Power Rankings: Denny Hamlin bringing the heat — on track and with the fans

NASCAR.com's Pat DeCola ranks the Cup Series Playoffs drivers after the race at Bristol Motor Speedway and before Sunday's Round of 12 opener at Texas Motor Speedway (3:30 p.m. ET, USA, PRN, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio, NBC Sports App).

12. Bubba Wallace (+3)

Season-high: 11
Season-low: Out

Comment: Wallace finished a lap down at Bristol but did what he had to do — advance. The 17.7 average finish he posted in the opening round won't cut it from here on out, but the good news is he has a win at one of the tracks in this round. The bad news is that it isn't this weekend's venue in Texas, which, in fact, is one of his worst tracks (23.6 average finish, one top 10 in eight starts).

11. Ryan Blaney (-4)

Season-high: 3
Season-low: 15

Comment: Blaney just barely scraped together one top 10 in the opening round (a P9 in Darlington), and he still has yet to finish better than ninth since June 4 at Gateway. He's got a lot of work to do, but the Round of 12 is where he could make the magic happen — he's got wins at all three tracks, if you include his Texas All-Star Race victory.

10. Ross Chastain (-2)

Season-high: 1
Season-low: 10

Comment: Chastain was another one with a very much not-flawless Round of 16, starting off well with a P5 at Darlington before settling back into the midpack on the results sheet, where he spent much of the summer for the latter two races. No. 1 has just two combined top 10s across 19 starts at the Round of 12 tracks. That said, one of those was his monumental win at Talladega last spring.

9. Brad Keselowski (-5)

Season-high: 4
Season-low: Out

Comment: It must be almost autumn because Keselowski continues to just rake in top 10s, landing there in every Round of 16 race for four straight in total. Given he ran well at Texas last year (while RFK Racing was still in the process of gaining steam), there's no reason to think he won't keep it rolling on Sunday. 

8. Kyle Busch (-2)

Season-high: 1
Season-low: 11

Comment: Busch's season has had its high points for sure, but it's starting to look likely he might not have the speed to take this thing all the way. He's led in just four races since his St. Louis victory and for a meager 36 laps total. He's a four-time Texas winner and claimed victory in this race in 2020, however, so perhaps some magic happens out west.

7. Martin Truex Jr. (+6)

Season-high: 1
Season-low: 14

Comment: Truex, the Regular Season Champion, likely didn't think he'd have to sweat the Round of 16 as much as he did, but, regardless, mission accomplished. He now gets re-seeded back on top, but it's not quite smooth-sailing from here. The 2017 champion is a future Hall of Famer — but none of his 34 career wins have come at Texas, Talladega or the Roval. 

6. Chris Buescher (+4)

Season-high: 2
Season-low: Out

Comment: Amazingly, we're beyond the "Buescher is a fixture in the top 10" phase to where he's now a regular contender in the top five battling for wins. Though he led just one lap in defense of his Bristol Night Race crown, it was his fifth top five in the last eight races, three of which were wins. And now he gets to go home to Texas.

5. Christopher Bell (+6)

Season-high: 1
Season-low: 15

Comment: Bell finally converted one of his five 2023 poles into a top five, landing P3 after leading 187 laps at Bristol. This team clearly has a few issues to wrinkle out over the coming weeks, but they're a defending Championship 4 contender, and the speed is obviously there. A wreck took him out at Texas last year, but the two previous fall races there yielded dual third-place results, so keep an eye on him.

4. Tyler Reddick (-2)

Season-high: 2
Season-low: 15

Comment: Reddick didn't do anything tremendously noteworthy at Bristol (apart from bringing J Balvin to the track), but he didn't have to — his Round of 12 spot was secure thanks to his Kansas Speedway victory. He can now start fresh again this weekend at Texas, where he enters as the defending winner as a non-playoff driver.

3. William Byron (+2)

Season-high: 1
Season-low: 14

Comment: Byron was nowhere near dominant in the Round of 16 — he didn't lead a lap — but scored an average of 33 points per race, which was more than plenty to move on. He now shares the top spot in the standings with Truex, and he was the runner-up finisher in this race in 2021 and was P7 last year. He's not going anywhere.

2. Kyle Larson (-1)

Season-high: 1
Season-low: 11

Comment: Boy, it sure feels like it's going to come down to Larson and Denny Hamlin, no? There's still a ways to go, but at the moment, the friendly rivals seem to be in a tier of their own. Larson flat-out dominated this race in the fall of 2021, and it wouldn't the least bit surprising to see him lock into the Round of 8 as soon as Sunday.

1. Denny Hamlin (+1)

Season-high: 1
Season-low: 12

Comment: I mean, wow. A driver getting that kind of heat at Bristol — and loving it — obviously has shades of a certain former black hat, and Hamlin appears to have this sport in the palm of his hands at the moment. He's a three-time Texas winner (though just once since 2010), and he most definitely will be competitive this weekend — and probably every race from here on out.