Once the checkered flag fell in Daytona to bring an end to the regular season, the points standings were instantly reset to set up the 16 NASCAR playoff drivers for their 2023 championship battle. And with that considered, it's only right that the CBS Sports Power Rankings follow suit this week.
The top 16 in the Power Rankings have now been rearranged with all 16 playoff contenders, but not necessarily in the order in which they're seeded for the playoffs. The 16 playoff drivers are ranked by virtue of their recent performances entering the Southern 500 at Darlington, which means that no one is ranked higher than Daytona winner Chris Buescher. Given that he's gone from trying to make the playoffs on points to winning three times since Richmond at the end of July, Buescher has gone from a potential good story to the fourth seed in the playoffs -- first in the Power Rankings -- and a legitimately dangerous title contender.
While the rest of the drivers in the Power Rankings have been bumped down below 16th, they're going to have the opportunity to make their way back up into the top 10 following Darlington. Ty Gibbs, who was a contender at Daytona before being eliminated in a huge crash at the end of Stage 2, leads all non-playoff drivers at 17th in the Power Rankings.
Here's a look at our updated Power Rankings:
| Rank | Driver | Change | Comment | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Chris Buescher | Since the end of July 2022 onward, there have only been two drivers in Cup who have won four races or more: William Byron, and now Chris Buescher. Buescher is beginning to enter the ranks of NASCAR's best just in time for a playoff run. | ||
| 2 | William Byron | William Byron will look to start the playoffs by sweeping the season at Darlington, something that hasn't happened in nearly 20 years. The last driver to sweep each Darlington race in a single season was Jimmie Johnson in 2004. | ||
| 3 | Martin Truex Jr. | The Southern 500 has the potential to be a vintage Martin Truex Jr. beatdown of the rest of the field. He won the Southern 500 back in 2016 and was dominating the spring race at Darlington before a run-in with Ross Chastain. | ||
| 4 | Brad Keselowski | With RFK Racing on a roll, count Brad Keselowski among the potential favorites in the Southern 500. He won back in 2018 and was fourth at Darlington in the springtime. | ||
| 5 | Denny Hamlin | -- | If he wins a race in the playoffs, Denny Hamlin will surpass the legendary Junior Johnson as the winningest driver in NASCAR history to have never won a Cup championship. Of course, he can change that by winning races in the playoffs and then winning his first Cup championship. | |
| 6 | Kevin Harvick | With Kevin Harvick set to retire at the end of the season, it should be noted that a Cup driver has never ended his career with a walk-off championship. The closest driver to do so was Ned Jarrett, who ran one more part-time season after winning the 1965 championship before opting for early retirement at 34. | ||
| 7 | Christopher Bell | Christopher Bell might want to make sure he works on his bump drafting before the Round of 12 race at Talladega. After triggering The Big One by bump drafting early in the 2021 Daytona 500, Bell did the same thing in the regular season finale after hitting teammate Ty Gibbs wrong. | ||
| 8 | Kyle Busch | Kyle Busch has the chance to win a Cup championship for Richard Childress Racing, something the company hasn't had in nearly three full decades. RCR's last championship triumph in Cup came by virtue of Dale Earnhardt's seventh championship in 1994. | ||
| 9 | Joey Logano | Joey Logano begins the playoffs conspicuously close to the cut line after winning just once in 2023 at Atlanta. But if the defending Cup champion has shown anything through the years, it's that he's really good at turning it on in the playoffs and putting himself in a position to get to the Championship 4. | ||
| 10 | Ryan Blaney | -- | The narrative that Ryan Blaney has to overcome in this year's playoffs is that he's never once made it to the Championship 4 in his Cup career. That's despite the fact that Blaney has made it to the Round of 8 in three out of the last four seasons. | |
| 11 | Tyler Reddick | Tyler Reddick's No. 45 team was a part of the 2022 playoffs in the owner's championship, but not the driver's championship due to Kurt Busch's career-ending accident at Pocono. With Busch officially announcing his retirement last weekend, there could be a "Win one for the Gipper" mentality within Tyler Reddick's team. | ||
| 12 | Michael McDowell | -- | When he made the playoffs in 2021, Michael McDowell crashed out of the Southern 500 and never recovered before being eliminated in the Round of 16. But compared to 2021 when he made the playoffs by virtue of his Daytona 500 win, McDowell and his team enter their second playoffs stronger and much further along in their development than they once were. | |
| 13 | Bubba Wallace | Do not be surprised if the slightest if Bubba Wallace makes a run in his first playoff appearance. He's won in the playoffs each of the past two years, and each round of the playoffs has a track where Wallace excels, namely Kansas -- where he won last year -- as well as Talladega and Martinsville. | ||
| 14 | Kyle Larson | It's going to be imperative for Kyle Larson to reclaim some positive momentum at Darlington. The 2021 Cup champion enters the playoffs with two-straight finishes outside the top 25. | ||
| 15 | Ross Chastain | Darlington may give us a conclusive answer on whether or Ross Chastain has been saving something for the playoffs. Chastain led 93 laps at Darlington in the spring before tangling with Kyle Larson while racing for the win. | ||
| 16 | Ricky Stenhouse Jr. | Ricky Stenhouse Jr.'s career year culminates with his second NASCAR playoffs appearance and his first since 2017. That year, Stenhouse made it to the Round of 12 before being eliminated midway through the playoffs. | ||
| 17 | Ty Gibbs | Ty Gibbs missed out on the playoffs in his rookie year, but he's virtually wrapped up the Cup Series Rookie of the Year title. Gibbs can earn ROTY honors with feeling by getting his first Cup win sometime in the next 10 weeks. | ||
| 18 | Chase Elliott | For the first time since his Cup career began in 2016, Chase Elliott did not qualify for the playoffs after missing seven races in 2023. However, Elliott's No. 9 team remains eligible for the 2023 owner's championship, having qualified for that playoff over the No. 23 23XI team. | ||
| 19 | Alex Bowman | After missing three races due to injury and missing the playoffs, Alex Bowman will have his worst finish in the championship standings since he joined Hendrick Motorsports full-time in 2018. It'll be his worst overall since 2015, when he finished 33rd in the standings driving for Tommy Baldwin Racing. | ||
| 20 | Daniel Suarez | Daniel Suarez and his team have to be wondering what could have been had they not had a poor green flag stop at Indianapolis. Of all the missed opportunities they've had to win a race this season, that may have been the best oppportunity that Suarez had to get back to Victory Lane for the first time since Sonoma in 2022. | ||
| 21 | AJ Allmendinger | -- | All isn't lost for AJ Allmendinger in 2023, as he's in a position to finish in the top 20 in the championship standings for the first time in many years. Allmendinger's last top-20 finish in points was in 2016, when he finished 19th. | |
| 22 | Aric Almirola | Aric Almirola might be a sleeper candidate to make some noise among the non-playoff drivers the rest of the season. His team has run appreciably better the second half of this season, and that continued with a third-place run at Daytona. | ||
| 23 | Corey LaJoie | Despite missing the playoffs, Corey LaJoie is in position to affirm 2023 as the best year of his career with his best-ever finish in the points standings. LaJoie, who's never finished better than 29th, currently sits 25th in the standings. | ||
| 24 | Chase Briscoe | Chase Briscoe's midseason penalty effectively served as a death sentence for his race team, causing them to miss the playoffs only a year after almost making the Championship 4. Briscoe almost wiped all of that away in Daytona, leading a race-high 67 laps after starting on the pole. | ||
| 25 | Erik Jones | Erik Jones has never finished better than 15th in the championship standings, and that'll continue after he missed the playoffs in 2023. He's currently 28th in the standings after a mid-season penalty, which is on pace to be his worst finish ever. | ||
| 26 | Austin Cindric | There was no walk-off magic to be had in Daytona for the 2022 Daytona 500 champion. After his 500 win put him in the playoffs as a rookie, Cindric got taken out in The Big One and missed the 2023 playoffs. | ||
| 27 | Todd Gilliland | Todd Gilliland and his team have likely been looking very much forward to their return to Darlington after the way they ran there in the spring. Gilliland ran 11th at Darlington in the spring, just missing out on another top 10 they could have added to the three he's had this season. | ||
| 28 | Ryan Preece | Unfortunately for Ryan Preece, he's become NASCAR's unofficial crash test dummy on superspeedways. After his brutal hit at Talladega, Preece went for a flier that rivaled the sort of rollovers that Darrell Waltrip, Rusty Wallace and others have had down Daytona's backstretch. | ||
| 29 | Austin Dillon | With 10 races to go in the season, Austin Dillon currently sits 29th in points following his mid-season penalty. For what it's worth, Dillon has never finished worse than 21st in the standings in his entire Cup career. | ||
| 30 | Ty Dillon | Ty Dillon did a very nice job putting himself into the picture in Daytona. Dillon worked the draft well throughout the night and earned a season-best 11th-place finish, just missing out on his first top 10 since Bristol Dirt in 2022. |
