Power Rankings: Joey Logano looking for home-cooked lobster at Loudon
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NASCAR.com's Pat DeCola ranks the top 20 NASCAR Cup Series drivers after Ryan Blaney's win at Iowa Speedway and before Sunday's race at New Hampshire Motor Speedway (2:30 p.m. ET, USA Network, PRN Radio, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio, NBC Sports App).
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20. Todd Gilliland (Not ranked last week)
Season-high: 20
Season-low: Out
Comment: Clearly a driver on the rise, Gilliland's 14.0 average finish across the past six races was enough to not only slot him into the top 20 in points but make his first-ever Power Rankings appearance. He's still nothing more than a dark horse to make the playoffs, but it feels feasible now, and he's been close to cracking the top 20 at Loudon the past couple years. Gilliland will likely cross the threshold this weekend.
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19. Kyle Busch (-3)
Season-high: 3
Season-low: 19
Comment: A new season low in the rankings for Busch, who could legitimately slip out of them entirely -- honestly, a wild notion to think about -- if things continue to trend this way. Even Loudon, where he has gone Beast Mode several times and has three career wins, won't be a sight for sore eyes -- Rowdy has crashed out of three of the last four there, and the fourth was a non-top-10.
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18. Austin Cindric (--)
Season-high: 16
Season-low: Out
Comment: How surprising was Cindric's Gateway victory? Well, it stands as not only his only top 10 in the past several weeks ... it was one of just two total top-10 finishes for him on the season. We'll see if he can find momentum at New Hampshire, where Team Penske typically performs well but where Cindric himself has yet to land a top 10.
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17. Daniel Suárez (+2)
Season-high: 12
Season-low: Out
Comment: Small steps forward, but not only did Suárez earn his first top 10 since Texas, he also led his first laps since Martinsville, a week earlier than that. While he's never led laps at Loudon, he does have a trio of top 10s there -- including one with his current team Trackhouse Racing, in 2022.
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16. Chase Briscoe (+1)
Season-high: 11
Season-low: Out
Comment: Briscoe didn't do much at Iowa to earn his bump up here (instead, he can thank Kyle Busch for slipping to 19th), and he isn't exactly showcasing his talents over the past month while looking for a new job, with a 26.0 average finish over the last four races. He's gotten progressively better at NHMS each time out, however, and has a win at the similarly laid out Phoenix, so he could right the ship this weekend.
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15. Ty Gibbs (-5)
Season-high: 4
Season-low: 15
Comment: Gibbs is in the midst of his worst three-race stretch of the season at the moment, rebounding from last week's one-point effort with just 12 tallies at Iowa to drop out of the top 10 in points for the first time since Atlanta. JGR cars tend to dominate at Loudon, though, and even though it didn't translate to Gibbs in his first attempt last year (27th), it's probably only a matter of time.
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14. Bubba Wallace (--)
Season-high: 10
Season-low: 19
Comment: It's not much, but Wallace has started to trend upward again with finishes of 21st, 20th and 17th the last three weeks. Normally I'd be inclined to think that trend would buck at Loudon -- where Wallace finished no better than 22nd in his first four attempts -- but he has a P3 and P8 the last two times out, so he's clearly figured out something there.
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13. Chris Buescher (-1)
Season-high: 9
Season-low: 16
Comment: There's no reason to write him off yet, but after looking like a legit title contender in the first third of the season, Buescher has just two total top 10s since Richmond ... in March. Unfortunately for No. 17, if he wants to get things rolling he's going to have to dig down and find something at New Hampshire that he's never found in 10 starts -- a top 10.
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12. Alex Bowman (+1)
Season-high: 8
Season-low: 18
Comment: After a super brief, two-race skid, Bowman is back to being a fixture in the top 10, with now six such finishes in the last eight races. And now for his next trick? Trying to finish in the top 10 at Loudon, which he's only done one time in 12 career starts for a rough average finish of 23.4.
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11. Joey Logano (+4)
Season-high: 5
Season-low: 20
Comment: Alright, is it finally happening? Logano's Team Penske teammates have each won in the past three weeks, so it only seems natural that the native New Englander, with two top-six finishes in the last three weeks, gets the job done this weekend at New Hampshire. Though he has just one win there in Penske equipment, he's an annual contender in the Granite State, and this sets up perfectly for him to cash in and quell any postseason worries.
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10. Ross Chastain (-1)
Season-high: 5
Season-low: 14
Comment: Chastain irked what felt like the entire field at Iowa, but it's hard to fault him when it's working -- he has five straight finishes of 12th or better, scoring 25 points or more in all of them. As for Loudon, he has a pair of eighth-place runs, but the remainder of his starts there all resulted in finishes outside the top 20.
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9. Christopher Bell (-1)
Season-high: 4
Season-low: 15
Comment: Bell was kind of a heavy favorite entering the weekend and struggled initially at Iowa before rebounding mightily for a top-five run (but just 33 points). He'll likely be among the favorites once again this weekend, as he has a better handle on Loudon than most drivers tend to at this point in their career, and last year's pole winner will look to avenge his P29 in last year's frustrating race.
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8. Ryan Blaney (+3)
Season-high: 2
Season-low: 12
Comment: Blaney wasn't in much of a situation where he could've missed the playoffs -- yet -- but Sunday's victory was still a massive sigh of relief for the reigning champ after several frustrating weeks. We've yet to see a driver collect wins in back-to-back races this year, but No. 12 has a legitimate chance to do so at Loudon. He led 64 laps en route to a P5 there in 2021, and it's a track that Team Penske rarely misses the setup on.
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7. Brad Keselowski (-2)
Season-high: 5
Season-low: 18
Comment: Despite the minor rankings dip here, Keselowski has been super strong in the late spring/early summer -- he's already matched his top-five total from a year ago -- and now heads to a track at which he has plenty of past success. The 2012 champ has a pair of wins at NHMS, but almost more impressive is his consistency at the "Magic Mile," with an overall 9.8 average finish and top 10s in 15 of his past 19 races there.
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6. Tyler Reddick (-3)
Season-high: 3
Season-low: 14
Comment: Iowa, oddly, felt like a near-complete whiff for Toyota, and Reddick was not immune, scoring 15 points and finishing outside the top 20. He only has four Cup starts at Loudon, but it's looking like it could be a fruitful track for him over the long haul, turning in his best showing there yet with a P6 last year.
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5. Martin Truex Jr. (+1)
Season-high: 1
Season-low: 10
Comment: Despite the speed shown early on this season, Truex is mired in a five-race slump outside the top 10, and he probably isn't quite second-guessing his recent decision at the moment. That said, a win this weekend at New Hampshire -- his white-whale track until finally breaking through last year -- could keep the itch going, and it's entirely possible he goes back-to-back as his worst finish there since 2016 is 12th.
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4. Denny Hamlin (--)
Season-high: 1
Season-low: 9
Comment: He still has three wins, so you can't feel too bad for him, but it's still pretty rough for Hamlin to fly all the way to Sonoma, then all the way to Iowa ... and get the results that he did, each no fault of his own. No. 11 will be happy to just fly up the East Coast this weekend to New Hampshire, where he has three wins and a sterling 9.4 average finish over his lengthy career.
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3. William Byron (+4)
Season-high: 1
Season-low: 7
Comment: In no way has Byron been bad lately, but things certainly haven't felt as sharp for the No. 24 team the past month-and-a-half-plus, so Sunday's runner-up was huge. What's odd about this weekend for Byron, however, is that Loudon is a curious track for him -- he's never finished in the top 10 there in six tries but has a respectable 15.5 average finish. Feels nearly impossible he doesn't pick up the first on Sunday, though.
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2. Chase Elliott (--)
Season-high: 2
Season-low: 17
Comment: And just like that, here's your points leader. Elliott is top dog in the standings for the first time since 2022, and he is once again firmly entrenched in NASCAR's elite crop of drivers, with sights set on win No. 2 this weekend. He has a similar trend to Byron at NHMS, where he has just three top 10s in 10 starts, but overall hasn't been awful with a 14.4 average finish.
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1. Kyle Larson (--)
Season-high: 1
Season-low: 5
Comment: It speaks volumes when a driver has a pair of 34th-place finishes in the past four weeks yet doesn't budge from the top spot here, but it's warranted for Larson. He was in a class of his own at Iowa before getting run into by Daniel Suárez, looking like he was headed toward consecutive wins. Larson has -- surprisingly -- yet to win at Loudon, but it sure could come this weekend. He notched a pair of runner-ups there for Chip Ganassi Racing in 2017 and was the third-place finisher last year.