sure would be sweet for "Happy." He accomplished the feat there in 2017 for the first time in his career.
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7. Denny Hamlin (+1)
Season-high: 4
Season-low: 12
Comment: Hamlin finished third in both stages and second in the race in one of the more complete weekends he's had all year to snap a two-race skid outside the top 10. He's never won at Sonoma but has led in eight of his 16 starts there — including five of the last six. He's due.
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Jared C. Tilton | Getty Images
6. Ross Chastain (-4)
Season-high: 1
Season-low: 7
Comment: After being first or second in points since Fontana, three straight finishes outside the top 20 have sunk Chastain down to fifth in the standings after St. Louis. The good news for him — he's shown capable of winning on road courses and his team enters the weekend as the defending Sonoma winners.
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Jared C. Tilton | Getty Images
5. Kyle Larson (-1)
Season-high: 1
Season-low: 11
Comment: In some respects, it feels like Larson is the obvious title favorite. In others, well, he's averaging a finish of 17.1, which is his worst since being a 22-year-old sophomore with Chip Ganassi Racing all the way back in 2015. He's two years removed from a Sonoma win, however, so perhaps he gets it done this weekend and it sort of calms the waters a bit.
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Jared C. Tilton | Getty Images
4. Martin Truex Jr. (-1)
Season-high: 3
Season-low: 14
Comment: Truex is really rounding back into shape as a weekly top-five contender, which is bad news for the field with so many strong tracks coming up for him. Sonoma marks as good a track as any for him to snag win No. 2 of the year as he's been one of the best there over the past decade.
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Jared C. Tilton | Getty Images
3. Ryan Blaney (+4)
Season-high: 3
Season-low: 13
Comment: Is the full-fledged Blaney breakout finally upon us? It all appears to be there right now, with Blaney on pace for career-highs in laps led and average finish while also claiming the points lead for the first time since Richmond-1 last year. He's notched three straight top 10s at Sonoma, as well, and there's no sign of stopping this train now.
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2. William Byron (-1)
Season-high: 1
Season-low: 14
Comment: Let's put it this way — Byron's pretty strong 2022 laps led count of 746 slotted him in third in the series. This year? Byron is already at 717 circuits paced ... just 15 races in. Sonoma is on his radar as a spot to win, for sure, and there's clearly plenty of speed in that No. 24 car.
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Jared C. Tilton | Getty Images
1. Kyle Busch (+5)
Season-high: 1
Season-low: 8
Comment: It's possible, given how good he looks this year and especially lately, Busch never relinquishes his No. 1 spot the rest of the year. Still a ways to go, but three wins in 15 races with RCR so far speaks volume, and a third career sip of wine in Victory Lane is absolutely on the table for No. 8.