As Ross Chastain earned his second win of the year in the season finale at Phoenix Raceway, Ryan Blaney drove away from Kyle Larson and William Byron in the final laps to win the 2023 NASCAR Cup Series championship, earning his first Cup title with a second-place finish. Blaney's championship is his first in eight full-time Cup seasons, a second consecutive Cup title for Team Penske, and the first NASCAR championship for the Blaney racing family out of Ohio.
Despite getting off pit road third of the three remaining Championship 4 drivers on the final pit stop of the day, Blaney poured it on over the final run of the day, taking the championship spot from Larson coming to 20 laps to go and never looking back.
Larson finished third and Byron finished fourth to earn second and third-place finishes in the championship standings, while Christopher Bell finished fourth in the championship after crashing mid-race due to a brake rotor failure.
In his 826th and final NASCAR Cup Series start, Kevin Harvick closed his career with a seventh-place finish.
NASCAR Cup Series Championship Race unofficial results
- #1 - Ross Chastain
- #12 - Ryan Blaney
- #5 - Kyle Larson
- #24 - William Byron
- #17 - Chris Buescher
- #19 - Martin Truex Jr.
- #4 - Kevin Harvick
- #11 - Denny Hamlin
- #34 - Michael McDowell
- #23 - Bubba Wallace
A third-generation racer and the son of Dave Blaney, a longtime Cup Series journeyman, Blaney made his first Championship 4 by peaking at the right time, winning at Talladega in the Round of 12 and then again at Martinsville in the Round of 8. Combined with finishes of sixth at Las Vegas, second at Homestead and second at Phoenix, Blaney's late-season surge culminates in his first championship and his arrival from one of NASCAR's brightest young stars into a legend of stock car racing.
"Just so proud of this team. What an unbelievable year, what an unbelievable playoffs for us," Blaney told NBC Sports. "Winning back-to-back Cup titles for Mr. Penske, that's so special. And to have my family here winning my first Cup title -- I got emotional in the car. I'm not a very emotional guy, but it's so cool ... Can't wait to celebrate with my guys."
Blaney earned three total wins in 2023, including the Coca-Cola 600 at Charlotte in May, and also had eight top fives, 18 top 10s, and 562 laps led on the year. Blaney is the third driver in Cup history to win a championship for Team Penske, joining Brad Keselowski (2012) and Joey Logano (2018, 2022).
A crack in the Bell
The complexion of the Championship Race changed dramatically midway through the event, as circumstances whittled the Championship 4 down to the Championship 3. Entering Turn 3 midway through Stage 2, a brake rotor failed on Christopher Bell's car, sending the No. 20 Toyota into the wall and ending his hopes of contending for the Cup championship.
"That was my first time I've ever exploded a rotor in my career. I was surprised, but early on in the race I had a little bit of brake fade and the second run it just kept getting worse and worse," Bell told NBC Sports. "Obviously a disappointing way to end, but super, super proud of this No. 20 team ... To be in the final four, it's something that we're really proud of."
Through much of the first half of the race, it looked to be William Byron's championship to lose as Byron started from the pole and led four times for a total of 95 laps. But as the track changed and began to rubber in, Byron's car began to develop a tight condition, which got worse as Byron lost the lead and had to deal with traffic.
"Just couldn't gain a lot of speed through 1 and 2, just kind of having to really over-slow the car, get it to the bottom.That's all we had there," Byron told NBC Sports. "... Great season. It stinks to come up short. I'd like to think we're going to be back in this position and we're going to have more shots at it.
"We've just got to keep working on the short track program for us. It was definitely the tough part of our season. I felt like we brought a good car this weekend. Really until the track kind of changed, I thought we were in the game. Just all we had there."
When Kyle Busch spun out on the frontstretch to bring out the final caution with less than 40 laps to go, the final round of pit stops under yellow almost yielded the same outcome as the 2021 Championship Race. A quick pit stop by Kyle Larson's crew got him out first of the Championship 4, but Larson was unable to get the benefit of clean air as Denny Hamlin and Erik Jones both took two tires on their final stops to move up to first and second.
While Larson was able to navigate his way around both, the disparity in handling between his and Blaney's cars proved to be too much to overcome.
"They did everything in their power to give us the winning job done there. Huge thank you to them," Larson told NBC Sports of his pit crew. "I needed to come out the leader on that restart. Ross got a really good start from the second row. Was hoping I could get clear of Denny and get the lead, have Ross kind of protect for me behind me.
"I'm not sure if it would have made a difference. I was just not as good as a few guys, especially Blaney and Ross probably. It would have been difficult. But my team did a really good job all season, so I'm extremely proud of them. We had an up-and-down year and we finally put together two solid weeks in a row. I don't know if we've done that all year."
A smashing success
For the first time since NASCAR's current elimination-style playoff was introduced in 2014, someone other than the NASCAR Cup Series champion ended up winning the season finale. As the Championship 4 took the spotlight, Ross Chastain would end up finding his way to the lead in a mid-race battle with Kevin Harvick and proceeded to pace the field for a race-high 157 laps, standing his ground at the front of the field despite the presence of the drivers contending for the championship.
Chastain would end his season in style with his second win of 2023, adding another trophy to go with his victory at Nashville in June. And in the process, Chastain's early-race battle for the lead with Harvick would prove in a vacuum to represent a changing of the guard: In 2024, Busch Light will move on after Harvick's retirement to become Chastain's new sponsor.
"I couldn't think of anything I would want to do more, is to try to be like Kevin Harvick," Chastain told NBC Sports. "And racing him early in the race was bucket list little kid in me, racing that 2005 Gamecube game. I drove as the 29 GM Goodwrench car. Now I'm driving a Chevy for GM to Victory Lane, a Camaro.
"I am beside myself that we were able to do that. That last caution we were really tight, and it saved us. Phil Surgen and this group at Trackhouse, all of our GM support staff, sim staff and everybody at Trackhouse somehow came up with a way to make this thing turn, and we drove off into the sunset."
With his Phoenix win, Chastain becomes the first driver not in contention for the Cup Series championship to win the season finale in a decade, with Denny Hamlin having been the last to do so at Homestead in 2013. Chastain finishes his 2023 season with a ninth-place finish in the championship standings by virtue of two wins, 10 top fives and 14 top-10 finishes.
Happy trails
In his 826th and final NASCAR Cup Series start, Kevin Harvick didn't get a storybook ending and one final victory before riding off into the sunset. But even short of that, Harvick's final race went about as well as he could possibly have asked for.
Starting third at one of his very best racetracks, Harvick was competitive all day and led twice for 23 laps before finishing seventh, capping off his career with a top-10 finish and ending things on his terms.
To go out the way he wanted to -- competitive to the last race -- was important to Harvick, as he was thrust into Cup in February 2001 in terms that weren't his own at all. When Harvick finished 14th in his Cup debut at Rockingham, he did so having taken over the Richard Childress Racing Chevrolet that was vacated by the death of Dale Earnhardt, somehow persevering in that situation to become one of the great drivers of his generation and one of the greatest in NASCAR history.
"I opened this chapter unexpectedly in 2001, and closed it in 2023 how we wanted to. And that was to be competitive," Harvick told NBC Sports. "The thing that means the most is just having the respect of the drivers and competitors and the crew chiefs, my team and organization, and all the past people that I worked for or worked with.
"There's been so many great stories and things that have happened over this year, but especially this week."
Kevin Harvick finishes his NASCAR Cup Series career with 60 career victories (10th all-time), 251 top fives, 444 top tens, 31 poles and the 2014 Cup Series championship. He will move into a career in television as a lead analyst for Fox Sports' coverage of NASCAR beginning in 2024, and he will be eligible for enshrinement in the NASCAR Hall of Fame beginning in 2026.
Race results rundown
- Chris Buescher completed a career year in 2023 by earning his ninth top-five finish of the season, bringing his No. 17 RFK Racing Ford home in fifth. Buescher's nine top-five finishes tripled his career-high in that category, which he set with three in 2022.
- After a downturn in performance following his elimination from the playoffs in the Round of 16, Michael McDowell finished his season on a high note with a ninth-place finish, his eighth of the season and first since Bristol in September. That top 10 would help McDowell finish 15th in the championship standings, giving him a new personal best.
- Bubba Wallace drove his X-Wing-inspired 23XI Toyota to a 10th-place finish, giving him five top fives and 10 top 10s on the season for the second year in a row. While Wallace went winless for the first time in two years, a 10th-place finish in the final championship standings marks his career best by far.
- While his exit is overshadowed by Kevin Harvick's, Aric Almirola took home a 13th-place finish to close out his full-time racing career as he will not return to Stewart-Haas Racing in 2023. Where Almirola's career goes from here remains to be seen, as he has left the door open to continue racing on a part-time basis while seeking a greater work-life balance away from the racetrack.
- It was a winning weekend for Brad Keselowski regardless of where he finished on Sunday, as Keselowski and his wife welcomed their third child into the world on Saturday. After Xfinity Series champion Cole Custer qualified his car, Keselowski returned to Phoenix on Sunday and drove the No. 6 Ford to a 15th-place finish.
- While their teammates Larson and Byron competed for a Cup Series title, Hendrick Motorsports' Chase Elliott and Alex Bowman would both whimper home in 16th and 17th to close out winless seasons derailed by injuries and absences. Elliott's winless season is his first since 2017, while Bowman failed to win a race for the first time since 2018.
- While he just missed out on a top 20 to close out the season, a 21st-place finish by Ty Gibbs allowed him to officially add a new accolade to his growing racing resume. Following the conclusion of the season, Gibbs was officially named the 2023 NASCAR Cup Series Sunoco Rookie of the Year.
- A 31st-place finish was a disappointing way to end what's been a year of marked growth for Spire Motorsports, but Corey LaJoie and his team could hang their hat on one very notable accomplishment: LaJoie was running at the finish of every single Cup Series race in 2023, the only driver to run the full season without a single DNF.
