NASCAR Power Rankings After Kyle Larson’s Long-Awaited Victory In St. Louis

After over a year of waiting, Kyle Larson returned to victory lane in a NASCAR Cup Series race on Sunday in St. Louis and, in the process, announced to the rest of the pack that he’s intent on defending the championship he won in 2025.

Larson led 80 laps after starting on the outside of the front row and then outdueled Joey Logano in both the second and final stages to take home the victory.

The impressive performance, as well as the victory, saw Larson gain significant ground on points leader Denny Hamlin and move from seventh to second in the standings.

On top of that, Larson flew up our latest power rankings after backing up his strong finish from a week ago in Darlington.

2026 NASCAR Cup Series Power Rankings: Week 28

Prior to the season, most drivers in the Cup Series felt that you needed to enter the Chase among the top six seeds to be a real threat to contend for a championship.

However, as we’ve seen throughout the season, one strong race, including high finishes in both stages and a victory, can lead to a massive points haul. We’ve seen that come to fruition in both of the first two races of the chase – first with Christopher Bell a week ago, and now with Larson.

While there are seemingly some restrictions on how far back you can be and still make a run, stumbles from Hamlin, who entered the Chase as the top seed, have brought a number of drivers into the fray, and that’s reflected in our newest set of power rankings.

10) Bubba Wallace

Wallace, who started the Chase outside the top 10 in the standings, is apparently one of the exceptions to the rule regarding the expanded field of contenders.

Sure, he could have gone on a generational run and chased down the top spot. However, what looked like a great day a week ago at Darlington ended up just being a good day, and he backed that up by running in 14th at St. Louis.

Still, Wallace has done enough to move up a couple of spots both in the power rankings and the point standings, positioning himself well for a solid end to an up-and-down season.

Last Week: 9th NASCAR Point Standings: 10th (-90)

9) Carson Hocevar

Controversy? What controversy?

While Carson Hocevar entered this weekend’s event at World Wide Technology Raceway (which is technically just outside of St. Louis in Madison, Ill.) in the news for what many would call the wrong reasons, he didn’t let it distract him on the track.

Hocevar backed up his 11th-place finish at Darlington by coming out and qualifying sixth for Sunday’s race, running inside the top 10 for the majority of the day, and then bringing home a top-10 finish.

He climbed back into the top 10 of the point standings in the process, and somehow avoided a run-in with new rival Brad Keselowski despite the two running around each other for much of the day.

Last Week: UR NASCAR Point Standings: 9th (-88)

8) Chase Briscoe

Chase Briscoe is seemingly the first driver on this list who still feels like he could win a championship over the course of the final eight races of the season, but Sunday proved to be a major setback for him, through no fault of his own.

Briscoe was in the wrong place at the wrong time on Sunday when fellow Chase contender Chase Elliott’s brake rotor exploded, sending him into Briscoe and the pair of them into the wall at high speed.

Big trouble for two Chase competitors!@chaseelliott goes sliding into Turn 1 and collects @chasebriscoe. pic.twitter.com/f3vYkvCaK3

— NASCAR (@NASCAR) September 13, 2026

Thankfully, nobody was injured. But Briscoe’s championship push took a bit of a hit. He dropped from fifth to eighth in the point standings after a 32nd-place finish and now will have to make up significant ground in the coming weeks to put himself back on level terms with the top drivers in the standings.

Last Week: 5th NASCAR Point Standings: 8th (-59)

7) Ty Gibbs

On one hand, Ty Gibbs avoided completed disaster and finished the second-highest of the four Joe Gibbs Racing drivers in the field on Sunday.

On the other hand, he’s yet to show the speed needed to contend for a championship in the opening races of the Chase, and we saw glimpses of the old, less mature Ty Gibbs when he got into an early incident with Legacy Motorsports’ Erik Jones.

Gibbs is still within touching distance of the points lead, so we’re not writing him off yet, but it feels like he needs a big showing next week at Bristol to re-establish himself as a title contender.

Last Week: 6th NASCAR Point Standings: 6th (-51)

6) Joey Logano

Three-time series champion Joey Logano has to feel conflicted following Sunday’s race in St. Louis.

On one hand, he took a solid chunk out of Hamlin’s points lead and currently sits as high in the standings as he has all season.

Logano entered the weekend as a favorite to win the race, knowing he needed a big showing if he was going to contend for a championship. He just about did so, sitting on the pole and taking 19 of a possible 20 stage points before finishing in third.

However, he led the most laps and could well have won the race, which would have trimmed another 20 points off of Hamlin’s lead and made it abundantly clear that Logano was a genuine threat moving forward. At the moment, that status is up in the last.

Last Week: 8th NASCAR Point Standings: 7th (-51)

5) Tyler Reddick

Reddick was the beneficiary, to a degree, of a race full of chaos.

On one hand, he finished down in 25th after getting caught up in one of the plethora of late-race wrecks. On the other hand, he still sits within 50 points of Hamlin at the top and only dropped one position in the standings. So the damage was minimal, all things considered.

Reddick showed decent speed throughout the race, driving up into the back end of the top 10 despite an early incident with fellow Chase competitior Dnaiel Suarez. But with a more impressive day, he could’ve been starting down the top of the standings or, at least, a single-digit deficit.

Last Week: 4th NASCAR Point Standings: 5th (-42)

4) Kyle Larson

Had it not been for Larson’s disappointing start to the season up until the last couple of weeks, he’d be even higher on this list. But one thing is certain: Larson, despite not looking like it for months, is genuinely a contender to repeat as the NASCAR Cup Series champion.

The reigning champion clearly had one of the two best cars, alongside Logano, throughout Sunday’s race, and when it mattered most, he was able to get and hold the lead in the closing laps.

The victory, alongside the 18 stage points he picked up, sent him flying up into second place in the points standings and within nine points of Hamlin.

He now heads to Bristol, one of his best tracks on the calendar, with a ton of momentum, and even more belief.

Last Week: 7th NASCAR Point Standings: 2nd (-9)

3) Ryan Blaney

If Ryan Blaney didn’t have bad luck, he’d have no luck at all. That has been true for seemingly the majority of Blaney’s Cup Series career, and it continued on Sunday.

After qualifying in third, Blaney didn’t quite have the same pace as his teammate, Logano; however, he finished fourth in both of the first two stages, cutting away at Hamlin’s already slim points lead. He was then driving back up through the top 10 after a slow pit stop when a brake rotor exploded, sending him slamming into the wall and ending his day.

On the bright side, Blaney’s 35th-place finish didn’t cost him as much as it could have had Hamlin or others had a great day. However, it took him from potentially the top of the points standings to fourth, with a notable deficit to erase.

Last Week: 2nd NASCAR Point Standings: 4th (-33)

2) Christopher Bell

After winning a week ago in Darlington, it appeared as if Bell might just go back-to-back when he finished the opening stage in second, hot on the heels of Logano.

However, Bell told crew chief Adam Stevens early on in the race that he was struggling with brake issues, and those seemed to cost him as the race went on.

A decision to take four tires rather than two cost Bell track position that he wouldn’t make up in stage two, finishing outside the top 10, and he later got swept up in a wreck involving several drivers. Bell rebounded to finish 19th, losing a relatively small amount of ground to Hamlin. But had it not been for the issues, he’d likely be leading the points at the moment.

Last Week: 3rd NASCAR Point Standings: 3rd (-18)

1) Denny Hamlin

Perhaps it truly is just Denny Hamlin’s year?

After what most described as a mulligan a week ago at Darlington when he got into a wreck with Michael McDowell, erasing a sizable chunk of his 25-point lead entering the Chase, Hamlin struggled again in St. Louis.

He qualified in 10th and fell backward at the start, failing to score points in the opening stage. Hamlin then took advantage of some clever strategy to grab a sixth-place finish in the second stage.

However, he spent most of the third stage back outside the top 10. Then the wrecks began. And they kept happening … and kept happening, taking out his competition one by one (and sometimes two by two).

Somehow, Hamlin avoided all of them, and when the checkered flag flew, he finished in ninth. Was it a day befitting a champion? Not exactly. But was it productive, given the struggles seemingly throughout the race? Undeniably.

Last Week: 1st NASCAR Point Standings: 1st