NASCAR Power Rankings After Shane Van Gisbergen’s Return To Victory Lane At Sonoma

A week ago, the NASCAR world sat stunned as Shane van Gisbergen, the heavy favorite for victory, crashed out in the second stage of the inaugural Cup Series race at Naval Base Coronado outside San Diego.

Van Gisbergen entered the event having won six of the last seven road course races, in including a dominant win the last time out at Watkins Glen.

This Sunday, van Gisbergen seemingly righted a wrong, leading 74 of 110 laps and holding off a hard-charging Chase Briscoe. In the process, he revived his hopes of making the chase for the championship and gave himself an argument for re-entry into our latest power rankings.

2026 NASCAR Cup Series Power Rankings: Week 18

Van Gisbergen’s win at Watkins Glen back in May sparked a three-race streak where he finished no worse than 11th, including a career-best oval finish of fifth at Nashville, which vaulted him up to eighth in the power rankings.

However, he fell back out following consecutive finishes of 30th and 31st at Michigan and Pocono. Entering last weekend’s race, I fully expected him to return to the rankings with a pair of wins in the two California road races, but last week’s crash means he’s just on the outside looking in.

Instead, we see a familiar face return to the rankings after months of bad luck put him behind the eight ball in the 2026 season.

10) Chase Briscoe

In 2025, Chase Briscoe was one of the most impressive drivers in the whole of the Cup Series, picking up three victories in his debut season for Joe Gibbs Racing.

This year, however, has been a struggle. Briscoe first appeared in our rankings in the No. 10 position back in February after the second race of the season in Atlanta. He hasn’t been in since, as it seems like either he or his No. 19 time have tripped over themselves at every turn.

But they’ve got things righted of late, and after Sunday’s runner-up finish, Briscoe now has three top-10 finishes in his last five races, with no finish worse than 17th and a pair of top fives.

Last Week: UR NASCAR Point Standings: 11th (-251)

9) Daniel Suarez

Daniel Suarez has, perhaps surprisingly, built up enough equity this season that he can afford one bad weekend won’t knock him out of the top 10 of power rankings.

But it was still a shockingly rough go of things for a driver who won at Sonoma in 2022 and finished 14th at the track each of the past two seasons.

Suarez qualified back in 21st and never really moved forward, eventually finishing all the way down in 31st and dropping a spot in the point standings.

Last Week: 9th NASCAR Point Standings: 9th (-235)

8) Carson Hocevar

On the other side of things, Suarez’s teammate Carson Hocevar continues to show that he’s making significant strides as a road course racer.

Hocevar qualified on the front row for Sunday’s race alongside Ty Gibbs and opted against flipping the first stage, finishing fourth and taking home seven key points. From there, he slipped back a bit out of the top 10 for the rest of the day.

However, he steadied himself and eventually drove back up for a perfectly solid 11th-place finish, solidifying his spot in the power rankings and jumping his teammate in the standings.

Last Week: 8th NASCAR Point Standings: 8th (-210)

7) Chris Buescher

Chris Buescher has proven himself to be one of the series’ best road course racers in recent years. However, this season has been a bit of a struggle for him on the circuits.

Sure, he had a strong showing a week ago, finishing sixth, but in the other three road races this season, he’s now finished 24th, 12th, and 19th, with the latter coming Sunday.

It’s hard to say what exactly went wrong for Buescher at Sonoma. He just never really moved forward after qualifying in a solid, if unspectacular, 15th position.

Still, three straight top-10 finishes in the lead-up to Sunday’s race gave him some built-in breathing room in both the rankings and the standings.

Last Week: 7th NASCAR Point Standings: 7th (-201)

6) Chase Elliott

Perhaps nobody is as fortunate as Chase Elliott that Buescher didn’t have a strong day in Sonoma. Elliott has now gone more than a month without a top-10 finish after bringing his car home in 17th position on Sunday, and that was probably as strong as he could have done after multiple off-track excursions.

In the time since his last top-10 finish at Nashville, Elliott has dropped from fourth to sixth in the rankings and the point standings.

He still has a pretty solid buffer to Buescher in points. However, with the chase for a championship nearing, he and the No. 9 team will want to figure things out as quickly as possible.

Last Week: 6th NASCAR Point Standings: 6th (-165)

5) Kyle Larson

Larson’s excruciating winless streak in the Cup Series, which is now well over a year, continued on Sunday at Sonoma. But his drop in the power rankings had more to do with the driver above him than anything that Larson did wrong.

In fact, the Hendrick Motorsports driver has continued to impress in recent weeks, including on Sunday, where he started in third and was able to flip the first stage and still pick up a pair of points.

He then repeated the strategy in stage two, narrowly missing out on the final point of the stage to Ryan Blaney, before bringing his car home in fourth. Larson spent almost the entirety of the race inside the top five and brought home his fourth top-five finish in a row.

Last Week: 4th NASCAR Point Standings: 5th (-148)

4) Ty Gibbs

Ty Gibbs jumps over Larson from fifth to fourth in both the power rankings and the point standings after an incredible weekend in wine country.

After putting his car on the pole for the race, Gibbs led 31 laps and won both of the opening two stages, banking 20 points in the process. He then drove back through the field all the way up to third by the time the checkered flag flew, making you wonder if he could well have challenged van Gisbergen for the victory had he opted for a different strategy in the second stage of the race.

All in all, Gibbs banked 54 points, the second-most on the day, and made significant movement up the point standings.

Last Week: 5th NASCAR Point Standings: 4th (-130)

3) Ryan Blaney

Blaney has shown significant improvement on road courses this season, running at the front at Circuit of the Americas, Watkins Glen, Coronado, and now Sonoma.

However, it’s not hard to question the strategy of crew chief Jonathan Hassler.

Multiple times, Hassler has decided to pass up on stage points in hopes of racing for the victory, and multiple times it feels like it has resulted in Blaney leaving points on the table.

On Sunday, Hassler flipped both of the first two stages, including pitting from the lead in stage two, which he ultimately finished in 10th to pick up one point.

At the end of the day, Blaney picked up a strong sixth-place finish, which is why he remains in third in the power rankings. However, his team’s strategy choices meant that he lost 22 points Gibbs in the race for third place in the point standings.

Last Week: 3rd NASCAR Point Standings: 3rd (-104)

2) Tyler Reddick

For the first time in the 2026 NASCAR Cup Series season, Tyler Reddick is not the leader of the point standings.

When you win five times in the first nine races of the year, you buy yourself a lot of wiggle room in both the point standings and power rankings, which is why Reddick currently sits second in both.

However, he now has three finishes of 25th or worse in the last four races, including a 35th at Michigan and a 36th at Sonoma after power steering issues on Sunday.

Between those performances, however, Reddick has a runner-up finish at Pocono, and he was racing for the lead last weekend at Coronado before blowing a tire late in the race, which dropped him from second to 25th.

Ultimately, Reddick has shown the type of speed that leads you to believe he’ll turn things around. But another poor finish next week at Chicago could well see him slide down the rankings.

Last Week: 2nd NASCAR Point Standings: 2nd (-1)

1) Denny Hamlin

Just like last week in Coronado, when Hamlin finished 14th, and Reddick saw his race fall apart in the closing laps, the Joe Gibbs Racing star is yet again a beneficiary of Reddick’s misfortune more than anything else.

Hamlin qualified in ninth for Sunday’s race and was running inside the top 10 when he, like Blaney, opted to flip the opening stage, passing up on points.

He did the same in stage two, and in the opening laps of stage three, he found himself spun around after a collision with Hocevar. Hamlin suffered damage to his car in the incident and spent the rest of the day mired deep in the pack, eventually finishing 26th.

Ultimately, Hamlin takes over the lead in the standings by just one point thanks to Reddick’s troubles, and maintains his spot atop the power rankings for the same reason.

But we’d be surprised if he weren’t right back in the front of the field, contending for victory, next week in Chicago.

Last Week: 1st NASCAR Point Standings: 1st