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Power Rankings: Will Alex Bowman build momentum, capture another Las Vegas victory?
By Pat DeCola | Published: February 28, 2023 21
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NASCAR.com's Pat DeCola ranks the 20 hottest Cup Series drivers after the race at Auto Club Speedway and before Sunday's race at Las Vegas Motor Speedway (3:30 p.m. ET, FOX, PRN, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio).
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Jared C. Tilton | Getty Images
20. Ty Gibbs (Not ranked last week)
Season-high: 20
Season-low: Out
Comment: While it’s not a barn burner by any means, Gibbs turned in a solid-enough finish (P16) at Auto Club to slot him inside the top 20 in points. He’ll now get a second crack at a track for the first time in his Cup Series career after posting a 22nd-place finish at Las Vegas last year while filling in for Kurt Busch.
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Jared C. Tilton | Getty Images
19. Austin Cindric (-4)
Season-high: 15
Season-low: 19
Comment: Cindric's start to 2023 has been the polar opposite of the 2022 Daytona 500 champion's season a year ago, but it's still tremendously early. He'll now look to get the gears going at Las Vegas, a historically great track for Penske but one at which he's averaged a 24.0 finish through his first two starts. That said, he did start inside the top three in both of those races, so you never know.
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Jared C. Tilton | Getty Images
18. Brad Keselowski (Not ranked last week)
Season-high: 18
Season-low: Out
Comment: Ah, there he is. The 2012 champion makes his first Power Rankings appearance since Atlanta-1 of last year, and overall it's been an encouraging start for RFK Racing as a whole. Keselowski will aim to make it two top 10s in a row as he heads to Vegas, a track at which he's tied for second in the series in wins among active drivers (three), only behind part-timer Jimmie Johnson's four.
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17. Chris Buescher (+3)
Season-high: 17
Season-low: Out
Comment: Again, RFK came to play in 2023 — Buescher is hanging around the top five in points through two races so far. He has his work cut out for him a bit at Las Vegas — where he has just one top 10 in 12 tries — but he's actually been pretty solid there, with his 17.5 average finish standing as his best mark among tracks he has at least 10 starts at.
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Jared C. Tilton | Getty Images
16. Ricky Stenhouse Jr. (+3)
Season-high: 16
Season-low: Out
Comment: Well, the 2023 Daytona 500 winner wasn't quite able to pull off back-to-back wins, but he nearly made it two top 10s in a row after landing P12 on the charts. Stenhouse has just two top 10s in 15 career Vegas starts but did notch a third-place result at the track in 2020.
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Jared C. Tilton | Getty Images
15. Tyler Reddick (-2)
Season-high: 9
Season-low: 15
Comment: Two races, two crashes for Mr. Reddick, who hasn't quite come out of the gate seamlessly in his first two races at 23XI. Still no reason to fret just yet, however, and he heads to Vegas as the most recent pole winner there with three straight top-seven finishes to his credit.
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Jared C. Tilton | Getty Images
14. William Byron (-2)
Season-high: 7
Season-low: 14
Comment: For the second straight year, Byron has started with two finishes outside the top 20 after turning his 32nd-place Auto Club start into a P25 finish. He's had some good runs at Vegas in the past — including a top five in last year's spring race — but overall, it's been an up-and-down track for him, and he's yet to string together back-to-back top 10s there.
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Jared C. Tilton | Getty Images
13. Austin Dillon (+3)
Season-high: 12
Season-low: 16
Comment: That's now two races to start the season with Dillon having a top-10 car, even if the Daytona result doesn't show it ... not to mention his teammate clearly having the best car for the final run Sunday at Auto Club en route to the win. Just saying, we could be hearing from Dillon a lot this year, and he and Kyle Busch could provide quite the 1-2 tandem. He has just three top 10s in 15 Las Vegas starts, but he's right there — he's notched an 11.5 average finish in the last four Vegas races, all of which were 10th-13th-place finishes.
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Jared C. Tilton | Getty Images
12. Ryan Blaney (-2)
Season-high: 10
Season-low: 13
Comment: Blaney took second in Stage 1 at Fontana and led 16 laps but ultimately got shuffled back to a 26th-place finish. He'll look to rebound at Vegas, where he has eight top 10s and five top fives in 13 starts. No. 12 landed 36th and 28th at the Nevada track last year but led double digits in both races.
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Jared C. Tilton | Getty Images
11. Alex Bowman (+3)
Season-high: 11
Season-low: 15
Comment: Bowman wasn't able to claim one more Auto Club win to the fold before the track goes through its upcoming transformation but did pick up points in both stages. He'll have another shot this weekend to win multiple times at a track for the first time in his career as he enters this spring race as the defending victor.
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Jared C. Tilton | Getty Images
10. Daniel Suárez (+1)
Season-high: 10
Season-low: 14
Comment: Trackhouse Racing is on fire out the gate, with both of its drivers looking locked in and each landing in the top 10 in the opening two races, both in the top four in the case of Fontana. Las Vegas offers a solid heat check for Suárez, who has just one top 10 there in 11 starts, and it came back in 2018.
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9. Martin Truex Jr. (-2)
Season-high: 7
Season-low: 9
Comment: Truex mired through several in-race mishaps — including losing a tire at one point — and still managed to nearly snag a top 10 at Fontana. Battling back like that is a great sign for the No. 19 team coming off a down year. There's a shot at building momentum here as the two-time Vegas winner owns the best average finish there over the last 10 races (6.5, tied with Kyle Busch).
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Jared C. Tilton | Getty Images
8. Kevin Harvick (+1)
Season-high: 8
Season-low: 11
Comment: For a minute there, it looked like Harvick, fittingly, would send both his career and Auto Club off with a win in his home state, but, alas, he faded to fifth. Still an encouraging start for the 2014 champ, and he'll look to make it victory No. 3 at Vegas on Sunday.
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Jared C. Tilton | Getty Images
7. Denny Hamlin (+1)
Season-high: 6
Season-low: 8
Comment: Hamlin didn't quite have the car to compete for the win at Fontana but did manage to have a complete race with two strong stage finishes to bolster his P6. He could find a way to dominate on Sunday as the 2021 fall winner at Vegas likely would've put together five straight top fives at the track had he not run into mechanical failure in this race last year. He led 31 laps but eventually landed 32nd.
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Jared C. Tilton | Getty Images
6. Christopher Bell (-2)
Season-high: 4
Season-low: 10
Comment: Tough break for Bell at Fontana, getting caught up in that stack-up wreck just under the halfway point. He sat on the pole in this Vegas race last year and rode it to 32 laps led and a top-10 finish, so a rebound could be in store.
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Jared C. Tilton | Getty Images
5. Kyle Larson (-2)
Season-high: 2
Season-low: 5
Comment: Larson had a heck of a time maneuvering his No. 5 machine at Fontana as the team worked to smooth out engine issues mid-race, and it would've been a wash of an afternoon had they not continued to fight. It paid off because Larson finished ahead of those in the restart wreck (29th). He dominated this Vegas race for his first Hendrick Motorsports win in '21, and he very well could do it again on Sunday.
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Jared C. Tilton | Getty Images
4. Chase Elliott (+2)
Season-high: 4
Season-low: 6
Comment: Elliott landed the runner-up at Fontana, but — to emphasize the importance of putting together whole races — he scored 14 points fewer than Ross Chastain, in third. The entire rest of the top six scored more than Elliott, actually. That said, we're two weeks in, and points aren't heavy on the mind. Plus, he's due for a win at Vegas, with his 178 laps led most among drivers that haven't won there.
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Jared C. Tilton | Getty Images
3. Ross Chastain (+2)
Season-high: 3
Season-low: 5
Comment: Chastain is showing absolutely no signs of regression and looked to be headed for his first win of 2023 for much of the race at Auto Club. He'll have to settle for the points lead as the series shifts to Vegas, where he's finished in the top 20 in just two of his nine starts. The silver lining? They were both last year and both inside the top three.
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Jared C. Tilton | Getty Images
2. Kyle Busch (--)
Season-high: 2
Season-low: 3
Comment: Well, alright then. Welcome to the playoffs, Kyle Busch — a familiar place for him, but one that he's arrived at perhaps sooner than some suspected in his new digs at RCR. While he still has just the one win at his home track, he's been pretty excellent at Vegas with just two finishes outside the top seven in the past 10 races there.
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Jared C. Tilton | Getty Images
1. Joey Logano (--)
Season-high: 1
Season-low: 1
Comment: With his rival Busch nipping at his heels, Logano's stranglehold of the top spot might be a looser grip than the champ would like. Logano still had a strong race at Fontana, however, picking up 39 points as he heads into the weekend as the most recent Vegas winner, which tied him for second in wins among active drivers (three). Pretty good place to be.