NASCAR Power Rankings After Shane Van Gisbergen’s Win At Watkins Glen

Shane Van Gisbergen entered Sunday’s NASCAR Cup Series race at Watkins Glen International as one of the biggest favorites to win a race in series history. Not only did the rookie from New Zealand deliver, but he did so by over 10 seconds.

In doing so, Van Gisbergen moves himself back into our latest power rankings, while a new face moves atop the rankings for the first time.

NASCAR Power Rankings After Watkins Glen

Van Gisbergen dropped out of the power rankings one week ago after several difficult weeks in a row on ovals. Now, after returning to his more preferred stomping grounds on a road course, he’s yet again asserted himself as a playoff dark horse.

In addition, both Denny Hamlin and Kyle Larson struggled at Watkins Glen, meaning we have a surprising new face atop our latest set of rankings!

10) Tyler Reddick

Tyler Reddick was far from fantastic at Watkins Glen. He qualified in 21st and spent most of the day on the outskirts of the top 10. But ultimately, he brought home a solid ninth-place finish and avoided some of the issues that plagued other playoff drivers.

Reddick still lacks race-winning speed, which is fairly shocking from a driver who many felt was a trendy championship pick to start the year. But as we’ve seen in the past, all it takes is for a driver to get hot at the right time to make a title push.

He’ll hope to start that hot streak next week at Richmond, a track where he finished third a year ago.

Last Week: 10th NASCAR Playoff Standings: 14th

9) Shane Van Gisbergen

Shane Van Gisbergen has run five road course races this season. He has won four of them. His average finish in those five races is 2.0, which is being held down by a measly sixth-place finish at Circuit Of The Americas in Austin early in the season.

Many fans won’t like the way that Van Gisbergen has climbed up the playoff standings, especially with an average finish of 26.7 on ovals. But the game is the game, and Van Gisbergen is so hilariously far ahead of the field on road courses that he deserves every bit of the success he’s having.

Will it all come undone when the playoffs start, with just one road course race in the final 10? Perhaps. But hey, you never know until you get there.

Last Week: UR NASCAR Playoff Standings: 3rd

8) Bubba Wallace

Make that four consecutive top-10 finishes for Bubba Wallace, tying a career high. The 23XI driver has been remarkably consistent in the second half of the summer and showed it again with an eighth-place finish at Watkins Glen, a track where he’s struggled in the past.

Simply put, Wallace is just maximizing what he has to work with every time out of late. He’s racing as confidently as we’ve seen at the NASCAR Cup Series level and, frankly, he’s been the better of the two between he and superstar teammate Tyler Reddick for a not insignificant portion of the season.

Last Week: 8th NASCAR Playoff Standings: 9th

7) Chase Elliott

Since taking the NASCAR Cup Series points lead at Dover in July, Elliott has had finishes of 13th, 14th, and now 26th at Watkins Glen, a track where he picked up his first career victory and has had succeeded at in the past.

Elliott and crew chief Alan Gustafson tried to play some strategy and pick up points in the opening stage. But it ultimately backfired as he plummeted to the back of the field immediately in stage two and never recovered.

Elliott now sits 42 points behind regular-season points leader William Byron and, more concerningly, seems to be back where he was to start the season, lacking race-winning pace.

Last Week: 6th NASCAR Playoff Standings: 11th

6) Chase Briscoe

While Chase Elliott has struggled, Chase Briscoe has remained red hot of late. Briscoe ran up front for much of Sunday’s race and made some nice late-race moves to bring home a fifth-place finish.

It marks Briscoe’s fourth top-five finish in the last five races. Crew chief James Small said prior to Sunday’s race that expectations have changed from good finishes to race wins, but those good finishes certainly don’t hurt!

If Briscoe continues to run this well, while doing so on all varieties of tracks, he’s a genuine threat to not only make the championship four, but perhaps win a championship in his first season with Joe Gibbs Racing.

Last Week: 7th NASCAR Playoff Standings: 8th

5) Ryan Blaney

Early on in Sunday’s race, it looked as Blaney might shock the NASCAR world and upset Van Gisbergen after qualifying on the pole and leading every lap before pitting to flip the opening stage.

Ultimately, a strategy call and a less-than-stellar pit stop meant that Blaney ended up finishing in sixth. But he stayed out to win the second stage, picking up an all-important playoff point in the process, and with 14 stage points in total, Blaney actually scored more points than any other driver on Sunday.

He jumped Reddick in the regular season standings and pulled with 21 points of third-placed Denny Hamlin with two races remaining in the regular season.

Last Week: 5th NASCAR Playoff Standings: 6th

4) Kyle Larson

Kyle Larson has had a no-good, very bad run through the summer stretch of the 2025 NASCAR Cup Series season. Not only has Larson not won a race since May, but he’s also finished outside the top 25 four times, and outside the top 35 thrice.

That includes Sunday, when he started the race in 28th after an abysmal qualifying session and then dealt with a brake issue in the first five laps of the race.

Larson can turn it around quickly, as evidenced by top-five finishes at Dover and Indianapolis last month. But right now, it seems as if he’s stuck in a rut, and as a result, he falls to the lowest spot he’s been in our rankings.

Last Week: 2nd NASCAR Playoff Standings: 2nd

3) Christopher Bell

In all honesty, Christopher Bell hasn’t been much better than Kyle Larson in the summer months. He, too, hasn’t had a race win since May, and not since March if you don’t count his victory in the All-Star Race.

But Bell’s lows haven’t been as low as Larson’s, and he’s shown race-winning speed at a more consistent race. Bell put together a fantastic final stint in Sunday’s race and passed Chris Buescher on the final lap to pick up a runner-up finish.

We’ll see if that success continues next week at Richmond, a track where he’s finished in the top-10 all but twice in his career and led 122 laps a year ago.

Last Week: 4th NASCAR Playoff Standings: 5th

2) Denny Hamlin

The king is dead, long live the new king! After two months atop our power rankings, Denny Hamlin slides to the No. 2 spot after a second straight disappointing week.

Hamlin finished 24th a week ago at Iowa in an uncharacteristic showing where he and his team just lacked any and all speed. He backed that up with a similar showing at Watkins Glen, qualifying 22nd and finishing 25th while never really getting close to the top 10 throughout.

There’s a good chance we look back at this and see it as a blip on the radar. Especially if Hamlin goes out and wins next week at Richmond, a place he’s won four times. But for now, Hamlin takes a step down in our rankings for the first time in months.

1) William Byron

What a difference a pair of weeks makes. It wasn’t that long ago that we were asking where Byron’s season went off the rails after such a strong start.

Now, after a win a week ago at Iowa and a fourth-place finish Sunday at Watkins Glen, Byron is not only back atop the regular season points standings, but also atop our power rankings for the first time this season.

The Hendrick Motorsports driver scored 42 points in total on Sunday, putting a further 24 between he and Elliott as the regular season winds down and an additional 30 between he and Hamlin. Byron now enters the final two races of the regular season with a 42-point buffer to second and a staggering 81 points to third, putting him in a commanding position to take the regular-season title and the 15 playoff points that come with it.

Last Week: 3rd NASCAR Playoff Standings: 4th