Power Rankings: Is it possible 2024’s best driver hasn’t even won yet?
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NASCAR.com's Pat DeCola ranks the top 20 NASCAR Cup Series drivers after Kyle Larson's win at Kansas Speedway and before Sunday's Throwback Weekend race at Darlington Raceway (3 p.m. ET, FS1, MRN Radio, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio).
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20. John Hunter Nemechek (Not ranked last week)
Season-high: 15
Season-low: Out
Comment: Kansas Speedway seems to be pretty friendly to the Nemecheks -- as the site of Joe's final win -- and John Hunter nearly added his third top 10 of 2024 there on Sunday before settling in 13th. It was still his best showing since a 44-point, sixth-place run at Bristol in March, and he'll now try to collect his second career top 10 at Darlington after snagging one in his first attempt there in 2020.
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Jared C. Tilton | Getty Images
19. Daniel Suárez (-1)
Season-high: 12
Season-low: Out
Comment: Another 2024 photo finish but Suárez was not in this one, wrapping up the day with a 10-point, 27th-place showing. This team is struggling to build much consistency at the moment and the road ahead isn't an easy one, with Suárez leading just one total lap and compiling a rough 23.9 average finish and just one top 10 in 12 Darlington starts.
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Jared C. Tilton | Getty Images
18. Joey Logano (-4)
Season-high: 5
Season-low: 20
Comment: If Ford as a whole was on fire and winning races and Logano was still having the kind of season that he's having, the concerns would be much greater here for the de facto flagship driver for the blue ovals. The manufacturer is still winless, however, but he's in the handful of Ford drivers you look for to snap that skid, perhaps even this weekend. The two-time champ won the Darlington spring race in 2022 and has six top fives at one of NASCAR's most difficult tracks from 2015-on.
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Jared C. Tilton | Getty Images
17. Noah Gragson (+3)
Season-high: 17
Season-low: Out
Comment: We said here last week that Gragson -- a driver with five career top 10s entering the weekend -- could actually make it three in a row at Kansas, and he did just that as the talented sophomore continues to turn heads. He's gone from 42nd (!) in the standings to 19th since Atlanta, and there's a legitimate shot he points his way into the playoffs ... or wins outright. Darlington was arguably his best track in the Xfinity Series, with Gragson never finishing outside the top 10 in seven starts, five of which were top fives with two wins. Just saying.
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16. Bubba Wallace (+1)
Season-high: 10
Season-low: 19
Comment: Wallace's day almost looked like it was ended early before being able to continue after a wreck, so his 20-point P17 isn't awful -- but Kansas was perhaps his best remaining opportunity to win in the regular season. Thankfully for the No. 23 team, a rebound could come at Darlington, one of Wallace's previous worst tracks but one he's figured out the past couple of years via three straight top 10s -- the only three he has there in 11 starts.
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15. Chase Briscoe (-2)
Season-high: 11
Season-low: Out
Comment: After back-to-back top 10s at Martinsville and Texas, Briscoe has started to trend the other way in every race since, and he's just not finding the front of the field, having led just 12 laps through 12 races. He's yet to finish in the top 10 in six Darlington starts, but he did win the spring race there in 2020 in the Xfinity Series; it's possible SHR collectively could put together a strong weekend ahead.
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Jared C. Tilton | Getty Images
14. Brad Keselowski (-2)
Season-high: 10
Season-low: 18
Comment: RFK Racing clearly is on the brink of breaking through for Ford's first win of 2024, and while Chris Buescher was the half of the duo to fight for it at Kansas, Keselowski might be the guy at Darlington. Kes has finished seventh or better in four of the last five there, and the 2018 Southern 500 winner owns a strong 11.4 average finish at the track "Too Tough to Tame."
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Jared C. Tilton | Getty Images
13. Christopher Bell (+2)
Season-high: 4
Season-low: 15
Comment: Bell led just five laps from his first pole position of 2024, but you'd better believe he'll gladly take the solid P6 after not even seeing the top 15 since a sixth-place run at Richmond earlier this year. He led 40 laps from the pole the last time the series raced at Darlington en route to a disappointing 23rd-place run, but it definitely feels like he's much more likely to turn in another top 10 this weekend.
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Jared C. Tilton | Getty Images
12. Ross Chastain (-2)
Season-high: 5
Season-low: 14
Comment: A look at Chastain's past month and a half reveals that, well, he hasn't finished in the top 10 since March -- but it doesn't feel that way, does it? No. 1 is still leading laps and has scored fewer than 25 points in just one race since then (a crash at Texas) to still hang around the top 10 in the standings. Despite most of his results being outside the top 20 at Darlington, you get the sense a win at the "Lady in Black" is only a matter of time for him given his driving style and this weekend would mark a great time to for him to win and shake things up from the Gibbs/Hendrick stranglehold at the moment.
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11. Ty Gibbs (-3)
Season-high: 4
Season-low: 11
Comment: After slipping a bit over recent weeks, the sophomore has fallen out of the top 10 here for the first time all year, which is quite a feat. The only other drivers who have yet to do that are Ryan Blaney, William Byron, Denny Hamlin, Kyle Larson and Martin Truex Jr. -- pretty strong company. No. 54 has three Darlington starts in his young career so far, and they've all been exactly mediocre, with no laps led and an average finish of 17.3.
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Jared C. Tilton | Getty Images
10. Kyle Busch (+1)
Season-high: 3
Season-low: 18
Comment: Busch has now turned in back-to-back top 10s for the first time this season, which is honestly a wild sentence to write in May about NASCAR's all-time winningest driver. It's an encouraging sign for the two-time champ, though, as that's now three in the past four weeks for Rowdy and the No. 8 team. He shockingly has not won at Darlington in nearly two decades (spring 2008) despite it standing as a pretty strong track for him, with a 13.3 average finish and top 10s in nearly 60% of his 24 starts there.
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Jared C. Tilton | Getty Images
9. Chris Buescher (+7)
Season-high: 9
Season-low: 16
Comment: Well, Buescher was literally as close as he could've gotten to ending Ford's skid as possible, but he'll have to settle for one of the most disappointing runner-up finishes in recent memory. Still, he's on a roll and breaks into the top 10 here for the first time this season, now heading back to Darlington, where he picked up his best finish at the track the last time we were there.
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Jared C. Tilton | Getty Images
8. Alex Bowman (+1)
Season-high: 8
Season-low: 18
Comment: Sure, he hasn't won yet, but Bowman has been remarkably consistent so far and is tied for the series lead in top 10s with seven despite finding the very front of the field for just seven laps this year. This will be an interesting weekend for him, as the 2020 spring Darlington runner-up typically doesn't perform well there (19.6 average finish, three top 10s in 12 starts) but clearly has things working at the moment.
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Jared C. Tilton | Getty Images
7. Ryan Blaney (--)
Season-high: 2
Season-low: 7
Comment: Blaney has just one top 10 in the last four races but is still collecting a decent amount of points and has actually improved to sixth in the standings over that time frame. The reigning champ notched a pair of top 10s at Darlington last year ... but they stand as just two of the three total he has there since 2015, so another one this weekend is far from a guarantee.
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Jared C. Tilton | Getty Images
6. Tyler Reddick (--)
Season-high: 3
Season-low: 14
Comment: 23XI Racing entered the weekend as the team to beat and, well, it was beat. Reddick did lead seven laps in a race he was looked at as one of the favorites, but walking out of Kansas with a P20 surely was not the plan. Like Chastain, a Darlington win feels like an inevitability for him and with two runner-ups and another P3 in the last four races there alone, it very well might come this Sunday.
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Jared C. Tilton | Getty Images
5. William Byron (-2)
Season-high: 1
Season-low: 7
Comment: Back-to-back finishes outside the top 20? Alright, he might just be human after all. After a five-race stretch of dominance Byron has hit a mini-skid, but expect it to end abruptly this weekend. The defending spring race winner has appeared dialed in at Darlington the past few years and it's shaping up to be one of his career-long best tracks.
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4. Chase Elliott (+1)
Season-high: 4
Season-low: 17
Comment: Throwback Weekend is so aptly timed as No. 9 is on some kind of vintage Chase Elliott run right now, turning in a win and five top fives over the past six races. He's had some real hit-or-miss success at Darlington, with a mediocre 17.0 average finish but also top fives in nearly 30% of his 14 starts there. Feels like we'll get another on Sunday.
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Jared C. Tilton | Getty Images
3. Martin Truex Jr. (+1)
Season-high: 1
Season-low: 10
Comment: Had Kyle Busch not spun in the closing moments before overtime on Sunday, Truex just might've closed the gap and won his first race of the year -- yet he remains winless, which is somewhat shocking given he's turning in some of the best numbers of any 2024 driver. The 2017 champ is on pace for a career-best average finish -- better than the 9.4 he turned in during his title year -- and through 12 races is close to surpassing his laps led count from the entirety of 2022. He's also the only full-time driver yet to finish outside the top 18 this year. The 2016 Southern 500 winner (and 2021 spring Darlington winner) has proven more than capable of dancing with "The Lady," and you should look very much past his four straight finishes outside the top 10 there -- he led a combined 221 laps in those races.
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Jared C. Tilton | Getty Images
2. Denny Hamlin (--)
Season-high: 1
Season-low: 9
Comment: Kansas delivered on the hopes of another Hamlin/Kyle Larson battle ... and so much more. Hamlin walked away one of three 50-plus-point collectors and now heads to, arguably, his best overall track. No. 11 owns a sterling 8.4 average finish at one of the most notoriously fickle venues on the schedule and has a win and a pair of runner-ups from 2020-on alone to pad his full resume there, which features four wins.
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1. Kyle Larson (--)
Season-high: 1
Season-low: 5
Comment: Larson continues to find unique and endlessly entertaining ways to enthrall us, with Kansas just the latest entry in his portfolio of excellence. We're only in May, but it would be a shock if he doesn't wind up in his third Championship 4 in four years. As far as this weekend? There's not a reason in the world to think he won't be in the mix for back-to-back wins as the most recent Darlington winner at a track in which he's finished in the top three in half of his 12 starts.