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Power Rankings: Just like Sunday, everyone's chasing Kyle Larson
Welcome to Power Rankings. As always, Power Rankings are far from a scientific formula. In fact, it’s the perfect blend of analytics and bias against your favorite driver. Direct all your complaints to us at nickbromberg@yahoo.com and we’ll try to have some fun.
1. Kyle Larson (LW: 1): Welcome to NASCAR’s playoffs, Kyle Larson.
Larson is pulling a Kevin Harvick with his domination of the Cup Series through the first five weeks of the season. Heck, you can make the argument that he’s been even better than Harvick was in 2016.
With his win on Sunday at Auto Club Speedway, Larson’s average finish is 3.8 through the first five races. That’s just a tick better than Harvick, who had an average finish of fourth through the first five races a year ago. Anytime you’re being compared to Harvick’s Stewart-Haas Racing tenure you’re doing something right.
“I think the runway, you know, he’s got a lot of runway,” Larson’s car owner Chip Ganassi said. “We don’t have the engine spooled up yet. We have a lot of runway to go. I think he’s just scratching the surface in terms of what he’s capable of. I have no idea what he’s capable of. I mean, your guess is as good as mine.”
2. Brad Keselowski (LW: 2): Keselowski was a NASCAR yo-yo on Sunday, though the climb back towards the front was much slower than the quick drop to the back.
After starting third, Keselowski was spinning just a few laps into the race because of a flat tire. The tire was busted because of damage sustained at the start of the race when Denny Hamlin’s car didn’t accelerate ahead of Keselowski’s and the driver of the No. 2 got sandwiched between Hamlin and Ryan Newman.
With a bunch of hammers and tape, Keselowski’s team got his car driveable and he took advantage of late restarts to climb through the field and finish second.
“I don’t know if I would have had a shot at Kyle [on the final restart], but I would have liked to have seen,” Keselowski said. “We came from third on that last one and a couple of three-wide passes and what-not. Kyle was smart. He picked the outside lane and kind of pinned me behind a guy that had older tires, so by the time I cleared everybody Kyle was just too far gone.”
3. Martin Truex Jr. (LW: 5): Truex was Larson’s main contender throughout the race on Sunday and ended up finishing fourth after he was passed by Keselowski and Clint Bowyer on the final restart.
The third-place finish may not be what Truex remembers most about the race, however. The biggest memory may be the contact that led to a crash with quasi-teammate Matt Kenseth. Truex’s car slid up from the bottom line on a restart and made contact with Kenseth’s right-rear. The touch sent Kenseth sliding into the inside wall on the backstretch and destroyed his car.
4. Chase Elliott (LW: 4): Elliott was the first driver to head to pit road before the race’s final restart and we’re a bit miffed that he didn’t finish any higher than 10th. It may be because so many cars stayed out on the track before the two-lap shootout.
But we liked Elliott’s strategy. With Larson being so good throughout the entirety of the day, more cars should have taken tires in an attempt to chase after the lead. If you’re not going to play the fifth race of the season aggressively, are you going to be aggressive in the playoffs?
5. Kevin Harvick (LW: 6): Here’s another driver that had one hell of a comeback. Harvick sustained some serious damage to the front of his car when he got into the back of Newman on that kerfuffle at the start of the race. After losing a lap after his team attempted to fix the damage, Harvick got the lap back and ended up finishing 13th. He was proud of that finish.
“I feel like we won,” Harvick said. “Those are the days that championships are made out of right there. To wreck before we even get to the start-finish line, I don’t know exactly what happened in front of me, but, obviously, we got a caved-in grille. [The team] did a great job fixing it. We got some wavearounds and made the car better and made something out of the day. That’s why these guys are who they are and won championships and races because they can make days like that happen.”
6. Ryan Newman (LW: 3): Last week’s winner ended up finishing 15th. Much like Harvick and Keselowski, the damage Newman suffered at the start of the race put him behind immediately.
“Then we battled an extremely tight-handling car that put us a lap down,” Newman said. “We finally raced back onto the lead lap with 19 to go. It certainly wasn’t the finish we wanted but it was a decent recovery.”
7. Joey Logano (LW: 7): Logano finished fifth after starting at the back of the pack because he didn’t get a chance to attempt a qualifying lap. He didn’t qualify because his car wasn’t through inspection in time.
Logano also came back from being a lap down, though he was a lap down late in the race after trying to pit off-sequence from the leaders and getting pinned because of a caution flag.
“We were good on short runs, but would fall off too hard on the long run,” Logano said. “We got caught with the caution while we were trying that green-flag cycle with 30 to go or so. We lost our track position, but were able to get enough cautions and allow us to fight back into the top-5. I thought, ‘Man, we’ve got a shot at winning this thing.’ We were catching them so fast with a newer tire, but another caution came out and we lost some track position on pit road and then we battled back and kept fighting to get back to fifth.”
8. Clint Bowyer (LW: 11): The resurgence of Clint Bowyer is real. Even though teammate Kurt Busch won the Daytona 500, it’s fair to say that Bowyer has had a better start to the year. He’s 25 points ahead of Busch in the points standings and with good reason. His finishes have been better.
“It’s just the opportunity you’ve been waiting on,” Bowyer said. “You know, I mean, everybody knows the situation. You know, this opportunity, this is something I signed up for a year and a half ago. I’ve been chomping at the bit to be with an organization like this, to have an army of people behind you like this, the teammates, the sponsors we have, the manufacturer in Ford, all of that.”
9. Daniel Suarez (LW: NR): After a rough few races to start the season Suarez now has back-to-back top-10 finishes. Much like Elliott, Suarez pitted late for tires and drove through the field to finish seventh, three spots of the driver of the No. 24.
10. Ryan Blaney (LW: 9): Blaney finished ninth after getting a mid-race pit road penalty that put him to the back of the pack. While he’s been good so far this season, he’d be even better if he and his team could avoid the pit road penalties.
11. Kyle Busch (LW: 10): Busch finished eighth and he’s now 10th in the points standings. Much like his teammate two spots ahead of him in the standings, Busch has two-straight top-10 finishes after finishing outside the top 10 in the first three races of the season.
12. Jamie McMurray (LW: NR): McMurray isn’t lagging that far behind his teammate Larson. He’s sixth in the standings and finished sixth Sunday at Auto Club. It’s clear that Ganassi has made organization-wide changes that have paid off at the beginning of the season. The test is now to see if CGR can stay at the top of the heap for the rest of the season.
“Our team and our whole organization has done an amazing job to get to the point that we are,” McMurray said. “It’s not one thing; it’s hundreds of small things. I’m so happy for all the guys at our shop that have worked hard. In our sport, every team works hard; and you’re not always rewarded for it. It’s awesome to be rewarded for all the work.”
The Lucky Dog: Erik Jones had a very late pit road penalty and still ended up finishing 12th. Tires!
The DNF: Poor Kenseth
Dropped out: Kurt Busch, Jimmie Johnson
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Nick Bromberg is the editor of Dr. Saturday and From the Marbles on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at nickbromberg@yahoo.com or follow him on Twitter!
