Some 30 years and change ago, Bristol Motor Speedway offered Joe Gibbs his first taste of success in NASCAR when Dale Jarrett's runner-up finish in the 1992 Food City 500 marked the first-ever top-five finish for Joe Gibbs Racing. On Sunday, in the present day despite the 1992 aesthetic of Bristol's Winston Cup-style retaining walls, Bristol was almost the site of yet another milestone for the powerhouse team that has made Gibbs the only man to have a place in both the Pro Football Hall of Fame and the NASCAR Hall of Fame.
For some time in the second half of the race, Joe Gibbs Racing cars occupied the first four spots at the front of the field, creating a chance that JGR would earn the very first 1-2-3-4 finish in team history. It wasn't to be as Ty Gibbs and Christopher Bell wound up falling toward the back end of the top 10, but a 1-2 finish for Denny Hamlin and Martin Truex Jr. nonetheless marked a second-straight win and another successful trip to the racetrack for the team.
Just as was the case in Bristol, Joe Gibbs Racing just misses out but comes very close to going 1-2-3-4 on top of this week's CBS Sports NASCAR Power Rankings. With the exception of Christopher Bell (seventh), JGR drivers are 1-2-3 at the top of the standings with Denny Hamlin now first, Ty Gibbs second and Martin Truex Jr. third.
Here's a look at CBS Sports' updated NASCAR Power Rankings following Bristol:
| Rank | Driver | Change | Comment | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Denny Hamlin | Figuratively speaking, spring has finally sprung for Denny Hamlin. While Sunday marked his fourth career win at Bristol, it was his first in the track's spring race after his previous three wins had all come in the Night Race. | ||
| 2 | Ty Gibbs | It was almost Ty Gibbs' day in Bristol, but he'll have to wait another week to try and get his first career win. There's a good chance it come come at COTA, as Gibbs has proven to be an excellent road racer with four road course wins in the Xfinity Series. | ||
| 3 | Martin Truex Jr. | Martin Truex Jr. has multiple wins on NASCAR's classic road courses in Sonoma and Watkins Glen, which for a long time were the only such tracks on the schedule. He's still looking for his first win at some of the newer road courses, like COTA, that were added to the schedule in 2021. | ||
| 4 | Ryan Blaney | Ryan Blaney and Ross Chastain found each other on the racetrack again, with Chastain using the chrome horn to knock Blaney out of line and almost knock him around mid-race. Blaney seemed in no mood to discuss Chastain following Bristol, giving a fairly terse response to reporters who asked about how the two of them raced. | ||
| 5 | Kyle Larson | Bristol was yet another illustration of how exceptionally skilled Kyle Larson is behind the wheel of a racecar. Despite losing his track position due to a pit road penalty, Larson was able to finish fifth and be one of just five cars to finish Sunday's race on the lead lap. | ||
| 6 | Ross Chastain | Pencil in Ross Chastain among the favorites at Circuit of the Americas, which has proven to be one of his very best racetracks. He got his first career win there in 2022 and has finished fourth the two other times NASCAR has raced there. | ||
| 7 | Christopher Bell | Christopher Bell is also good at Circuit of the Americas, provided he can actually get to the finish there. Bell was third at COTA in 2022, but he has crashed out of his two other Cup races in Austin. | ||
| 8 | Brad Keselowski | After finishing third at Bristol, Brad Keselowski had to play "car owner trying to preserve a car" on pit road afterward. There was a small fire under the hood of Keselowski's car, and he was seen popping the hood in order to make sure, in his words, it didn't burn down. | ||
| 9 | Chris Buescher | Fun with numbers: Chris Buescher, in car No. 17, led 17 laps at Bristol. He did so after starting 34th, which is double the number 17. This is as good of math as you're gonna get from me. | ||
| 10 | Michael McDowell | It's no longer a surprise when Michael McDowell puts a complete weekend together, as he started seventh and finished 11th at Bristol. That generates positive momentum for McDowell entering a road course at COTA, where he could very well be among the contenders to win. | ||
| 11 | Chase Elliott | Despite an alternator issue that emerged early in the race, Chase Elliott would earn his first top 10 of 2024 with an eighth-place run at Bristol. Elliott won the inaugural Cup race at COTA and his road course record is well documented, but he hasn't won on a road course since the Next Gen car was introduced in 2022. | ||
| 12 | Tyler Reddick | Tyler Reddick could have made it out OK after his spin early in the race at Bristol, but that changed when Zane Smith came barreling into the left front of Reddick's car and heavily damaging it. Reddick had a long day from that point onward, finishing five laps down in 30th. | ||
| 13 | Daniel Suarez | Daniel Suarez has a very good feel for Circuit of the Americas, but not the results to show for it. He qualified second in 2022 and fifth in 2023, and was fast in both of the past two years before circumstances kept him from finishing well. | ||
| 14 | William Byron | William Byron had the longest day of any driver at Bristol, as he hit the wall early and broke a toe link in an incident that brought out the first caution of the day. Since winning the Daytona 500, Byron has only one top-10 finish and no runs better than 10th as Las Vegas. | ||
| 15 | Chase Briscoe | Well, this is awkward. The tension that existed between Chase Briscoe and Erik Jones throughout the week leading up to Bristol was caused by an offseason change of phone number for Briscoe, which prevented he and Erik Jones from calling each other to discuss their incident at Phoenix. Once that was cleared up, the issue between those two was quickly resolved. | ||
| 16 | Noah Gragson | After two great runs out west, Bristol marked a setback for Noah Gragson. He had troubles throughout the day and hit the wall in the second half of the race, relegating him to six laps down in 34th at the finish. | ||
| 17 | Alex Bowman | Alex Bowman's fourth-place finish at Bristol is very well-timed given his recent history at COTA. He's had two top-three finishes in a row there, including a runner-up finish in 2022. | ||
| 18 | Todd Gilliland | The results don't show it, but Todd Gilliland had yet another very nice performance at Bristol. Gilliland ran inside the top 10 and drove up into the top five at one point before falling off the pace and finishing 24th. | ||
| 19 | John Hunter Nemechek | For the second time this season, John Hunter Nemechek has set a new high mark for his best career finish. Nemechek was strong all day at Bristol on his way to an eventual sixth-place finish. | ||
| 20 | Joey Logano | The raw speed that Joey Logano and his team have exhibited to start 2024 suggest that at some point, better finishes should come. But it didn't happen at Bristol, as Logano finished 22nd despite starting fourth. | ||
| 21 | Bubba Wallace | Bubba Wallace was among the drivers who fell off dramatically as the race went on at Bristol. He went from leading 15 laps early on and earning some stage points to just having to get out of the way of car owner Denny Hamlin in the closing laps when Hamlin and Truex were racing for the win in lapped traffic. | ||
| 22 | Kyle Busch | Sometimes, you can't just keep going back to the well. Kyle Busch tried driving backward to the pits like he's done multiple times before, but this time his car spun the other way on the transition from the racing surface to the apron and he was left with little choice but to drive in pointed in the actual right direction. | ||
| 23 | Ryan Preece | A trip to Bristol suited Ryan Preece just fine, as he earned his first top-15 finish of the year in the first short track race of the year. He'll be chomping at the bit to get to the next short track at Richmond in two weeks, where he was a contender last July on his way to finishing fifth. | ||
| 24 | Carson Hocevar | I had some people in my social media mentions freaking out that Carson Hocevar was wearing a Derek Jeter jersey at the racetrack this weekend despite the Cal Ripken Foundation sponsoring his car. Take it easy: Ripken and Jeter's foundations collaborate, and Hocevar is a Michigan native just like Jeter is. | ||
| 25 | Erik Jones | As the 75th-anniversary season of the Petty family in NASCAR continues, I guess this is a good time to note that it's been a very long time since the No. 43 has won a road course race. The last time that happened was in 1977, when Richard Petty won the NAPA 400 at Riverside. | ||
| 26 | Corey LaJoie | Late in Stage 2 at Bristol, Corey LaJoie stayed out on old tires to try and pick up a stage win and some stage points. It was a bold strategy -- and it didn't work. Still, LaJoie was credited with leading four laps on his way to finishing 21st. | ||
| 27 | Josh Berry | Josh Berry makes his way into this week's power rankings by virtue of a very nice performance at Bristol. Berry qualified on the outside pole, led 25 laps, and wound up just missing out on a top-10 finish in 12th. | ||
| 28 | Justin Haley | The Rick Ware Racing teammates both end up right together in this week's power rankings after both ran in the top 10 at Bristol. First up is Justin Haley, who made his way up to the doorstep of the top five before eventually finishing a season-best 17th. | ||
| 29 | Kaz Grala | Very quietly, Kaz Grala has had a solid start to his rookie year in Cup. After running inside the top 10, a 19th-place run at Bristol marked Grala's second top-20 finish in five races to start the year. | ||
| 30 | Ricky Stenhouse Jr. | After the two spun out in Turns 3 and 4 at Bristol, it was between Ricky Stenhouse Jr. and Austin Cindric for the last spot in the power rankings this week. Based on Cindric's DNF at Phoenix, I'll give Stenhouse the nod despite him going on to finish 33rd in Thunder Valley. |
