Austin Dillon muscled up and proved his 2024 victory at Richmond Raceway was no fluke.
The driver of the Richard Childress Racing No. 3 Chevrolet now has plenty of momentum at hand as the season’s 14th different winner and returning to another track where he’s enjoyed a crisp Coca-Cola in Victory Lane.
NASCAR.com’s Zach Sturniolo ranks the top 20 Cup Series contenders after the Cook Out 400 at Richmond and before Saturday’s Coke Zero 400 at Daytona International Speedway (7:30 p.m. ET, NBC, MRN Radio, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio, Peacock).
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Analysis: William Byron is officially the 2025 Regular Season Champion, no small feat and one that instantly adds 15 playoff points to his postseason push. A 12th-place showing at Richmond may not have been the most dazzling way to clinch it, but he could very realistically end the regular season on an even higher note by winning this weekend at Daytona, where he’s won each of the last two Daytona 500s and the summer race in 2020.
Analysis: Blaney appears to be revving back up to championship form. The No. 12 Ford driver headed an impressive night for Team Penske at Richmond with a third-place finish while his teammates rounded out the top five. More notably, Blaney carries five consecutive top 10s with him into Daytona, where he won the regular-season finale back in 2021 — another trip to Victory Lane may be in his near future.
Analysis: After 23 straight top-20 finishes to open the season, the last two weeks have really stung for the 2020 Cup champion. Elliott was dealt a last-place finish at Richmond after first avoiding the ‘Big One’ in Turn 3, then getting collected by Kyle Busch, resulting in Elliott’s first DNF of the season and eliminating him from reaching Byron to contend for the Regular Season Championship. The sport’s most popular driver is still seeking his first Daytona win but has two runner-up results (August 2020, February 2021) and a fourth-place finish in the 2023 regular-season finale.
Analysis: The good news for Hamlin is that he has three Daytona wins. The better news for him is that they’re all Daytona 500 victories. The bad news is he’s never won at Daytona in the summer. The worse news is he hasn’t finished better than 17th at Daytona since the Next Gen car was introduced to start the 2022 season. In seven starts since, Hamlin has just two top-20 finishes at the “World Center of Racing.” But he’s only five points behind Elliott for second in the regular-season standings, which could result in an additional two playoff points for Hamlin if he can overtake the No. 9.
Analysis: A quiet sixth-place effort at Richmond is exactly what the No. 5 team needed. That puts an end to a brief but rough two-race skid that left Larson 28th at Iowa and 39th at Watkins Glen. He’s still looking for his first top-five finish at Daytona after 22 starts, which seems astounding, but crew chief Cliff Daniels and his driver have proven they should never truly be written off.
Analysis: Bell’s up-and-down summer continued with another middling evening at Richmond with a 21st-place finish. The No. 20 Toyota was running toward the front of the field early but couldn’t maintain its track position, resulting in Bell’s seventh finish of 16th or worse in past 11 races. Hope could be high in their camp this weekend, though. Bell hasn’t won at Daytona yet, but he does have three third-place finishes in the past five races at the 2.5-mile superspeedway.
Analysis: Briscoe had a fairly standard 13th-place run at Richmond for just his second finish outside the top five in the past six races. Now he pivots to Daytona, where he began his stint in the No. 19 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota this year with a Daytona 500 pole and fourth-place finish in the “Great American Race.”
Analysis: A Richmond runner-up may have bolstered Bowman’s shot at making the postseason this year. He heads to Daytona 60 points above the provisional elimination line — but with 14 winners this season, Bowman is in danger of being ousted if another new winner emerges on Saturday night. Bowman is still looking for his first Daytona win, but the three-time Daytona 500 polesitter does have four finishes of sixth or better in his last five Daytona starts, including a runner-up finish in the 2024 Daytona 500.
Analysis: Reddick entered Richmond in great shape to make the playoffs and set sail early to lead 41 laps — but he left just 89 points above the elimination line. While 89 points is a great cushion, Bowman is just 29 markers behind, meaning the contact that sent Reddick spinning from the lead in Stage 2 at Richmond (and ultimately saddled him with a 34th-place finish) puts Reddick’s postseason status in jeopardy if he is collected in another crash Saturday at Daytona. On the bright side, Reddick did finish second in this year’s Daytona 500 in addition to a runner-up performance in the 2022 summer race.
Analysis: Like his teammate Reddick, Wallace was having a stellar run under the lights as the 23XI Racing duo ran 1-2. But a detached left-front wheel derailed the No. 23 team’s day, instead falling to a 28th-place finish and snapping a four-race streak of top 10s. Wallace has generally been good at Daytona, where he has three second-place finishes overall and two top 10s in his last three Daytona starts.
Analysis: The summer has been a bit of a roller coaster for the defending Cup Series champion, with three top 10s in the past seven races and those other four results reading 11th (Chicago Street Course), 14th (Dover), 32nd (Indianapolis) and 14th (Watkins Glen). Richmond was a peak, though, with a fourth-place finish that tied his best result (Nashville) since winning im May at Texas. With just one regular-season race remaining, this is about the time when Logano — and the whole of Team Penske — ignites for a possible championship run. Is another in store?
Analysis: Chastain had an OK-but-not-great day at Richmond, where he finished 19th, backed by a 20.78 average running position at the 0.75-mile track. There won’t be much pressure on Chastain at Daytona as he’s already locked into the playoffs (and is notably good at its opening track, Darlington Raceway), but he will certainly be searching for some success on the Floridian high banks after finishing 40th in this year’s season opener and owning just three top 10s in 14 Daytona starts.
Analysis: After a third-place finish at Watkins Glen, Buescher appeared to have some momentum heading back to another track where he won in Richmond Raceway. Unfortunately, that was far from the case last week after a 30th-place finish and a new winner shoved the No. 17 RFK Racing driver 60 points outside the playoff picture. But Buescher has won at Daytona with his back against the wall before. He will likely need to do that again on Saturday night.
Analysis: Sure, a 14th-place finish doesn’t really jump off the page to anyone. But for van Gisbergen to match his best result on an oval — tying his mark set in the Coca-Cola 600 in May at Charlotte — is significant with the four-time race winner gearing up for his inaugural Cup Series Playoffs appearance. Richmond shares some similarities with the 1.25-mile World Wide Technology Raceway at Gateway and the 1-mile New Hampshire Motor Speedway, both of which appear in the first two rounds of the postseason. If SVG can muster top 15s at ovals moving forward, he has a legitimate shot to make a surprise run deep into the playoffs.
Analysis: What could have been almost feels like what should have been. Preece launched himself to the pole position at Richmond, but the No. 60 team appeared unable to keep pace as the majority of the field went a different direction on tire strategy. Preece didn’t pit through Stage 1 and fell to the back of the top 15 before his brakes gave way and plummeted to a 35th-place finish, four laps down. Now he heads back to Daytona, where he went for a tumble in Turn 3 in February, but does have two top 10s in 11 starts.
Analysis: Cindric turned in a great performance Saturday at Richmond that deserves proper credit. The No. 2 Ford ranked fourth in average position at 7.86 before taking the checkered flag fifth, his first top-10 finish since Pocono in June and first top five since winning in April at Talladega. Evidenced by that victory, Cindric has long performed well on superspeedways, earning his first career win in the 2022 Daytona 500. He also finished eighth in this year’s edition of the “Great American Race,” so maybe some momentum is brewing for this Team Penske driver, too.
Analysis: No controversy. No doubt. Just a show-them-you-can-do-it-again performance from Dillon that may have been the best of his Cup Series career. He led a career-high 107 laps at Richmond to earn his sixth career win and now heads back to another track he knows well in Daytona, earning the 2022 summer victory driving that famed No. 3 Chevrolet in addition to the 2018 Daytona 500.
Analysis: Berry collected a much-needed top-10 finish at Richmond by placing eighth — his first top 10 since finishing sixth at Kansas way back in May. Berry was a real threat to win last year’s Daytona summer race before late contact sent him upside down on the backstretch while racing for the lead. The winner of that race, though, was Harrison Burton, who just so happened to be driving the No. 21 Wood Brothers Racing Ford that Berry will be in on Saturday night.
Analysis: After missing the playoffs in 2024, Busch appears on the brink of doing so all over again in 2025. The No. 8 Chevrolet has been close a few times this season, but the two-time Cup Series champion remains mired in the longest winless streak of his career at 82 races. Busch was a runner-up in this race one season ago. A victory on Saturday at Daytona would be monumental for the 40-year-old “Rowdy,” who would leap back into the title hunt in an instant.
Analysis: Allmendinger showed speed early at Richmond but faded in the end to a 22nd-place finish. Allmendinger has made just four Cup starts at Daytona since the Next Gen was introduced and has had mixed results, finishing sixth twice and 29th and 41st the other two times.