Power Rankings: Will Daniel Suárez be the first Round of 12 driver?
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NASCAR.com's Pat DeCola ranks the 2024 NASCAR Cup Series Playoffs drivers after Chase Briscoe's win at Darlington Raceway and before Sunday's postseason opener at Atlanta Motor Speedway (3 p.m. ET, USA Network, PRN Radio, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio, NBC Sports App).
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16. Harrison Burton (+4)
Season-high: 16
Season-low: Out
Comment: A week after shocking the world, Burton was back to finishing outside the top 20, though his P21 at Darlington is actually his third-best finish since June. The No. 21 driver has the biggest mountain to climb in the playoffs, but the most recent superspeedway winner will be happy to see Atlanta -- where he's earned a pair of top-11 finishes in 2022 and earlier this year.
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15. Austin Cindric (+4)
Season-high: 15
Season-low: Out
Comment: Cindric hasn't lit the world on fire since his early June victory, but he's no doubt run better than you'd probably guess, finishing 19th or better in seven of the 11 races since. Championship material? Probably not, but he'll be in the mix at Atlanta and drives for the two-time defending champion Team Penske. Not a bad spot to be in.
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14. Daniel Suárez (+3)
Season-high: 12
Season-low: Out
Comment: Serious question: How many preseason predictions had Suárez being the one driver that Trackhouse put in the playoffs? It can't be many, but that's where we're at, and the No. 99 could have a decent shot to advance. He not only rolls into Atlanta as the most recent winner there, having earned his playoff spot at the track all the way back in February, but he's also been running decent enough lately in general with four top-11 finishes in the past seven races.
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13. Chase Briscoe (+5)
Season-high: 11
Season-low: Out
Comment: Briscoe breathed life into Stewart-Haas Racing's championship hopes for, at the very least, three more races, and he now gets the benefit of essentially a four-car stable doing everything in its power to ensure that continues beyond Bristol. He once led five laps from the pole at Atlanta in 2022 but otherwise has yet to finish better than the 15th he landed in that race.
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12. Alex Bowman (+1)
Season-high: 8
Season-low: 18
Comment: Given Bowman still has just 14 laps led all year, it's hard to see that turning around now and No. 48 chasing a title, but he does still remain in top-tier equipment. He has yet to finish in the top 15 since Pocono, however, and he's been pretty unremarkable in the past four trips to Atlanta with a best finish of 14th in that span. This year has shown us to really never say never, but he has his work cut out for him.
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11. Ty Gibbs (-2)
Season-high: 4
Season-low: 15
Comment: Quest for his first win be damned, Gibbs is a playoff driver for the first time (of what will likely be many) in his career. The No. 54 car has been out front in many more races than you probably realize (12, to be exact), and there's still a legit shot Gibbs wins during the playoffs, which could have significant postseason implications. For Atlanta, he's landed in the top 10 in two of his three starts there.
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10. Martin Truex Jr. (--)
Season-high: 1
Season-low: 10
Comment: The only way Darlington could've gone worse for Truex would've been if somehow he'd gotten knocked out of the playoffs, but even though that didn't happen, it's still the latest entry in a frustrating summer for the No. 19. He had a long stretch of Atlanta dominance for about a decade before the reconfiguration -- though no wins during that span -- and he'd love to finally cash one before he hangs it up to jump-start his playoff outlook.
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9. Brad Keselowski (-1)
Season-high: 5
Season-low: 18
Comment: Keselowski has finished eighth or better in every season since 2017 except for 2022, and here's the 2012 champ, sitting eighth in the standings as we start the 2024 playoffs. Earning a third Atlanta victory this weekend -- he has none since 2019 but was runner-up in spring 2023 -- would make a firm statement that a second title is also once again on the table.
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8. Joey Logano (+7)
Season-high: 5
Season-low: 20
Comment: It looked early on like Logano may struggle to even make this year's playoffs, yet here he is once again in an even-year shaping up to be a potential contender for what would be a series-leading third title among full-time drivers. He punched his ticket to last year's postseason at Atlanta and has led double-digit laps there in the past three races. He'll look to make an early statement that he should be in the title conversation after much of the talk this year has had him out of it.
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7. William Byron (-1)
Season-high: 1
Season-low: 8
Comment: It's been a truly wild year because early on it looked like it might be Byron's title to lose, and he may have a 2021-Larson-esque run in him. Instead, he kind of limped into the playoffs with three crashes in the past five races and just 22 laps led since the Coca-Cola 600. Still, we've seen this team come alive in the postseason after a listless summer before, and another Championship 4 run is certainly in the cards for the two-time Atlanta winner.
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6. Chase Elliott (-3)
Season-high: 2
Season-low: 17
Comment: Elliott felt near invisible in the Regular Season Championship hunt at Darlington as it came down to the Reddick/Larson battle while he finished 11th. Elliott has still been consistently great for most of the year, however, and that consistency should pay off in this year's playoffs as he looks for win No. 2 at Atlanta this weekend.
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5. Ryan Blaney (--)
Season-high: 2
Season-low: 12
Comment: Blaney was said to have perhaps the fastest car at Darlington, which could have potentially been race-winning ... but we'll never know. The defending series champion now officially gets to defend his title starting at a track he owns a 6.25 average finish over the last eight races.
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4. Denny Hamlin (+3)
Season-high: 1
Season-low: 9
Comment: Apart from a pair of crashes at Indy and Daytona, Hamlin has picked up the pace quite a bit since an early-summer swoon as he knocks back on the door of Victory Lane. It may not happen at Atlanta, where his last win came in 2012, but the playoffs are loaded with strong tracks for him and he's kind of viewed now as a sleeper championship threat, which he absolutely shouldn't be.
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3. Christopher Bell (+1)
Season-high: 2
Season-low: 15
Comment: Bell is averaging his worst finish since 2021, yet it feels like he's a surefire bet to make a third consecutive Championship 4 as one of the season's most dominant drivers at times. Atlanta hasn't gone so well for him lately, but Bell had four top-six finishes in the five races leading into the playoffs and should carry plenty of momentum into the Round of 12 and likely well beyond.
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2. Tyler Reddick (-1)
Season-high: 1
Season-low: 14
Comment: Reddick did literally everything in his power to make sure he walked out of Darlington as the Regular Season Champion, and he did -- by one point. Why the drop, then? Lest we forget -- the battle for the bonus points was only so close because everybody was spotted a race by the guy everyone will be chasing the rest of the way ...
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1. Kyle Larson (+1)
Season-high: 1
Season-low: 5
Comment: ... and his name is Kyle Larson. From the get-go, the 2024 NASCAR Cup Series title was always going to be won either by the No. 5 team or by somebody going through them, and nothing appears to have changed with the 10-race sprint to the Bill France Cup upon us. Of course, we've seen crazy things happen before -- "Seven-Time" Jimmie Johnson was knocked out in the first round at Dover of all places, once -- but things would have to go seriously wrong, even without the RSC bonus points, for Larson to not make a strong run to title No. 2. One potential major hurdle for this squad comes immediately, however, as Larson has crashed out of the past three races at Atlanta, with a best finish of 31st. Get out of Georgia with a finish on the lead lap and it should be smooth sailing from there.