Power Rankings: Back on top, will Charlotte sting propel Byron at Nashville?

Analysis: Byron didn't leave with the trophy in Sunday's Coca-Cola 600, but he was the clear "winner," picking up a whole 15 points more than any other driver, including winner Ross Chastain. That vaults him back to the top here and also in the Cup Series standings, heading to a track where he should be in the mix for the win. Fresh off a (lengthy) contract extension, too, it's good to be No. 24 right now.   Analysis: A second straight tremendously frustrating Memorial Day Weekend Sunday for Larson not only resulted in him finishing neither the Indianapolis 500 nor the Coca-Cola 600, but knocking him out of the points lead as well. He's been quite good at Nashville, though, dominating his first start there for the win and following it up with three more top 10s. A butt-kicking might be just what the doctor ordered. Analysis: In terms of consistency, Bell is right there with Byron among this season's elite, with his only non-top-10 in the past two-plus months — including the All-Star Race, which he won — came after getting caught up in a wreck at Talladega. He appears destined for another Championship 4 appearance later this season and after leading 131 laps last year at Nashville, a fourth 2025 points win could come Sunday. Analysis: Elliott has now finished fifth, sixth, 15th or 16th in five straight races -- on top of not finishing outside the top 20 at all this year -- as his fun with numbers and solid runs continue into June, riding a career-best 11.2 average finish. He's a past Nashville victor and has been competitive in each race there; this could certainly be the weekend he becomes a 2025 winner. Analysis: Hamlin likely would've been in the mix at the very end at Charlotte had his pit crew executed correctly on the final stop ... which wound up not being the final stop, since he needed more fuel. The Coca-Cola 600 was still a fruitful, 44-point day for him, however, and with 70-plus laps led in each of the last three Nashville races he should be competitive once again Sunday. Analysis: We mentioned here last week that Chastain was capable of winning the Coca-Cola 600 and, well, he did just that to quiet all of his many doubters and reinsert himself into championship talk. And, as these things seem to always go, he actually might be the favorite to win at Nashville, too, as he's been lights out there across its four recent Cup races with a win and three top fives. Analysis: Team Penske was essentially absent from the Coca-Cola 600, and Logano was the highest-finishing driver among them in 17th, the last driver on the lead lap. He could use a little bit of a boost after that showing, and it could certainly come at Nashville, where he sparked his title run with a victory last season. Analysis: Reddick finished top five in each stage at Charlotte, so it's not like he had a miserable Sunday, but it's worth noting that he hasn't had a race finish better than 14th since the beginning of April. Things definitely seem a tick off his 2024 level of performance when he landed in the Championship 4, and with just one top 10 in four Nashville starts it might not mark the best place for a turnaround. Analysis: Blaney's super weird season continues, as in the past four races he has scored exactly one point in two of them and finished exactly third in the other two. This team and driver are just too good and too fast to not be winning races, and once they get on a stretch of several complete races being put together in a row ... you can guarantee they're going to win some of them. It can certainly happen at Nashville, but his results there follow a similar trajectory: two finishes of sixth or better and two of 36th or worse. Analysis: The Charlotte pole winner only led a single lap in the Coca-Cola 600 -- ironically, not even the first one -- but Briscoe still managed to corral his second straight top-five finish, the first time he's done that since early 2023. Things are starting to click here, and we might know for sure this weekend, if No. 19 is able to secure his first top 20 at Nashville in his fifth try. Analysis: Bowman is struggling from the same sort of inconsistency as Blaney; there is clearly some speed here but for whatever reason the finishes are anything but consistent. Literally all of No. 48's finishes in 2025 are top 10s or outside the top 25 and off of the lead lap. He's still hanging around the top 10 in the standings, however, but with no top 10s at Nashville to date, this likely lines up as one of his "outside the top 25" weekends. Analysis: 23XI Racing's recent woes stretch across the board, and Wallace is no exclusion -- he's finished 33rd or worse in May's three points races and missed the cut for the All-Star Race entirely. All four of his Nashville results have been top-20 finishes with the most recent being a P7, however, so perhaps this might be a bit of a rebound weekend for him. Analysis: Stenhouse Jr. fell just shy of his third top 10 of the season at Charlotte, but it still helped to lower his season-long average finish to what's shaping up to be a career-best 16.8. Though his recent Nashville results leave some room for improvement, he was P6 there in his first shot in 2021 and it's not impossible to think he could replicate it with how well he's running. Analysis: Thirteen races into his RFK Racing tenure -- his sixth full-time Cup Series season -- Preece has already matched a career-high in top 10s and is quite surprisingly looking like the team's best shot at the playoffs at the moment. Given he had a top five running for a lame-duck team at Nashville last year, there's little reason to think he won't keep it rolling in Tennessee. Analysis: A difficult weekend for Team Penske as a whole didn't spare Cindric, who faced questioning about his job status after his father and former Penske president Tim Cindric was let go from the organization before Austin took home the No. 2 Ford in 31st at Charlotte. His lone top 10 since the middle of March was his win at Talladega and with his only such finish at Nashville coming in 2022, another top 10 this weekend looks like a stretch. Analysis: Allmendinger's 49 points scored at Charlotte were only one tally shy of race-winner Chastain and the most he'd scored in a Cup race since 2010 (which used a different, higher points format; this was essentially his most lucrative race ever, points-wise). The Coca-Cola 600 might be exactly the jolt this team needed and Allmendinger -- who finished 10th and 11th the past two years at Nashville -- should be competitive again this weekend. Analysis: Berry is still going to be in the playoffs by virtue of his early season win at Las Vegas, but he currently holds the final spot and is about to be doubled in points by standings leader William Byron. This likely signals a one-round-and-done kind of playoff run, but at least he'll be motivated for a good showing at Nashville this weekend after starting on the front row last year and crashing out. Analysis: The highlight of Busch's weekend came in the media center, where he and Richard Childress Racing announced a contract extension for next year. Otherwise, another finish outside the top 10 and more questions than answers was what he walked away with. He's also led just seven total laps since COTA and while he's led in three of the four Nashville races, it's hard to see more materializing this weekend. Analysis: McDowell has looked like a contender this year, but it hadn't quite turned into anything resembling a solid finish for him ... until Charlotte, where he finally landed his first top 10 and collected 31 points for his largest total since COTA. Nashville could be a sneaky track for him, too -- though he averages a 23.0 finish, he led 31 laps there last year before losing a transmission. Analysis: While Preece may seem like RFK's best overall shot to make the playoffs right now, Buescher arguably remains the driver in its stable most likely to win his way in, despite a recent downturn. With a top five last year at Nashville, it may even come Sunday.