NASCAR Power Rankings After Joey Logano’s Dominant Victory At North Wilkesboro

For the first time in 30 years, the NASCAR Cup Series held an official points race at legendary North Wilkesboro Speedway, and three-time series champion Joey Logano made sure to leave his mark.

Logano, who dominated the All-Star Race at North Wilkesboro in 2024, was similarly dominant on Sunday night, leading 323 of the 450 laps and never looking in any real threat after taking the lead at the beginning of the second stage.

Behind him, however, there was plenty of action, with drivers moving up and down the pack and an ill-timed caution ruining the race for several drivers, one of whom was involved in the wreck that caused the caution to fly.

2026 NASCAR Cup Series Power Rankings: Week 21

As the weeks roll by, we continue to get a clearer picture of the 16 drivers who will take part in the 10-race Chase for a Championship to end the season.

Logano’s victory, coupled with the 18 stage points he picked up during the race, moved him from outside the playoff cut line to a solid 49-point buffer.

Meanwhille, Denny Hamlin’s second-place finish saw his grasp on the No. 1 seed in the Chase continue to grow, while the fight for second between a floundering Tyler Reddick and surging Ryan Blaney is heating up.

All of those storylines and more come into play in our latest set of power rankings.

10) Chris Buescher

A four-spot drop for Buescher in the power rankings may well seem a bit drastic after a race where he finished in 20th, which is far from terrible, but the drop is more indicative of his lack of speed for several weeks now.

In fact, Buescher has just one top-10 finish in the last four weeks, which came last week at Atlanta when he finished in 10th but picked up no stage points along the way.

His average finish over the last four races is 17th, and he’s dropped from seventh to ninth in the point standings, with Christopher Bell hot on his heels.

It’s hard to blame the driver, as Buescher hasn’t exactly made a number of mistakes, but RFK Racing as a whole is just badly lacking for speed at the moment.

Last Week: 7th NASCAR Point Standings: 9th (-257)

9) Christopher Bell

Christopher Bell finished just one spot ahead of Buescher in 19th on Sunday night, which will come as a disappointment after an impressive showing in practice on Saturday.

But he did manage to pick up five points with a sixth-place finish in stage one, and on the whole, he’s just been faster than Buescher on a week-in, week-out basis.

There’s an argument to be made that he should have jumped Buescher a week ago after finishing second in Atlanta. That’s a mea culpa on our part.

But Bell is just now entering a run of tracks where he could well be a threat to win most weeks.

Last Week: 9th NASCAR Point Standings: 10th (-268)

8) Carson Hocevar

NASCAR’s most controversial driver had himself quite the week both on and off the track.

Carson Hocevar began his week taking pictures with both LeBron James and Prince Harry at Fanatics Fest in New York City.

He then showed up to North Wilkesboro and ran inside the top 10 for the majority of the night, picking up points in both stage one and stage two, before fading late for a 13th-place finish.

The finish won’t sit well with Hocevar, who had a top-five car for a large portion of the race. But he’ll once again be happy with the speed he brought to the track and the fact that he gained a spot in the standings as the Chase nears.

Last Week: 10th NASCAR Point Standings: 7th (-244)

7) Kyle Larson

Behind Christopher Bell, Kyle Larson probably had the fastest car in the field during Saturday’s practice session.

Unfortunately, that didn’t really show up much during the race. Larson started back in 27th and began making his way through the field fairly steadily in the opening stage.

However, during the first round of pit stops, he made significant contact with Connor Zilisch while pulling out of his box, bending the front-right wheel assembly on his car.

Larson and his team then spent the rest of the night trying to steady the ship, and actually came away with a pretty admirable 15th-place finish. But it’s just the latest in a tough three-race stretch in which he has an average finish of 27.7

Last Week: 6th NASCAR Point Standings: 6th (-226)

6) Chase Briscoe

Chase Briscoe got caught on the wrong side of a caution that flew in the middle of a green-flag pit cycle in the second stage, which dropped him back from the top five all the way to a lap down in the mid-teens.

But it hardly seemed to slow him down.

Briscoe started the race in 30th, and with the help of a fast car and good strategy call by crew chief James Small, finished the opening stage in eighth. He then fought back from the untimely caution to take third in the second stage, and it appeared for a while as if he may be Logano’s biggest threat.

While that didn’t prove true, Briscoe did end the night with a third-place finish and a haul of points that saw him gain two spots in the point standings.

Last Week: 8th NASCAR Point Standings: 8th (-255)

5) Chase Elliott

Chase Elliott, like Chase Briscoe, got the unfortunate side of the mid-pit-cycle caution in stage two. To make matters worse, Elliott found himself trapped not one, but two laps down after the ordeal.

That came after a strong run in the opening stage that saw him finish seventh and pick up four bonus points.

Unfortunately for Elliott, he was never really able to fully recover from the ill-timed caution and came home with a disappointing 17th-place finish. But the finish wasn’t indicative of his overall performance on the night, and he still has a slight buffer to Briscoe both in the points and the power rankings.

Last Week: 5th NASCAR Point Standings: 5th (-208)

4) Ty Gibbs

Sunday’s race will be a matter of what could have been for Ty Gibbs, who won the opening stage after starting the race on the front row.

However, following that stage win, Gibbs was hit with a penalty for speeding on pit lane and had to drop to the back of the field.

While he couldn’t recover quickly enough to score points in stage two, Gibbs eventually drove all the way back up into the top five for a fourth-place finish.

The question, however, is whether or not he could’ve challenged Logano for the victory if not for the self-inflicted penalty.

Last Week: 4th NASCAR Point Standings: 4th (-134)

3) Tyler Reddick

Whatever can go wrong, seemingly is going wrong for Tyler Reddick these days.

After winning five races early in the race, Reddick appeared to have a strangehold on both points lead and the top spot in the power rankings.

However, Reddick has run into a brutal stretch of bad luck over the summer. He has five finishes of 25th or worse in his last seven races, including four of 30th or worse, and many haven’t been his fault.

That includes Sunday’s 30th-place finish, where he was an innocent bystander when Alex Bowman tried to pit from the top lane of the track under green, wiping out Reddick in the process.

Sure, Reddick was struggling even before the incident, but the crash turned a potential rebound for a top 10 finish into a 30th-place finish that sees him drop a spot in the power rankings and fall even further away from the lead in the point standings.

Last Week: 2nd NASCAR Point Standings: 2nd (-68)

2) Ryan Blaney

What many expected would be a great weekend for Ryan Blaney turned into one where he was largely treading water.

Blaney got the benefit of sitting on the pole for the race following last week’s victory at Atlanta and Saturday’s qualifying session getting rained out.

However, he had to drop to the back of the field due to unapproved adjustments prior to the race to fix a power steering issue. By the end of stage one, Blaney had driver all the way to 12th, and unlike Briscoe and Elliott, he was on the right side of the stage two caution, putting him inside the top five late in second stage.

Despite that leg up, Blaney fell back to eighth by the end of the stage, and after driving back up into the top five in the final stage, he, too, sped on pit road. Unfortuantely, his speeding penalty came under green and later in the race than Gibbs, dropping him down a lap.

Eventually, Blaney fought back for a solid 11th-place finish, but it could well have been a top-five if not for the penalty, especially when you consider the speed of his teammate Logano.

Last Week: 3rd NASCAR Point Standings: 3rd (-87)

1) Denny Hamlin

On the other side of the coin from Reddick is Denny Hamlin, who has been ridiculously steady since the beginning of May.

Hamlin has just one finish outside the top 15 in a stretch that includes four victories and seven top-three finishes.

He was yet again in the mix for the victory on Sunday night, finishing in the top five in both stages and then chasing down Logano late in the race before ultimately falling just a bit short.

Hamlin is the driver to beat almost every week out of late, and if he can’t win, there’s a fantastic chance he’ll bring his car home in the top five at worst.

He now heads to Indianapolis Motor Speedway in search of his first Brickyard 400 victory, and he’ll do so both as the betting favorite and as the points leaders by an ever-growing margin.

Last Week: 1st NASCAR Point Standings: 1st